The causes of PC multiculturalism
by Free Hal
In case you’ve forgotten, here are a few more-or-less random examples of multiculturalism in action:
- A 14-year-old schoolgirl arrested, fingerprinted, photographed, held in a police cell for 3½ hours, and questioned on suspicion of a race-based public order offence. She had asked to sit at a different science table because the other three pupils only spoke Urdu.
- A 10-year-old boy (just inside the age of criminal responsibility, “doli incapax” ending at age 10) arrested, charged, and brought before a judge. He had responded to taunts from an 11-year-old that he was a “skunk” and a “Teletubby” with the word “Paki”.
- The makers of the Channel 4 documentary “Undercover Mosque” subjected to a year-long police investigation for investigating extremism in mosques.
You can find similar stories most days, usually accompanied by a helping of bafflement.
We know multiculturalism exists. The question is why?
In this essay I maintain that the cause of PC multiculturalism and self-loathing is the welfare state and, specifically, the welfare state’s justifying ideology, collectivism.
By “collectivism” I mean the morality of group rights. The idea that you are judged, and have rights, based on your group identity. You’re poorer than average? Here’s some money. You’ve come here from a poor country? Here’s a house, some money, and a TV. Feel bad about those cartoons? We’ll ban them.
Collectivism clashes with traditional morality, which is based on our individual actions and intentions. You built a house from nothing? It’s yours. You bashed an old lady over the head for her handbag? Jail for you.
Think of the welfare system as the computer hardware, collectivism as the operating system, and the various PC utopias as the software applications.
Surprisingly, few of the thinkers who warn us about cultural relativism and multiculturalism have convincingly traced its roots.
A summary of some of the best explanations follows: Melanie Phillips, Theodore Dalrymple, Paul Gottfried, Fjordman, Geert Wilders, and Mark Steyn. There isn’t the space to do them justice, and I would recommend reading all of them.
Melanie Phillips
- - - - - - - - -
She puts our enervating political culture down to the general philosophy of relativism amongst intellectual elites, and a lack of appropriate pride in our institutions and traditions.
You can’t disagree with this view. But it restates the situation rather than explains it. It would be wrong to call her reasoning tautologous, but moral and cultural relativism describe the texture of western self-loathing rather than its roots.
Where did the cultural relativism come from? You get the impression that we only need a good shake to get out of it.
Theodore Dalrymple
He explains political correctness as “communist propaganda writ small”. Marxism, unlike fascism, survived its denouement, and has retained its attraction to intellectuals because of the status it gives them, and they have evolved it into a more resilient form.
Theodore Dalrymple puts the blame on European political elites’ attempts to make the public financially dependent and their attempt to reduce belief in European culture.
These points go further than Melanie Phillips’, but still strike me as observations rather than explanations. They do not explain why the non-elites, the voters, have allowed political correctness to continue. Commentators generally skirt around this issue. British scepticism for egg-heads, and scorn for politicians, are poor soil for a self-serving elite. It is unlikely that British voters tolerate soft-core Marxism for the privilege of supporting unnecessary academics.
Theodore Dalrymple seems to me to come close to a theory about elites conspiring to manipulate and rob their electorates. In other words, the public are unwilling dupes. Whilst he is right about the anaesthetic effects of political correctness and the welfare dependence, I don’t think these factors are enough to force the public to get themselves robbed. Given that every percentage point of the vote must be fought over, it is hard to see the public as mere victims here.
Modern day liberal Marxism goes a long way to explain the mentality of PC self-loathing, but doesn’t explain how it arises.
Paul Gottfried
In “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy”, Paul Gottfried states that multiculturalism denies civil society its independence by casting it into competing groups. All of them are subject to the state’s authority, and depend on its patronage. Heretics fare badly, and there is “the substitution of designated victims for the older adoration of religious martyrs”. “Third World, gender, and lifestyle victims” become the new “suffering just”.
Paul Gottfried is right about the guilt-trip side of multiculturalism, and the state’s interest in undermining civil independence. But he too falls for the temptation to blame the elites rather than the public.
This is a similar to Theodore Dalrymple’s belief that multiculturalism is a deliberate government policy. It is true, but doesn’t explain public tolerance of it.
Fjordman
A brilliant and sensitive defender of our western heritage. His conclusions — e.g. that we have “no intellectual cadre that can think” — are the more devastating for being thoughtfully researched.
For him, “cultural Marxism” is a Gramscian strain that survived the fall of communism, and our treacherous elites promote it for their selfish ends. He is right. But like others, he avoids the unpalatable conclusion that those self-serving elites may be doing the public’s bidding. To be fair, he has expressed doubt that democracy is up to the challenge (“Democracy not Working”), but I think he lays too much emphasis on the role of (admittedly unscrupulous) elites.
Geert Wilders
His speeches to the Dutch Parliament accuse a cowardly and self-serving elite of handing over Western civilisation as an outgoing President might hand over the keys to the Oval Office. In a 2008 budget debate he stressed the disconnection between “the leftist canal-zone” (the high-price areas near to the Amsterdam canals where left-wing celebrities and politicians tend to live) and “The other Netherlands (which) consists of people who have to pay the bills”.
As one might expect from a democratic politician who still values state provision, this line avoids criticism of the electorate. Elite swindlers dupe the unsuspecting tax-paying public, and the public haven’t queried the bill yet.
Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn looks further than the elite for an explanation. First, he sees PC multiculturalism as one of the absurd symptoms of “civilisational exhaustion”. And the most civilisationally exhausted society, Europe, is the most absurdly multiculturalist.
Like Melanie Phillips, his argument doesn’t quite get to the root of the problem. For example, does PC multiculturalism cause civilisational exhaustion, or vice versa? No-one with sense would describe self-loathing and cultural relativism as a symptom of “civilisational vigour”. And if civilisational exhaustion is the deeper cause, how did it arise? And what is the cure? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a good shake is all we need.
Second, he appears to suggest that that exhaustion is the result of deathbed demographics — or is it the other way around? The question matters because unless you can identify a relatively fundamental cause, then it’s hard to find an intervention point that will work.
Perhaps it is just a matter of age — western civilisation has had a good long run and has had enough of leading? Mark Steyn, rightly, has little time for historical inevitability.
In “America Alone”, he suggests it is the result of the luxury of American military protection since World War I. If that were the case then it would not explain why America shares much of Europe’s self-loathing.
Second, why should self-loathing and multiculturalism, be the symptoms of shrinking demographics? Japan and China have deathbed demographics, and yet neither of them is falling for our PC multiculturalism. Japan still has low levels of immigration, and virtually no Islamic immigration, and shows no sign of abandoning its orderly culture. China appears to be combining a demographic crunch with civilisational resurgence, and is cited by Mark Steyn as an example of the ‘strong horse’ feared and respected by Jihadis. Russia has, if anything, even worse demographics, owing to disease and low male life expectancy, but shows no wish to abase itself before Europe. And whilst the British birth rate is significantly higher than Germany’s, PC multiculturalism appears to be higher in Britain. And America, whose population passed the 300 million mark two years ago, is playing catch-up with Britain in the self-loathing stakes.
