Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Roots of Non-Discrimination - Liberalism or Marxism?

The Fjordman Report

A new report from the noted blogger Fjordman, on the distortions of equality and liberty.

For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here
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What is the driving force behind the ideology of absolute equality and total non-discrimination in the Western world? I’ve seen many different explanations blaming it on Christianity, democracy of universal suffrage, Marxism, decolonization or - perhaps most likely - on Nazism and the devastation caused by the Second World War. This triggered a rejection of absolutely everything perceived to be divisive, including the nation state, and has enabled a Multicultural ideology that is, ironically, itself becoming increasingly totalitarian.

American blogger Lawrence Auster believes that this civilization-wide epiphany that intolerance is the worst thing and must be eliminated “is the logical outcome of the older, more moderate-seeming liberalism, not of radical leftism. But even if I am mistaken and the present insane liberalism is the child of the radical left, it doesn’t matter, because that leftist-born liberalism is now the mainstream orthodoxy of the Western world.”

According to Auster, “liberalism” has meant many things over the last 300 years and has provided significant benefits to the human race. He distinguishes between three main stages of liberalism, which can overlap and co-exist with each other:

Classical liberalism, where “All men are created equal” meant no one is born to a different order, above other men. Liberalism meant the removal of traditional or arbitrary distinctions that were imposed on people. Liberalism meant restraints on the power of the state and a government of laws, not of men. It meant the self-government of a people, through their constitution and system of laws.

The Progressive Era, with its New Deal and Great Society liberalism, came to mean the use of government to prevent the economically powerful from having too much power, and to improve and raise up people’s condition and (in its Great Society phase). It was designed to make all people equal. Instead restraining government (because unrestrained government had earlier been seen as the main threat to liberty), liberalism now meant the indefinite increase of government in order to expand the provision of concrete social goods.

Finally, we have modern liberalism, established after the Second World War and especially after the 1960s: “Liberalism then came to mean that there is nothing outside or above the human self, that any higher or collective social reality (or even natural reality, such as sex distinctions) is an oppression. It came to mean that nations, religions, families are not legitimate because they impose a collective order on individual selves. It came to mean that the only legitimate order is a global world consisting of radically free persons, as in John Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’ It came to mean that truth itself is an oppression because if there is truth then the person is not absolutely free to do as he likes. It came to mean the elimination of self-government, because a people acting through its majority will still be exercising power over minorities and individuals. Therefore it came to mean unelected, unaccountable elites enforcing the individual rights of the whole of humanity.”

In Auster’s view, liberalism has formed much of the modern world and is associated with all kinds of goods, but has now been carried to an extreme that is destructive of civilization itself. Yet because people still have a positive image of liberalism, they are unable to see the destruction it is wreaking or to imagine a social order that goes beyond it.

I have a couple of comments to this. What Auster calls classical liberalism is exemplified by the quote “All men are created equal” from the United States Declaration of Independence written by Tomas Jefferson in 1776. It states that: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I like many things in the American Declaration of Independence. It embodies the concept of self-determination and the right to institute a new government if the present one is hostile to your interests. However, I have reservations about the phrase “all men are created equal.” This is followed by the concept of “rights,” but it is still problematic. I am in favor of equality before the law, but this can be distorted into a demand for equality of outcome in all walks of life. Having equal rights does not mean we are created possessing equal potential. Some are more talented than others. This distinction is of great importance, as the idea that all human beings are not just equal before the law but equal in ability is now common.
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Perhaps this is rooted in older, cultural ideas of egalitarianism. One could make a strong case that it has also been strengthened by the nature of the democratic system with universal suffrage, part of which stipulates that the political opinions of all human beings are equally valid. This political equivalence could lead to cultural democratization and the idea that the lifestyle choices of all human beings share a moral equivalence , one choice being as valid as another. In other words, this view leads to Multiculturalism and to cultural relativism.

To put it in another way: Will abolishing all social and political hierarchies sooner or later also lead to abolishing all cultural and even natural hierarchies? Were the seeds of the modern liberalism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries sown already during the classical liberalism of the eighteenth century?

Cathy Young writes at the newspaper The Boston Globe and is a contributing editor to Reason magazine, which is dedicated to libertarian ideas, individual choice and to “free minds and free markets.” Young immigrated to the Unites States as a refugee from the Soviet Union. Whatever her politics, she cannot remotely be labelled a Marxist.

However, she has warned against the Islamophobia of writers such as Robert Spencer:

“Spencer cites the atrocities perpetuated by medieval Muslim armies in Jerusalem,Constantinople, and other conquered cities as evidence that barbaric ‘jihadism’ is endemic to Islam, without acknowledging that the Christian crusaders’ actions were at least as bad.”

Spencer himself points out in his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) that he does in fact call the Crusaders’ sack of Jerusalem in 1099 an “atrocity,” an “outrage,” and a “heinous crime.” Young’s conclusion regarding Islam is that “The best hope for peaceful coexistence is for the Islamic world to embrace modernization and individual liberty, not for the West to turn its back on those values.”

Exactly how this is going to happen she doesn’t say. Cathy Young sticks to the belief that Western liberalism can be exported to the Islamic world, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Instead, they are currently exporting sharia to us.

As Canadian journalist Ken MacQueen writes, should polygamists win recognition for their view of marriage in court - a real possibility - Canada’s already suspect polygamy law would be blown out of the water:

“Marriage has already been legally redefined to include same-sex unions to meet equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As the Supreme Court of Canada noted in the same-sex marriage reference, the notion of a ‘Christian’ marriage is no longer relevant. ‘Canada is a pluralistic society,’ the court ruled.”

“Anecdotally, we hear that in Toronto and Ottawa some so-called religious leaders are performing Muslim [polygamous] marriages,” says Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. Asad Dean, chair of the Meadowvale Islamic Centre, agrees many multiple Islamic marriages are conducted in Canada but are simply not registered. It’s no different than others who live common-law, he says. “No one says, ‘hey, you have to be married to live together.’ Those days are over.”

Polygamous families emigrating to Canada are less fortunate. Their marriages aren’t recognized, so multiple wives and their children don’t gain entry. “We should allow it,” Hogben says. “We should respect different people.” Queen’s professor Bala warns if polygamy is decriminalized, polygamous immigration would certainly follow. “We can’t discriminate against someone from, say, Afghanistan, who wants to move here with their four wives, or indeed, 30 wives and their 20 or 100 children.”

Exactly why can we not “discriminate” against polygamy or Islamic culture? This assertion that a law against polygamy is discriminatioin is never explained, its "unfairness" is simply taken for granted. However,the emphasis on monogamy, even among kings and nobility in the West, enforced by the Church, was of great importance in shaping our civilization. Abolishing the institution of monogamous marriage will destabilize this civilization.

