Monday, October 31, 2011

What is Wrong With Western Elites?

Fjordman

Below is Fjordman’s latest essay. For a complete archive of his writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.


Libya’s autocratic ruler Muammar Qaddafi was brutally tortured and killed on 20 October 2011 after France, Britain, the USA and NATO had actively given military support to rebel troops that were known to include groups with ties to terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.

Muammar QadaffiAs writer Diana West said, “Qaddafi was not killed in retaliation for his attacks on American servicemen in Berlin in 1986, or the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1989. He was not killed for his central role in the USSR’s terror networks going back to the 1960s and 1970s. He was killed after coming over to our side of George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ in the final phase of a civil war in Libya in which his regime fought al Qaeda affiliates. Horrific as it sounds, Qaddafi was killed because we and our NATO allies joined the other side.”

In February 2011, a day before he quit as Egypt’s president after popular uprisings, Hosni Mubarak had harsh words for his former allies in the United States and their misguided quest for democracy in the Middle East. “They may be talking about democracy but they don’t know what they’re talking about and the result will be extremism and radical Islam.”

Mubarak during his three decades in power kept stability in Egypt, peace with its neighbors including Israel and promoted decent economic progress in his country without being cruel. Despite this, the USA quickly turned its back on him when protests began. The Muslim Brotherhood has since gained in strength, and attacks on Coptic Christians have escalated.

Sayyid QutbSayyid Qutb (1906-1966) from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was with his writings among the inspirations for the Jihadists terrorists from al-Qaeda who killed three thousand Americans on September 11th 2001. A decade later, President Obama and his Administration are actively aiding the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere to gain more influence.

Many ordinary citizens, when witnessing our so-called leaders supporting our enemies, wonder whether Western political elites have lost their grip on reality. What are they trying to achieve with such stupid and suicidal policies? Why do they want to export democracy to Islamic countries, even if this brings radical organizations with hostile agendas to power, at the same time as the democratic system is being de facto abolished in Europe by the European Union?

My personal view is that the cultural, economic and especially immigration policies currently promoted by the ruling elites throughout virtually the entire Western world are harmful to the long-term interests of the European peoples who created this civilization. One fundamental question that has been hotly debated on the Internet by dissident writers is whether this trend is entirely accidental, and exclusively reflects the purely impersonal forces of technological globalization, or whether there is also a purpose and a plan behind some of these changes.

I believe that there is also an intentional plan of breaking down Western nation-states behind this trend. This is demonstrated by the statements of some key actors, by the all-pervasive (in the Western world at least) indoctrination with non-European “diversity” as well as by the systematic demonization and ridicule of all traditional practices, cultural symbols and national flags. The arguments, or rather lies, presented in favor of continued mass immigration and Multiculturalism are remarkably similar in all Western countries, too similar to be entirely coincidental.

Multicultural classroom

The question is: Why? And what do those promoting such policies hope to achieve?

It is important to realize that this does not necessarily rule out other possible explanations, which may supplement rather than contradict the previous claim. It is undoubtedly true that modern Western technology has created a far more integrated world than existed in the past.

One could also successfully argue that there are deep underlying structures and ideas in Western culture and mentality at work here, too, for instance the concept of “universal egalitarianism” that could be found already in Greco-Roman Antiquity, and especially in Christianity. This was secularized after the Enlightenment in the form of human rights. Present-day Globalists, regardless of whether they come in a Socialist or a capitalist shape, can exploit these ideals.

Finally, there is no doubt that many people vote for open-border Globalists of their own free will. For example, I have been severely critical of the British government of Tony Blair, but we should remember that Blair with his Labour Party won no less than three elections in a row. Some of this can be attributed to media censorship and decades of indoctrination plus the mass importation of a new electorate in the form of immigrants who tend to vote for Socialist parties which give them access to more welfare payments. Some of it, maybe, but not all of it.

No matter how we twist this, the fact remains that tens of millions of Westerners have more or less freely voted for parties that insult and dispossess them and rob them of their heritage. We have become decadent, indifferent consumers who live only for the here and now, cut off from our historical roots and with little regard for the future of our nation. Far too often, we care little for what will happen 50-100 years from now as long as we can still personally enjoy a steady supply of material comforts and new electronic toys plus football and sex on TV.

My good friend Ohmyrus, an Asian essayist, has convincingly argued that one of the factors behind the booming budget deficits we can now observe in many Western countries plus Japan may be the short-term focus inherent to the democratic system, where people prefer short-term gain now at the price of long-term pain later and vote themselves into possession of other people’s money. Not enough of them think longer than a couple of election cycles — maybe ten years — ahead. History-conscious peoples who come from non-democratic cultures, for instance the Chinese, seem to find it easier to plan in terms of generations and centuries.