I’m exaggerating slightly. And I think that there is merit to Mark Steyn’s view about demographics. But, those demographics look more like a reinforcer of self-loathing than its main cause.
I go along with these writers in that Europe’s elites bear a disproportionate share of the blame since they are not mere agents but trustees. However, they couldn’t get away with it without the implied consent of the voters.
Collectivism — the philosophical poison
Collectivism is the philosophical poison at the heart of Western self-loathing and PC multiculturalism.
At least half of all wealth created in European countries is spent by the state, which generally forces higher earners to subsidise consumption for lower earners. It is a good deal for lower-earners, who make up a majority of the electorate.
This system operates by coercion, but it is not just a mafia racket. It requires stability for the wealth to be created in the first place, and a justifying ideology to minimise opposition. Monarchies use the ideology of the divine right of kings. Welfare democracy uses collectivism.
Collectivism has been successful. Its meaningless language about “compassion” (forcible extraction of money from someone else), “social justice” (equal incomes), “investment” (subsidised consumption), and “giving money to the rich” (reducing tax), is accepted at face value.
Collective wishes trump individual rights at the ballot box. And collectivism trumps individual morality philosophically, for lacking “social justice”, “compassion”, and “investment”, and for “giving money to the rich”. The days before collectivism were the Bad Old Days.
There are plenty of self-serving intellectuals to flesh out this crude orthodoxy: western culture was dull and unspectacular; individual responsibility is oppressive; self-restraint is repression; self-reliance is impossible.
Collectivist rights extend to other victim groups as well as the below average-earning majority: religious rights, racial minority rights, gender rights. Anyone who can stake a claim to a collective hardship has a collective entitlement, via the taxman.
This process irritates Europeans who find themselves on the wrong end of minority entitlements, e.g. the right not to be offended. This explains the tension on the ground between socialism and multiculturalism. But most recipients tolerate this rather than endanger the welfare flow.
The general public don’t much like the absurdities of multiculturalism, or the abuse of their history. But most will put up with it in favour of the drive for “services”. Not because they like it but because it is useful.
None of this happens suddenly or calculatedly. It is more like a set of habits that reproduce and develop over time, which explains their unquestioning acceptance.
Why multiculturalism?
Multiculturalism’s power derives from guilt. A century ago, British history focused on the high points of our history: the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar and Waterloo. Today, it focuses on guilt: guilt over the Nazis (whom the British resisted); guilt over slavery (which the British eradicated); guilt over racism (which, prior to PC multiculturalism, was seldom a problem within Britain).
Multiculturalism is so useful because it disempowers people before the state. People will do appalling things if the state doesn’t take control for them. And it fits neatly with collectivist ideas which are lucrative to the majority of voters.
Multiculturalists are not slow to take up the opportunity. See for instance the calculated comments of the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, on the eve of Remembrance Sunday 2007, that Britain was becoming like Nazi Germany. Or, in 2000, Jack Straw’s (the UK Home Secretary) comments that the English are “potentially very aggressive, very violent” and — shock, horror! — “increasingly articulating their Englishness”.
Guilt overpowers opposition. Any accusation of chauvinism, or “being right-wing”, is enough to end discussion. Godwin’s Law states that “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one” and the discussion is effectively ended. This is why it is used so frequently to vilify opponents — see, for instance, Pim Fortuyn, here, and here.
Multiculturalism is a very efficient method of overcoming opposition to collectivism and its utopias.
The future
What does all this mean now that things appear to be unravelling?
If I am right — that PC multiculturalism stems from the welfare state — then PC multiculturalism will continue. But it will cause more and more ethnic conflict as the limits to the tax-take hit home.
If people can’t increase overall tax-take by going after higher earners, they will transfer that hostility to other groups competing for welfare. Different groups will blame each other for taking more than their fair share of the welfare pot, and will cast each other as less deserving.
We can expect this scramble for welfare to fall out along ethnic lines. Partly because of the disproportionate consumption by Islamic populations; partly because European populations don’t see immigrant groups as having such strong collectivist entitlements as themselves; partly because multiculturalism entrenches ethnicity; and partly because the European ethnic divide is so deep.
The collapse of the welfare state will turn PC self-loathing into a sense of betrayal that is deaf to reason. Ethnic hostility may not be the primary or immediate cause of European breakdown but will be its apparent cause — a harbinger, and the thing that people blame.
Conclusion
It should be obvious from the above that I have deep misgivings about welfare democracy, and that I think collectivism and its tendrils are poisonous.
If welfare is the underlying cause of these problems, then the question is whether a state can be devised that doesn’t become a welfare state. The experience of America, from Founding Fathers to President George Bush, let alone President Obama, suggests that this isn’t possible. If not, then we need to devise ways to live and flourish without a state authority.
45 comments:
The cause of PC multiculturalism is the Frankfurt School, a marxist-derived ideology designed in the 1920's to destroy western culture, and so make the west ripe for marxist revolution (which had failed to materialize, contrary to expections after WW1).
PC in particular is the Frankfurt School's rejection of classic logical argument, in that the conclusion must be examined in isolation from the arguments to determine its validity. If the conclusion is deemed invalid, then the arguments are invalid too. This is PC in a nutshell. Multiculturalism then is a consequence of the sanctioned view that all races and cultures are equal, although the white race is less equal than all others and western culture is less equal than all others.
Excellent Post, and some serious research done!
I would want to add Shelby Steele to this list.
He talks about the loss of 'moral accountability' and uses the language of 'redemption' to describe how liberals (=socialists) use displays of generosity to redeem their collective consciences.
There is merit in this analysis because it sets the blame wider that just 'elites', accounts for the difficulty in countering this way of thinking, and also holds some authority as Steele is not of the white majority.
Steele provides interesting analysis of how the multicult bullies have seized a moral high ground that can only be retaken with the language of individualism. And it is too easy for the left to paint individualism as 'selfishness'.
This is a thought-provoking essay, and addressing this subject is timely and important. From my perspective, the CAUSE of PC Multiculturalism can be found in Christian values, namely, the Golden Rule and the Galatians 3:28concept that all of us are equal, regardless of race, sex, or social status. Thus, the notion of redistributing wealth from the more fortunate to the less fortunate (either through charity or taxation) was a normal extension of these concepts. Combined with this was the idea that those of foreign cultures could be assimilated into the dominant culture if they were accepted and tolerated during the transition.
The FAILURE of PC Multiculturalism is because those good deeds were exploited by people who had no respect for them. After World War II, Western societies were faced with immigrants who brought with them a well-engrained culture that is hostile to Western values, namely, Islam. Islam (as defined by the Quran) refuses to assimilate. (Surahs 5:51 and 9:123) Islam revels in taking wealth from non-Muslims. (Surahs 9:29 and 48:20) Islam uses terror to intimidate non-Muslims (Surah 8:12 and 8:59) Islam does not value striving for material success in preference to jihad. (Surahs 9:91-93 and 9:111)
As a result, instead of having a society that helped one another advance, the advent of the Islamic populations became a severe drain on the resources and good will of their host countries, with little prospect of a future payback. (This is generally not true in the U.S., where most Muslim immigrants were middle- and upper-class professionals.)
