Friday, March 30, 2007

Fatalism and the Loss of Western Cultural Confidence

The Fjordman Report

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.



Akashi Gidayu writing his death poem before comitting SeppukuOn my essay about glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word, reader kepiblanc suggested that the Western culture of self-destruction should be called seppukultur, from the Japanese word “seppuku,” the ritual suicide by disembowelment which was a part of the Samurai code of conduct, more commonly known as hara-kiri. I find the word intriguing, but it isn’t entirely accurate. What modern Westerners are doing is eradicating their own culture. This concept would never have occurred to Japanese who followed bushido teachings. Those who committed seppuku did so precisely out of a deep commitment to their traditions. For good or bad, the Japanese always have been fiercely attached to their culture, which is why they have largely remained insulated to the onslaught of Western Multiculturalism.

Right-wingers can be very short-sighted when it comes to mass immigration, and even so-called “conservatives” keep parroting the “Islam is peace” mantra. And although conservatives will complain about left-wingers, at least Leftists are committed to their cause and more determined to get into positions of influence. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the most eager allies Muslims find in the West tend to be among the hard-Left groups. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some of them actively side with Muslims against their own people if there ever is a genuine physical battle.

There is an aggressive anti-Western impulse in certain segments of the Western Left which is rare among right-wingers. When they break down the “oppressive” nuclear family in the West yet downplay barbaric violence in Muslim families they are being entirely consistent: Their primary goal was never about freedom, it was about destroying the West. This creates fissures between the left-wingers who actually believe their own rhetoric — and some of them do — and between those who always knew it was just a pretext for something else.

Tariq RamadanAccording to journalist Ian Buruma, Tariq Ramadan prefers “Islamic socialism, which is neither socialist, nor capitalist, but a third way.” The tyranny to be resisted is “the northern model of development.” Global capitalism is the ‘abode of war,’ for “when faced with neoliberal economics, the message of Islam offers no way out but resistance.” This kind of rhetoric appeals to segments of the Western Left, and Mr. Ramadan knows this.

I’m not claiming that everyone left of the political centre actively seek the destruction of Western civilization. I once belonged to the political Left myself, and I was simply naïve because I had grown up in a sheltered environment in a peaceful country. I can understand those who initially didn’t grasp the sheer magnitude of the forces at work and didn’t foresee how the tiny trickle in the beginning would turn into the vast migration deluge that is swamping the West.

What I find difficult to understand is how people can, even now, with Islamic barbarism and terror attacks spreading across the European continent, continue so stubbornly to claim that mass immigration is good and that all those claiming otherwise are “racists.” We have unfortunately an almost infinite ability to fool ourselves into believing whatever we want to believe, especially if the truth seems troublesome. Moreover, many observers can be shockingly indifferent to the sufferings of actual people as long as they are focusing on the “greater good.”

Valdimir SorokinAccording to Russian author Vladimir Sorokin, “The word ‘people’ is unpleasant to me. The phrase ‘Soviet people’ was drummed into us from childhood on. I love concrete people, enlightened people who live conscious lives and do not simply sit there and vegetate. To love the people you have to be the general secretary of the Communist Party or an absolute dictator. The poet Josef Brodsky once said: The trees are more important to me than the forest.”

Theodore Dalrymple writes about how George Orwell, because of books such as Animal Farm and 1984, has been made into an “honorary conservative.” However, his 1938 book Homage to Catalonia about the Spanish Civil War gives a different impression of the man:

“‘Churches were wrecked and the priests driven out or killed’: the only regret that Orwell expresses is that it allowed Franco to represent himself to readers of the Daily Mail as “a patriot delivering his country from hordes of fiendish ‘Reds.’” Orwell continues: “For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to look at the Sagrada Familia… Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona, it was not damaged during the Revolution — it was spared because of its ‘artistic value,’ people said.. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.”

Orwell states that “In six months in Spain I saw only two undamaged churches.” According to Dalrymple, George Orwell, a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist,” was a “fundamentally decent man blinded by abstract ideas: He never really asked the right question, which is not whether there could be democratic socialism (clearly there can be, in the one-man-one-vote sense), but whether socialism is compatible with freedom.”