On top of this, the good components that a democracy may contain have ironically also been undermined by hollowing out this system from above through international organizations, which in many cases promote harmful policies even when the majority does not want this.

The UN Ummah

In 2009 it was revealed that the ruling Labour Party had purposefully flooded Britain with millions of immigrants without consulting its citizens, in order to socially engineer a “truly Multicultural” country. The huge increases in migrants over the previous twelve years were due in part to a politically motivated attempt to radically change the country and to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity,” if you believe Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. He said that mass immigration was the result of a deliberate plan, but ministers were reluctant to discuss this openly for fear of alienating the party’s “core working class vote.”

Lord Glasman — a personal friend of the Labour Party leader — in 2011 stated that “Labour lied to people about the extent of immigration… and there’s been a massive rupture of trust.” He admitted that the Labour Party had sometimes been actively hostile to the white natives. In particular, they tended to view white working-class voters as “an obstacle to progress.”

To my knowledge, these shocking revelations of a government launching a full-front attack on its own people — in what could be seen as a policy of ethnic cleansing of a specific national group — did not cause a single word of protest from the political leaders or mass media in any other Western country back then. I have since come to suspect that the reason for this shameful silence is that the authorities in many other Western countries themselves follow roughly similar policies and therefore see nothing wrong in what the British government did.

In 2009, the former left-wing US President Bill Clinton stated publicly that Americans should be mindful of their nation’s rapidly changing demographics, which led to the 2008 election of Obama as president. He told an Arab-American audience that before 2050 the USA will no longer have a majority of people of mainly European descent and claimed that “this is a very positive thing.” This was just a few years after a group of Arab Muslim terrorists had staged the deadliest attack against the US mainland in peacetime, killing thousands of US citizens.

Bill Clinton is himself of European extraction. I have never heard representatives of, say, the Chinese Communist Party brag about the fact that they support displacing their own ethnic group from their own country. Only leaders from the supposedly democratic West do this.

Roger ScrutonThe English philosopher Roger Scruton notes that “buying and selling of citizenship, often to people who think of it purely as a right and never as a duty, is common throughout Europe. The political élite sees nothing wrong in people collecting passports as they might collect memberships of clubs.” He thinks that the Western élite are immune to xenophobia, or fear of foreigners, but instead suffer from a severe case of what he terms oikophobia, the repudiation of home, the urge to denigrate the customs and culture of your own people. “The oikophobe is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism.”

Ibn KhaldunIbn Khaldun is somewhat overrated compared to other non-European historiographers such as Sima Qian, but the most useful aspect of his writings is the concept of asabiyya, which could be translated as group consciousness. Judged by the above cited examples of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton (numerous others might unfortunately be mentioned here), the ongoing decline of Western civilization can partly be explained as a decline of asabiyya among Western elites, who no longer feel attached to their own peoples but see them as obstacles to be overcome, or silenced through widespread anti-racism campaigns and doctrinal guilt imposed from above.

This does not mean that there is no grassroots support at all for Multiculturalism. Yet support for mass immigration is lukewarm at best among the population as a whole, whereas the ruling elites in politics, media and academia promote it enthusiastically. If anything, this pan-Western disconnect and deficit of trust between rulers and the ruled is growing larger. If unchecked, this widening political chasm threatens to seriously undermine stability in the Western world.

CIP logo

In June 2007, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with Chancellor (and PM-in-waiting) Gordon Brown and Conservative Party leader (also future PM) David Cameron, met Muslim leaders at a conference organized by the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme. Blair opened by defending Islam as a religion of “moderation and modernity,” announced a government fund to aid teaching of Islam and to train imams and designated Islamic studies as “strategically important” to the British national interest. Timothy Winter, a lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, said that “The question facing British society, and society as a whole, is not how we encourage minorities to engage with western countries, but how those countries define themselves as a collage of different religious cultures.”

In other words: Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, Spain and other Western countries with white majorities are no longer nations with a distinct heritage, only random spaces on the map just waiting to be filled with a “collage of different cultures.”

I could add that North American authorities and mass media are little better than European ones, and sometimes worse. The USA was the first Western country, in 1965, to open its borders to mass immigration from the entire world as a matter of ideological principle. US authorities have been promoting similar policies elsewhere in the Western world ever since.

