German Chancellor Angela Merkel got herself in hot water for expressing joy over the death of Mr. Bin Laden, and it’s possible that she may even be charged for what is considered a criminal act in Germany. In a strongly-worded article, the noted American conservative Lawrence Auster took issue with the Germans’ reaction to the death of Bin Laden and their condemnation of their own Chancellor.
Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, a German blogger who is also the author of Das Dschihadsystem: Wie der Islam funktioniert (“The Jihad System: How Islam Works”), has submitted the following guest-essay in response. He believes that Mr. Auster’s article raises some fundamental questions about who the enemy is and what the Counterjihad ought to be, and demonstrates the gap between American and German conservatives.
From a German Point of View: A Reply to Lawrence Auster
by Manfred Kleine-Hartlage
On May 6, Lawrence Auster posted a comment on Germany’s reaction on Bin Laden’s death — a comment suddenly highlighting political tensions most of us are normally not aware of. I think it is worthwhile to examine Mr. Auster’s argument to make clear the nature of these tensions, and what they could mean to the Counterjihad.
Mr. Auster’s starting point is that Chancellor Angela Merkel has been criminally charged for expressing delight over Bin Laden’s demise. He then quotes a poll according to which “64 percent of Germans do not see the death of Osama bin Laden as something to be celebrated”. To Mr. Auster, this indicates the “spiritual death” brought upon Germany “by the consistent application of liberalism”.
There are some points Mr. Auster doesn’t seem to understand. First of all, the question was not whether Bin Laden’s death was good or bad, but whether one should celebrate it. In Germany, many terrorists have been killed by security forces during recent decades, and some committed suicide in jail. In no single case did a German government express satisfaction or delight about it, and in no single case were there public celebrations of the kind we are now witnessing in America. Celebrating anyone’s death, even that of an enemy, is considered indecent in Germany, and therefore Mrs. Merkel’s statement was at least an embarrassing faux pas, regardless of whether it was illegal or not. It is something that is simply not done in this country.
I don’t blame Mr. Auster for not knowing and not understanding the customs of a foreign country; I just think he should be reluctant to judge what he doesn’t understand.
Up until now this has been just a minor disagreement between most Germans on the one hand and most Americans on the other. Given the irrelevance of what we are talking about, it is all the more dismaying that Mr. Auster seizes this opportunity to trigger an avalanche of hate and prejudice against Germany, beginning with:
And by the way, why are we keeping 50,000 U.S. troops, at a cost of billions a year, in that dead land? For what purpose, other than feeding their economy, which happens to be the largest in Europe?
Well, they are not here to protect Germany from invasions. Indeed, we are being invaded, as any European nation is, but the U.S. is the last country who would like to protect us from that — we will pick up this point below. The U.S. has bases in Germany because U.S. forces in the Middle East are supplied from here (and kidnapped persons are distributed from here to secret CIA jails around the globe).
Just think, if the anti-Hitler plotters in 1944 had succeeded in killing him, and if some German leader had expressed his joy, this German judge, if translated back to 1944, would seek to punish him. I guess Germany hasn’t changed so much after all, hmm? Pure liberalism, which the Germans in their humorless fanatical thoroughness aspire to as the opposite of Nazi totalitarianism, is another form of totalitarianism. And in the same way, as I have often remarked, the German-championed transnational opposite of the Nazi nationalism which sought to destroy the nations of Europe, is also destroying the nations of Europe. One way or another, whether in their Nazi form or in their hyper-liberal form, the Germans pose a determined threat to the nations and peoples of the West. To paraphrase Churchill’s famous remark about the Germans, they need to be kept at our feet, or else they will go for our throat.
And he adds:
I am not being extreme or “anti-German” when I say that.
Which indeed shows that he doesn’t share German humourlessness.
The Germans agree with me. They see themselves as a threat to others. That’s why they say that the EU is necessary, to keep them, the ever-threatening Germans, in check.
Many Germans say this, because they were told to speak and think such things. They were taught to consider thousand years of German history just as a pre-history of Hitler. They were taught to regard their history as merely a history of crimes. They were taught that they are a danger to others. They were taught that patriotism and “nationalism” are the same thing, and that the latter is the root of all evils in the world. They were taught to hate themselves.
It started with the re-education after 1945, and this re-education is still going on. To poison an entire nation with self-hatred turned out to be a working concept, and this concept, once successfully applied, was generalized to the Western world as a whole, and as the concept of “white guilt” is now undermining our civilization. This is nothing you should blame the Germans for. They were just the guinea pigs.
The million-dollar-question is: Why is this done, and who does so?
Mr. Auster may not understand much about Germany, but he has quite correctly understood that we don’t share the feelings of triumph on Bin Laden’s death — not due to appeasement, or liberalism, or decadence, and not only due to a special German concept of decency described above. It may be shocking to some, but even militant counterjihadists like myself don’t share it.
Yes, Bin Laden was our enemy, but on the list of our enemies he was not number one, and not even number ten. Islam is marching forward in Europe not by terrorism, but by immigration and ethnic struggle, with strong support from the international political elites. It makes no sense to assert a difference between American and European elites, because they all belong to a transatlantic network centered in, but not confined to, America. Within this network, strategies are made compatible with each other, so that there is no such thing as a strictly national policy. There are disagreements on minor questions, but the general direction is towards establishing a global uniform civilization. The EU is part of this process, and an analyst blaming just Germany for that, as Mr. Auster does,
The problem is that the German-led EU which in the German mind is aimed at suppressing the German nation, must suppress all other European nations as well. This is why, just as German nationalism could not be allowed to rule Europe, German anti-nationalism also cannot be allowed to rule Europe. Germany must not rule, period.
proves that his hatred of a particular country is stronger than his analytical capabilities.
Why is the leading power in the “war on terror” at the same time urging France to open herself to Islamic infiltration and secretly fostering this infiltration, as we know by Wikileaks (and there is no reason to assume that the same strategy is not applied to other European countries)? Why is the European power most passionately joining this war — Great Britain — at the same time and with the same passion engaging in self-Islamization? Why are the Anglo-Saxon powers, while at war with more than one Islamic country, urging Europe to enlarge the European Union more and more, predictably with the result that Turkey and North Africa will join the club, thereby opening Europe to a flood of Muslim immigrants?
The obvious answer is that Westernization of the Islamic world and Islamization of the Western world are two sides of the same coin.
Establishing a global uniform civilization requires the destruction of traditional patterns of values and loyalties. Nations, religions, and traditions enable people to express solidarity with each other; they are a the natural enemies of any tyranny. Globalism means to dissolve these ties that hold society together, making men mere perfect consumers and members of the labour force, subject to a global system of supranational institutions responsible to nobody. Such a system of global mobility of capital and labour, i.e. a global market economy, tends towards anarchy on the micro level, thereby requiring further empowerment of the supranational level to enforce a peace that the individual states are no longer able to preserve.
This is what the political classes of all Western countries, including the United States, are working for. The Muslims with their jihad ambition and the Left with its childish multicultural utopia are just seen as useful auxiliary forces, which is the reason why they are given their head.
This is behind the slogans about spreading “democracy”, and “liberty”, and “good governance”, and so on; and this is behind the phrases “cultural enrichment”, “tolerance”, “welcoming culture”, and so on. It is probable that those responsible believe in what they say. They probably really believe that they work for a system of peace and freedom. Unfortunately, this demands that opponents are not only enemies, but devils, seemingly working for war and tyranny. The utopian concept of “one world” implies a hyper-morality and entails the de-humanizing of the enemy.