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso

Many of us associate the Spanish Civil War with Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica, and were taught that the “bad guys” won the war. But if the “good guys” were killing priests and blowing up churches, maybe the truth is slightly more complicated than that. Dalrymple points out that Orwell’s anti-totalitarian books did far more good than Homage to Catalonia did damage. 1984 circulated clandestinely in the Communist dictatorship of Romania, where people were amazed to see how a Western writer could so accurately portray their own reality. However, Orwell should also serve as a chilling reminder of how even good men can become blinded by ideology.
- - - - - - - - - -
Kai SørlanderThe philosopher Kai Sørlander explains that when optimists don’t see any serious problem arising from mass immigration of people from alien cultures, this is partly because they assume that man by nature is good. To the pessimists — some would say realists — man by nature isn’t good, he is combative, and has the potential to do both good and evil. Cultural education is necessary to bring out his good qualities and suppress his potential for evil. For the optimists, the pessimists appear to be dangerous because they do not believe in the goodness of man. However, Mr. Sørlander notes that where the optimists portray the pessimists as xenophobic and thus evil, the pessimists only makes the optimists naïve. The demonization is one-way.

Oriana FallaciIt is indeed striking how venomous many Multiculturalists are whenever any Westerner stands up for his country. Oriana Fallaci was hated by parts of the Italian Left during the final years of her life. I have seen cartoons in Denmark depicting the leader of the Danish People’s Party, Pia Kjærsgaard, who has been pushing for stricter immigration policies, as a rat, a vulture etc. Years of such dehumanization will eventually lead to physical attacks. Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands was murdered following similar treatment by the media.

The idea that human beings are by nature good leads to viewing criminals as suffering from some kind of disease that can be corrected by treatment. If a person does something bad, this is because he has suffered some form of “injustice.” The same logic is extended to Islamic terrorists.

The tabula rasa or “clean slate” view of humans has been shared by good men such John Locke. As a non-Christian, I too do not believe that human beings in general are born sinful. However, the idea can be dangerous if combined with massive state indoctrination.

Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau said that: “The state should be capable of transforming every individual into part of the greater whole from which he, in a manner, gets his life and being; of altering man’s constitution for the purpose of strengthening it. [It should be able] to take from the man his own resources and give him instead new ones alien to him and incapable of being made use of without the help of others. The more completely these inherited resources are annihilated, the greater and more lasting are those which he acquires.”

It is this lethal cocktail of the “noble savage” idea and state indoctrination that led via Maximilien Robespierre to modern totalitarian states. I believe the contradiction between Leftists not viewing terrorists as evil, but considering ideological opponents to be evil, can be explained if we postulate that they think that criminals haven’t received proper ideological guidance, whereas political opponents have rejected their ideological indoctrination and are thus considered a threat.

According to Paul Gottfried and his book The Strange Death of Marxism, the so-called cultural Marxism of Antonio Gramsci and others means the death of Marxism, because Marxism is an economic theory. Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal disagrees and thinks that we should call it “the transformation of Marxism.” Personally, I agree with Belien, and believe there is still enough shared DNA to label it Marxism, although I do recognize that there have been some mutations.

Critics state that there is no centralized conspiracy pushing Gramscian views ahead. No, but we should think of it as the Leftist version of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” described in The Wealth of Nations: It’s a spontaneous cooperation between various groups with a shared goal. As examples, the display of the national flag has been denounced as “xenophobic” in Sweden and the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. Was this part of a grand, centralized conspiracy, a Gramscintern? No. But that doesn’t change the fact that the end results were remarkably similar.

Political Correctness, of which Multiculturalism is a core component, has many of the hallmarks of a totalitarian ideology: ideological punishment for newly invented crimes, which creates a climate of fear, public propaganda campaigns as well as a gross perversion of language. Research and media coverage are tailored to suit the ruling ideology, inappropriate questions are not asked, “wrong” answers are suppressed. Since the ideology is logically incoherent, it can only be enforced through repressive means: We’re supposed to celebrate our differences at the same time as it is taboo to say that any differences exist.

Like all totalitarian ideologies, Multiculturalism needs a Villain Class, a group of evil oppressors that can be blamed for all the ills of society. If the ruling ideology falls somewhat short of producing the Perfect Society it has promised, this will be followed by even more passionate attacks on the Villain Class, be that the Jews, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, etc. The Villain Class of Multiculturalism seems to be white people and Western culture. Any problems will automatically be blamed on “white racism,” which will ensue more state enforced “equality” and suppression of free speech.