Critical Whiteness StudiesThe concepts of “white privilege” and hostile “Whiteness Studies” were also developed in and spread from the USA. In conflicts between native Europeans and non-native colonizers, US authorities have repeatedly demonstrated that they will go against the interests of the natives.

Former PM Tony Blair showed no regrets when he stated in the fall of 2011 that it is “right” that the country should made up of different cultures and faiths mixed together. That is not to say you don’t encounter problems at certain points, but these “are to be overcome.” Blair added that the anti-immigration debate was now a thing of the past. Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch responded that: “This is completely shameless from the Prime Minister who brought more than three million immigrants into Britain in the teeth of public opposition.”

Perils of Diversity by Byron RothIn The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature, Byron M. Roth, a Professor Emeritus of Psychology from the USA, argues that the debate over immigration policy in the Western world is critically uninformed by the sciences of evolutionary biology and psychology. A primary thesis of his book is that societies are mainly the product of the genetic nature of the human beings who make them up, not geography, as Jared Diamond claims. He mentions that rising crime has become a serious problem, often committed by ethnic minorities. Low IQ correlates highly with rates of criminality and antisocial behavior.

What consequences will the mass importation of low-IQ peoples to the West have? Is a certain minimum average IQ necessary to maintain a complex society? Roth speculates whether what may emerge from these demographic patterns is that the USA will move in the direction of countries like Mexico, corrupt and dysfunctional states with oligarchic politics.

Do some Western elites actively desire such a result? Do they hope to turn the Western world into a giant version of Mexico with a weak middle class incapable of challenging a tiny ruling elite (themselves) entrenched virtually as a caste? Perhaps the authoritarian key to crushing the white man’s traditional desire for self-determination is to paralyze it by flooding his lands with alien ethnic groups who themselves often come from repressive and authoritarian cultures. In parts of Europe, Christianity was in medieval times used to consolidate the embryos of nation-states. Perhaps those who seek to break down these nation-states today view a different and more repressive religion, Islam, as a useful tool for achieving this goal.

LeninThe phrase “Political Correctness” first came into use under Communism and meant that all ideas had to conform to and support the agenda of the Marxist movement. History and philosophy were the first to be forced into line, but as is clear from the career of Trofim Lysenko, science was made to conform, too. Those who dissented from the official doctrine were judged to be psychologically imbalanced or evil. Today the ruling ideology is an absolute egalitarianism that if you analyze it closely actually amounts to saying that all cultures have an equal right to exist, except the European one which is evil. As Roth says:

Whether Western elites really believe these things is less important than the benefit they gain from its promulgation. The primary benefit is that it paralyzes the popular preferences for national preservation by characterizing opposition to elite doctrines as immoral, indecent, and inhumane. It allows unelected elites to aggrandize their own power by obliterating national sovereignty and nullifying democratic accountability. Many are, without exaggeration, true totalitarians that have no regard for the well-being of those they control, since the only way they can consolidate their dystopian plans is through brute state power. While there is no doubt that many well-meaning individuals join their efforts, they are the sort of ‘useful idiots’ who excused and covered up Communist atrocities during most of the 20th century.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great to have you back Fjordman. Keep telling it like it is.

Lawrence said...

My good friend Ohmyrus, an Asian essayist, has convincingly argued that one of the factors behind the booming budget deficits we can now observe in many Western countries plus Japan may be the short-term focus inherent to the democratic system, where people prefer short-term gain now at the price of long-term pain later and vote themselves into possession of other people’s money.


Benjamin Franklin and Alexis de Tocqueville would agree with him.

jeppo said...

There are basically four different types of immigration policy being implemented in the developed world today. This fundamental policy choice will ultimately decide any given nation's future, or lack thereof.

1) Large-scale negative immigration: The United States, Canada and Australia.

By "large-scale", I mean immigration rates consistently exceeding 0.5% of the host nation's population annually. By "negative", I mean that the vast majority of immigrants to the host nations are of a different race, ethnicity, religion, language or culture. Often these immigrants have a considerably lower average IQ than the natives of the host nations as well.

The US, Canada and Australia not only meet these nation-wrecking standards, but are where the "nation of immigrants" propaganda is most virulent, and are undoubtedly the three easiest countries in which to obtain citizenship. Canada and Australia have higher rates of immigration, but the US has a less selective and more concentrated source of immigrants, i.e. Latin America, so they are more susceptible to having the immigrants successfully impose their language and culture on the host nation. The US is also more vulnerable because their existing ethnic core is smaller: they are only about 60%-65% white, compared to 75%-80% white Canada and 80%-90% white Australia.

2) Smaller-scale negative immigration: Western Europe.