I have seen suggestions in Western countries that polygamy should be legalized. Some of the advocates for this are free market libertarians who justify their position from the point of view that states should not interfere with individual liberty. This is why Lawrence Auster talks about “right-wing liberals” and “left-wing liberals,” claiming that there is little difference between the two. In some cases this is probably correct. In immigration, many of the so-called right-wing factions, too, embrace the idea of total non-discrimination regarding the ethnic and cultural background of immigrants.

Professor Helmuth Nyborg at Aarhus University did research which revealed that there are differences between the sexes when it comes to intelligence. This triggered massive resistance and accusations, later disproved, of flawed scientific practices. According to Nyborg -

“Within the realms of psychology you are not allowed to talk about intelligence. You cannot measure intelligence and you cannot rank people according to intelligence. The entire field of intelligence is a so-called ‘no-go-area.’“
If you still choose to proceed, you are a bad person, one who is willing to rank other human beings according to their worth. If you also look at differences between groups of people, sexes or races, you are simply immoral.

According to Professor Annica Dahlstrom, an expert in neuroscience, men are found at the extremes of high and low intelligence, and although female geniuses do exist, they are much less frequent than their male counterparts. She has also stated that children should be left primarily in the care of their mother during their first years of living. The feminist establishment are angry and claim that she has misused her position as a scientist to reinforce gender stereotypes.

As Dahlström says, “The difference between boys and girls, in terms of their biology and brain, is greater than we could ever have imagined.” Differences between the sexes emerge even in fetuses and are clearly recognizable at the age of three. The centers of the brain dealing with communication, the interpretation of facial expressions, body language and tone of voice are more developed in girls even at this early age. Forcing boys to behave like girls are vice versa is unnatural and will inevitably hurt them. Such a policy could even be viewed as “mental abuse” of children in her view. Yet this is exactly what is happening, and sometimes with government support.

Journalist Kurt Lundgren reported on his blog about a magazine aimed at preschool teachers who take care of children between the ages of 0-6 years old. It included recommendations to promote “gender equality” and “sexual equality.” He said that in a kindergarten in Stockholm, parents were encouraged by the preschool teachers to equip their sons with dresses and female first names. There are now weeks in some places when boys HAVE TO wear a dress. Lundgren considers this sexual indoctrination to be worse than political propaganda:

“To give sex education to preschool children, to force them to have an opinion on gay sex and queer (lesbians, transsexuals, bisexuality, fetishism, cross over, sex change etc..) I regard as abuse of children. (…) Little children, we are talking about three to six-year-olds here, cannot in the preschool protect themselves from these sexual assaults. Their parents are not there, the children are totally left to themselves.”

This is presented as sexual liberation, but it is actually about breaking down the traditional Judeo-Christian culture and the nuclear family. Such practices leave the state more powerful since it can regulate all aspects of life and indoctrinate children without undue parental influence.

In Norway, a specialist in early childhood education stirred debate by supporting “sexual games” for children of pre-school age. “The only thing that is absolutely certain is that children, sooner or later, will play sexual games and examine each other,” pre-school specialist Pia Friis said. She thought children should be able -

“to look at each other and examine each other’s bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate. But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don’t want to.”
Family therapist Jesper Juul conceded that “many are disturbed by children’s sexuality, but I think it’s important to put it on the agenda.”

Most Norwegians send their children to the kindergartens before they begin school at age six, and many average citizens were shocked by this. “I thought at first that this was a joke,” said Karin Ståhl Woldseth, a spokesman for the Progress Party. “Children don’t need more exposure to this in kindergartens. We think it will damage their health.”

Child psychologist Thore Langfeldt in an interview apparently admitted that these sex games were encouraged by those who feared we could become infected by conservative Christian groups and wanted to make children immune to Christian morality as early as possible.

I do not believe sex in itself is sinful and disagree with the celibacy rules of Catholic priests because I don’t think it is natural for most human beings, men in particular, to totally repress these instincts throughout their lives. However, being civilized means precisely that you have to control your urges and natural impulses. Sex in this situation isn’t “natural,” it is specifically being used for destructive ideological purposes.

This sexualization of childhood is prevalent all over the Western world. A report published by the American Psychological Association (APA) warned against the early sexualizing of young girls, especially through media and marketing. They also found that teachers and parents are among the influences in the over-sexualization of children. Joseph D’Agostino of the Population Research Institute (PRI) wrote that radical feminism teaches girls that chastity is a form of oppression:

“They have taught that there are no natural limits to sexuality. Based on feminist principles, why shouldn’t little girls sexualize themselves? And why shouldn’t adult men and women view them as sexual if there is no such thing as unnatural sexuality?”

One interpretation of this trend is that its promoters want to destroy any form of civilization whatsoever. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed civilization corrupts human beings. This could be a reflection of the Rousseauan idea of liberation through dismantling all forms of social restrictions imposed upon us by society. Perhaps it is also the result of people who lack any religion and transcendental purpose to their lives.

Eric Hoffer has explained this in his book The True Believer:

“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.”

“There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.”

“It is obvious that a proselytizing mass movement must break down all existing group ties if it is to win a considerable following. The ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence. Where a mass movement finds the corporate pattern of family, tribe, country, etcetera, in a state of disruption and decay, it moves in and gathers the harvest. Where it finds the corporate pattern in good repair, it must attack and disrupt.”

Hoffer encapsulates well what is happening in post-Christian Western Europe. However, I suspect the obsession with equality in Socialist nations such as Sweden comes from the influences of Marxism, at least Marxism in a particular form.

Marxists theoretician Gramsci concluded after WW1, when the Revolution in Russia failed to spread, that the Marxist was blocked by the “Christian soul” of the West. Hence, breaking down this identity became a matter of great importance. In 1919, cultural Marxist Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Communist regime in Hungary. He set plans to de-Christianize the country by undermining Christian sexual ethics among children.

It is not difficult to hear an echo of this strategy now. The sexualization of children is promoted in order to break down their sense of modesty. However, some of the people advocating this show much more respect for Islam than for Christianity. Muhammad married a six year old child, so maybe sexualizing children is a form of soft-Islamization?

In general, Leftists hate Judeo-Christian values far more than they like Islam. Perhaps they think they can control Islam, or perhaps they are attracted to its totalitarian mindset. Either way, it is a fact that many of them are more aggressive against Christianity than against Islam.

Maybe I have a conspiratorial mindset, but the way left-wingers condemn Christianity and praise Islam is so consistent and aggressive that I cannot help but ask whether some of them have deliberately set out to uproot the plague of Christianity from our culture once and for all. They ridicule it at any given opportunity and destroy the values of the native culture, and at the same time they import a rival religion and groom it to replace the traditional one. When the day comes that people get sufficiently tired of nihilism, Christianity will have become so discredited as to have been eliminated as a viable alternative, and people are left with Islam.

In Sweden, the natives have been subject to ridicule of Western culture -- and Christianity in particular -- for generations. They are supposed to abase themselves in front of immigrants and tell them how worthless their culture is, or alternatively how much they lament the fact that they don’t have a culture. Swedish girls are told to be sexually liberated and end up getting raped and called “ infidel whores“ by Muslim immigrants. Meanwhile, Swedish boys are taught to be as “gender neutral” as possible.