According to columnist Leo McKinstry, the white working class is the one ethnic group that it is perfectly acceptable to insult. In his book The Likes of Us: A History of the White Working Class, author Michael Collins recalled coming across a municipal leaflet in a library in south London, listing every group that had settled in the borough, including Afro-Caribbeans, Somalians and Ethiopians. As he read this, Collins sensed an elderly white man looking over his shoulder. “They don’t mention us English. You wouldn’t think we existed, would you?”

Race relations
Education Secretary Alan Johnson from the British Labour Party has stated that children will be taught race relations and multiculturalism with every subject. In science, key Muslim contributions such algebra will be emphasized to counter Islamophobia. Pupils could also be tested on their attitudes to diversity. Tory MP Douglas Carswell warned that schools would become vehicles for left-wing propaganda and classrooms turned into “laboratories for politically-correct thought.”

This was due to recommendations by former headmaster Sir Keith Ajegbo. Ajegbo also said that resources need to be put into providing education about the benefits of diversity to white pupils, citing an example of a white pupil who, after hearing in a lesson that other members of her class originally came from the Congo, Trinidad and Poland, said that she “came from nowhere.”

But since the goal of Multiculturalism is not just to demographically and culturally eradicate Western civilization, but to erase any memory that it has ever existed, when this English pupil says she comes from nowhere, she is merely parroting what her education system tells her.

V. S. NaipaulAccording to the West Indian writer V. S. Naipaul, “[Islam] has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter.’” It is striking to notice that this is exactly what is going on in the West. When Muslims enter our lands, they thus discover that much of their work has already been done for them by Western Multiculturalists.

What’s really amazing is that the people who do this get away with claiming to have a monopoly on good. I believe it’s because they claim to champion “equality,” and if they champion equality, this means that everybody who disagrees with them champions inequality, which is almost the same as racism and discrimination. As Observer columnist Nick Cohen writes, “To be good you had to be on the left.” The problem is, as Hayek has so eloquently pointed out, there’s a world of difference between equality and equality before the law, since absolute equality in all walks of life can only be enforced by a government with totalitarian powers.

In Norway, Government Minister Karita Bekkemellem says that female directors must make up at least 40 percent of all new shareholder-owned companies’ boards of directors. “This is all about sharing power and influence and it is intervention in private ownership, but it was overdue.” Violation of the new rules will be penalized with forced dissolution of the company.

We now get enforced quotas between the sexes, and among various ethnic, religious and racial groups, an idea so radical that it was abandoned even in Communist dictatorships. Communism, the idea of forced economic equality, has been replaced by Multiculturalism, the idea of forced cultural, religious, racial and gender equality. As a result, the supposedly prosperous and free West will end up being decidedly less prosperous and significantly less free.

Animal EqualityThe next step in the equality drive will lead to extend human rights to animals. According to author Joan Dunayer, “It’s speciesist to deny anyone equal consideration either because they aren’t human or because they aren’t human-like. Nonspeciesists advocate equally strong basic rights—for example, to life and liberty—for all sentient beings. Just as the concepts of sexism and racism have been vitally important to advancing human rights, the concept of speciesism is vitally important to advancing nonhuman rights.”

Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero’s Socialist Party has made attempts to grant human rights to apes.

The Dutch Party for Animals, PvdD, has forbidden the laying of poison to deal with a mouse infestation in its parliamentary offices. Its leader Marianne Thieme says, “Should there ever be a mouse plague, we would wish to combat it using traps that keep the mice alive.”

According to David Green’s book We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now!, victimhood is sought after because of the advantages it brings: “Group self-interest includes not only material benefits but also emotional pleasures such as righteous indignation and exerting power over others. Demands to be able to subject opponents to police action are perhaps the strongest examples of the latter.” The victim is the sole judge of when language is offensive.

The “oppressed” groups constantly change the words that are deemed offensive. That way they can keep potential offenders on their toes, always afraid of uttering, or even thinking, a word that could be deemed insensitive. This is combined with a culture where the most important thing is whether what you do “feels” good. According to writer Mikael Jalving, we have become “seduced” by goodness. He warns that we have to be judged according to the result of our actions, not their intentions, and that a precondition for freedom is the exercise of power. It is tempting to add that this emotional culture is a result of the excessive feminization of society. Everything that smacks of traditional masculinity, such as enforcing rules by force, is viewed as “Fascist.” Tolerance has become a goodness dope, an extension of our pleasure seeking culture, just another drug intended to make you feel good about yourself.