Notwithstanding the Labour Party's flooding Britain with non-white immigrants from 1997 to 2010, immigration levels to European nations have been, historically and presently, much lower than those to the US, Canada and Australia. But the source of the bulk of those immigrants has been the Muslim world, making it far more dangerous than the immigration to the New World nations. Muslims bring higher levels of terrorism, crime, welfare dependency and civil strife, and are turning once-enlightened and Christian Europe into an increasingly Islamic, and therefore backward, continent. However, one advantage that the Europeans have is that it's much more difficult to obtain citizenship there: in Germany for example, only about 45% of resident Muslims hold German citizenship. This holds out the (small) hope that eventually many of them can be made to leave.

3) Positive immigration: Israel and Singapore.

"Positive" meaning that immigration policy is used to either bolster the majority (Israel), or weaken the minority (Singapore), or a combination of both. In Israel, any Jew from anywhere, or any non-Jew with at least one Jewish grandparent, plus their spouses, can make aliyah and become Israeli citizens. This policy boosts both the total number of Jews in Israel and their percentage of the overall population, while weakening the hostile Arab minority. In Singapore, immigration policy is used to keep the Muslim Malay minority (who have a much higher birthrate than the dominant Chinese, and surround Singapore in neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia) relatively small at about 15%. Singapore welcomes not just Chinese immigrants, but Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, etc., to ensure that Malays are never allowed to dominate their country.

4) No immigration: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

This policy ensures that these nations will remain, repectively, Japanese, Korean and Chinese far into the future, hopefully forever. These nations are already automating industry, agriculture and services rather than relying on cheap immigrant labour, and are dealing with their aging populations today rather than importing masses of Third Worlders in a vain attempt to prop up ponzi scheme pension systems that likely won't exist in the future. Their united, homogenous and monocultural societies will increasingly become the envy of our divided, heterogenous and multicultural ones, contrary to our reigning diversity-uber-alles ideology.

So, to sum up:

4) The ideal immigration policy.
3) Doing what they have to do to survive.
2) Walking off the cliff.
1) Running off the cliff.

A Common Loon said...

Always good to see Fjordman at the keyboard

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the history and roll of academia in the problems we currently face. As an undergraduate at a major university myself, I am privy to the IV drip of diversity and multiculturalism propaganda that is fed to our student body through every conceivable source.

The problems that face our civilization today, as you implied, are extremely multi-faceted, and there are probably many reasons, groups and individuals at fault. One line I see in our history is the young radical anti-establishment movement from the 60's and 70's who fought the traditional culture and power structures especially in the United States tooth and nail. Then they aged and became the establishment themselves. It seems that no one told them, because the establishment today acts as if it is an anti-establishment movement fighting the "injustice" of the same civilization it is in charge of. They seem to be fighting yesterday's ideological war. Not only that, but they are fighting it in every Western Country with the world's only superpower as their loyal steed. The USG's commitment to diversity in every Western country cannot be ignored. They seem to treat every other Western Country as a US state that has the same "disease" of enthno-patriotism that the US once did and they are the cure.

As a student of history, I can see many strains throughout the past that lead us here today. I think the leading ideological culprits are Universalism (enlightenment and Christian), Global Corporatism, The Proposition nation, and cultural Marxism. The United States is unquestionably at the helm of the diversity campaign worldwide. The Multicultural "city on a hill" that the rest of the "monocultural" West must emulate.

doxRaven said...

We have become decadent, indifferent consumers who live only for the here and now, cut off from our historical roots and with little regard for the future of our nation.

Fully agree and I don't think one has to be, as the Left migh charge, a religious conservative to have this view.

The question of who is in control is an interesting one. We talk about the political elite. We talk about this elite as if they are were control - I increasingly have my doubts that they are. I believe the system has taken on an autonomous momentum and even the elite and mainstream academics are just compelled to act out their roles.
Emerging independent thinkers like Geert Wilders are vilified and offered up to the wolfs. Those that challenge the system are not afforded protection, and all the talk about democracy and free speech is exposed for what it is: a sham - propaganda to placate masses with clever guilt tripping.

The socio-economic system that we see today is much more clever and dangerous than a Gaddfi or a USSR. The middle class has become successfully enslaved by finely calibrated taxes, fines and fees - bondage by mortgage. This fine tuning of control plus stupification through gadgets and flooding of content-less entertainment options , has taken out any drive for decent. The average person has been successfully captured and tamed. The ten commandments, turning into twenty and ever expanding in number, are being handed down from the state to regulate our lives. Thou shalt not smoke, or drink or gamble more than x$ per prescribed period; though shalt not be in control of your own body (excepting if it server the pro-abortion debate of course). The nanny state is ever more dictatorial, more than the religious laws of the eschewed catholic church ever were.