To sum it up, I see some indications that our obsession with non-discrimination is rooted in classical liberalism, which became more radical after the Second World War. However, there are also impulses from Marxism at work. The notion that men and women are identical would have been considered ridiculous by most human cultures throughout history. It was pushed in the West by radical Leftists groups, but has since become adopted by society as a whole. In this case, conservatives fought a rearguard battle which they have constantly lost. At best they have managed to slow down the advances of ideas emanating from the Left, without ever being able to stop them.

It remains to be seen whether this trend can be reversed.

42 comments:

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

I find that in understanding apparent contradictions in left politics it is usefull to think of it as a three ring circus. The far left disseminates ideas through a series of enlarged but watered down cascades : cultural marxists -> progressives -> liberals (for lack of better labels).

An example :

The true cultural_marxist (Gramsci and runing dogs) understands all too well that affirmative action (enforced radical egalitarianism) is deleterious to society, but thats fine with him since his aim is to weaken and ultimately destroy said society. Fortunately the true believers are few, but unfortunately they are well ensconed in academic circles where they can poison the minds of thousands.

The progressive (think dKos) does not understand that affirmative action (or quotas, hate speech laws etc) deleterious. Having swallowed the lies is convinced that it is a positive step for society. Since the aim of affirmative action for this audience is to reverse the results of institutionalized rascism, the progressive violently denies that affirmative action (or quotas, hate speech laws etc) can be used to benefit a non-intended minority. Interestingly, these are the most rabid of the bunch, and defend their revealed truths as dogma.

The liberal (from left or right) understands little, and sometimes fails to get with the program, for instance applying non-discrimination legislation to the protection of white folks who have managed to minoritize themselves. Looking into the depths of deep left literature, I find apparent frustration with the (to their mind) inert and corrupt masses of the bourgeois.

spackle said...

"However, I have reservations about the phrase “all men are created equal.” This is followed by the concept of “rights,” but it is still problematic. I am in favor of equality before the law, but this can be distorted into a demand for equality of outcome in all walks of life. Having equal rights does not mean we are created possessing equal potential."

The problem IMHO is that when the founding fathers wrote that simple but eloquent statment "All men are created equal" they couldnt in their wildest dreams ever imagine that man would devolve and lose the power of recognizing the obvious. A is A. Not anymore. Had they had a crystal ball they would have put a phalanx of lawyers to work to make clear what that statment did not mean.

spackle said...

“They have taught that there are no natural limits to sexuality. Based on feminist principles, why shouldn’t little girls sexualize themselves? And why shouldn’t adult men and women view them as sexual if there is no such thing as unnatural sexuality?”

With this twisted logic Ted Bundy should never have been arrested. After all he was only exploring his own personal sexual freedoms wasnt he? Total insanity. This is like some bad science fiction novel.

Aella said...

For my self I am highly dubious of the notion that classical liberalism is the course of our current problems.I think this Idea has gained most of its popularity becose American Leninists refer to themselves as Liberals as a ruse.Poltical correctnes,multicultarlism,and the late 60`s new left belong clearly to the tradtion knowen eronusly as "Western Marxsisum" itself a political manifestation of "German Idealism". Its relationship to Marxsisum is purley oppertunistic and its real interest in that tradition is only in Lenin`s technology of power not Marx socalist aims. I do think however that one post war Liberal did unintentunaly open the door to this mad house and that was Sir Carl Popper. In his 1945 work "The open socity and its enemys" he reached the conclusion that a meaningfull Liberalism had to be both compleatly asocial and ahistorical. By rejecting not just teleology(the view that history is striding towards some pre-destined cosmic goal)but the value of history itself(by which I mean the consideration of past events in an attempt to understand the world)as "historcism" Popper belived he had outflanked Marxist Historical Matiralism. Likwise by rejecting all social collectives he bellived he had shatterd the cult of the masses. I beleave that Popper`s work delt serious damage to both Classical and Soviet Marxisum but in doing so forced many Marxists to fight on new ground. Rather than give up the fight thease"Marxist"thinkers cut the last cord between Marx and themselves and thearby any connection(however partial and imperfect)to both reality and rationality. A new genration of Leftists were able to float freely in the allternative universe of structrlism, post-structrlism,post-modernity,de-construction and thired worldism. By depriving the Left of there last links to sanity Popper had freed them to mutate into somthing arguably more difficult to combat and therfore more distructive. Meanwhile by rubbishing the systimatic study of history Popper allowed the left to turn it into a grab bag of unrelated events to be used selectivly as grivences.For instance the Atlantic slave trade becomes a "white"attrocitty without noticing the universeality of slavery in previous human socitys,the simlar Islamic slave trade in both Africans and Europeans,and the inconvenent fact that Europens did not rule the Slave exporting cuntries at the time. Poppers rejection of all collectives meanwhile made it impossible for Liberals to defend the family and the nation as consepts. The last was catsrophic for Europe where nationality ,at least as much as the family, was the cement of socity. Becouse of the continents sectarian history and pre-christian roots Christanity was just as often a source of social divsion as cohsion. Often it was ethno-patratism(somthing tradtional Liberals valued highly) that held the community together. When this was re-defined as "racisum"Western Eurpean socitys crumbled within decades.For instance without the French people the French State became absurd ,meaningless. It is not a mutation of Liberal ideology which produced the new left.Rather it was the decision of Liberals to abandon some of there core values in an attempt to out flank Marxism that allowed Marxism to mutate into somthing akin to a collective form of insanity.

Beckwith said...

Google "The Frankfurt School"

That's where this crap came from. The founders were German. When they left Germany before the war (WW II), the ones that didn't get teaching jobs in academia went to Hollywood.

Anonymous said...

The rights to which the Founders refer are "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." They certainly did not imply an equality of outcome, merely of opportunity.

Regards.

Anonymous said...

One interpretation of this trend is that its promoters want to destroy any form of civilization whatsoever.

Exactly. Therapeutic anticulture considers all forms of authority, restraint and inhibition - i.e. culture - as mental illness which much be overcome by therapy through endless transgresion of taboos. "Civilization and its discontents" indeed! The therapeutic class, originated by Freud and others, first tried to merely ease the anxiety of people living in culture and help adapt to its pressures. Today it valiantly seeks to protect us from the traumas of culture altogether.

Vol-in-Law said...

Aella, re Popper:
"It is not a mutation of Liberal ideology which produced the new left.Rather it was the decision of Liberals to abandon some of there core values in an attempt to out flank Marxism that allowed Marxism to mutate into somthing akin to a collective form of insanity."

I think this is correct. (Classical) Liberals' adoption of total non-discrimination as the highest aim of the State opened the door that has enabled the cultural Marxists to destroy our society.