Labelling opposing countries “rogue states” means not to abide with established legal standards with respect to these countries. As my own country has twice been declared a rogue state in the last century, I know what I am talking about, and seeing how easily even a mere opinion poll provokes pure anti-German ethnic hatred among Americans (I think Mr. Auster’s attitude is representative), it isn’t hard to imagine what the reaction would be if Germany seriously fought against Islamization. Even conservatives like Mr. Auster, I suppose, wouldn’t stand by our side.
Torturing so-called terrorists in Guantanamo and elsewhere is not an exception to the rule due to irrefutable requirements of national security (by the way: if it was necessary to examine Bin Laden’s driver, why was it not necessary to examine Bin Laden himself?), and throwing Bin Laden’s corpse into the sea is the consequence of this de-humanization. At the same time, it is a warning to any opponent of the new world order, e.g. for counterjihadists, that they have no chance of being treated according to civilized democratic standards if their opposition becomes too strong.
What they do today with Bin Laden is what they did yesterday with German generals, and what they will do tomorrow with anyone fighting their utopia. That’s why I don’t celebrate Bin Laden’s death.
Mr. Auster’s polemics have shown the gap between Anglo-Saxon and German conservatism. To bridge the gap a little bit, I have started a new blog, German Views, in order to make important articles from the conservative German blogosphere available in English. I have been planning this for a long time. Mr. Auster’s article was the impulse to start it now, and this text is, at the same time, the starting post.
63 comments:
It appears that according to Kleine-Hartlage, nefarious Western globalists are worse than Muslims, because the former are Macchiavellianly using the latter, and for ends in the end more dangerous.
This "conspiracy-theorizing" (there must be a German word for that -- something like Verschwörungstheoriesierend, perhaps) in the anti-Islam movement has got to be reined in, or we risk botching the whole thing.
Regardless of whether there's a conspiracy or not, and how could anyone know, it does appear that certain sectors of the West just happen to be profiting from the Jihad and just happen to take similar, apparently perverse positions. I think there may be a conspiracy, because it's more likely that certain transnational interests recognise what they have in common and communicate about it, but one doesn't need to take a strong position about this. It's only necessary to notice that big business, big religion, big government, big social work, etc., seem to take positions that appear to be counter to common sense, and that it's possible to predict their positions, based on a hypothetical conspiracy.
How are views like mine, and I'm moderate and skeptical, to be "reined in"? How is it detrimental to the CJ to be willing to connect the dots? I'd say, the people who refer to bin Laden as Emmanuel Goldstein are a detriment to the CJ, but not all people who connect the dots have such an agenda.
"The obvious answer is that Westernization of the Islamic world and Islamization of the Western world are two sides of the same coin."
I found this editorial to be generally lucid; however, I vehemently disagree with the particular statement above.
Beyond the obvious Western product placement (for example, Osama Bin Laden's compound stocking both Coke and Pepsi), I would sincerely like the author to provide specific examples of how the Islamic world (where located in the East or the West) is being Westernized - with an emphasis on any examples that indicate that the Islamic world is being Westernized to the advantage of the West.
Indeed, perhaps the Baron would open a thread to pursue this line of inquiry?
@Egghead
Why don't you aks the question at the above linked "German Views" blog? No better way to actually start such a thing than to bring both sides of the discussion together there. Not to mean that the Baron shouldn't establish a thread here, but Manfred has written extensively on liberalism and globalism, so maybe a discussion would be better suited over there?
Hi War Blogger: I had clicked on his site, and it is published in German (which I do not read).
P.S. I believe that the New World Order (NWO) is purposefully using Islam and Muslim immigration as a weapon against the West in order to accomplish evil NWO objectives.
Hey Egghead, you might be mistaken. His "Korrektheiten" is in German (but, ironically, a ".com" URL), but "German Views" (which is a ".de" domain) is in English and specifically meant for a German-English exchange of opinions.
http://www.german-views.de/
:)
My first and only course in sociology was given by
Milton Baron of The City College of New York.
He never failed to offer interesting insights into custom and practice.
For example, he interpreted incest prohibitions as,
in part, a need to maintain simple relationships between people
so that those relations could be understood
by all those in close relations with each other.
How would being the child of your mother and your grandfather
be handled by your mother's husband?
Nationalism is no different in my very humble opinion.
It allows for clear lines of relations,
which are anathema to melding of disparate groups.
Very frequently differences between people are magnified to the detriment of all.
But by the very same logic as incest prohibitions,
differences that make a difference will be swept away
by those engaged in melding.
By discarding 'differences' as a concept of extreme value
in the improvement of human existence,
we return to the hunting and gathering stage of existence.
Any farmer knows that you plant your best seeds and eat your inferior produce. (Thus, parents impoverish themselves by sending their best and brightest to university.)
So, everyone engaged in social experiments is guilty of flushing away the baby with the bath water - right and left.
My problem with the stupid German nationalists and the stupid German internationalists
is that neither can clearly distinguish between what is "baby" and what is "bathwater"!
From this perspective, we are all stupid.
That is the source of my own conservatism.
I am loath to change anything
and prefer to practice what was practiced in the past with benign consequence
than what is new
so as to never approach mistaking the "baby" for the "bath water".
This is a valuable discussion as indeed, Mr. Auster seems to suffer from some fair measure of Teutophobia ;-)
Weakest points in the discussion:
Says Herr Kleine-Hartlage
"Such a system of global mobility of capital and labour, i.e. a global market economy, tends towards anarchy on the micro level."
Global governance - regardless of the i.m.o. quite useless argument over whether this is some "conspiracy" or not - has very little to do with a true free market economy. The latter thrives with radical decentralization not a concentration of power into the hands of a few.
Dixit Mr. Auster:
"why are we keeping 50,000 U.S. troops, at a cost of billions a year, in that dead land? For what purpose, other than feeding their economy [..]?
"Feeding" an economy, as in "(govt.) spend and thrive". That's silly, especially considering the current economic crisis that has been prolonged by the very same adage.
Furthermore, I'd like Mr. Auster to explain and answer the justified questions posed by Mr. Kleine-Hartlage:
"Why is the leading power in the “war on terror” at the same time urging France to open herself to Islamic infiltration and secretly fostering this infiltration, as we know by Wikileaks [..] Why is the European power most passionately joining this war — Great Britain — at the same time and with the same passion engaging in self-Islamization? Why are the Anglo-Saxon powers, while at war with more than one Islamic country, urging Europe to enlarge the European Union more and more, predictably with the result that Turkey and North Africa will join the club, thereby opening Europe to a flood of Muslim immigrants?"
My own "brusque" answer would be that this so-called "War on Terror" is an integral part of the process of Islamization, precisely because it reinforces - with shock and awe (and PC), the powerful meme of "a tiny minority of extremists", while doing nothing to prevent the influx (flood, tsunami) of Muslim occupiers settling in our countries (also think of ludicrous airport "security" while at the same time restyling the US-Mexican border into some sort of Swiss cheese).