I have heard non-Europeans say that the ongoing colonization by immigration of Western Europe is a fitting punishment for the colonial era. It’s called karma in Eastern religions. However, Norway, which never had a colonial history, has immigrants from all over the world. The Netherlands had colonies in Indonesia, but there is not now a majority of people of Dutch descent in major Indonesian cities, whereas native Dutch will soon be a minority in most of their cities. It is also difficult to see what Moroccans, a large immigrant group in Holland, have to do with Dutch colonial history. The Germans were a colonial power in places such as Namibia. It is unclear why they should have an obligation to accept millions of Turks because of this.

The truth is that there is frequently no direct correlation between past colonial history and present mass immigration. Europeans have a right to resist colonization, too. There is no other place in the world where the indigenous population are supposed to celebrate their own colonization and get punished by their government if they fail to comply with this.

The waves of migration that the Western world is faced with now are far, far greater in scope and speed than those who brought down the Roman Empire. At least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the West every year until 2050, according to a United Nations report from March 2007. The world’s population could reach 9.2 billions.

It is striking that it appears to be taken for granted by the UN that we will sit back, bleed to death and accept all these millions to flood our countries. It is presented like a natural disaster, as if the massive population growth cannot be stopped by the nations in question, and the ensuing migration cannot be limited by Western countries. But both these assumptions are wrong. Westerners should not and cannot take responsibility for billions of people in other parts of the world. They will have to limit their population growth to a sustainable level. We have already accepted more immigration peacefully than any other society has done in human history.

There is a significant element of blackmail here. I remember a group of African leaders telling the European Union that they needed to get huge amounts of money to limit mass migration from their countries, which is indirectly an admission that they can control this if they want to.

Many Westerners watch with resigned fatalism as we are told by our leaders and our media that this is “inevitable.” But nothing is inevitable. Our societies will collapse if this continues, yet we are supposed to be quiet bystanders to our own demise. Right-wingers tell us that it will be “good for the economy,” and left-wingers attack us for “racism and discrimination” if we desire our continued existence.

At Lawrence Auster’s blog, an Indian living in the West writes:

They say that all ‘rich nations’ will face mass immigration. But, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and even Malaysia are also rich nations. Immigration to those countries is close to zero. I think that immigration is matter of government policy and national will. If the will is there, you can have zero immigration or limited immigration. But there isn’t the will to do anything about immigration in the West. Instead they sit and wring their hands. (…) If there was ever a picture of a society that has been completely finished, this is it. You don’t have to discriminate on racial grounds or religious grounds, just reduce the annual quota to 1000 or 10000. Nothing illiberal about that. But they cannot contemplate even that! Westerners amuse me. Even the worst cowards in the so-called ‘third world’ have more spine than this.

We seem to have lost our willpower. Why? Maybe some of those traits which previously used to be our greatest assets, such as our respect for women, for human rights, individual freedom and for openness to outsiders have been carried into such extremes that they have become liabilities. Perhaps even initially good ideas can turn bad if practiced without moderation. The key word, which we seem to have forgotten, is “balance.” According to a conservative Swedish friend of mine, many of the seemingly crazy excesses now on display are not so much a perversion of Western civilization as a fulfilment of it. What has happened is that Westerners have carried many of the seeds of our culture into their theoretical (and extreme) limits. This has left us confused; we have fulfilled our civilizational mission, and don’t know what to do next.

Besides, when your entire world view is fundamentally out of tune with reality, you are bound to display some irrational behavior. Too many Westerners are still mentally stuck in an age when the West was globally dominant. Many left-wingers thus tend to explain the shortcomings of other regions of the world by Western oppression. Other groups believe we have near unlimited resources, that we are invulnerable and can absorb any number of immigrants to our countries.

But the West’s dominant position is not just coming to a certain end, it ended a while ago. We shouldn’t think of this as “decline,” rather as a return to normality and as an opportunity for a return to Western sanity. If it is true that some left-wingers attack us for being a “global oppressive class,” it is conceivable that their most aggressive anti-Western behavior will subside once it becomes apparent to everybody that the West simply isn’t powerful enough to oppress the rest of the world.

Western civilization has been the first civilization in human history whose influence has penetrated every single corner of the planet, from Greenland to New Zealand. That a single civilization has been so globally dominant is unprecedented, and may never happen again. Besides, critics are probably right that it is immoral for a minority to run so much of global affairs.