Auster suggested that something innate in Lockean liberalism inevitably led it to this. I don't know; I do think the modern western classical liberalism of Popper and Rawls is Rationalist, in the tradition of Rene Descartes, and thus alien to the empiricist tradition of Locke.

ricpic said...

aella,

You're very bright. Spelling is not square. We won't hold it against you if you learn to spell. You'll still be bright. But your thoughts won't be so f***ing hard to follow! Start learning how to spell...now!

Dano W. said...

"equality before the law"

This is a long winded way of saying 'impartiality'. The Law, to be just, must be applied impartially.

"equality before the law" imports the concept of 'equality' into a proposition where is hasn't any place. It is a psychological concession to the egalitarians. I think we ought to make the distinction between 'equality' and 'impartiality' clear, and I think we ought to be making that distinction every time it is relavant to do so.

Unknown said...

I think the relationship between the left and Islam is one of utility. The Left believe they can use Islam as a battering ram against the Christian West.

It's a case of a small parasite attaching itself to an even larger parasite, which will ultimatly turn and consume the smaller.

The left believes they can accomodate Islam. Such a belief springs from a fundamental misunderstanding of Islam and its history.

Whiskey said...

What do Liberals and Muslims want?

A few powerful men (themselves) ruling harems. Feminists also want this as they obsess over the Alpha male and various status markers, both for themselves and their Alpha males.

That's pretty much it. All about destroying Christianity which allows the ordinary man to have a wife and family of his own, and replacing it with a society based on a pride of lions. In other words, Egypt or the Sudan or Saudi Arabia.

Dymphna said...

ricpic--

I do not think aella's original language is English. For your sake, I do hope you are fluent in more than one tongue...or you shall get a well-deserved whiplashing.

In fact, I suggest that she return and tell you off in her native speech. Since we at the Gates of Vienna only require that language be PG 13 *in English* I think she could have a very nice "rightbackatcha" and we'd never know.

Please, to make the guests welcome, yes? Or no cheezburger for u.

Félicie said...

"Finally, we have modern liberalism, established after the Second World War and especially after the 1960s: 'Liberalism then came to mean that there is nothing outside or above the human self...'"

One of the problems, as I see it, is that we have no language and no theoretical apparatus in talking about group dynamics. We still think in terms of the Newtonian paradigm - a reductive model of the universe made up of atomistic constitutive elements - when we describe the behavior of the socium. The state in this model is a collection of individual citizens, i.e. the liberal idea of the state. We don't have a model that describes cohesion and coherent behavior, this is why we lack for words and explanations when it comes to operating with the phenomena of patriotism and group allegiance. Thus, we dismiss these phenomena as culturally constructed illusions. This is an explanatory model failure.

Simon de Montfort said...

Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger,

Several interesting strands here; I doubt that the exact or specific origin of the current multi-culti / Marxist / anti-Christian mentality. The year 1965 does seem to be the Year Zero for several dysfunctional currents blending together ( or becomming fully realized, and overt ever since then ).

Fjordman mentioned, as others have, the hysteria against nationalism in Europe after WWII, but the irony is that the Nazis were supra-nationalists who thought in terms race, not nationality: they dragooned all sorts of 'Nordics' into the Waffen-SS and created their crackpot myth of a northern European Master Race that had virutally nothing to do with the borders of Germany or a German nation.

The Nazis were anti-Communist lunatic totalitiarians--not nationalists and not really socialists. They wanted to destroy the whole concept of nationhood and replace it with an empire dominated by 'Nordics'.

Somehow their anti-nationalist efforts ended up as the driving force for the anti-nationalism of the last 60 years

go figure...........

dienw said...

"All men are created equal” meant no one is born to a different order, above other men....

This error of miss-interpretation must not pass.

When the Founders wrote "All men are created equal”, they meant before God and the law. They did not mean equality of station, ability, personality, or outcome: even outset.

The concept of substantive equality is a basic premise of the French Revolution, not the Anglo-American Revolution tradition.

atheling2 said...

'Liberalism then came to mean that there is nothing outside or above the human self...'"

That's called solipsism, which means, to put it in simpler terms, "navel gazing".

I stand by TS Eliot's analysis of Liberalism:

"...That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination...

...Liberalism may be characterized as a progressive discarding of elements in historical Christianity which appear superfluous, obsolete, confounded with practices and abuses which are legitimate objects of attack. But as its movement is controlled rather by its origin than by any goal, it loses force after a series of rejections, and with nothing to destroy is left with nothing to uphold and with nowhere to go...

...By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of "getting on" to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos."

Have we not seen this come to pass in Europe, and what is coming to pass in America today?

Jimmy the Dhimmi said...

Do liberals, or Marxists, really want to break down class structure and end distinctions amogst people? This seems to be the case regarding gender, as Fjordman reports, but what about other "social classes" defined by culture?

Do they really want to break them all down, or merely the powerful, majority ones? Is it not the case that exotic cultures and tribes are romanticized and upheld to be "preserved"

Is it more that power is to be taken from dominant social classes and distributed amongst a consortium of the other classes, thus preserving them and "making them equal to eachother"

dienw said...

"A few powerful men (themselves) ruling harems. Feminists also want this as they obsess over the Alpha male and various status markers, both for themselves and their Alpha males."

Whiskey,
I want to see the quality of your proof. From what sources are you obtaining this knowledge or opinion?

I am aware that historically many "Alpha" males -- Kings, Nobles, and princes of commerce -- have had one wife and mistress(es) on the side. I am aware that Geo. Will once wrote that we have now begun a culture of "serial monogamy" especially amongst the elites [I hate that word as it is applied: in these contexts, it is like calling a mangy, flea bitten, mongrel cur a pure bred.]. Be that as it may, I have not read any literature that promotes this.

If you had said that with the establishment of Islam the well-off will be able to indulge in the pre-Christian, even pre-Mosaic, practice of polygamy and concubinage; and that they, some consciously, desire a return to such; then, I would be more in agreement with you.

Stating it thusly also exposes the enormity of the holocaust that will likely come to pass for polygamy to be restored.

Can we not also state that the principle of the first-born inheriting all will be re-established; and, thusly, also the murder and plotting of the harem. And son against son.

xlbrl said...

The people destroying civilization today were known over two hundred years ago as 'levelers'.
Burke--Those who attempt to level never equalize.
Colton--A leveler has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work today, would have to begin it again tomorrow.

These people were most commonly found among those who prized equality, as spectacularly displayed in the French Revolution.
Tocqueville came to America to discover why democracy worked here, when it was the source of such tyranny in Europe.

Tocqueville--Equality is a slogan based on envy. No one is going to occupy a place higher than I.
Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom, but for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, and invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
To combat the evils of equality, there is but one effective remedy, namely political freedom.
Philosophic systems that destroy human individuality will have secret attractions for men who live in a democracy.
Aesop--People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

Félicie said...

I do believe in meritocracy though, which I see based on the principle of the equality of opportunity. To me, this is a just social idea. (I am against artificial leveling though).

Armance said...