Perhaps the WAY OUT of the PC Multiculturalism trap is to insist on another Christian value:"Be on your guard against false prophets. . . A healthy tree bears good fruit, but a poor tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a poor tree cannot bar good fruit. And any tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know the false prophets by what they do."
(Matthew 7:15-20)
While I applaud Hal’s skepticism about the most common explanations, including Fjordman’s, Melanie Philipps’ and Mark Stein’s “explanations”, I still believe that the psycho-biographical appropriation I do of Conservative Swede’s view (“in Secular Christianity each person has to be like Jesus himself, doing self-sacrifice, since there’s no other way to realize Christian ethics”) may provide the whole picture.
See e.g., what I’ve just posted in another thread.
One problem is we are in a post-industrial and post-labour intensive society, most european states have a labour surplus by a factor of millions a problem that has been inflated by mass-imigration and outsourcing to the third world - globalization.
Subsistance welfare is not the cause of the above in fact if anything it has saved Britian from a political collapse that would have gifted Britian to totalitarianism.
If anything cultural relativism has been deployed against subsistance welfare and its indigenous recipients - check out Nulabours Benefit thieves propaganda that crimialises this section of society.
If I wanted civil war in the U.K. tomorrow, I would end subsistance welfare, Free Hal are you advocating this and the starvation of millions of children.
To blame PC multiculturalism and self-loathing on subsistance welfare is absurd and scapegoating, try the Frankfurt School and the political elite most of whom have never done an honest days work in their lives.
@ “Try the Frankfurt School…” —4Symbols
This is insufficient. As I said in another thread (linked above), today’s crisis can best be understood if we go beyond Gramscian or commie brainwash into a meta-perspective that involves Christian ethics. I learnt this from Con Swede.
(By the way, is there a bug in the “Recent Comments” page or something? Reference to my post in the old “Be change” thread got mingled with Mace’s post!)
Chechar,
Thanks for referring to me in such a positive way (twice).
As I wrote to two friends in an email the other day, in reference to this:
---
To summarize: Its very important that people on the Right understand that the big capitalist entities are just as much the enemy as the Marxist Left.
I wrote:
Amen to that. Only that it's not really about "follow the money". The problem of the right is instead as deep and profound as the one of the the left. I.e. it's about (the same) religiously held ideological convictions rooted in the enlightenment and the French and American revolutions: ideals of egalitarianism and diversity, etc. To put it simply and clearly: it is exactly when Westerners strive to act morally good that they cause destruction. Moral correctness, the grandmother of political correctness, is ubiquitously operative.
There are no surprises here. With an inverted morality the result of "moral" actions are up-side down. With an inverted concept of good, the result becomes the inversion of good. What else could be expected? The moral grammar of the Westerners needs to be reprogrammed at the deepest
level.
---
PS. Guess what religion that introduced inverted morality in Europe?
PPS. I invented the concept moral correctness several years ago. But I have never written an article yet to explain it to the public. I'd say it's absolutely essential to explain the Western psyche.
Chechar,
I'm responsible for the Recent Comments page. The problem seems to be that your comment was cut, after the 100th character, just when a hyperlink tag had started, and that this confused the layout.
In order to deal with it I'd have to write a parser with some intelligent. But since this sort of thing happens so rarely, I'll leave it be.
We could just blame the whole thing on the invention of agriculture and be done with it...
Seriously, there's no practical interest in tracing current problems back to millenia-old belief systems, since these problems are entirely new in that context.
I blame George Lucas for popularising the central ethos of political correctness:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Mriggs,
It seems that you want to tell us that you see no practical interest in tracing the problem back to its root cause. No you don't want to hear about it. You do not want to be confused with facts while being animated in the middle of a rant about the Frankfurt School. Easier to blame it all on some superficial scapegoat, that suits the theater, than to examine the weakness inside of oneself, isn't it?
We could just blame the whole thing on the invention of agriculture and be done with it...
Well, agriculture is still in use. So yes, even if it's old, there would still be a problem if there was something evil and destructive about it. What would that be according to you? (You seem to suggest that there is). I only see benefits from it (even though the methods being used could be discussed).
The Frankfurt School, however, is long gone. So let's quit talking about that as a problem today, shall we? Your Frankfurt School is the only thing that is old -- as in expired and non-existing -- in this context. It's funny indeed that you turn things up-side down and speak of existing and prevalent phenomena as "too old", when your own narrative clings to things that are no longer even around.
Christian ethics is definitely around, and is definitely a problem: with it's inverted morality, it's weakness, the importation of a foreign god, it's universalism, and thereby the denial of ones own ethnicity.
In India, after 1000 years of Buddhism, their own national religion Hinduism was restored, in the face of the threat of Islam. The Indians were lucky there was no Mriggs around to tell that that this was "too old".
It was also a 1000 years since Christianity as introduced in Scandinavia. But it cannot be a problem according to Mriggs since it's "too old".
Likewise Islam cannot be a problem according to Mriggs since it's "too old". It even dates 1400 years back. Any emulation of Muhammad can never be problematic according to Mriggs, since he lived so far back in time.
All in all, things that exist and are currently in use can never be a problem according to Mriggs. Only things that are no longer around can be, such as the Frankfurt school.
In medicine it is considered barely scientific, or pre-scientific, to approach a disease if its etiology has not been firmly established. If we think of self-loathing among many westerners, this is the really weak point in counter-jihad: people are afraid to delve deep into it.
I’d like to quote from a thread about an article by Takuan Seiyo (again, the subject of today’s entry in my blog). Yes, Con Swede: Whiskey strongly reminded me your views on “Secular Christianity”:
Whiskey said in GoV...
“I take issue with both Seiyo and Fjordman. This is not ‘Gramscian’ stuff out of the Frankfort School. It is the natural result of Christianity. Most Christian of poets, William Blake in Daughters of Albion, compared marriage and family to slavery and prison. Mary Wollstonecroft, mother to Mary Shelley, preached free love in the 1780’s. The Oneida Commune predated Marx and the Revolutions of 1848. Much of the current morass stems to the Romantic poets and the thoughts of Thoreau and Whitman… The impact of the collapse of marriage (which ties female well-being to that of men’s opportunities) is to my mind, far more explanatory than the idea of the pod-people and bodysnatchers.”
Yes, unaha-closp, those words made Yoda look stupid in the Lucas film. But Free Hal’s question about the cause of the PC multi-cult is serious and legitimate (even if his blaming on welfare falls short as a full explanation). I must iterate what Larry Auster has said on this subject. Conservative people—:
“instead of opposing non-discrimination, they oppose multiculturalism and political correctness. But let's say that we got rid of multiculturalism and political correctness. Would that end Muslim immigration? No. Multiculturalism is not the source of Muslim immigration. The source of it is our belief that we must not discriminate against other people on the basis of their culture, their ethnicity, their nationality, their religion. This is the idea of the 1965 Immigration Act, which was the idea of the 1964 Civil Rights Act applied to all of humanity: all discrimination is wrong, period. No one in today's society, including conservatives, feels comfortable identifying this utterly simple idea, because that would mean opposing it.”