We may at best retain a position as a first among equals. However, even this is far from certain. We live in a world demographically — and perhaps soon economically — dominated by Asia. Russians look after Russian interests, Chinese after Chinese interests, Indians after Indian interests, etc. Only Westerners are still supposed to worry about global interests. We should stop trying to save others and start saving ourselves, while we still can.. Only by letting go of illusions of hegemony can we regain our sanity. The sooner we realize that, the better are our chances. We should use this situation as an opportunity to regenerate and define a new civilizational mission dedicated to our own survival. If cultural confusion and a lack of hope for the future is a primary cause of our low birth rates, it is likely that a new sense of cultural confidence will lead to a significant rise in the same birth rates.

The battle for Western hegemony is already over. The battle for Western survival is about to begin.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why does Christianity never get mentioned as the ultimate source of all this trouble? All the fatal flaws of liberalism, multiculturalism, socialism, call it what you will, find their origin in the doctrines of the New Testament. These include pacifism- one must never fight back if attacked- nonjudgementalism- no one else's behavior can be evaluated as wrong or condemned- preference for the poor, the oppressed, minorities, criminals, anybody outside of the mainstream of society- these are the people God really cares about, and if they are hard to love, well loving them just shows how good you are! European societies have only survived because they developed something that was not Christianity except in name, and could just as easily been practiced by their pagan ancestors.

Evanston2 said...

Baron, thank you for a thoughtful and comprehensive article.
Thrasymachus, "All the fatal flaws" you mention are imposed on the Bible by people who do not read it. They look for a single line of text, or small incident, as a proof text and off they go.

Put another way, they impose their own views of love, justice, peace, etc. on the text. For example, a thin slice of 1 John (4:8) "...God is love" is distorted into meaning Love is God. So liberals start with their idea of what love is, and decide that God cannot act in what they consider an un-loving manner. That way they can throw out many inconvenient passages and entire books of the Bible.

But God knows that there can not be any true love without justice, so He shows the truth of Hell by paying for it in Christ's torture death and temporary separation from the Father. He then shows His mercy to whom He will.

Liberals wish it all away. They never ask, "How can there be mercy if God can not punish sin?" Or "How can there be grace if God must provide all good things to all people (because after all, Love is God)?"

In sum, liberals (like unsaved conservatives) use the color of christianity for their own ends. The lie of their actions is apparent to anyone who knows the Bible. Those who have donned clerical collars will be particularly disturbed when Christ tells them "I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness." (Matt 7:23).

History Snark said...

Thrasymachus, I completely disagree with you. You state that Christianity is the root of Pacifism. I think that the more "real" Jesus is the one that attacked the money-lenders in the Temple- which to me hardly looks like Pacifism.

More importantly, you state that "no one else's behavior can be evaluated as wrong or condemned": I don't rightly know what part of Christianity you speak of, but it isn't the Catholicism I grew up with. Certainly there are things that are "sins": perhaps you are splitting hairs- people "sin", but the person is not a "sinner"?

I don't get it. It seems to me, unfortunately, that you are simply opposed to Religion in general, or Christianity in particular, and are looking for a way to blame everything on it.

And that is just not fair.

Venjanz said...

Excellent post, sir.

Anonymous said...

I just love this post, have linked to it for my easter message.
On the issue of Christianity being to blame, we must remember that with the unholy alliance of church and state that occured many moons ago, the Churchianity we see today is always more representative of the state than of Christians, if Christ had gone along with the authorities we would have had no Crucifixion but this was not his Fathers will.

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

Good article

Many of us associate the Spanish Civil War with Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica, and were taught that the “bad guys” won the war. But if the “good guys” were killing priests and blowing up churches, maybe the truth is slightly more complicated than that.

Franco has had an unfairly bad press. We never got to see what the radical leftists (they called themselves Nationalists, but were more Stalinists) would have done to the Communist Spain that fortunately never was. However, judging by Cuba, Sandista Nicaragua, Khymer Rouge Cambodia, Enver Hoxha's Albania, North Korea etc etc then the Francoist regime was decent and enlightened by comparison.

Multiculturalism is still best understood as the continuing evolution of marxism from economic (classical marxism) to cultural (Gramsci) and now to racial marxism (a.k.a multiculturalism).

Asger Trier Engberg said...