I guess it's a mixture of factors that led to the egalitarianism of today's West, which considers discrimination as the most shameful, unacceptable sin: the universalism of Christianity + The Enlightment - the concept of universal rights and the Rousseauist hatred of civilization and praise of nature; the myth of the good savage + Marxism as a consequence of the Enlightment - if all men were created equal and the society is to blame for their inequality, let's make them equal by force.
One derives from the other.

aella - great post, in spite of the spelling.

dienw said...

I guess it's a mixture of factors that led to the egalitarianism of today's West, which considers discrimination as the most shameful, unacceptable sin: the universalism of Christianity +...

As a Christian I must ask: What universalism? Christianity does not teach egalitarianism. Fjordman, Auster, and their acolytes really need to have a little more intellectual honesty here:
1. distinguish between Christianity and heresy and apostasy.
2. distinguish between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
3. distinguish between biblical Christianity and baptized paganism
4. distinguish between biblical and non-biblical presuppositions
and:
5. I'm a 'merican therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement
7. I'm European therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement
8. I am White therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement

If you're going to state what is quoted above or variations on the theme then the syllogism is created:
Christianity is one of the causes behind the current crisis; therefore the solution to the problem does not include Christianity.

dienw said...

to continue:

It is one thing to say that false doctrines that have infiltrated into Christian doctrine are at the root of many aspects of the current crisis; it is another to say that true doctrines are at the root. In the former case, one can and must discover the false doctrines, determine from where they derived, and if they are in theology where did they first infect the civilization before they metastasized to Christianity? In the latter, then Christianity will be considered part of the problem; not the solution.

Ypp said...

It is our cultural inheritance that we defend. And inheritance always comes from father. Mother on the contrary, loves all her children and care of them equally. Mother can be strict, but just. People often would prefer justice to wealth. If you are treated worse than others, you are not a loved one.

Thus, the current situation in the West is the assault of matriarchat on traditional patriarchal society. All kinds of ideologies participated in this assault : liberals, leftists, feminists, multiculturalists etc.

As for Islam, it is not a patriarchal religion, but rather a repressive one. A similar example is communism - communists are not traditionalists, but they have to enforce some values cruelly because they have no other way to control society. Allah is not a loving father, he rather resembles a strict but just mother. Moslems don't have any inheritance except Islam itself.

Steven Luotto said...

It started with the reformation... the resultant religious wars ended in a compromise of religious futility: "cujus regio ejus religio" ("Let every State establish its State Church") but which eventually played out as "Let the Prince do what he likes."

Man before God...

Rise of nationalism... creeping sensation and then certainty that not only Catholicism and Protestantism, but even Islam and the other religions were all six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Veneration of Freedom which without moral Dogma and orthodoxy gradually lost content.

Calvinist Homo economicus triumphant via British Empire and America. Though Calvinism, the religions as good as dead, the ethos ultra-victorious.

Detachment of science and loss of any sense of communion. Cultures governed by shared sense of sin and Virtue replaced by behavior controlled by law. Evil no longer the absence of good, but at best good the absence of evil. Immorality defined as any activity that constitutes a problem for public security.

The only place where morality is enforced (and in many cases even dress codes) is the only place that really matters: the workplace.

Only measurement of quality the GDP. Failed countries doing brilliantly on the economic front but champions of divorce, drug abuse, abortion, street crimes, broken homes.

Rise of passivity (Islamic mindset)

Simon de Montfort said...

NJArtist, you confuse 'truth' with validity in evaluating arguments. The list you rattled off is a series of weak and / or weak arguments, not of false statements

You might want to provide some specific examples, so others know WTF you're talking about

Profitsbeard said...

I you do not discriminate between tones in music or the pigments in art you end up with muddle or mud.

If you do not discriminate between those ideologies which work toward our common human security and those that merely please the power-hungry, you risk allowing predators to gain positions of influence.

Who usually have to be shot off their blood-caked perches.

Discrimination means choosing the sound fruit over the rotten.

The potable water over the poisonous.

How these fundamental rules of existence get lost when it comes to the a-realistic levels of academe and politics is a demonstration of the essential decency (and it's dangerous flipside, gullibility) of the majority.

Who would ever think that their leaders would be such cynics that they would look upon their own people as experimental "material" for theoretical Utopian dreams.

History teaches this lesson, over and over, of despots drunk with power.

But, if History is distorted to suit a softsoaped Belief System (Marxism, multiculturalism), and not the hard truth, it degenerates into one more tool of the brainwashing class.

Critical Thinking is the only knowledge that schools ultimately need to impart.

The rest is easy once you are able see through the veils of self-serving b.s. that manipulating instructors and politicos want their students and constituents to believe.

How this specific "Tolerating the Intolerant" folly evolved, and put its stranglehold around the mind of the West, will be a worthwhile study ...once we survive this Age of Unnatural Self-Evisceration.

The anti-toxin is to teach the art of Skeptical Questioning.

Of everything.

A skill essenital to every science, but as rare in the "liberal" arts as is a basic sense of humility in the face of our protean, multifarious and mysterious universe.

Caution about changing what works is common sense.

Monogamy works.

An Enlightenment Civilization works.

A nation and the unique people within it works.

Undoing the efforts of millennia... merely to try out transitory theories that fly in the face of the lessons of the natural world (nuclear family, property, territory, liberty)... and which threaten to topple the labor of our valiant ancestors, is a deadly game.

Let them play it in their own minds and lives, first.

And leave the real world to a more prudent course.

dienw said...

Very well.. so you know WTF I am talking about...three
1. distinguish between Christianity and heresy and apostasy.
There is the Christianity grounded the bible which not only provides its doctrines but also corrects and reproves false doctrines as they emerge. Heresy and apostasy either corrupt, falsify or deny biblical doctrines.
2. distinguish between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Protestantism uses the bible as the sole authority : Rome places man's traditions on equal footing; in fact, to do places man as arbiter of God's word. Protestantism affirms that man is saved by faith alone: Rome adds works and membership to Roman Catholicism as conditions to salvation.
4. distinguish between biblical and non-biblical presuppositions
There are the biblical doctrines of the Trinity and then there are those belonging to the Babylonian mystery religion: paganism. There is the recognition of Mary as the mother of Jesus the man and then there is the imported paganism of the goddess, who is greater than the Son. There is the biblical doctrine that Jesus is our only mediator with God then there is, again. the importation of the goddess who is the mediator.
The Church has also been affected by the importation of Greek philosophers.
As for
5. I'm a 'merican therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement
7. I'm European therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement
8. I am White therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement


There seems to be, I've noticed over the years, a tendency to equate being European, or American, or even white with being Christian. I am saying that there is no such equating. In addition, the concept is also false that one is a Christian because one was born to parents who believed on Jesus Christ; or because one belongs to a church or denomination.

I think I am beginning to see the outlines of the argument. At the moment, there appears to be three positions to the analysis of the problem of the decline and possible dhimmitude of the West and to its reestablishment: the agnostics(including atheists), the Protestant, and the Roman Catholic; we have not yet heard from the Orthodox branches. Each of these positions restricts argument to certain boundaries within which the reasoning or dialectic may proceed.