And yes: “Thou Shalt Not Discriminate” is the 11th commandment of what, following Swede and pace Auster, we may call Secular Christianity.
It’s time to identify the enemy and look straight into his eyes.
Ok what about this one imagine a rabbit dazzled and rendered senseless in the headlights, that rabbit represents the asspiration of political power, the road an ideology and the headlights represent the atomic bomb.
Has the restriction of MAD had a psychological effect on politicians and modern day nation, empire and civilisation builders -knowing that their power would now be caged by nuclear weapons like an animal with repetitive behavior disorder, the only thing left to do trample their populations into national soil.
The projected self-loathing like that of an power hungry Apparatchik with no prospect of promotion.
Actually, the Frankfurt school can be blamed for the destruction of the family in Europe and the US due to the sexual revolution and feminism, which are it's off shoots. This led to parents wanting to out-source their responsibility to the government, who obviously was self-serving enough to brainwash the little kids into their ideologies.
I agree on this one with Lawrence Auster - the problem is the core belief of liberalism which is non-discrimination and it was easy to brainwash the children into this due making a transition from equal rights to equal social outcomes. Basically, to say no to this meant to deny your principles of equality. Just look at the revisionism of the language - a nation is no longer a group of people who share a common culture, history, language and ethnicity. If a people want to survive, they need to discriminate, it's that easy.
Also, you can't say that welfare was to blame for this. Look at Dubai. Only 10% of the population is a citizen and large parts of the population are banned from EVER holding citizenship NO MATTER what they do. We could have fixed the problems this way.
4Symbols, you need to learn economics. Welfare didn't save Britain - along with feminism this is something that destroyed the British family and which is the reason for the Chav generation. Obviously that now you would have a civil war if you did away with welfare considering the lazy population got used to it and became dependent on government assistance. I'm really curious on your explanation about how welfare saved any country from anything, but in this case Britain from political collapse. Outsourcing has it's limits, without the amazingly huge tax rates, over-regulated sectors and so on, the UK would have still produced something to pay for the imports of the things that they outsourced. It's really common sense. Give me a break about the UK's labour surplus - why is everything built lately there done by Poles? Besides the British population being mostly on handouts, obviously.
Also, the system devised by the Frankfurt school is the one used today, but it became popular for a reason. It's probably because of the same reason Keynesian economics are popular, even though they're a load of garbage. It serves the government, as long as the population is full of people wanting handouts, with no sense of duty and that is willing to trade freedom for security - it allows them ever growing power. And destroying the majority and unity of a country is the way to do this. Also, the people were bored with our culture. It required duty to maintain, it's a lot more fun to be allowed to have unimpeded satisfaction of your impulses and desires - just look at feminism or all the other PC fringe movements(multiculturalism is another one) that see Western culture as oppressive.
Oh, and as an example of the way the nation principle is applied. My country isn't politically correct and we use the word Romanian only for ethnic Romanians. We also have no hyphenated Romanians either. Hungarians living here aren't viewed as some of us(which is amusing because even though I'm an ethnic Romanian, I do have Hungarian relatives and some Hungarian blood). This is how things are done. You discriminate against the minorities so that you force them to either leave or adopt every single custom and cultural aspect of your society and in time their ethnic group will disappear too inside the big one. Obviously, this doesn't work with the suicidal rates of immigration in the West. The only way to do it is to discriminate in such a way to make people move back home. A multicultural, multiethnic society doesn't work(unless segregated) and by this I mean that the groups are all relatively big. This is the way to do divide et impera.
Much food for thought in this essay (always a good thing!).
First of all, I think it pertinent to actually look at why governments are formed in the first place - to do a good for a collective group of people (I'm sorry, but that is their nature). Prior to the French Revolution, this was basically limited to the peace and defence of the Realm and ensuring access to foreign markets for trade (so foreign affairs and trade were necessary). However, even a government so limited in its powers was always a restrictor of one's natural rights.
In part, I feel that a good chunk of this collectivism comes from the attempts to codify rights into bills (which is all well and good, until you realise that many are in fact contradictory, eg free speech and privacy).
Second, while certainly Christianity, as an integral part of our culture has played a part in seeing this rise, I feel it is unfair to lay the blame wholly at its feet. Though certainly charity was lauded in the Gospels and New Testament, as an act without individual will behind it, social welfare as we currently understand it is theologically meaningless. The actions must be matched by a motivation of good will and a desire to be of assistance to others (which is hardly how I would feel when I am taxed).
And third, this obsession with collectivism can actually be traced back to the scientific method. The idea of being able to classify people into certain groups means that the individual's own merits become inconsequential; it is only the groups they belong to that matter. In part, it's why 'scientific' is used to describe a lot of stuff that doesn't deserve the name (and believe me, I am offended. I'm tending to prefer natural philosopher now).
It's certainly quite complicated (and that's quite an understatement).
1. More hedonism means less character
2. Speech from Pim Fortyne's memorial on topic
3. 12 minute video on the Frankfurt school by PJTV
On the one hand, I agree with the thesis that self-interest and the welfare state explains why the common man accepts or at least tolerates multiculturalism.
Of course, he rarely admits his selfishness in this, but instead uses various rationalizations that have filtered down to him from the intellectual elites.
The intellectual roots of multiculturalism can be traced even deeper and earlier than the Frankfurt school. In his book After Virtue, Alisdair McIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project of finding a rational ground for the moral judgments we inherited from the classical world has failed, and was bound to fail, because it began by denying that man has a telos which he does not choose for himself.
In other words, it is the modern obsession with "freedom" that has brought us this situation upon us.
For a recent discussion of McIntyre's thesis, see http://sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=13Dec09
@ “while certainly Christianity, as an integral part of our culture has played a part in seeing this rise, I feel it is unfair to lay the blame wholly at its feet.” --LAW Wells
Neither Swede nor I blamed Christianity but what we might call “secular Christianity”: liberalism.
(4th and last post.)
You have to look at the Frankfurt school in conjunction with the Baby Boomers and the 60s. That is a massive cocktail right there.
The New Left is most certainly driving this.
However Conservative Swede makes good points. Indeed Marxism has been described as a Chrsitian Heresy. That is why it is so beguiling to Christians. However you must also see that Latin Americans who are unarguably Christian are not self hating and suicidal with multi cultuarlism. Though there are tinges of it down there.
Great roundup and thought provoking Original Post.
What it is, is a nasty cocktail of New Leftist ideologues pushing identity groups to hate and resentment in order to form a political coalition to advance an agenda. However this wouldnt work, except that there is guilt and not just guilt but civilizational doubt amongst the population of Europe (and the Anglo Nations). The 2 World Wars were devastating...combined with genocide of the Jews and Gypsies and other groups....which is also a horror that European Christians must live with.