The Greeks are evading taxes like a national sport, tooday we hear that 9000 dead are drawing the pension in Greece. But I can't bring myself to condemn the Greeks because they may be the smartest most free people of Europe. Give me Greece any time over the social-engineering control freaks in Scandinavia. Greece, vote against the package, default and get your Drachma back. Take your future in your own hands - not before long you will be the envy of the peoples behind the EU/Euro iron curtain.

Anonymous said...

To Jeppo,

I think I would consider your ideal model to be Singapore, as opposed to Japan, Korea, or even Israel. Singapore, from your description, has a policy of allowing intelligent, educated non-Muslims from any country to immigrate.

You tend to equate "white" with the key to maintaining European culture. What we don't have in either Europe or the US is a rational immigration policy to allow in a reasonable number of high-IQ and skilled people each year. I have colleagues at work who are very dark, very skilled, and very, very committed to bringing their children up as cultural Americans.

Japan and Korea are putting themselves at a disadvantage by shutting off all immigration. Cultural isolation is exactly the reason the Japanese were so susceptible to US and European encroachment in the 1800's. They had become insulated, and fell behind in technology.

In sum, a moderate amount of controlled immigration is healthy for a society. Our governments have failed in their responsibilities as gatekeepers.

Anonymous said...

Fjordman: I hope that you are well. I presume that Hesperado is the source for some of your ideas although Hesperado is a cock-eyed optimist who believes Westerners are committing cultural and ethnic suicide from "good" motives - whereas I see and sense much darker moral elements at work.

jeppo: "...are dealing with their aging populations today rather than importing masses of Third Worlders in a vain attempt to prop up ponzi scheme pension systems that likely won't exist in the future."

It is time to STOP pretending that Western "leadership" imports Third Worlders - particularly Muslims - in order to prop up Western social services.

Indeed, this "argument" is simply the "argument" perpetuated by Western "leaders" who actively plot the complete and utter downfall of the West - through a rapid descent into violent crime (at best) and civil war (at worst).

Why should we pretend that their "argument" contains any validity by repeating it as if it were true and giving Western "leaders" the pretense of a "noble" reason for their treason?!

RonaldB: "In sum, a moderate amount of controlled immigration is healthy for a society."

You are making a premise rather than a conclusion.

Unknown said...

@ Muninn:

David Horowitz has written extensively on the onslaught academia in the US is making on the character and culture of America.
http://frontpagemag.com/

MRiggs said...

RE: the Libyan intervention.

I am surprised at how many in the counterjihad are reacting. It is as if they don't consider the alternative, i.e. had Gaddafi emerged victorious. The flood of refugees to europe, fleeing his brutal retaliation. The massive guilt felt in the west for standing idly by as he slaughters his people in the most brutal and hideous fashion. Especially these two factors combined would have created the perfect storm of immigration.
As it is, the Libyan route for immigration into europe from africa is effectively closed. No black immigrants dare set foot inside Libya now. The islamists are taking over Libya. That is not a bad thing, but a good thing, a VERY good thing. It will demonstrate to the people of the west what muslims really want, when they are free to choose, sharia, an islamic state, and barbarism. When this lesson finally sinks in, the battle against islamisation in the west is won.

So please stop raising a guilt trip over Gaddafi.

Anonymous said...

@MRiggs
I hope you are right. In recent history it has been impossible to underestimate the stupidity of 'the people of the west'.

David said...

The cfr/trilateral comission/bilterberg want one world government. They must eliminate the free minded western middle class to get it. The ruling elite of the US cfr including John D. Rockefeller and Prescott Bush supported Hitler and eugenics up to WWII. Don't be surprised by their continuing amoral business and political empire building today. Patriotic parties representing middle class indigenous voters must emerge to stop this one sorld government madness.

john in cheshire said...

For what my view is worth :
I would like to see any immigration, particularly from third world countries, into the UK as being temporary, with no right to permanent residence and certainly no right to citizenship. And once the permit has expired, a robust system for ensuring the temporary residents, including any family they might have acquired while here, go home. I would prefer no immigration, no asylum-seekers and no refugees.
As an aside, I don't understand why the leaders of the Christian churches have not agitated for more conversions of muslims to Christianity, as a prequisite for aid, and entry to Christian countries. Instead, they all (including, or maybe even especially, the Catholic Church) appear to be doing all they can to ensure that islam takes a firm hold in all European countries and prospers. I find it bizarre to say the least.

scherado said...