On the other hand, fake classical liberalism, i.e. progressive political Americanism, is the "riddle inside an enigma" for Mr. Kleine-Hartlage, or so it seems. While his questioning of an agenda encouraging Western nations to "welcome" floods of Muslims - one catastrophe after another - is certainly warranted, I am in serious doubt whether he truly understands the economic basis of his envisioned New World Order.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
P.s.: Hesperado -
Verschwörungstheoriesierend? I thought you were German yourself? (probably because of your second nick). How about this simple infinitive: Verschwörungsdenken.
There is no honesty in the conservative/counter-jihad debate most conservatives in the West are not true conservatives they build their conservatism on the foundations of the very same ideologies they claim to oppose.
There is the same power paranoia that is evident in all totalitarian rule in the (false) conservative case any free association of the smallest sum is opinionated as a communist conspiracy this has been elevated to such an abstract point that any transaction is deemed to be ideologically contaminated if it involves any human interaction, value-creating advanced to the point of absurdism moving into the transaction as supernatural.
IHSV -
Though I'm not entirely sure whether this phony conservatism is due to a lack of honesty or something else (lack of knowledge, for instance), I must say, however, that I find myself in complete agreement when you state:
"[..] most conservatives in the West are not true conservatives they build their conservatism on the foundations of the very same ideologies they claim to oppose."
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
* I'd like to encourage you (perhaps I already did in some other thread) to follow this scholarly lead by Prof. L. Raeder, that will provide some major clues as to the "genesis" of fake conservatism in the Anglo-American part of the West, and the pivotal figure of J. S. Mill in that scheme.
This is why we don't spike the football in U.S. football anymore.
It is considered poor sportsmanship, and we wouldn't want to make the losing team feel worse than they already do.
However, counter-jihad isn't a football game...
I am not sure whether the Baron himself wrote this comment..
Anyway, to whomever is the author, this would be my response:
Commenter X wrote:
"It is obvious by Kleine-Hartlage’s interpretations that Germany still is in self awareness trouble."
Same goes for your interpretation, pertaining to the role of (post-Wilsonian, progressivist) America as "liberator" (now the US is "liberating" Libya, yesterday they were "liberating" Bosnia, see the point?).
And for sure, you are absolutely right about the Allied forces, saving Western-Europe from Stalin, but the other side of the story is that political Americanism and post-war US cultural hegemony (not representing true conservative American people) brought mind-numbing Political Correctness to Europe, besides the push for creating Islamic states within Europe and Islamic states joining the EUssr.
"And remember Germans did give us Karl Marx"
And the US gave us Woodrow Wilson [pausing for disapproving noises from the audience] and the Progressive party.
About that fine US specimen, champion of hubristic interventionism and deranged altruism (some precedent), conservative scholar Robert Nisbet wrote:
"I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the West's first real experience with totalitarianism — political absolutism extended into every possible area of culture and society, education, religion, industry, the arts, local community and family included, with a kind of terror always waiting in the wings — came with the American war state under Woodrow Wilson" (The Twilight of Authority, p. 183).
Allow me to recommend the following thread, with special interest for the comments by a fellow named "Conservative Swede", on what he calls the "therapeutic babbling" of some Americans on this issue.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sagunto --
I wrote only the three paragraphs of factual introduction at the beginning of this post, above the first illustration. The rest was written by either our guest-essayist, Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, or Lawrence Auster (in the block quotes).
Baron -
For this post, on GoV, that was quite obvious. I meant the post in the link provided. The comment was posted on the German site and it wasn't obvious to me who was the author. Good to know it wasn't you. It didn't sound like anything you'd say about German self-awareness.
Anyway, it gave me a chance to revisit the earlier thread with Conservative Swede, who made some interesting points, beside yourself.
Sorry for the mix-up. I should have known better ;-)
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
I posted that comment on "German Views", and I introduced it as originating from this site.
Could it be that the Moslems (minus their most virulent elements) are in fact a large part of the solution to resisting, to fighting the globalists, at least in their own lands? The latter have sought to rule and manipulate, quite successfully, in the spheres of economy and politics but concomitantly they realize that in the social-religious realms lie their greatest challenges.
Turning back the tide of transnationalism is not about Islam and the West or East "coming together" to combat any sort of global version of the EU but rather each understanding independently that their own interests are not well served by ethnic and religious syncretism, no matter the shiny economic promises.
It may ultimately be a sort of flash realization that compels all the sovereign states, ethnicities and religions, or rather the actual people underlying these symbols, to see that *international* relationships do not need to be supplanted by any grand progressive schemes beyond treaties and localized partnerships. But any such realization is unlikely to occur before the NWO has come along much further than it has already.
On Mr.Kleine-Hartlage's point about Mr Auster expressing ethnic hatred for the Germans, I don't get it. I think I know what ethnic hatred sounds like, and this ain't it.
Kleine-Hartlage asks the tendentiously loaded question --
"Why is the leading power in the “war on terror” at the same time urging France to open herself to Islamic infiltration...
-- and Sagunto thinks it's a good question.
Both appear to know their answer to this rhetorical question.
But the answer is not (as Kleine-Hartlage and Sagunto seem to think) that the powers that be in America are nefarious and thus either in knowing collusion with Islam or malevolently using Muslims in order to destroy France (and by extension Europe).
The clue to the answer lies in the tendentious phrasing of the question: the powers that be in America do not see the mass invitation of Muslim immigration as an inimical "infiltration", but as a furtherance of our modern Western progressive commitment to "diversity" and to "helping the disenfranchised Brown People" of the Third World. And most of the the powers that be Europe, the UK and Australia agree. As do, I continue to maintain, a considerable mass of the ordinary citizenry throughout the West (when, that is, they are not being too distracted by their daily apolitical lives to worry about such grand dangers as Islam which requires too much dot-connection for their idly, pleasantly, and oft-times annoyingly busy lives).
Sagunto,
My own "brusque" answer would be that this so-called "War on Terror" is an integral part of the process of Islamization, precisely because it reinforces - with shock and awe (and PC), the powerful meme of "a tiny minority of extremists", while doing nothing to prevent the influx (flood, tsunami) of Muslim occupiers settling in our countries...
I agree and have said so many times. But this effect is not intentional; it is the result of a complex worldview that operates through sincere and good intentions derived from common Western virtues, not through nefarious wickedness, as so many in the Counterjihad seem to think. Saving the baby from the ejected bathwater in this instance has to begin with that premise, and tries to locate what went wrong in a context of unaware sincerity: sincerity unaware of the damage its form is wreaking. The problem of PC MC is one of form, not substance.
Metaphor: Clean water is good. Supplying clean water to a society is good. Official engineers in a healthy society sincerely desire to supply clean water to their society in the cheapest yet most effective way. Somehow, however, we begin to to see the water being diverted from supplying basic needs to flooding streets and destroying houses. Those who are conspiracy-minded leap to the conclusion that the authorities and engineers knowingly want to destroy their own society. But there can be other motives and thinking that are not guilty, per se, but have come to seriously wrong conclusions through a complex convolution of their good impulses over time. This latter type of explanation proceeds from a basic tenet that has faith in the health of one's own society. The former type is a darker skepticism bordering on a world-transfiguring nihilism that sees one's own society as rotten to the core and so either gives up hope, or steels itself for some kind of apocalypse-to-come in the near future involving mass Revolution and Civil War. If the latter view is in fact true, of course, then it's true. But if it's wrong, it can have grievous effects that could have been averted, and will also tend to divert time, energy and action away from the actual problem to the imagined one (not to mention that it will tend to alienate more reasonable people on the fence but ready to join us).