Furthermore...Christianity itself has faltered in Europe, and has been in decline for sometime.
World War II is a particular milestone, (as WWI was rather limited in scope especially on the popululations and cities and civilians). It also left a bunch of widowers and man-shortage, where the state became the new provider in the post war era.
Post colonial and post Jim Crow guilt.
So it is a culmination of things. And the Left taking advantage of them to drive for power and use that power to assault the institutions of Western Civilization, to tear it down so that it can be built anew in a more perfect Utopian Neo Marxist version.
Then you also have the collapse of the Soviets, which left the Left without a base of exterior agitation. So they latched onto the Anti Western "anti imperialist" Muslims as an ad hoc ally against the West. As noted by Nick Cohen and the Harry's Place Decent Leftist "NeoCons." His book What's Left is highly recommended.
I think the addition of Shelby Steele is a good one.
I would also propose....
Icarus Fallen by Delsol...
Here is a review by Claire Berlinski...read the entire second half of the review (first half is another book)
Is God Still Dead?
http://www.berlinski.com/node/47
excerpt...
"In her subtle, highly intelligent meditation on the moral state of modern European man, Delsol considers his profound disillusionment: European man has in recent memory suffered two great losses, first his Christian faith and then its replacement — a vision of human perfectibility absent supernatural guidance. Failed experiments in utopianism, particularly in its communist and fascist expressions, have left him, like Icarus, singed at the wing-tips and fallen, paralyzed by self-doubt."
This self doubt or lack of cultural confidence (cultural cringe as Melanie Philips and Aussies describe it) is being taken advantage of by the Left to drive its agenda...and to deconstruct Western Civilization.
The "good thing" is that Islam and mass immigration seems to be the 1000 lb. straw that broke the camels back. All other identity groups are merely annoyances (except perhaps Feminists).
Islam is in your face hostile to Western Civilization repleat with the most vile pronouncements, barely hidden agendas, and widespread and accompanying violence.
This hopefully is what shakes Western peoples out of it.
EV
I forgot one thing...
Secular Hedonism is fueling this as well, the massive welfare state bennies and lavish lifestyles, people didnt find the time to procreate, and then their were not enough workers to provide the lavish bennies for the aging Baby Boomers...and they imported them.
Being Secularized Hedonists, they decided that compromise is best, as long as the bennies keep flowing. Ugly perhaps violent confrontation is to be avoided. There is nothing worth dying or sacrificing for, so they will compromise (a million small steps to dhimmitude) and the Baby Boomers will be dead, and their children and grand children can worry about their own well being and dealing with the Islamic invasion.
Pretty shameful stuff.
A very nasty storm.
Multiculturalism is just the latest weapon wielded by modern liberals to attack and destroy their own civilization, which they hate because of the moral constraints it places upon them. I agree that it goes back to collectivism, the first collectivist being Rousseau. That is where I think modern liberalism branched off from what we now call classical liberalism. I think modern liberalism arose from, and continues to be fed by, the desire to escape traditional morality -- and to escape even the inherent frustrations and limitations of human life itself. A brief acquaintance with Rousseau's life and behavior shows that he wanted to escape his own responsibilities and push them off onto society as a whole.
Marxism, the Frankfurt School, the Sixties radicals, etc. are all descended from Rousseau. I think more than one answer is correct. It just depends on how far back you want to go.
The key to the problem is Western man's objectivity; his belief that he can put himself outside the equation. This is responsible both for his genius and for his naivety. Science can't proceed without it yet the scientist cannot exist alongside it.
The insistence on Christianity's role even in a form of some sort of secular heresy, is misplaced. Blaming "secular" heresies on Christianity is even crazier than blaming the Beatles for the Monkees.
"Secular" means that religious considerations were tossed aside. If a warped, do-good, but ultimately virtueless "christianoid" mindset remained, well take it up with the squandering seculars and not with the original culture-creating Christians.
If my daddy worked all his life to leave me a small fortune and I the sole heir blew the fortune away instead of ADDING to it, don't blame daddy.
Anyhow, multiculturalism isn't about kindness, but about purpose. About planned outcome.
I say look to the unversality of science and the rise of "soft sciences" in a thought realm of enlightenment egalitarianism... add the very real and palpable reality of the Global Condominium (there are also many elements of inescapable reality in multiculturalism)... and then add the final touch: the financial world's embrace (co-opting) of Gramscianism.
Ultimately we must look at what has turned Culture into System. Kindness is complicated and full of paradox and contradiction. It dwells in the realm of culture. Cold purpose - of the kind that makes petroleum companies become the world's biggest greenies or leads Walmart and others to buy most of their goods from Asian sweatshops smacks of purpose. So does busing kids around to integrate schools or forcing Westchester communities to attain an "X" degree of racial mix or certain parliaments to have an "X" percent of women.
I like to think of it as a party. A good party is a happening kind of thing. It contains some planning, some egalitarianism, and there are all sorts of financial considerations, but - importantly - it is mostly left to the revelers. It has a life of its own.
In today's parties all the details are studied, all the timings are set and those in charge carefully shape events so that an ulterior purpose (above and beyond the revelers having a good time) is achieved.
Kindness is practiced by individuals without ulterior motives; Purpose has a plan that overrides the interplay of individuals... and it can be - as it is to the citzens of today's developed countries - amazingly cruel and singleminded.
Back to the party. Kindness would of course lead an all-white clique to welcome the racial outsider. Purpose would IMPOSE that all cliques be rigorously mixed. Christianity without free will is not Christianity, even if its intentions are christianoid. But are they even christianoid?
Purpose? Follow the money and IMHO, keep a beady eye on the financial world's embrace (co-opting) not only of Gramscianism, but even of science. I say follow the money.
Who and what are behind Obama? What makes the Galileo mishap pale compared to the present state of science? Why the thundering silence in the MSM about the CRU scandal, compared to the raging party on the Internet where there is no purpose and control - at least not yet?
EV is getting close. The baby boomers was a large voting segment of the population, which simply overhauled the US. The 1960s is the decade in which the US began it's cultural decline and the WASPs, which pretty much created that country were pushed aside.
You are wrong about Latin America though. They're ethnocentric and they hate White people. Just look at the behaviour of a large part of immigrants that the United States gets. They're as destructive as the Muslims, just that they don't have a Quran and they're less organized due to it. I was talking to a friend there and he knows a girl who got impregnated by a Mexican and he proceeded to impregnate another two White girls... What makes it funny is that he wanted the daughter he had with the first American woman to date within his "race" and he was mad she was dating a White guy. I talk to some Mexicans there and all have a degree of contempt for European descent people and prefer their own over others - which is something European descent people don't do and we should.
I don't get why people fret so much about the world wars. It's probably the way they brainwash you in school there to be ashamed of them, while here they have no moral stigma attached to them.
What's sad is that I know a few people that aren't ethnic Europeans and like our culture more than we do, on average.