Muninn said... "I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the history and roll of academia in the problems we currently face. ..."

Allan Bloom's "The Closing Of The American Mind" is a thorough and exhaustive treatment of this subject.

Anonymous said...

MRiggs,

I agree with you that one effect of the Libyan intervention was to slow the flow of refugees. In fact, that may have been the motivation of the European leaders who chose to intervene. Whether Obama had a clue or not, I don't know.

But, you make two assumptions. One, is that Europe itself is powerless to take action itself to keep out the immigrants. Two, is that once the inevitability of Sharia in Muslim societies is demonstrated, Europeans will be motivated to take action to protect themselves.

In any case, there will be many examples of Muslim societies sliding into Sharia in the very near future, and I'm not sure it will motivate the Europeans to take control of their borders.

To Egghead,
You are correct I did not make a tight case for controlled immigration, but simply alluded to the benefits. I do think it ought to be opened to a debate as a viable concept.

MRiggs said...

@RonaldB

"But, you make two assumptions. One, is that Europe itself is powerless to take action itself to keep out the immigrants. Two, is that once the inevitability of Sharia in Muslim societies is demonstrated, Europeans will be motivated to take action to protect themselves. "

The first assumption is a safe bet as it has held true for a long time. If the second assumption is false, then there is no hope whatsoever.

Sagunto said...

My attention was caught by the same passage that @Lawrence cites:

"My good friend Ohmyrus, an Asian essayist, has convincingly argued that one of the factors behind the booming budget deficits we can now observe in many Western countries plus Japan may be the short-term focus inherent to the democratic system, where people prefer short-term gain now at the price of long-term pain later [..] History-conscious peoples who come from non-democratic cultures, for instance the Chinese, seem to find it easier to plan in terms of generations and centuries."

The starting point, budget deficits, could have led to an analysis, or at least some reference to the far greater problem of (inter)national debt, which ultimately will neccesitate an investigation of the welfare state financial engine, which is extortion of property (money) and monetary inflation (e.g. to fight progressivist wars of "liberation", promoting democracy).
Instead, I get the feeling that part of the argument is about an alleged "lack of planning" by the people. Excuse me? Needless to say that the all pervasive welfare state wasn't brought into being by some lack of historical consciousness on the part of the public. Moreover, I'd prefer a short-term lack of planning in a democracy over the "long term planning" in collectivist societies anytime, anywhere. One only has to wait and witness the impending collapse of the Chinese economy within a couple of years, to see what all this so-called "historical sensitivity" and planning ahead has gained them. Countries that superficially appear to be economically successful always seem to prompt observers to look among its inhabitants for cultural or even biological traits to explain the (temporary) success. What is said now about the Chinese was said of the Japanese before. I don't buy it.

Our main problem instead is, that modern Western civilization was based on something that is no longer in place, i.e. the idea that people could govern themselves with very little interference by any ruling body, that the best way of going about our business was in a free market and that any form of state should be limited in its ability to rule people's lives (mostly a "decentralized" kingdom and later a constitutional republic, sometimes fitted with an appointed royal house, like in Holland).

That model hasn't been in place for at least a century now. What we have instead is the US Progressivist model of "rule by experts", i.e. the scientific management of society, and corporatism, effected by the collusion between monetary centralism, big political entrepreneurs (as opposite to free market entrepreneurs) and the managerial state. This system is based on aggression against supposedly free people: our property (money) is being seized "for the common good", and used to finance the elitists' dream world of a global progressivist and indeed multicultural empire.

In my view, the financial engine behind the neo-Progressive empire (Google: "Progressive Party") is the same engine that has driven our welfare states into overdrive. There's your elephant in the room, ignored once again, when the political focus is on IQ, race, and better "planning ahead" (former leftist concepts), in an otherwise fine article.

Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.

Anonymous said...

RonaldB: "In sum, a moderate amount of controlled immigration is healthy for a society."

You are making a premise rather than a conclusion.

RonaldB: "To Egghead, You are correct I did not make a tight case for controlled immigration, but simply alluded to the benefits. I do think it ought to be opened to a debate as a viable concept."

Your premise is that a moderate amount of controlled immigration is HEALTHY for society.

Originally, you did NOT allude to any benefits; you made a simple statement - or declaration - that "a moderate amount of controlled immigration is healthy for society" - without referencing or providing a list of actual benefits to society.

Whose society, by the way? There are THREE distinct societies to be considered in the immigration question:

1. The Western immigrant society.
2. The non-West primitive society.
3. The Western indigenous society.

It's easily provable that Western immigrant societies receive many benefits to their societies both in the West (generous welfare and safer cleaner environments) and at home (welfare money payments sent back home and family reunification projects for easier immigration).