Hesperado -
Yes, I still think it is a good question to ask why the US political establishment (and the EU's for that matter) oftentimes seems to end up supporting Islamization (see Libya, see Bosnia, see Afghanistan [Rambo III]).
Once again, you seem unable to refrain from your well-known hobby - the mind reading game - in order to bring your point across. So of course you write:
"[..] Kleine-Hartlage and Sagunto seem to think that the powers that be in America are nefarious and thus either in knowing collusion with Islam or malevolently using Muslims in order to destroy France"
..when in fact, while I do think that US progressivism is indeed "nefarious", I have said nor suggested anything of the sort you claim I said about their use of Islam. I think the question is a good one and I am still curious about the answer Mr. Auster would care to provide.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Hesperado -
"it is the result of a complex worldview that operates through sincere and good intentions derived from common Western virtues [..]"
I don't think that the progressivist political usurping of, indeed, well-intended Western virtues can be justly described as confused benevolence. Progressivism is just another, upgraded, collectivist political religion, that predates on the good intentions of common people, distorting them for political use (that's why language, as a political tool, is so important for them).
I don't think that the ideology of the "scientific management of society", i.e. a welfare state government, run by "experts", bears anything good or well-intended for Western civilization.
Sag.
re: "German Views" - Whatever happened to "Davids Medienkritik"? Wasn't that originally intended for something similar? Or did it devolve into neoconnerie the way Merde in France did.
And the US gave us Woodrow Wilson [pausing for disapproving noises from the audience] and the Progressive party.
WW was a mini-me Teddy Roosevelt. While Wilson was still diddling as a career academic (though heavily influenced by German intellectual thought) it was our Bull Moose party leader, TR, who got the ball into play.
However, Euro-type socialism had been eroding our founding doctrines since well before the Civil War. And I won't even go into Lincoln's Effect, since he died too soon for us to know if he'd have rolled back any of his egregious executive decisions made in the fog of war.
The others have fewer excuses than did Lincoln.
Here's a good beginning on a study of that erosion, though the author provides no footnotes or links for his theses (if you look around the site you'll get a few leads):
Teddy Roosevelt: Progressive President
Beginning in the 1860s in America, the Judeo-Christian morality and individualistic responsibility of the founding generations was progressively eroded by the importation of European theories of socialism and the all-powerful national state.
Herbert Croly was the founding editor of The New Republic, the most influential liberal-socialist journal throughout much of the 20th century. His 1909 The Promise of American Life presented the intellectuals’ argument for an all-powerful, collectivized, socialistic government. He declared that Jeffersonian individualism had produced a mediocre American society.
Looking longingly at the scientific and academic excellence achieved under Otto von Bismarck’s German Empire, Croly said that America needed a strong man who would take the bull by the horns, undeterred by the Constitution, and simply impose socialistic collectivism as Bismarck had done when he instituted the world’s first welfare state in 1881.
Croly and his fellow intellectuals, however, seemed unperturbed that Bismarck had bluntly announced that his welfare system was intended to make Germans so dependent upon the Prussian Kaiser’s rule that, as Bismarck put it in the Reichstag, Germans could simply be herded like cattle.
None of the intellectuals foresaw that socialism has an inherent tendency toward totalitarianism. They did not understand that imposing socialist uniformity and forcing everyone downwards to the lowest common level of economic equality necessarily must be at the expense of individuals' natural-law liberties embodied in our original Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Teddy Roosevelt, and later to some extent Woodrow Wilson, were the answers to academic intellectuals’ prayers.
A damn-the-Constitution activist, Teddy Roosevelt became President after William McKinley’s assassination by social-justice anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901. Without pre-approval from Congress, for example, Teddy committed the nation to the cost of building the Panama Canal and started a civil war in Central America to obtain territorial rights. When asked where in the Constitution he found authority for these actions, Roosevelt said that he knew what the situation required and simply did it, whether Congress would concur or not...
Wilson was a tamed bird by comparison with the Rough Rider who trod all over the Constitution whilst under the thrall of Bismarck...
---
America's poltical elites are far more Europeanized than the average 'Mericun likes -- that goes for both sides of the aisle.
More attention to 19th century politics in America would give some context for where this country has been and where it is most sadly likely to go...
Dymphna -
"However, Euro-type socialism had been eroding our founding doctrines since well before the Civil War"
Very true. And before that, there was French Revolution-style nationalism, establishing "La Patrie" as the entity to be revered and worshipped. Yet more political religion, betraying European civilization. The US was in large part founded on the principles of the French Revolution, so in that respect also, context will give some indication of where both the US and the EU are going..
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Just a few remarks:
I think speculating about a "conspiracy" is fruitless. I guess there are conspiracies, but most of the job is done openly. The "networks" I refer to are well known: CFR, Atlantic bridge, Bilderberg, American Council on Germany and so on, and a lot of related institutions which don't conceal at all what they are aiming at: You've just to translate their ideological phrases into plain English to see what they want. The co-ordination within this network wouldn't work if there wasn't an ideological basic consensus. As I wrote:
"It is probable that the responsible believe in what they say. They probably really believe that they work for a system of peace and freedom.
I'm sure many members of the ruling elites are not aware (although some are) that their agenda will result in the destruction of our civilization. Ideological conformity is what makes the network effectively working as if there was a conspiracy.
@Egghead:
"I would sincerely like the author to provide specific examples of how the Islamic world (where located in the East or the West) is being Westernized - with an emphasis on any examples that indicate that the Islamic world is being Westernized to the advantage of the West."
To start with the latter point: This Westernization is not intended to serve the interest of "the West", if you mean the Western nations. It is intended to realize the "one world" utopia at the expense of these nations. American conservatives who see their country in the grip of an utopistic liberalism are quite right. Westernization of the Islamic world is a process on different levels, including f.e. military presence of Western powers, the influence of Western media ("Baywatch" is said to be the most popular TV serial in Iran), the trend to democratization, the economic embedding in the world economy, the emancipation of women etc. I don't say this is something bad, but it is shattering Islam as normative fundament of these societies and, thereby, making these societies more "Western". When Western societies become more Islamic at the same time, you get a uniform civilization.
RE the decision on "celebrating" or not the death of bin Laden: it depends very much on one's personal history vis-a-vis 9/11.
In looking at some of the more exuberant celebrations, it seems that the closer one was to Ground Zero (or the effects it had on one's family) the more likely were the spontaneous dances in the streets. NYC and Pennsylvania and those in the Pentagon are entitled, imo, to whatever they want to do to commemorate the death of an evil being who caused them inestimable harm.
Even visiting the still-smoking hole three months later, I was moved to bring back home some of the ashes from all those pulverized lives and dreams. I will never forget the thousands of homemade signs still hanging from the fences and walls around the site. There were jars & bowls of wilted or dried bouquets above those posters, often with pictures of their beloved family member(s) -- all begging for word of the missing. They were 90-day leftovers from back in the beginning when there was hope that their kin might be found wandering and dazed somewhere...As hope was abandoned, I doubt they even remembered their placards and signs...
...Those of us who came to see the devastation could read these pleas and understand even more viscerally the horrific tear into the fabric of so many families' lives.