I absolutely agree with Fjordman - the problem is our own laziness.

This is either a great catastrophe or an opportunity to regain our culture and civilization.

There are, as I see it pro´s and con´s:

Con:

- Time, we are running out of time
- Academia gone totally ballistic
- The will force of the islamists

pro:

- We need very few people to start the mental revolution - if you look at the french and the russian revolution, few people made it happen though sheer willpower, sharp minds and determination
- Concrete firepower, our firepower in the west far exceeds anything any other nation have
- History, everytime the muslims met the Vikings in an actual fight, they lost.

Basically we just have focus all our will on fighting, mentally and politically - and history shows us that we will win.

We are the vanguard of western civilization, the ones who have seen the danger. Well it is up to us to challenge it, by putting our will to that, not flinching an inch.

David Foster said...

Those interested in the Spanish Civil War should read "The Forging of a Rebel" by Arturo Barea, which paints a vivid portrait of Spain before and during the conflict. Barea was a Republican but reports honestly on his own side's atrocities as well as those of the other side. See my review here.

A Jacksonian said...

This change from Communism to a multicultural elitist view was summed up by John Fonte in The ideological war within the West and longer piece here in pdf. The summary term used is Transnational Progressivism which has the following root outlooks:

Groups are what matter, not people. You are "Black" or "Christian" or "Mexican" or "Afghan" or "Sunni", you are not yourself. You also don't get to choose your group; it's inherent in what you were when you were born. Someone else will categorize you into your group, and you will become a number, a body to count to decide how important that group is. And your group won't change during your lifetime.

The goal of fairness is equality of result, not equality of opportunity. It isn't important to let individuals fulfill their potential and express their dreams, what's important is to make groups have power and representation in all things proportional to their numbers in the population. Fairness is for groups, not for individuals. The ideally fair system is based on quotas, not on merit, because that permits proper precise allocation of results.

Being a victim is politically significant. It's not merely a plea for help or something to be pitied; it's actually a status that grants extra political power. "Victimhood" isn't a cult, it's a valid political evaluation. Groups which are victims should be granted disproportionately more influence and representation, at the expense of the historic "dominant" culture.

Assimilation is evil. Immigrants must remain what they were before they arrived here, and should be treated that way. Our system must adapt to them, rather than expecting them to adapt to us (even if they want to). The migration of people across national borders is a way to ultimately erase the significance of those borders by diluting national identity in the destination country.

An ideal democracy is a coalition where political power is allocated among groups in proportion to their numbers. It has nothing to do with voting or with individual citizens expressing opinions, and in fact it doesn't require elections at all. A "winner take all" system, or one ruled by a majority, is profoundly repugnant because it disenfranchise minority groups of all kinds and deprives them of their proper share of power.

National identity is evil. We should try to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, not as citizens of the nations in which we live, and we should try to minimize the effects of national interests, especially our own if we live in powerful nations.


That outlook structure is being used to negate the value of Nations and denigrate the emphasis placed upon the Individual during the enlightenment and thereafter. This is anti-thetical to Western democratic ideals as it seeks to limit individuals to group-based behavior and rule. Doing so negates the foundational premise of Westphalia to allow Nations to have individual outlooks for their people and to allow individuals to have their own views on religion and other matters. While the Nation State is not necessarily perfect, it is the only structure and system of orderly governance that allows for a wide variety of government type and social outlook, while having such Nations need stand by their word and agreements to other Nations. By seeking to dissolve that structure, Transnationalism as a concept has nothing to put in its place save group based rule by an Elite that will determine who gets what rights. While the Left started this, the terrorists in the Middle East have picked it up and changed it to Transnational Terrorism, with an aim to delegitimize the ability of Nation States to use military means as defense by taking up the tools of warfare outside the bounds of the Nation State concept.

That erosion of the Nation State then happens internally with the Leftist 'Progressives' seeking to remove the concept of self-governing units called Nation States and from the outside from terrorists seeking to remove the ability of Nation States to actually defend themselves. Neither of these outlooks seeks to spread the universal rights of man, but to exercise power over mankind from cradle to grave and to outlaw the concept of freedom by removing it as a 'bias'.