However, when Western countries implement a "moderate amount of controlled immigration" from more primitive parts of the world, the West 'steals' the most productive members of those societies and effectively ensures that those societies will stay primitive through lack of human resources.

Again, I fully grant that a "moderate amount of controlled immigration" provides significant benefits for the most productive individuals who leave primitive societies.

The commenters here are happy to debate the concept of immigration, but we must carefully examine the comprehensive progressive PC MC brainwashing that we have all received regarding the supposed 'benefits' of immigration and multiculturalism to indigenous Western societies and people.

Feel free to list those many 'benefits' with any supporting documentation based on factual studies - rather than amorphous opinions - that show how any amount of immigration - whether controlled or uncontrolled - has benefited indigenous peoples in any Western country.

In its implementation, even "a moderate amount of controlled immigration" has proved damaging to indigenous worker employment, compensation, tax rates, crime rates - and community cohesion through shared Western identity and values.

Witness how Western societies have been completely prevented from celebrating their own religious, cultural, legal, and historical heritage in the public square (including public schools) because a quite small (some would say moderate) fraction of primitive immigrant interlopers MIGHT be offended by our societal symbols that challenge their primitive tribal views of their moral and legal superiority over the West.

In truth, "a moderate amount" of these Western immigrant societies regard themselves as settlers and conquerers - an advance team for the coming Muslim ummah.

Whiskey said...

Like others, I am happy to see Fjordman back and wish him well.

However, I take issue with his analysis of PC, Multiculturalism, and Diversity/mass immigration. It is QUITE popular, supported by a significant amount of people, and organic, too widely dispersed to be part of a master plan.

In my view, the rising equality or even social superiority of most White Western professional women has led them to simply loathe with a hatred of a thousand suns their ordinary male peers who are not sexy. Thus they seek to drown them in mass of immigrants and anti-White guy ideology and political power. Demanding basically antlers or big peacock feathers (Western White males to abjure group self-interest) as a show of reproductive fitness by displaying excess resources.

It is basically a sexual marketplace run wild, without any social control, that shapes/creates in turn social demands for more mass immigration, denigration of home cultures and ethnicity, and so on. If you choice is beta male drones, you might well as say drown it all, in domination from other men from other lands, the only successful men being by definition reproductively fit.

In this view the sweet spot for Western Civilization was most men being just slightly, BARELY socially superior to most women, and the whole thing collapses when it shifts to women.

Whiskey said...

Let me follow up that if this is the case, there is nothing realistically to be done to save Western civilization. Under this view, it is doomed, because most professional White women have judged it to be a failure, in producing the most important thing: SEXY MEN. This group of women wields outsize influence, being the most politically active, powerful, and providing line leadership if not executive leadership politically and culturally.

Most White professional women would argue it would be a good thing to eradicate the West culturally, racially, ethnically, and historically and replace it with say, Pakistan or Ivory Coast or Libya. Why? Because they hate their own country (this is routinely expressed and is the heart of the West's failure). For that there is no cure. No hope.

In a deep, brutal recession no one in any nation has said anything about deporting those here illegally, much less those permanent guest workers, and those who are not in any sense natives but require the lion's share of social resources. Why? Because White professional women will not have it. Consider these guys the "losers" who get drunk/stoned all day and have their "winner" girlfriends who are smart, professional, and together support them. This dynamic is well known. The men do nothing to support themselves or their women (because the women don't need it, they have their own support, they merely desire sexiness). That writ large is the influence of the White professional class women.

It is not all women. It is not the entire White professional class of women either. [Though it is most of them.] But there it is.

Labor's conspiracy was one done in the open. No one ever disagreed with it. They still don't. Because of the power of the professional White female voting bloc.

Anonymous said...

@ Jeppo

My country Sweden should be included in the "running of the cliff" group: immigrantion the last 5 years have consistantly been exceeding 1% of the population (100.000+). There is no system picking out "skilled immigrants". There are virtually no requirements to become a citizen (5 years residence).
Actually I´m considering leaving for Canada or Australia as a skilled immigrant..

Anonymous said...

Yeesh, Whiskey!

Must every problem in every century be pinned upon the women - whether as seductive Eves, 'bad' mothers, or evil witches?

Moreover, must every problem in every century be pinned upon the suffrage, education, or nominal societal leadership of women?