I do hope those survivors of bin Laden's evil deeds celebtated the closing of his maglinant circle of destruction.
bin Laden was an animal in human clothing; there are many such, but he managed to attain a particular notereity. And we have found out thru bitter experience what happens when we "capture" enemy combatants in this war. No one wants the responsibility of holding onto them.
Osama caused a million nightmares for Americans. I've had my share, but I can't imagine what the survivors of those planes and buildings went through. Not to mention the on-going health problems of the men and women who worked on the aftermath clean-up. Lung damage, even with masks, is widespread.
Once he was dead, his corpse would've caused more nightmares and likely more deaths as The Believer Reavers tried to get at his body. The decision to put his remains into the ocean was the least culturally offensive thing we could have done with his body. When there are no good options, they chose the least bad one.
I prefer civil discourse, but I feel compassion for those who needed to dance.
A few questions:
1. what is the heart and center of Germany (as NYC is the 'heart' of America -- not its heartland, but its pulse)?
2.What if some evil maniac engineered a huge pyromaniac devastation where TV watchers could see other Germans, over and over again, jumping 100 floors to their deaths?
3.Or switch channels to watch other Germans being carried out of buildings in its capitol?
4. If it took ten years to find the demon who destroyed their countrymen, would Germans not celebrate that fact?
If their response to his death at the hands of their military was a polite and civil silence, then the world would know that Germany had indeed become a nation of hollow men...
@Hesperado,
The (ultra)liberal "progressivism" from the left equality driven globalists immigration is no different in outcome to the (ultra)liberal "progressivism" from the right market driven globalists immigration.
Both result in the drowning of the indigenous peoples of Europe in a globalists multikulti flood of islamisation and supranationalism.
No "conspiracy-theorizing" here we are in their filthy multikulti sea up to our necks.
The US was in large part founded on the principles of the French Revolution...
Say what?? The American intellectuals of the Founders' generation were moved by Hume, Locke, et al. The intellectual ferment of the French ws never congenial to American thinkers.
The reasons our revolution did not descend to the bloody level the French Revolution did should be obvious. We were an Anglo-Saxon culture, not a French one. For the remnants of *that* experiment on our continent, see Quebec, which is dependent on (and defensively resentful toward) the more prosperous Anglo-Saxon provinces in Canada.
"Loyalists" moved to Canada; we didn't kill them.
We didn't abolish religion or appropriate the land of religionists.
There weren't any guillotines doing a thriving business in any of the states of the American federation;
However, the first and most obvious fact is that the American Revolution was over and done with by the very first rumblings of the French insurrection in 1788 at Grenoble.
See next comment for a contrast and compare...
"When asked where in the Constitution he found authority for these actions, Roosevelt said that he knew what the situation required and simply did it, whether Congress would concur or not..."
At least somebody asked TR about his actions. Obama committed us to Libya with nary a thought for the Constitution - and barely a whimper of protest from the Congress or the nation.
Here is an interesting blog article on Abraham Lincoln's connections to European Communists (no sources cited so I can't vouch for its accuracy):
If Obama is the New Lincoln, What Should Be Expected
Agree with Manfred that most of these conspiracies are open conspiracies. Unforuntately lots of people think a one-world government is a splendid idea, so simply blowing the lid off it happening isn't enough. You also have to convince people it'd be a bad thing.
Sean: At its start, the New World Order kept its plans under wraps with bits and pieces that slipped out here and there. Lately, the New World Order has been very obvious about its intended direction for the world which is few, if any, human and civil rights for common people who will be ruled with an iron fist "for their own good and for the collective good" by the unelected rulers of the New World Order.
Manfred: Thanks for writing back. I agree that the New World Order is globalizing Islam with the goal to create a uniform civilization. Islam and its Muslim foot soldiers offer a plausible cover for the New World Order to quickly and drastically restrict the human and civil rights of Western people - rights that Muslims have never had and never will have under Islam.
My main point is that, by specific intent of the New World Order, the only Westernizing of Islamic nations is cosmetic rather then philosophical. Here Muslims, have a Coke and a smile. Here Muslims, watch the TV show with the infidel ladies in bikinis. Here Muslims, insert Sharia Law into your "democratic" constitutions.
Partial time lines of the American Revolution vs. that of the French:
First Continental Congress September 1774.
1775 - war broke out between the colonies and Great Britain.
1776 events:
Second Continetal Congress met on May 10.
Benjamin Franklin helped write the Declaration of Independence.
The members of the Second Continental Congress officially put the colonies in a state of defense.
Declaration of Independence signed in Congress.
--------------------
[The War of Independence ensued]
--------------------
1781 -
Cornwallis and the British surrendered at Yorktown in August
1783
John Adams helped write the peace treaty with England.
The Peace Treaty of Paris was signed on Sept. 3, 1783.
1789
The Bill of Rights are the First Ten Ammendments that were added to the U.S. Constitution; ratified in December.
-------------
Meanwhile across the sea, after America settled down to wrangling about federalism...
in 1789, the first rumble of the French Revolution began w/ the insurrection at Grenoble...
July 1789 was busy:
50,000 citizens arm themselves with pikes and form National Guard.
Armed citizens storm and capture the Bastille.
'Great Fear' begins as peasants revolt across France.
So was August 1789
abolition of feudalism.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
expropriation of Church property.
National Assembly legislates for departments, etc.[Yup. the bureauacracy was there at the get-go --D]
1790-91
Suppression of religious orders and vows.
Abolition of nobility and titles.
Civil Constitution, subordinating the Church to the civil government [see? They never actually understood the separtion of church and state. Only subordination of one or the other --D]
Food riots across Paris.
Property of émigrés forfeited.
And so it goes, into Stages 2&3,
1794 -- executions and terror...But let me not forget that great moment in 1793, when they inaugurated "The Festival of Liberty and Reason".
Compare and contrast folks. By the time blood was truly running in the streets of Paris, America had established its capitol in NYC, Thomas Jefferson was the first Secretary of State, and there were already slavery abolitionists among the Quakers in Pennsylvania. We had our first federal budget then and our first national census.
Nope, the intellectual inheritors of the French Bloody Terror Years were Stalin and Pol Pot, but NOT the US. It wasn't until the academic balloon heads got ahold of Rousseau that we ever had any French intellectual effects.
OTOH, the greatest observor of America's culture was, and remains, a Frenchman. To this day, Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand this motley nation. In the same way,Frenchman Frederic Bastiat's economic philosophy ought to be read by any who would understand the bases of an authentic free-market capitalism (something we do not have here). In the US, among conservatives, he is lionized. In France, Bastiat is unknown.
I find it troubling that anyone could think the American revolt devolved from the one endured by the poor French when in historical fact ours was accomplished and secured before the Terrors began.
As a caveat, I realize that the hard core imams warn that Westernization is a danger to Islamization because Westernization seduces Muslims to stop wanting to commit jihad to die to spread Islam throughout the world.
And yet, as is obvious even to most Muslims, WHY should Muslims commit jihad to spread Islam when mass immigration to Western nations is quickly "democratically" conquering the West for Islam without the need for jihad from the average Joe/Moe.
The American revolt was derived from Enlightenment principles and thinkers, which is also where the French one came from. That may be what he meant.
I think it is fair to say the French took certain of those principles more to the logical extremes, with visible results. I also think the outcome of this social experiment is not settled yet, and have entertained a suspicion for a while that many of our founding myths should be re-examined in the light of actual results. "All men are created equal", for example, is manifestly untrue, and attempting to force it to be true is at the root of the ravages of multiculti and equalitarianism.