Any movement to create laws that deligitimizes Citizenship is a move in this direction. So are 'hate crimes' that attempt to prosecute intent and intent alone, which is a form of thought control. Orwell did see some of this coming from the USSR, but even International Communism still had some adherance to the Nation State concept as organizing unit and kept to the strictures put in place for it. The modern Transnationalists see no legitimacy in the Nation State and seek to remove it as a basis for independent governance. That deep erosion of Nations to actually *be* legitimate is deeply troubling as all we know today is founded on it... and no Empire ever created has sought to greatly expand human freedom and liberty, but to circumscribe it more and more for those being ruled by their rulers.

And neither the Progressives nor the terrorists of any stripe seek to do that, either.

Sandokan said...

The question of identity in autochton communities reminds me of the fate of the Austro-Hungarian-Empire.

After the battle of Königsgrätz (against Prussia) and after settling the Hungarian-Question, Austrians (as the German speaking part of the empire) were no longer allowed to see themselves as predominantly German - they where ridden of their identity by the state - nore fish nore flesh.
In contrast to all other ethnic groups: Slaves, Hungarians ...
But that didn`t help, some on the austrian side turned to German nationalism and other ethnic groups even grew stronger in theres.
Some of this mess even played into the youngest history during the Balkan-Wars.

So multiculturalism really is a thread when neglecting the cultural core of a society or country.

Shrimpville said...

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Darrin Hodges said...

Even transnationalists have admitted that multiculturalism is a failure. Early in 2006, a conference was held in an Australian university (Griffith university) to discuss the effects of the 'Cronulla riot' and how to address this point of failure in the multicultural ideology. One of the speakers, Kevin P clements, of the "Australian centre for peace and conflict studies" started with a good dose of self-flagellation:

"As you can tell from looking at me I am white, male, middle class and a Professor in a
prestigious Australian University. For all of these reasons, I benefit enormously from
maintaining the system and the status quo more or less as it is. Thus even though I might
decry the specific events of Cronulla, (and I do) in fact I am a beneficiary of a system
that favours males, favours white Anglo-Saxon protestant types and favours
professionals.
"

then went on to say:


"Those of us of a liberal internationalist persuasion used to
think that contact between peoples and cultures would stimulate higher levels of cooperation,
empathy and understanding. We are discovering, however, that this is not
necessarily so. In the absence of norms and institutions aimed at facilitated empathetic
understanding
"

it's all foobar.

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I have been reading here for a while, and did not post any comments.
But I wanted to tell you that I really enjoy reading this site.

As an "Evil" Israeli jew-atheist (consider myself part of the jewish people but without any belief in god), who is also gay, and whose parents grew up in the arab world, and speaks arabic at home -> I had no clue about what was going on in Europe until I lived there for a while!

Whithin weeks I got the picture and I was shocked.
Muslims assumed I was a muslim and they spoke openly about how they hate the countries they live in and how the women are whores and gays are not "taken care of" and so on.
When I was travelling Scandinavia I met an australian girl who was born in lebanon (a christian) and we travelled together for two weaks. (Funny, as most people did not believe us when we said where each of us was from).
She noticed things I did not notice, like signs on shops and stuff, but I don't really remember well (that was before I lived in Europe, was much younger then and only understood what she said in retrospect)...


I was surprised that no one was talking about it.
So I told some of my european friends about it, and they told me that I should not mention it again because people would assume that I am "racist" and hate arabs because I am a an Israeli.
After being attacked a few times for raising the issue I gave up.

I really appreciate what you do here, just raising this issue and breaking the forced "taboo".
In the next generation, or even sooner, all of us would have to stand together or disappear together, be us gay atheist or straight christians.

Shrimpville said...

After the previous post, some comments I must make:
I agree with that dutch party that if you can put mice traps instead of poison, it is better. :)
You can free them somewhere else, and I don't have to have a small heart attack when my dog eats something he finds outside.

One thing as to multiculturalism.
I was told lately that I have a multiculturalist groups of friends.
I am an atheist, three others are secular jews, one is religious jewish, one is a christian swede who does a phd here and also we had a hindu exchange student in our group who already left back to India.
I believe that "multiculturalism" in the sense that people of different cultures which are very similar is ok. but is it multiculturalism? I don't know, not sure it is...
We definitely have differences, anyone who sees my swedish friend in a free alcohol party would notice it :), but in general we are all very similar in cultural principles, and the fact is that we integrated very well from day one.

I really hope Europe would be able to restore its self pride without falling prey to Islamists on one hand and to racism on the other.
Remember that Pim Fortuyn's "deputy" was black.