Each restricts how the problem is perceived and how it may be resolved.

dienw said...

Profitsbeard,
A skill essential to every science, but as rare in the "liberal" arts as is a basic sense of humility in the face of our protean, multifarious and mysterious universe.

Humility is another was of stating teachable. And it is very necessary in the humanities; as is critical thinking.

geza1 said...

Locating the roots of non-discrimination is a very difficult task and there is much truth in many of the arguments proposed. I think it is important to look at each of these causes because there is quite a bit of overlap.

1. Christianity: According to the New Right, this is the real source of egalitarianism mainly due to the racial and cultural negation ("There is neither Jew nor Greek") inherent in Christianity and the existence of a universal Church, Catholicism, with a universal figurehead, the Pope, guiding the believers. The equality of all Christian believers is emphasized and there is no distinction in worth between a Christian of noble lineage or a Christian peasant. In some instances, the poor are seen as better Christians. However, it should be noted that Christianity did tolerate inequality for the majority of its history by means of aristocracy and slavery eventhough both of those institutions came to an end. Whether this tolerance of inequality was more a result of pragmatism that was in conflict with the Christian character or a respect for ancient traditions that weren't necessarily in conflict is a matter that is open for debate.

2. Marxism: Even with the demise of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, Prof. Gottfried argues that Marxism still survived but focused more on multiculturalism and political correctness instead of economic distribution. The USSR had been discredited with its massive human rights abuses in the name of equality so the Left needed to find a new, softer method to utilize. There were signs of interest in this new multicultural/racial equality when the USSR was still operative if you consider all of the Third World nations that received its patronage and the leftists that automatically sided with the moderate and radical blacks during the Civil Rights movement. Economic equality may have seemed too difficult to impliment in the capitalist West but multiculturalism seemed far more feasible and in a sense was aided by capitalism's constant need for cheap labour.

Those are the only ideologies I can think of that contributed to this. I could say liberalism, but I merely view it as protracted communism. The only difference between the two is that liberalism is dishonest because it doesn't guarantee equality in outcome while communism does. Also, there has always been a movement within liberalism, and now it's more potent than ever, to guarantee equality of outcome.

The rise of "Rights": Whether they are constitutional or the dreaded "Human Rights", everyone is guaranteed certain rights that do not have to be earned no matter how loyal/disloyal or native/alien he is to his respective country of residence. This blurs out many distinctions between the citizens of the same country and demands that everyone be treated fairly, that is to say, equally. Wacky acts such as the Equality Act in Great Britain should come as no surprise to people because once you start granting inalienable rights left and right to everybody who is a citizen and there is some contradiction within that body of rights, people are going to demand even more. This is a general trend of egalitarianism. Once you began to make things equal, you cannot stop until everything is equal.

WWII/The Holocaust: The Holocaust is quite possibly the greatest teachable moment the Left has ever received. To them it is a universal axiom. Discrimination leads to Auschwitz. Not only did the Holocaust rip the soul out of Europe by nearly destroying the continent and its native Jews but the Left misuses the Holocaust as a talisman in order to promote tolerance. The Left does not stop at the most obvious point that we should love our Christian and Jewish European neighbours and work out our greivances which should be the real lesson of the Holocaust but that we should love the whole world and constantly give and give. If we discriminate against any part of the world, then we are not better than the Nazis. Since the Holocaust is in recent memory, this shaming method is very effective and that is why the epithet "fascist" is much more insulting than "commie".

Anti-Colonialization: This was more of a movement to rectify the inequalities of the past. With the rise of post-colonial thought, the former colonizers such as the British, French, Dutch, etc had to take responsibility for those that they colonized. Whether this responsibility took the form of foreign aid or immigration, it did not matter, the point was that they had to fix the problems of the Third World even if it came as a great disadvantage to themselves in order to relieve their guilt. Of course, the greivances from the Third World will never end until there is at the very least, true equality between them and the colonizers of the West. This also applies to the neo-colonizers, the Americans.

So did equality originate with Christianity? I think it's very hard to say but there are defintely signs of it there, some of which are not present in many other non-Western religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and obviously, Islam. We shouldn't also forget that Marxism appealed to many non-Western and non-Christian nations at first, so the thirst for equality may go beyond the European border. There are also some convincing arguments that I have heard ,but I won't go into detail now, that the roots for equality can be found in Germanic pagan culture and the concept of progress is thoroughly German. It could even turn out that equality happened in Europe because the population had the highest verbal IQ, who knows.

What we do know is that all of these factors combined are entirely responsible for the egalitarian madness that we see today. They each reinforce each other. Christianity reinforces the idea that we are all created equal and should have equal rights. The West feels guilt for its past sins such as slavery and colonialism because we are predominately Christian. We are also constantly looking for ways to atone and what better way than inviting the stranger and giving him some money? The West is on a quest for true equality. We will try to make everything equal even if it kills us in the end. Not only that, we will even atone for past inequalities that we had nothing to do with such as Africa's poor economic performance by constantly giving aid and agreeing to the most outrageous Third World demands. Egalitarianism, not radical egalitarianism, must be rejected if this is to stop.

Profitsbeard said...

Fjordman, and Dymphna, thanks for starting as stimulating a thread of commentary as the original piece.

Intelligent Resistance is the essential antidote to all cultisms, secular (communism or anarchism) or theocratic (Islam).

Let me recommend A. Koestler's collection "Bricks To Babel" to all who haven't read it.

He worked against the previous upsurgence of this same kind of alluring mental tyranny, and his observations and suggestions for fighting it are still useful.

Dymphna said...

njartist -- I'm not certain I understand your argument, but these stood out:

5. I'm a 'merican therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement
7. I'm European therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement
8. I am White therefore I'm a Christian is not a true statement


Just to take #5: is this 'merican a subtle dig at Southern pronunciation, which tends to clip words? Is it a reference to know-nothings? What was your purpose in choosing that form? Why not also say 'urpeans??

And of course, it could be
equally true that other versions are the case: I'm an American and I'm a Christian; or I'm a Christian and I'm not an American...

What you've got there is a Venn diagram, seems to me. Or maybe two.

Anyway, how are these statements germane to the theses Fjordman presents?
___________

This one strikes me as simplistic on all counts:

Protestantism uses the bible as the sole authority .

Yet because the bible is made up of words that are interpreted differently by different people, Protestantism is inherently splintered...a very leaky ship because at some point man must become the "arbiter" of the words he reads.

Catholicism is in a different boat but it is no less leaky for that. But is it the simplistic reductio ad absurdum you describe?

You say:

Rome places man's traditions on equal footing; in fact, to do places man as arbiter of God's word .

Well, man is the final arbiter, in all religions with a Book. That is what free will is for, no matter what your denomination.