Steve is right on this:
"Multiculturalism is just the latest weapon wielded by modern liberals to attack and destroy their own civilization, which they hate because of the moral constraints it places upon them. (...) I think modern liberalism arose from, and continues to be fed by, the desire to escape traditional morality -- and to escape even the inherent frustrations and limitations of human life itself."
In case you people didn't realize, liberalism wants your life to be the same no matter what decisions you take and so on.
Ioshka is right too. Multiculturalism is about purpose and the purpose is what Steve said. And probably destroying the European nations(real definition of nation) so that they create a single Euro-Arab state.
I disagree with the kidness thing and welcoming other races. Romanians are kind. You can be part of any race, religion, socio-economic class and we will treat you nicely. We don't want you in our backyard though and we want our country to stay ethnic Romanian. Hell, we have beef with the Hungarians and they're European, have a lot of similar values. And purpose would impose that cliques would be rigorously segregated. It's proven by the way, that social harmony collapses in mixed environments and it just breeds distrust. There's a study by a Harvard teacher over a ten years span and I will approach this in an essay I will write after I'm done with my school stuff. Racism was non-existent in the UK before immigration started to happen in these proportions. And about the social harmony thing, I visited Brussels with my mother around ten years ago and it was a really nice, pleasant and clean city. It was safe, nobody told us anything. When I visited a couple of years ago, the concierge employees told me to not go out after 8pm and you really could feel the city differently - funny enough, a friend did get robbed on that trip.
Oh, and about the boomers. They were a large voting segment that didn't reproduce enough to create another segment that will bring a paradigm shift. Basically all the other generations got absorbed in the cultural mess created by the baby boomers due to numbers. This is the greatest way to ensure political control of your generation in a democracy - not reproduce. So the cultural and political cancers just progressed.
It seesm we are after all not talking about christianity, but liberalism. That does indeed make more sense. Wikipedia: "Liberalism ... is the belief in the importance of individual freedom.... Modern liberalism has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment and rejects many foundational assumptions... such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status..."
PC, multiculturalism, relativism, feminism and all of that are not champions of what is described above, but strive to destroy it. They are 'Babel agents' that seek to disrupt harmony, understanding and science, and instead bring western society back to a medieval culture, to a pre-liberalistic mindset. Most notably, PC seeks to outlaw freedom of expression, and only allow that to be expressed which fits with the world view of the ruling class. In other words, PC seeks to undo and defeat the works of Galileo and all who came after him.
I'm not sure it's actually correct to blame christianity for this "moral inversion" or what have you, this idea that christianity creates a universalist mindset. It doesn't.
Where did this universalist mindset pop up first? France has been mentioned, but the origin is actually Germany. Perhaps more accurately it first appeared in a form we recognise amongst lutheran, germanic northern europe. Why not Great Britain, where christianity had a greater and more thorough foundation than northern Europe? In England, Christianity fomented an increase of nationalism and bound the nation together in a very powerful way;l so too scotland, where the church fought against the rule of English kings even though they were Christian. In Ireland the church was used as a nationalist banner against us English once again. They called on God against their alleged christian brothers.
Why not Italy? Or Spain? Or any eastern european nation? Why am I singling out northern europe?
CS is not promoting, despite his arguments, the typical pre-christian or pre-existing scando-germanic culture that existed in northern europe prior to the arrival of Christianity. One thing that could easily characterise Scandinavia in general, And Sweden in particular, is the notion of consensual politics. More widely this is one of the odd contrasts of Germanic culture, which is ruggedly individualistic but at the same time hospitable and open to the neighbours and strangers, an attitude that is unsurprising in a culture that has spent much of its existence living on the edge of survival. In the frigid north especially, if a stranger came knocking at your door late on a cold winter night you would be bringing down the wrath of the gods if you didn't invite him in. Leaving a man outside to die in the cold was a heinous crime.
The root cause of this universalist urge is not Christianity. Nor, despite what I've said, is it solely the scando-germanic urge toward hospitality. It's the combination, the message of world-wide brotherhood became unduly emphasised in a culture that already contained an element of what might be seen as open borders philosophy. Whilst a man's farmstead was his own and defended with his life if necessary, he couldn't countenance turning away someone who seemed to be in need. Other cultures that absorbed Christianity didn't place the same emphasis on this particular aspect of the new faith. The Romans certainly didn't. Christianity as the state religion of Rome became a religion as much of conquest as love, and a religion more akin to the mystery religions that came before it. Christianity in South America took on the resentments of natives oppressed by a coloniser upper class and became fiercely tribalist in some cases there, too. In China christianity is adopted by rebels against the communist regime and becomes a religion of subversion and rebellion against oppression. As previously mentioned, in England it became a source of national unity.
My point is that, unlike Islam for example, Christianity adapts to the culture it joins far more than it changes that culture. Blaming christianity for the problems of the world is illogical when you consider it in this way.
it's like a new religion, you know.
we lost christianity because the bible wasn't updated enofh with the world being 5000 years old and all that.
but most people must have a religion, so thay clined to the next closest thing that was avelabule, wich was this pc multiculti combination.
and then of cores every power that had that in it's interest joined to brain wash people into this new religion.
as for geting out of it without becoming muslims, it posible that the only way is trough orgenaised gangs like ms 13 and/or military coop....
"the CAUSE of PC Multiculturalism can be found in Christian values"
I strongly disagree with this, and disagree with blaming the problem on the Enlightenment too.
Turn-the-other-cheek is one small aspect of new testament values, albeit one that the libs have bought into wholesale and adopted for their secular religion, and in any case has been misinterpreted.
Similarly, ideas of equality expressed in the Enlightenment have set us free, whereas multiculturalism is a doctrine of slavery.
Charity, too, is not the same as welfare! It is a private, individual choice borne out of compassion - welfare is tax-theft to be "charitable" with other people's money.
as rebelliousvanilla says,
"the problem is the core belief of liberalism which is non-discrimination and it was easy to brainwash the children into this due making a transition from equal rights to equal social outcomes"
which is true, but note that that transition is not a logical one at all - far from it. Equal rights are not the same as equal outcomes, which is why conservatives stress equal opportunity as an expression of Enlightenment values.
Whereas it is correct to say that Rousseau's thought is the origin of many kinds of wrong-thinking, we cannot deny that multiculturalism is a purely modern, post-WW" phenomenon.
There is nothing wrong with charity, nothing wrong with equality under the law, and nothing wrong with Capitalism.
The "modern obsession with freedom" is the one thing that will SAVE us from this.
I continue to be obsessed with it.
I agree that neither Christianity nor the Enlightenment can be blamed. Some of you may know your history better than I do, but I think that although Rousseau was certainly one of the most influential Enlightenment philosophers, the Enlightenment was not purely an extension of his ideas. It was an embrace of the power of reason as the ultimate method of determining truth. I think it went too far, especially in its assumption that humans can be perfectly rational and that five minutes of reasoning is sufficient to overturn centuries or even eons of traditional beliefs, many of which endured for so long because they worked. I think some portion of the Enlightenment was an embrace of reason in an honest search for truth, but another portion of it was a misuse of reason as a form of philosophical disputatiousness to destroy any inconvenient standard of behavior.