Also, regarding the lack of bloodshed in the war of independence - the first cause to examine for this is the reluctance of the British to actually fight. Warfare requires two parties. Howe and Cornwallis were both Whigs and their behavior in practice was about as suspect as one would expect a partison Democrat's to be were he in charge of Iraqi counterinsurgency. Lack of bloodshed in the face of lack of opposition is no great accomplishment.
I believe that the New World Order is an atheist movement to use the "religion" of Islam to break down the other world religions. Have you seen Italy lately? Italy is swarming with Muslim immigrants who will be more than happy to destroy every last remnant of Christianity - including people and places.
After the Muslims have caused enough societal mayhem to justify draconian measures, the atheist New World Order will banish God and his troublesome religions - and institute the "religion" of science which will be a pretext for societal rules and extensive taxes - and, as with every other religion, will also be impossible to argue against with believers.
Oh, and as for Quebec. Quebec at least is capable of defending its culture, and of _enforcing_ the use of its language within its borders. That's the biggest first step in enforcing societal norms. This seems to be something that is entirely beyond the capacity of any Anglo-Saxon society - and this is the fight that matters, right now.
Dymphna -
Since you quote part of what I wrote, I assume you're talking to me with your "Say what??" reply.
I see that commenter Rollory already clarified my point. I am sorry that my imprecise formulation led you to spend so much effort on time lines and all.
Rollory -
"The American revolt was derived from Enlightenment principles and thinkers, which is also where the French one came from. That may be what he meant."
Thank you for the clarification on my behalf, and yes, that is exactly what I meant: "on the principles of" referred to the vast and lasting influence of "enlightenment" thinking on American culture and political philosophy.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sagunto said...but the other side of the story is that political Americanism and post-war US cultural hegemony (not representing true conservative American people) brought mind-numbing Political Correctness to Europe, besides the push for creating Islamic states within Europe and Islamic states joining the EUssr.
Actually, Political Correctness is something that came to U.S. from Europe. What we imported back to Europe is the current specter of Neo-Muti-Culturalism.
Sagunto,
"I think the question is a good one..."
To wonder about the question's answer is to flirt with the kinds of answers of which the one I mind-read is an example. If you do not already have an answer tucked away for this rhetorical question, then there is no wondering why in this regard. I already answered it. It derives from the good intentions of PC MC, which are good.
Better time would be spent disentangling the deleterious effects of those good intentions in the service of persuading still good and intelligent people in our societies, than in asking rhetorical questions pointing toward needlessly ominous answers that tend to condemn those good and intelligent people among us.
A reader of Lawrence Auster's blog comments there on a quote from Kleine-Hartlage's article:
Celebrating anyone's death, even that of an enemy, is considered indecent in Germany...
-- and wrote:
"Despite what he says, I think you understood the issue (the celebration of the death rather than the death itself) perfectly. I agree with you completely that the refusal to celebrate the death of Osama--or any other terrorist--is a sign of spiritual death."
My question to Kleine-Hartlage would be: How long have Germans had this curious custom of refraining from celebrating the righteous killing of a horrible mass-murdering enemy? Does this curious custom date from 1945? Does it date many centuries? When did it begin? And why?
Lawrence, in taking issue with Sagunto, wrote:
"Actually, Political Correctness is something that came to U.S. from Europe."
While Lawrence is warmer than Sagunto there, both don't seem to realize the enormously deep and broad historical complexity afoot here. As that complexity goes back centuries, of course Europe is the site of the roots of the problem. But this isn't merely a 20th-century problem, nor even merely a 19th-century one.
The specific nexus of the problem of the shift of PC MC from relatively marginal status to mainstream dominance is a 20th century phenomenon, but both Europe and America were convolved (as well as Australia, New Zealand and Westernized India).
From tonight's newsfeed:
"Sixty-one African migrants including two babies died of hunger and thirst in late March when their boat drifted for 16 days in the Mediterranean after European and Nato military vessels apparently ignored their calls for help, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday."
I guess that PC MC squishy stuff skipped the Western navies? Now, that wouldn't happen at Fort Hood where the American army values "diversity" over the lives of Fort Hood soldiers facing a little jihad here and there.
Hesperado -
Your mind-reading game appears to be an integral part of your style, so given the valuable points you make, I won't really mind any further. So please do infer from things left unmentioned by other commenters, to push your point about PC MC over and over again, because it is an important one.
I on my part will take leave, with a little sigh every now and then, to correct some of the particulars ascribed to my comments or rather, things I left uncommented, so to speak. So yes, I do realize that the German author asked a rhetorical question, and you might find it puzzling when I say that I am only interested in the answer by Mr. Auster, and leave the rhetoric to others.
In another lectorical vehicle for your PC MC meme, you wrote:
"While Lawrence is warmer than Sagunto there, both don't seem to realize the enormously deep and broad historical complexity afoot here. As that complexity goes back centuries, of course Europe is the site of the roots of the problem"
Again, things unmentioned provide you with another opportunity to exhibit your grasp of the complex history involved in the genesis and proliferation of PC MC. That's all fine, you keep doing that, beat on that drum, and in the meantime allow me to focus on today's problem with political correctness, a US subtype of PC MC that came back to European shores with a vengeance. And yes @Lawrence, it was in a recycled form, and yes @Hesperado, it was part of a process that hailed back centuries, as we have been discussing extensively in previous exchanges, all very true, so kudos to you guys for bringing those points to the table..
But my comment was clear enough in that it dealt with the particular form of PC we are facing today. It came in the wake of the US post-war cultural dominance, as Conservative Swede has been arguing time and again in past threads here on GoV, and it had been part of the distinctly American, progressivist, 20th century Wilsonian project for a better world, run by experts.
So here we are, celebrating diversity, "liberating" Libya, aiding Muslims, setting them free to implement sharia-compliant violence and oppression by democratic means, while also celebrating the demise of the dead poster-boy for Obama's imminent reelection.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Dymphna -
"OTOH, the greatest observor of America's culture was, and remains, a Frenchman. To this day, Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand this motley nation. In the same way,Frenchman Frederic Bastiat's economic philosophy ought to be read by any who would understand the bases of an authentic free-market capitalism (something we do not have here). In the US, among conservatives, he is lionized. In France, Bastiat is unknown."
I'd wholeheartedly second all of what you wrote here, except maybe for that last little sentence.
Sag.
@Sagunto,
Followed the clues in the Ralph Raico lecture you pointed me to in a previous comment which lead to an amusing demolition of J. S. Mill, it is the Godless and misanthropic capitalism that I have contentions for - the currency of the market should be the will to compete not enslave - competition not the corruption and cohertion of the freeman.
Thanks
IHSV -
My pleasure. You now know the reason why I always use the phrase "true free market philosophy", instead of just capitalism, in order to be precise and prevent any confusion. Any business not earning an honest living on the market because they're in bed with the State, is participating in a scheme best described as "corporatism". True free market philosophy is based on Natural Law tradition, developed in medieval Europe, and perfected by the late Scholastics in Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (reading tip: the excellent work by Dr. Alejandro A Chafuen: "Faith and Liberty: the Economic thought of the Late Scholastics".