First, Ann Barnhardt blames women for the adoption of daddy state socialism via women's suffrage; then, Ann Barnhardt advocates to deny women the vote - based on her WRONG interpretation of an ancient religion of which Ann Barnhardt is a convert - and thus has much to learn before she intones.

Now, we have you making arguments that seem to lead to the idea that educated and employed women are detrimental to civilization (via their alleged support of mass immigration - mass immigration that was purposely obscured from everyone else by ruling elites!). Would you have us deny women education and employment - or merely regulate their activities to be 'less' than those of men?!

Yeesh, Whiskey!

1389 said...

@Whiskey,

Not everything is about sex--at least for those of us who have already passed beyond puberty.

People who are excessively focused on sex resemble compulsive gamblers, in that they are using the "action" as a type of drug. It lets them momentarily escape their own inner demons and spiritual emptiness.

Somebody who insists on describing everything in sexual terms succeeds only in making sex boring. What a shame.

Sagunto said...

I'd like to ask Wiskey -

And other commenters who think that "PC, Multiculturalism, and Diversity/mass immigration [..] is QUITE popular", to reflect on an observation made by a British GoV reader the other day, when he demanded PC/MC incarnate, Tony Blair, to explain the following:

"If multiculturalism were so popular amongst Britain's people then wouldn't the most multicultural areas of the country be the most desirable to live in? Shouldn't we be witnessing a mass migration of people from more "monocultural" (i.e. traditionally British) areas to more multicultural areas? Shouldn't monocultural areas be emptying as their jealous residents flock to multicultural areas? Therefore shouldn't property prices be plummeting in monocultural areas as demand drops?

None of the above is happening. Property prices in traditional British areas are holding up well. People are not abandoning such areas. Multicultural areas are home to fewer and fewer indigenous Britons.

I wonder if Tony Blair can explain the paradox?"


I doubt whether Mr Blair has any background knowledge, let alone backbone, to address this question, but I'm sure someone over here would like to comment. How does this square with assertions that multiculturalism enjoys so much popularity among the general public in European nations? I often hear in support of the popularity-claim (indeed @Egghead, that is what Hesperado is saying) that the public still votes en masse for PC/MC political parties. In the same vein one could argue that the income tax is quite popular among the public at large, since all of the parties they vote for openly support it ;-)

Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.

P.s.: afterthought on the subject of blaming the Western public's lack of "planning ahead" as some sort of explanation for budget deficits.
Linking economic problems of Western nations to the mentality of the people is a very contrived attempt at explaining the economic situation in the West, where a far better one has presented itself since Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek and others started re-educating the public about free market philosophy.

Blaming Western budget deficits on historical amnesia and lack of planning by the public is akin to blaming our current financial crisis on the "greed" of businessmen, or to resort to psychological phenomena among investors, in order to account for the cyclic behaviour of our economies. All very limited perspectives at best, leaving the progressivist welfare state system untouched. I wonder why.

Sagunto said...

One other thing concerning the fascination with IQ. I'd like to ask Fjordman or any other who'd care to comment, whether he'd prefer our politicians, public administrators and other wise overlords to have high IQ's, perhaps considerably higher than the voting public? And if so, why.

I wonder why a construct from the social sciences with limited scientific value, would often enjoy so much attention. It has mainly been advertised by progressivists as a useful tool for social engineering, in planning the scientifically managed society. That alone should give one pause for thought.

Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.

Anonymous said...

The West is reverting back to the days before the French Revolution when the aristocracy would find more in common with a fellow aristocrat from another European country than his fellow citizen plowing the fields a few kilometers away.

This ever growing disconnect will lead to massive convulsions if not corrected. Sadly, I don't see any evidence of any movement afoot to have even the slightest impact. A brutal, bloody civil is on our future.

Anonymous said...

Hey Benge Runfalk

If you move to Canada, go straight West to Saskathcewan, Alberta or BC. Ontario isn't worth the stop over - it's fascist, in a deep, deep recession, and full to the brim with Muslims agitating for Sharia, and separate-but-equal religious apartheid.

Quebec? 'nuff said. And in the Atlantic provinces the weather is awful. BC and Alberta have mountains, lakes, and a relaxed, easygoing lifestyle, yet we still make tons of cash off our dirty oil! So you'd be giving the Ontario Lefties conniptions to boot! Git over here, pardner!

syntec said...

Indeed, I'd very much agree.

Yorkton, somewhere nr Saskatoon, Saskathewan is where my school teacher brother and his school teacher wife settled in the 1970s. They lived in Churchill for a good 30 years prior.

Apart from the extreme sub-zero winter temperatures, the winter starting in October often getting down to 40c, they would never leave the place they have come to love.