And that is not how R.C.systematic or moral theologians would see it. Nor would her ecclesiologists frame the argument in your terms. Some, like Yves Congar, describe a priesthood of all the faithful.

The bible and the kerygma (preaching/homiletics) are essential to Catholicism, but so are the sacraments. The latter because if one is a believer in Christ, then obviously he was corporeal and so aren't we all indivisible psychesomas, united in belief.
___________
You say: Rome adds works and membership to Roman Catholicism as conditions to salvation.

You left out the primary condition: RCs believe that people are individually called; this is a precondition of the experience of faith. That pre-condition is termed "grace" and it flows as it will. We do not choose, we are chosen, and our response is based on our free will.

There are many streams within Catholicism; only a minority think that membership in Rome's view is a condition for anything. In fact, I don't know a priest of monk who says that...though I'm sure there are a few. You have to distinguish what its leaders say themselves -- what is considered "ex cathedra." The Body of Christ --i.e., all Christians are historical beings. History evolves...so do Christians, even the RCs. Papal "infallibility" wasn't declared till the middle of hte 19th century, when the church felt threatened by Italy.

This much is always true:

"Wherever two or three are gathered His Name, as least two are vying for power."

Such is our nature.

Roman Catholicism as conditions to salvation.

dienw said...

Dymphna,
Just to take #5: is this 'merican a subtle dig at Southern pronunciation, which tends to clip words? Is it a reference to know-nothings? What was your purpose in choosing that form? Why not also say 'urpeans??

I spent twenty-five years in North Carolina: wasn't considered good in retail sales until I could say riiight instead of right. Having learned to speak properly, why shouldn't I use it. As for European, I frequently heard the word pronounced damn bastards, as in: "We should have let those damn bastards kill themselves off during the war [WWI]." As you can see, the word is clipped also: fewer vowels. I would have used it but nobody would know to whom I am referring in current affairs.

I was driven out of North Carolina for being a heretic and apostate: didn't think much of the state religion Basketball -- wouldn't attend Coach Smith's sermons. [Hell, I may have just gotten the sports wrong -- one more reason I am not welcome in the state "I like calling home".]

The first time I played with Venn diagrams my mother slapped me. [true]

The examples are used in that wording because that is the manner in which I have encountered the concept in the mass media: A little less cruder or as an unstated assumption.

The use of all eight points was to underscore the issue I have with the assumption that Christianity is part of the current destruction of Western Civilization. One must distinguish between the core, biblical principles and the pagan or philosophical accretions. One must also distinguish between those who are Christian and those of the general population; even if Christianity influenced principles dominate the society.

One cannot simply start an essay including a blanket accusation against Christianity. As for miss-used or misunderstood doctrines such as "universalism", if that is what it is, don't blame Christians for your error. To make relevant point: blame the arsonist for the forest fire, not the inventor of fire.

Dymphna said...

NJ--

Since I was raised in a state where 2% of the population was my religion, and many of the other 98% had a prediliction for throwing rocks at us, I rather like being in the minority.

N.C. is not nearly as basketball-crazy as the Midwest. In fact, it is moderate by comparison. And it consists of three very different domains: the coastal area, the Piedmont, and the mountains. All those people are very, very different. There are huge differences between those from the barrier reefs --e.g, someone from Ocracoke and someone from the Smokey mountain area like Asheville. Ain't the same animal at all. Nor do they all speak with one voice.

Ocracoke still has some of the same 17th century twang of the first British settlers. At the other extreme, the mountain boys are Scots-Irish in their origins and their inflections and character.

Mmeanwhile, life as a heretic is one to be savored and enjoyed. There are always a few fellow-heretics and apostates who are willing to join in.

Here in Virginny, we have many idioms that locals use. However, I wouldn't try because they would know it was phony. Had the same issue in New England...

Around here, everybody that has moved more than 20 miles beyond their birthplace is "right much foreign." And if you listen carefully, you can hear the differences in their speech. Southside VA (that is, south of James River) has a distinctive pattern...

Being a first-generation American born of a mother who loved the US while she was appalled at some of the characteristics, I grew up as a participant observer, as do all first generation kids. One of our commenters uses the nic "Alien Anthropologist" -- very good term.

Mother did *try* to fit in. She thought ketchup very American so every year she bought a bottle of the stuff -- and threw out the one from the year before. That was the extent of her 4th of July celebration...


You say:

One cannot simply start an essay including a blanket accusation against Christianity.

Who did that? Do you mean Fjordman? He starts his essay with a question, not a blanket accusation...

What is the driving force behind the ideology of absolute equality and total non-discrimination in the Western world? I’ve seen many different explanations blaming it on Christianity, democracy of universal suffrage, Marxism, decolonization or - perhaps most likely - on Nazism and the devastation caused by the Second World War.

That is a *description* of the various assigments of blame. It is a general statement which includes various factors that others have used to attempt to put their finger on the drive behind the compulsive push for an absolute equality (without discernment) that engulfs the politically correct (II blame Margaret Mead and her lies, myself).

In fact, if you look at the whole paragraph, you can see he is describing people in the midst of a downward spiral because of their knee-jerk reactions to the extremes of the 20th century.

If that's a "blanket statement" I'm an anarchist.

Steven Luotto said...

Geza1's analysis is skewed. Catholicism is egalitariam inasmuch as everyone has a soul. Even the people not so good at making refrigerators and automobiles have souls.

The church is egalitarian inasmuch as it separates sinners from the sin and her morality is equal everywhere just as a mathematician's "1+1=2" is equal everywhere: for the rich and for the poor, for the races of achievement and the races of lesser achievement or for those of past or present failure.

There is no compromise on sin. Abortion is sin no matter who does it. Just as 1+1=3 is wrong no matter who says it.

He is fixated with race, but race would take care of itself if there were moral orthodoxy. This is the only workable solution for there are not just two races: superior and inferior, but a whole gamut of them and further complicating the issue there are different cultures.

What would be the alternative? Different levels of accepted morality based on the IQ test scores of the different peoples? Forced separation of peoples that like it or not have been slung together rather mercilessly?

Paradoxically, nothing is quite so egalitarian as concepts of racial superiority put into practice. The apparent loss of true egalitarianism is compensated and reinforced many times over in the subsets: the immoral Swede is anyhow better than the moral Greek or Nigerian. In this manner egalitarianism is shorn from the dictatorship of morality where man has choice and hope is always possible, and is reinforced in the realm of race where there is no choice and the situation is considered hopeless inasmuch as genetically written. So all Swedes become equal. All blacks become equal. "The worst of ours is still better than the best of yours" is tribality and tribality is unthinking egalitarianism within smaller sets.

There is no distinction in worth between rich or poor, or between Christians of Noble lineage or peasants because both are capable of egregious sin, even the tall, blue-eyed Swede with an IQ of 160. In fact because of his intelligence he can sin all the more egregiously, just as I can do more harm with my Pentium 8 than I could have done with my old Olivetti XT.