Meanwhile I've received the book by Prof. Raeder, about the tremendous influence J. S. Mill on liberty, economics (of the wrong kind) and his "Religion of Humanity". Prof. Raeder argues the case that the work of J. S. Mill - heavily influenced by notable French philosophers/activists striving for a "better world" - cannot be properly assessed without taking into account his virulent hatred of organized religion. His freedom of speech was a vehicle, a useful tool, for demolishing religion without resorting to a frontal attack (which wasn't possible anyway in those days and circumstances).
@Egghead, in the light of your earlier remarks, I'd like to ask your opinion about the essay by prof. Raeder that I provided earlier in this comments section. Mill, with his enlightenment-style "Religion of Humanity", is i.m.o. a pivotal figure in understanding the change of classical liberalism in the Anglo-American world into the highly convoluted and contradictory type of cultural and political liberalism we see today.
Afterthought, or rather a (non-rhetorical, trust me ;-) question, for @Hesperado:
Can you name just a few firmly PC MC politicians/administrators in the US, whose political actions are - as you claim - driven by "good intentions" and also what those intentions might have in store for the people they represent?
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Hesperado said... The specific nexus of the problem of the shift of PC MC from relatively marginal status to mainstream dominance is a 20th century phenomenon, but both Europe and America were convolved (as well as Australia, New Zealand and Westernized India).
Very true. Post 1945-ish.
What occurred, simply stated, is that Communist-Marxism was introduced from Europe to America as a viable "secular" political ideology.
What America introduced back to Europe was Hippies.
And right now the Hippie generation is the generation in power. Sigh...
Sagunto,
"...the US post-war cultural dominance, as Conservative Swede has been arguing time and again in past threads here on GoV, and it had been part of the distinctly American, progressivist, 20th century Wilsonian project for a better world, run by experts."
This view implies that Europe in 1945 was not itself partaking of, and cultivating, the paradigm shift into the mainstream dominance of PC MC; and thus implies that all of Europe went along without protest with American coercion into that shift, even though it (Europe) was supposedly organically opposed to it.
A more nuanced view of what happened is that Europe through its internal (and variegated, region by region) participation in what might be called "proto-PC MC" (where the "PC MC" denotes specifically the shift into mainstream dominance, not the substance of PC MC itself, which can be found as far back as, for example, in the writings of Montaigne) was already massively predisposed to the new order necessitated by the catastrophic horrors caused by two European countries (Germany, Italy) going stark-raving berserk with a sociopolitical disease of expansionist insanity along with numerous allies in other countries who shared in the disease that almost destroyed Europe, if not the West and the world.
America in 1945 and increasing exponentially thereafter just happened to be the strongest and healthiest locus of the West at that point, and something had to be done to reconstruct a Europe in smoking cinders with millions mass-murdered, millions displaced, perhaps millions injured, and millions more killed in a needless war that had escalated to that point of no return by already a proto-PC MC in the 1930s that appeased Hitler. It's a shame that the necessary and good reconstruction of the West had to be warped by the increasing dominance of PC MC which probably got a considerable boost from the catastrophic fact of WW2 and its aftermath. E.g., one can say that the dismantling of Western Colonialism was simultaneously motivated by an increasing sense of PC MC deference to the Third World, and by the sheer massive exhaustion wrought by WW2; though Western Colonialism had already begun to become tainted by proto-PC MC decades before, and it was not all Pres. Wilson's fault: it reflected a sea change in civilizational consciousness, of which Wilson, while he was a brilliant statecraftsman, cannot be held so responsible as to be its principal architect (it is amusing to see Europeans treat themselves as the hapless victims of a process, as though they had become passive Noble Savages to be bullied about by America and unable to do anything about it, much less show their protestations; it is more reasonable to suppose that they were, to varying degrees, willing participants in a paradigm shift that was pan-Western, and blaming America for orchestrating and forcing that shift upon Europe is to blame those lucky enough to have become strong and healthy enough (and of course also spared the direct destructions of infrastructure, dislocations and domestic killings of the war) to enjoy the historical accident of being "Chosen" by Chance to be in the driver's seat of the tragically necessary reconstruction of the West post-WW2).
Sagunto,
"Can you name just a few firmly PC MC politicians/administrators in the US, whose political actions are - as you claim - driven by "good intentions"...?
I would classify the majority of politicians/administrators throughout the US that way -- relatively decent and intelligent people with good intentions to do civic service (ditto for the entire West, with varying majorities, country by country, of course). It just so happens that good intentions and intelligence has become enmeshed in a paradigm that often results in deleterious decisions and policies, deleterious in varying degrees (not every PC MC policy is pernicious and suicidal; some are merely mistaken with relatively minor effects: there is a spectrum, depending on the context and particular substance of the PC MC in question).
"...and also what those intentions might have in store for the people they represent?"
It depends on the context, whether local, regional, or national and then geopolitical. It depends on the specific policy. I'm less worried about the wide variety of PC MC concretions peripheral (much less unrelated) to the problem of Islam, and I continue to trust that America, and the West, will be able to recover the rationality of causuistically discerning and prioritizing the differences among deleterious habits and their resultant policies -- to wit, one can rationally come to realize that Muslims through their Islam represent a unique danger that must be dealt with by itself, without dragging along a panoply of other indirectly related issues ("immigration" in general; "globalism"; internal social PC such as gay marriage; etc.) which all sides who may still disagree on those can agree to put them on hold while dealing with this one particular unique situation of the problem of Muslims. While I retain the optimistic trust the West to be capable of this, I am not necessarily optimistic about its capability of recovering such rationality without a few tragic shocks caused by Muslims in the decades ahead.
Indeed, the whole point of the myopia to the problem of Islam is that it suffers from an inability to make casuistic distinctions -- e.g., between Brown Muslims and Brown non-Muslims (the immigration of the latter present societal problems of various kinds and degrees but never rising to the level of the dangers the former pose). It's a shame to see an apparently increasing trend among many in the anti-Islam movement who tend to encourage, from the opposite end so to speak, this ideological (and irrational) promiscuity.
The anti-Islam movement should not muddy the waters and make of the issue of Islam one cog in a vast, complex and messy (not to mention provocatively antagonistic) Manifesto against their own West.
Lawrence -
You wrote:
Post 1945-ish. What occurred [..] is that Communist-Marxism was introduced from Europe to America [..] What America introduced back to Europe was Hippies.
You commented earlier that PC introduced from Europe preceded the recycled US export-product, so to speak. Now let me return the favor, 'cause I beg to differ with the above statement. My reservations are twofold. First off, if only them hippies were the problem, things would have been much easier over here. Secondly, now you seem to equate PC with Marxism, introduced (meaning making a first time appearance, isn't it?) to the US right after WW-II. Let me inform you that Marxism/Socialism was introduced - and became widespread - in the US way earlier, in the fourth quarter of the 19th century. You must have heared about the Bellamy nephews, Francis (1855 -1931) and Edward (1850 - 1898). They were US socialists with tremendous influence in their days.
The utopian socialist novel "Looking Backward", by George Bellamy was an international bestseller and nothing short of a bible for socialists/marxists world-wide. The US Pledge of Allegiance, an exercise in state-worship (much like the rituals based on Enlightenment worshipping of "La Patrie"), was conceived of and meant as a deeply socialist and nationalist ritual, thought up and construed by Francis, a self-declared "military socialist".