Modern liberalism is a descendant of the latter, and Rousseau can be blamed for that. It is no coincidence that the man who drew up complex new theories about society and law which argued that people do not need to be individually responsible for their actions was the same man who abandoned his children to their fate of probable death.
That is why it is so beguiling to Christians. However you must also see that Latin Americans who are unarguably Christian are not self hating and suicidal with multi cultuarlism.
Only white Christians have taken up the self-hating characteristics of cultural Marxism. There are two reasons for that: 1) We are the only ones who've been actively targeted in this way by cultural Marxists since the end of WW2 when mass society in its present day form really began - universal schools, TV, radio, large corporations. (Schools and TV in particular have been used to imprint inverted morality).
2) Even before Christianity we displayed the characteristics such as individualism and out-group altruism that have been used against us in recent decades. (Therefore allowing another ethnoreligious group to capture the devices used for moral imprinting was catastrophic). As Graham Dawson said: "Christianity adapts to the culture it joins far more than it changes that culture".
There is nothing wrong with charity, nothing wrong with equality under the law, and nothing wrong with Capitalism.
The "modern obsession with freedom" is the one thing that will SAVE us from this.
I disagree. Capitalists have been more than happy to fund and collaborate with cultural Marxists.
Freedom as an end in itself is just another part of the USA Proposition Nation. More often than not freedom is about individual selfishness and freeing oneself from our own people, community, and tradition. If we are universal individualists and our opponents are collectivists they will win. The latter will use the universality of rights associated with freedom when it suits them to undermine the freedom-lovers who in return will wait in vain for reciprocity.
Well, yes - most corporate CEOs are almost communists!
Ask any analyst, the last thing businesses want to do is have to compete with each other - hence all the bailouts.
By liberalism I meant neoliberalism, which isn't based on freedom per say, but freedom to do whatever you want and have your life turn out in the same way.
Graham, I agree that the world-wide brotherhood thing is a fallacious and dangerous concept. It's good that Romanians have always been nationalistic due to always fighting for this piece of land. lol. Too bad the younger generation is changed a lot(I mean younger than me, the current kids). We also have no idea what consensus politics are - we don't have a government for months now because the MPs didn't reach a consensus. It's all related to being proud of your nation and being willing to defend it. It's like Revel said - a nation that is ashamed of everything it is and does will find trouble in defending itself.
Viking, I agree that it doesn't make sense to extend equal rights to equal outcomes, but it was designed as a progress(ugh) from equal rights and a natural extension. It's not my fault most people are simple minded and fell for it. And from that moment on, every other single aspect of the neoliberal doctrine was free to expand. And yes, multiculturalism is a new idea and there are lots of factors for it - most of which already stated here.
Avery, you don't understand capitalism. The people who tout capitalism nowadays are usually corporatist idiots, who enjoy offloading the social cost of their crap on others. Besides, if the European nations were capitalist, they would have had no welfare, the governments wouldn't have funded building mosques or been in education and healthcare to make halal meals and so on. Muslims would have had problems moving here, especially if the people themselves weren't brainwashed by the public indoctrination camps(aka public schooling) into not being proud of their heritage.
And you also don't understand what freedom is. Freedom also comes with responsibility. The problem is that the freedom lovers of today are liberals that understand economics. They want the benefits of a free capitalist society, but they don't want the moral code that forces them to maintain it. If you analyze them, their core belief, non-discrimination is the same one that liberals have. This being the reason why I'm a conservative and not a libertarian.
I agree Christianity isnt the problem.
The problem is that people with an agenda are targeting the weakness in an organized deliberate sustained way, so as to game Christians and the System.
The Left is the problem. However they are also taking advantage of the charity and goodwill and tolerance of Christians...as well as feelings of post colonial guilt, and post WWII self doubt.
What is the remedy, the remedy is to realize that we are at war, and that we need to take it seriously. During war you break your own rules to ensure your success and survival....you can return to them when the war is won.
The Left is not concerned with Freedom or Liberty, but in promoting their agenda. We need to adopt their tactics and use them against them. Fighting with one hand tied behind your back, especially when you are losing the war, is ridiculous.
Give no quarter, no public space, no workspace, to Leftwingers or their ideas. Make these spaces hostile to Leftist expression and ideas.
rebelliousvanilla,
"4Symbols, you need to learn economics."
That maybe the case but then again any fool can sell the family gold, dial the combination open the Bank of England vault and create an economic boom then claim to be the greatest economist in history.
"why is everything built lately there done by Poles?"
There are many reasons, you have to realise the the mass unemployment of the 1980's was never solved in the U.K. the long term unemployed were put on disability benefit this suited both Conservative and Labour Governments as those on disability benefit no longer showed up in the unemployment statistics - mass unemployment solved at the stroke of a pen, who knows what the real unemployment statistics are in the U.K. today?
From the 1980's firms no longer trained or took on apprentices this created a skills gap in future years which was then filled by foreign labour most notable poles in the semi-skilled sector, indeed the biggest lobby for immigration particularly from the third world is business, a point the right choose to ignore. It was not that the unemployed were lazy it was that they lacked the basic skills to do the jobs and it was cheaper to import workers than train them, high unemployment from a politicians point of view can be a political advantage, to drive down wages, break the power of trade unions and more importantly in this case subdue a population.
The Chav (Council Housed And Violent) generation is a beautiful example of the Frankfurt School and cultural relativism, the the first stage of the individual being libarated from tolarence. This (political) culture was a product of, and promoted in the 1980's - surprisingly that period of British Conservative Party ideology has a lot in common with the Frankfurt School philosophy. Maybe that is why even some influential conservatives of the day had difficulty recognising the ideology and it was dubbed Thatcherism.
Perhaps I should post a working link to the Picket Line's excellent summary of MacIntyre's book.
While I agree that Rousseau's ideas have been influential -- especially in the form that they have taken in the socialist tradition -- I really think the root of the problem is even deeper, in places we rarely think to question.
At one point in his book, MacIntyre makes the interesting remark that the intellectuals behind the French Revolution hoped to bring France into the liberal culture of their neighbors in England, Scotland, the Netherlands and some of the German provinces. Thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire all share this rejection of the culture of Catholic France in favor of that of the Protestant north. What they envied the most about Protestant culture was its tradition of individualism and free thought. Each man was entitled to interpret Scripture for himself, to find truth through the exercise of his own reason.
The problem, as MacIntyre explains, is that there turned out to be no way that modern, secular man could justify the bourgeois virtues that the leading thinkers of liberalism took for granted. Libertinism had raised its head early on, and the liberal thinkers proved unable to decisively defeat this threat to society.
Among the consequences of that failure is the moral relativism that lies at the core of present-day multiculturalism. Since no cultural ethos can be shown to be universally binding, all of them must be allowed to flourish.
@Steve
nicely said.
The enduring legacy of the Enlightenment is no doubt the idea that right and wrong are universal concepts, and all peoples and cultures ought to be judges by the same standards. Contrast this with modern liberalism which, in line with postmodernism, says that there are no objective standards to judge anything, ergo, the ultimate good is not to judge at all.