When people label as "racist" the most non-racist people who speak against another religion which has "special status", it brings the risk that the only people left to speak against it would be the real racists.
This is why I am encouraged by this site.


Another question that popped into my mind is if birth rates are really necessarily correlated to self-pride?
I am not sure this is true.
I believe it is a cultural thing, and the way people view kids. Also, my own opinion is that people like myself, which had 3 sisters, want their kids to have many siblings.
This is an interesting report about the situation in Israel:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154526026305&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Interestingly, for many people kids are so important, that even non married people make sure to have kids.
The sister of a friend of mine was not married, and when she got older had children with a gay man.
A friend of my sister decided to raise a kid on her own, and it was a compromise to have only one for her.
The interesting thing is that the media now is trying to present a picture where the secular woman "chooses" not to have kids and be liberated, and the religious woman is a "slave" to her kids. There was just one such article in the news site "ynet", which I will not refer to, as it is in hebrew.
I am bothered by this media trend, but hope we keep up the birth rates.
Many feminists here sit on TV and complain we have too big a birth rate and women are used as "baby machines". This is so much bullshit.
When did feminism turn from complete equal rights for women, which I support 100%, into lecturing to other women that the fact they want kids is not ok, and that they should allign their will to the feminist cause? ridiculous.


One of my family members recently gave birth to her third child, and was sad that the doctors told her she is in health risk from pregnancies and should not get another kid.
She has 2 degrees in TA university, and very accomplished.
I think you need more pro-family policies.

Voyager said...

Thrasymachus, unlike "Christians" today those who wrote down the Words of Christ and the Letters of Paul in what we choose to call "The New Testament" were ALL well-versed in what we call The Old Testament and throughout Christ's Ministry he was a Torah-observant Jew.

It is only the politically-oriented who have attempted to separate the New Testament from the Old in violation of Articles VI and VII of the Church of England

Article VII
Of the Old Testament
The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Wherefore there are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet, notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.



It is a poor grasp of Christianity rather than Theological Christianity which is at fault.

Anonymous said...

I think the reference to the attitude in Japan in important, I made a post myself on how we in the west need this approach, if you check out the links im sure you will agree, that Christianity need a radical approach along this kind of theology of what freedom is
this is the attitude the west needs

Conservative Swede said...

Thrasymachus, I agree with you. I am the conservative Swedish friend, mentioned by Fjordman. And what you said is exactly what is behind my comment about that what is happening now can be seen as a fulfilment of the Western civilization. Christian ethics being the keyword here. However Christian ethics is more unfettered in liberalism than it is in Christianity itself. But you're quite right, the source of Christian ethics is, of course, Christianity.

I'm glad that someone else is putting the finger at the root of the problem.

togo said...

I'm sure Fjordman or many others could do or have done a better job of defining multiculturalism than me, but I'll give it try.

In practice it means that all cultures are equal except for Western Civilization, which is something to be ashamed of. The cultures of the historically poor and oppressed of non-European origin are to be given protected or privileged status in the nations of the West and the people from those cultures are not expected to assimilate.

Thorgrun said...

I know that it is unpopular to blame Christians, especially at this time when another religion from the Middle East makes it's way into Europe. Thrasymachus has brought up some very valid points as to why we are so eager to accept this invasion, be it in Europe or N.America.

There is an excellent work about the Conversion Period to Christianity from the indigenous religion of the Pagani/Headinn people of N.Europe. It is written by a Christian Scholar and details the extent that the Christian religion was changed by the indigenous culture of N.Europe. "The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity",by Dr. James C. Russell, I highly recommend this well researched work.

You see, when Christianity came North it was not always a peaceful stranger, in fact it had many of the same tactics that Islam regresses to today. Christianity underwent a radical change, due mainly to the indigenous religion/culture of Europe. Christianity was reformed initially, hundreds of years before Luther. It was a long and bloody struggle, however.

The reason the West has survived is because the older culture is just under the veneer of Christianity.

We need to remember our ancestors as they have gone through this struggle to survive the "Stranger in their Home", before.

Way before the Crusades, around 1000ce, the Viking, Harald Hardrada, was giving battle to the Sarasens in the Bosporus, Sicily and N.Africa. Everytime he encountered the Caliphate, they lost he won,Period.

As Fjordman said, Islam is a secondary result. I add that Mutated Marxism is the Vector!

May the Elder Religion be reborn!

Torgrim