Geza would do better to understand those forces which swayed man away from good and evil and dwelled on the psychological and sociological causes of evil, and by doing so justified evil and both pulverized and massified it.

Dwelling on past crimes is anything but Catholic. That is what confession is for. To put the past, the immediate past, the sins one is personally responsible for behind one. Racial and colonial crimes are atheist concepts. In Geza's world of tribality, they would instead make sense. The refrigerator makers VS the mud people or vice versa would definitely make sense because the tribe is posited above personal good and evil. So let the reparations roll! Let the Romans pay off the Sabines and the Norwegians pay off the Sicilians and the Danes pay off the Saxons.

Just as the New Testament barely touched slavery (yet created an ethos that ridded the world of slavery) so too the New Testament barely touches race. Race like population was meant to take care of itself, without being forced either way.

Mencius Moldbug said...

It's Christianity plain and simple. I call it Universalism.

Not only is Universalism Christianity, IMHO, it's the world's dominant Christian sect. It's the modern continuation of the American Puritan tradition, through what used to be called "mainline Protestantism." It has just mutated to the point of unrecognizability.

See, for example, George McKenna's Puritan Origins of American Patriotism. He traces the tradition from the Mayflower to the SDS.

Christians who actually still believe in God are the side branch, the heretics, the dissenters. They've assumed much the position that Catholics used to hold in the British political system - basically, the all-purpose scapegoats for everything.

Dymphna said...

mencius:

Christians who actually still believe in God are the side branch, the heretics, the dissenters. They've assumed much the position that Catholics used to hold in the British political system - basically, the all-purpose scapegoats for everything.

Indeed. The mainstream churches are imploding from the weight of their own p.c., however. The Baron met someone from the UK, a convert to the CofE, who says that the split is imminent.

And there's that African missionary group in Northern Virginia who have come to the US to prosletyze the unbelievers in the seat of power. They are Episcopalians. I predict that within 10 years or so the Archbishop of Canterbury will be of African origin.

Perhaps the Roman Pontiff will be Chinese.

Meanwhile, the UU, and the American Council of Churches visit Cuba and rave about Saint Fidel...and create sanctuaries for illegal aliens. I think they are stuck in the amber of nostalgia, needing so much to have something to be against, especially if it includes legitimate government.

Burn, baby, burn...yawn.

geza1 said...

ioshkafutz,

If you gleaned racial supremacism (!) from my not-mainstream but not-that-controversial post, then dialogue with you is not possible.

Steven Luotto said...

Ciao Geza1,

You say: If you gleaned racial supremacism (!) from my not-mainstream but not-that-controversial post, then dialogue with you is not possible.

I gleaned it in part here and in part from some of your writings at Conservative Swede, where you are obsessed with the IQs of people.

For example:

"The highest IQ Muslim nation is only 60% Muslim and it ranks below such intellectual juggernauts like Uruguay and Portugal. Other than SE Asia and Turkey, the rest of Muslim countries have the same IQ as the Mezos or lower.

"The Christian mean falls below the European mean because it includes Metizos/SS Africans."

And who's bright idea was it to spread Christianity to these hell holes?"

And it was in one of your posts there that I was introduced to American Renaissance (Jared Taylor). I gobbled up that site and all his interviews and all the WMVs and and Mpegs... and because of your "winking" at him, I've always subconsciously connected this new racialism with you.

BTW Very interesting guy and I thank you for the link. Racialism, especially the new jacket and tie variety is not white supremacy. It is indeed just racialism, which is not entirely devoid of merit. So I am I so wrong in touching the issue of Christianity's universalism vis-a-vis race? Did I call you a white supremacist? But you are a convinced racialist, that much is clear.

But let it rest. I like being a lost cause and getting everything wrong. It's what gave me the freedom to tell your compadre Conservative Swede that if he can parse Lady Dymph's use of the word Islamo-Fascism, he should look and look hard and carefully into his own misuse of the word "Dhimmie"... (seeing as he juxtaposes it to Roman pagan fortitude, when the real Dhimmies show fortitude as well, albeit in defeat, where it's really fortitude!). No answer from him. Not even one of his customary warnings that I'm mad or carry personal grudges (instead of trans-blogging personal arguments), or that sometimes I write okay, but am empty-headed.

It also gives me the freedom to suggest that re the topic of this thread, you are overplaying the effect of the Jewish Holocaust whereas you and others, all of us (if what I say is true) should also consider the very real possibility of total Holocaust, oblivion. One of the major causes of intelligent humanity's flirtation with moral equivalencies is our very real and recent ability to destroy the world and bring death to the entire planet. This alone has a great deal to do with making right and wrong moot. Death has always been the great equalizer. This alone can give ultimate sense to ideologies and methods of accomodation, compromise. It can and perhaps should teach us not to over-value ideas, moral convictions, ideologies, logic. For what difference will it make if only cockroaches that glow in the dark survive? Unfortunately it has taught many that the only good conviction is no conviction at all. But no one can say that they are totally wrong in suggesting that convictions are dangerous these days

I'm not sure it was mentioned here. Through the technology of oblivion, we've all literally become equal, the good, bad and the ugly. The difference perhaps is that the good feel their hands tied and so think in terms of processes, whereas the really bad and the ugly, the Muslims - as proven by their use of suicide bombers, have a friendlier rapport with oblivion.

geza1 said...

Nice try Ioshkafutz.

The IQ stats are from the IQ and Wealth of Nations, that "racist tract" that is referenced by sociobiologists everywhere from Steve Sailer to the South Asians and co who run GNXP. They all disagree with Taylor as do I, yet they believe in the reality of IQ.

"The Christian mean falls below the European mean because it includes Metizos/SS Africans."

^^ That was not my quote you moron. I was repsonding to a troll from Majority Rights. And I stand by my response that Europeans had no business trying to colonize those hell holes, and hell holes they were in comparison to the living standards of Europe. Do you honestly think Sub Saharan Africa was a wonderful place before colonization with the constant wars and plagues?

There was no "winking" at Jared Taylor. I linked to his site because he provided a plot outline for The Camp of the Saints. It was more comprehensive than Pinkerton's review at AmConMag so I thought it would be more useful for those people who have not read the book and wanted to understand the reference. I remember this because this is the only time I have linked his site in all the posts I have ever made. So much for supporting him, huh?

Given your ability to smear not only me but also Conservative Swede, my suspicions about you were correct. But I will take your advice and let it rest.

DP111 said...

Fjordman posted: In Auster’s view, liberalism has formed much of the modern world and is associated with all kinds of goods, but has now been carried to an extreme that is destructive of civilization itself. Yet because people still have a positive image of liberalism, they are unable to see the destruction it is wreaking or to imagine a social order that goes beyond it.

This is a natural consequence of liberalism detaching itself from its Christian roots. G K Chesterton identified this problem a long time ago.

"When a religious scheme is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful."

Chesterton identifies not just the "vices" let loose that do harm, but the far greater harm that is done by the "virtues" cut loose from their moral and spiritual foundations.

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