-rebelliousvanilla, I think many of the excellent points you make would be equally shared by both conservatives and libertarians, particularly those of us who consider ourselves both.
-EscapeVelocity, while I share your hostility to leftwingers, I can't accept that playing identity politics is the answer.
There's no doubt multiculturalists use our inherent compassion for others as a weapon against us. The third world holds us to ransom by overproducing starving children, and then cry to us to provide them with food, and in the same way multiculturalists bully us into accepting their agenda.
The shame of the holocaust is being used to flood Europe with Moslem immigrants. Who do they think will cause the next holocaust??
But I believe that freedom is a powerful weapon too, and one that people easily understand.
...One of the reasons I have so much admiration for Geert Wilders.
4Symbols,
the business lobby may want immigrants, but only because our governments pay our citizens not to work! If wages weren't being unfairly undercut, that problem is solved at the stroke of a pen..
CorkyAgain
As you say, since all cultures are considered "equal", then no competition is allowed in the marketplace of ideas, and therefore the good ideas do not get a chance to replace the bad.
EV, well, calling big government leftists slavery supporters(that's what taxes are essentially - unpaid work whose results are extorted out of you at the threat of a gun and jail) will piss them off and they won't be able to come up with any more higher moral ground points. When people tell you that some idea you hold is in a certain way, tell them they need sensitivity classes because they're intolerant to opposing points of view. Hell, if you immigrated to your country, tell leftists that they don't like your ideas simply because they're racist and intolerant towards immigrants. I can think of so many ideas like this - I bet that if I will get my graduate classes in the US(funny enough, I'll probably end up at a liberal college), people will be puzzled by the things I say.
4Symbols, obviously anyone can create an economic boom on the short term by slashing interest rates and going into debt, but the bust will be huge. Just look at Bush who did this to avoid the recession due to the tech bubble and in the process he created the housing bubble. Obama is doing the same thing and the dollar might become a junk currency by the time he leaves office, which would lead to the government imposing price controls, which will cause shortages and queue lines. I really hope someone will wake up in DC.
Welfare drives down real wages, it's not that if you keep people on benefits, wages go up. Someone have to maintain those people and as long as working becomes profitable, they will start doing it. And the people who pay the welfare checks are the fools who keep working. And the unions are a horrible thing - I won't really go into an economic discussion here because it's mostly irrelevant, but their only purpose is to have their workers overpaid. Obviously nobody will hire you if you're unskilled with the minimum wage so high and unions like policies like the minimum wage to price the unskilled people out of existence. If four unskilled workers can build me a fence for 3$ an hour and a skilled worker who is in the union of fence builders will build me that fence for 15$ an hour, I will choose the four workers, which will learn the skills and become better at it. If the minimum wage is at 4$, they're more expensive and I'll hire the unionized dude. This is why unions like the minimum wage law. There are TONS of destructive things like this that unions do and support. Hell, the unions are basically in bed with the left.
Here are two interesting quotes:
1)The bourgeois virtues (prudence, humility, industriousness, and a philistine suspicion of high culture) always existed in tension with aristocratic culture’s love of bravado and decadent extravagance. The bourgeois worships the “rule of law” above all else; the aristocrat knows that greatness comes from making your own law and belonging to a caste of one.
2)"Liberalism gives people what it thinks they want, which is unimpeded satisfaction of their desires and impulses. But in doing so, it closes them off from what they really want, which is beauty, truth, and goodness, and membership in an enduring human community that embodies those things."
I haven't finished reading it myself, but another interesting analysis of PC multiculturalism can be found in Jim Kalb's book "The Tyranny of Liberalism"
Let me guess, rebelliousvanilla, your two quotes are from Evola. Yes? They certainly sound like him.
So why not let the neoliberals destroy the whole system far easier to build the New Jerusalem from scratch.
The first quote is from a forum, I don't know who wrote it initially and the 2nd one is from Auster's blog.
4Symbols, I was actually considering to vote for the socialists in my country so that the government goes bankrupt faster and so that they'll be forced to default on all the unfunded liabilities and start from scratch. The system in the Western world and across all Europe is so broken that it can't be fixed in my opinion, through normal political methods. It needs to be destroyed completely and start from scratch. Obviously it will cause more pain than just solving it now, but I really don't see another way. I can't really get to advocate the destruction on purpose of the system. I don't know why, but for some reason I feel like my duty is to make people reconsider and solve it the easier way, even though as I said, I think it is impossible at this point. Maybe when people of European descent will be a minority in their homelands and everywhere on Earth, they will realize that ethnocentrism and discrimination had a legit purpose and happened for a reason. I just hope we won't be so pussified that we will go out without a fight... I don't blame White men though considering they were bashed from all sides, including their own women. Maybe I'm too negative, I don't know, but I really don't see a proper solution to things that don't involve huge paradigm shifts and a really big struggle over things - the most important being reinstating the family as the norm because everything is related to that. I was teasing a guy I care for that we should just move to a deserted place, buy a ton of guns and have a ton of kids and not care about the world... lol
4Symbols, I was actually considering to vote for the socialists in my country so that the government goes bankrupt faster and so that they'll be forced to default on all the unfunded liabilities and start from scratch.
Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. France has been bankrupt for nearly thirty years but they just keep declaring themselves not bankrupt. As long as the subsidies keeps flowing nobody cares. Of course now they've got the EU to prop themselves up for a while longer, which certainly helps.
But, socialists will simply declare reality is a lie and carry on. Bankruptcy will be called a globalist plot to destabilise the country.
As long as we play their game it's impossible to win.
Graham, I live in Romania... Things here don't work like in France because people don't really have a vested interest in keeping our government going - at least didn't before we got in the EU. I look at my government and I'm puzzled. They want to fire employees, but the unions and socialists don't so they can't because they failed to secure a parliamentary majority and they got sacked. Besides, nobody really talks about the government doing less, they just talk about taxes and the burden of the government is what it spends, not what it taxes. The government here borrowed 14 times more than the private sector this year to keep itself going and now they're waiting for the next IMF payment. I was glad that the government was sacked so we didn't get the payment yet. Here there already are shortages of money and people need to cash cheques from the government that fail to come and it's only a matter of time before they can't pay retirement benefits and so on - which will be a moment when I will pop a champagne bottle and then get drunk on vodka and lime. I don't want to pay into a Ponzi scheme for the rest of my life.
Besides, the socialists here aren't really cultural Marxists, even though they seem to start importing EU socialist values, sadly.
That is why Im aligned more with the Burkean tradition.
Post a Comment
All comments are subject to pre-approval by blog admins.
Gates of Vienna's rules about comments require that they be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum. For more information, click here.
Users are asked to limit each comment to about 500 words. If you need to say more, leave a link to your own blog.
Also: long or off-topic comments may be posted on news feed threads.
To add a link in a comment, use this format:
<a href="http://mywebsite.com">My Title</a>
Please do not paste long URLs!
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.