To these Bellamy nephews, one of whom studied socialism in Germany from 1868 - 1869, the state worshipping ritual of the Pledge itself (1892) and the govt. takeover of schools, to spread socialist/nationalist doctrine, were their brainchilds. The modern progressive and socialist ideas of the Bellamy's met with great success among the educated public, and throughout the nation, Bellamy societies were erected. Way before 1945.
To further illustrate my point about the "proximate" origin of todays US progressivism, let me take a quote from what Conservative Swede had to say about the subject, some time ago here at GoV:
He wrote:
Regarding American intervention in Europe in the 20th century: It prolonged WW1, the peace of which created the power vacuum for Hitler to expand in. Naive Wilson called this creation of power vacuum "organized peace" (as has been pointed out, if Hitler had had a sense of humour he would have raised a statue of Wilson for the way he paved the way for him).
Then in the aftermath of WW2. Western Europe was sent into a America-led cultural revolution pushing political correctness and multiculturalism upon us, all of which had been in place in America since many decades back, but effectively non-existent in Europe before WW2.
That is in keeping with the assertion by Prof. Nibet (the quote I gave earlier) about the totalitarian US war-state under Pres. Wilson. So I date CS's "many decades back" in the heydays of the Progressive and the Nationalist (substitute US word for Socialist) parties of the US, and the US intervention in WW-I. European Socialism was "modernized" and "upgraded" in the US in the 19th century, and that is what Europe eventually got back - in the form of "progressivism" - about a decade after WW-II, when US cultural dominance (i.e. political Americanism) really kicked in.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Anti-Americanism in Europe: A historic disease is an illuminating study of European anti-Americanism, which according to the author's cogent argument (and Grabinski is by no means the only writer or scholar to have noticed and examined this) goes back to the very founding of the United States in the late 18th century. (Wilson can hardly be blamed for 19th century European anti-Americanism.)
What a well-written and informative article. I particularly like this: "The obvious answer is that Westernization of the Islamic world and Islamization of the Western world are two sides of the same coin."
Any unbiased observer would likewise see also that global capitalism is simply the flip side of Marxism. Both reduce man to an economic animal, both ultimately centralize global power in the hands of a few, and both are destroyers of all boundaries: national, tribal, communal, and familial.
"Wilson can hardly be blamed for 19th century European anti-Americanism."
Ha! Can't he just! I love my country but when I think of the many utopian presidents such as Wilson we've elected, and the disastrous utopian projects America has imposed upon others around the world, I am embarassed. Americans have always had a deep fever for Utopia and assume that everyone wants to be just like them. And if any country resists our "help," they must be bombed into submission. Global capitalism/Marxism rules and true conservative voices are not allowed.
Rusty Mason: I appreciated your input about the quotation that I asked about above. In reply, I would point out that no one can claim to be truly unbiased. The most that you can hope for is that people are flexible to adapt their views and change their minds where compelling evidence is presented.
That said, my point is that Islam is causing FUNDAMENTAL societal and legal changes in the West - and Russia - and Asia - and South America, whereas the inverse situation is NOT happening - to date.
Islam is swiftly conquering the world on a deeper philosophical level than the cosmetic influence of the West on the Islamic world.
I repeat my very sincere question: Can anyone explain any philosophical changes that the West has convinced - or even coerced - the Islamic world to accept and practice?
Sagunto: I skimmed the article that you mentioned, and it appeared to br well-written. I need more time to fully read it. Then, I will comment more on this thread. :)
I usually agree with Mr Auster, but not on this. His views are not indicative of most Americans, either. At least in the part of the US where I grew up.
My view is that Germans have spread all over the world, opening many businesses and workshops, producing vast quantities of many things, all over the world, not just in Germany. But one thing you rarely see from the Germans when they spread out is an interest in politics. It seems that the Germans are usually too busy producing things to bother with the long, tedious, often childish games politicians play. The outcome of this is obvious, that they are destined to often have political rulers that are less fit for the job than themselves.
I hope Lawrence's medical issues are resolved favourably soon, not just for his own good health but so that we might read his much promised reply to Kleine-Hartlage's well thought through post above.
It seems to me a gargantuan task of Herculean proportions to come down from statements such as the Germans pose a determined threat to the nations and peoples of the West...they need to be kept at our feet, or else they will go for our throat. and Germany must not rule, period. but I'm sure our man in New York is up to the task.
I hope it doesn't involve any form of prevarication such as It's about Germany as a political society. or the world is better off when Germany does not have too much power. After all, Auster's former and opening argument is categorical whereas latter statements are equivocations. If the latter is now Auster's position then perhaps an apology to the Germans he has insulted by saying that they should be at his feet lest they go for our collective throats, is in due order. Or perhaps a re-write of his opening post. After all, he does sound rather genocidalist, imbued with a hatred of historic and unresolvable proportions against "the Germans". Imagine saying such things about the Jews?!
Let us pray for his swift return to good health.
Cheers,
Pat Hannagan
M4 Monologue
Tanstaafl has reacted to this article with an article at his blog.
Pat Hannagan,
Lawrence Auster has a penchant for hyperbole, sometimes worse than Robert Spencer. The melodrama of his critical prose at times reminds one of a ballerina on crack leaping from extreme to extreme (which can be entertaining to read); and he thus tends to foster an escalation to places he may not have intended to go. When, in turn, he is called on the position his hyperbole indicates, his explanations of his own original hyperbole sometimes toe the perilously thin line between sophistry and earnest distinctions (but to me seem to be in a third category of a kind of acrobatic feat of a juggler on a unicycle on a high-wire trying to have his taco wrapped in a riddle within an enigma and eat it too).
Auster doesn't always, or perhaps even mostly, do this. Often his laser-like acumen on certain apposite subtleties concerning certain issues is brilliant. But when he does start twitching and waxing hyperbolic, he more often than not is not defensible.
@Sagunto,
Cameron and Clegg and the new buzz word in U.K. politics - Muscular Liberalism.
Any thoughts on this political ideology on steroids?
Looks to me like the liberal totalatarians have crawled out from the political closet and have set the mark of muscular liberalism on their foreheads.
IHSV -
Thnx for providing that link. And you are right in your assessment of this predictable "musculinity" among liberals. It is the same old progressivism repackaged, no doubt, but perhaps - since you've become acquainted with (Raico's/Raeder's) take on J.S. Mill and his "Religion of Humanity" - you understand me when I say that this movement can be characterized as one hundred percent, vintage Milleanism.
Some of the quotes are of special interest, like this self-contradictory one:
"We are equally opposed to the cynical 'realism' of the old Right - which seeks to describe geopolitics as a constant, amoral battle for supremacy. For us, foreign policy is about aggressively promoting the shared values of the Western world."
I see precious little difference when I compare those two allegedly opposing views. The latter is about progressivist (i.e. Millean) supremacy just the same. Of course these people seem to think highly of their own moral outlook, and contrast it with the very same scheme that falls short of their elevated moral standards.
And how about this howler of a disclaimer, about their political muscularity:
"it's a perspective, not a religion.
To that I'd say, "pull the other one". If this ain't political religion 101, nothing is.
Thank you again for that link. Most informative.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Still no word from our man in New York. I suppose the travails of that "Frenchman" Dominique Strauss-Kahn (certainly a name that sounds French) are more deserving of attention, and redemption.
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