Saturday, April 11, 2009

Making the World Safe for Manifest Destiny

Certain comments made by Conservative Swede on yesterday’s post by Fjordman induced one of our American readers to send me an email specifying his objections. Finding the current atmosphere here uncongenial to Americans, he indicated that he will no longer be visiting our blog.

AltercationThat’s unfortunate, because I really do want to encourage all points of view here. None of us is right all the time or completely, and the only way we will arrive at a reasonably accurate understanding of what is going on around us is to argue and debate with one another until the truth is approximated.

In order to forge an awareness of what is actually happening now — especially as it concerns the widening gulf between Europe and the United States — we need to entertain views that initially may seem wrong and misguided, and that even may even tend to make us angry.

That initial flood of anger is a signal that there could be something there worth looking at, since anger is based in fear. Often when I hear assertions about the massive mistakes that the United States has made in its foreign policy, my first reaction is to get angry — because I’m subliminally afraid that what I’m hearing may be true.

So this is what I wrote in my email response to our disgruntled American reader:

Conservative Swede can be annoying, but if you look past his deliberate abrasiveness, you’ll find that he’s often right. He’s not mindlessly anti-American; he has a point.

He doesn’t always understand Americans very well, but he is a good analyst of our foreign policy, and is right in much of what he says about American adventures overseas.

If it hadn’t been for the travesty of Kosovo, I might never have woken up and realized what’s happening.

Not just Bill Clinton, but George Bush and Condi Rice — Republicans! — irrationally demonized Serbia and actively encouraged, even demanded, the creation of the Kosovar state. We have forged a dagger of Islamic criminality aimed at the heart of Europe.

This is dangerous and evil, and it was engineered by an American “conservative”.

What’s more, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all leaned hard on the Europeans to admit Turkey into the EU. Why?

That is also dangerous and evil.
- - - - - - - - -
Much of our damaging foreign policy results from the penetration of Saudi money and influence at the highest levels of our government. Republicans are at least as guilty as Democrats of corruption, stupidity, and cowardice.

This is also dangerous and evil.

Our country is doing great harm abroad, even as Obama is destroying us here at home. The Messiah is worse than anyone who came before him, but his predecessors — of both parties — share much of the blame.

We are not an empire, yet we are using our power to do harmful, deadly things abroad, not just in Europe but all over the world.

This is an unpleasant reality to wake up to, but it is true. It is foolish to live in denial and look away from it.

We can no longer get by using the “Americans saved Europe’s ass at Omaha Beach” meme — the few remaining people who performed those brave deeds are rapidly disappearing from our midst.

Keeping the Soviets out of Western Europe was a good thing to do, but that was in our interest as well as Europe’s. At the same time, unfortunately, the Marshall Plan epoxied the lips of the European infant to our teat, and the grizzled pot-bellied old man is suckling there still.

Is this beneficial, for them or for us? Is this actually a benign thing that we did to them? Did we perform a good deed?

I don’t think so. It is dangerous and evil.

It’s painful but necessary to wake up and see things as they are, not as we’d like them to be. We have made huge mistakes which produced evil results, and we haven’t stopped making them.

It would be better if we acted like a real empire, and ruled openly and brazenly, rather than by threats, extortion, arm-twisting, and bribery, all the while pretending that other countries are free to do as they please.

If we can’t do that, we should leave them to their own devices, the way we did back when we were collectively sane, before Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson discovered our manifest destiny and set off to make the world safe for democracy.

A hundred years have passed since then — how safe did we make it? And how is democracy doing today?

Conservative Swede may not be tactful when he speaks the truth; nonetheless, it often is the truth.

16 comments:

PatriotUSA said...

Baron,
I read all the posts that resulted from Fjordman's article and decided to just watch the great debates going on between the posters. Yes, CSwede can be irritating and a bit gruff but who can't. It is quite easy to lose track of the main idea but Cswede does have a knack for nailing it down far more often than not.

As an American, I do not find this site more hostile to us yanks than most other sites. I have taken many a beating at other forums but it has never stopped me from coming back better armed with better facts and understanding.

Baron said:
None of us is right all the time or completely, and the only way we will arrive at a reasonably accurate understanding of what is going on around us is to argue and debate with one another until the truth is approximated.

In order to forge an awareness of what is actually happening now — especially as it concerns the widening gulf between Europe and the United States — we need to entertain views that initially may seem wrong and misguided, and that even may even tend to make us angry.


Yes, angry at times but it is worth the cost of anger if the truth is coming out as the end result. America is far from perfect and has made it's share of mistakes. I certainly take no comfort in seeing US policies and actions be picked apart and criricized. But the truth is that there is plenty of room for criticism about the USA and Europe. Bring it on and let's discuss it. It is always regrettable to see a reader leave and I hope this individual can find a site he will feel "safe" at.
With the current stupidity of the mullah obamaham and his administration of loons, there has been and will plenty more to criticize, just like with so many past US administrations. Europe is far from being criticism free past and present. So as I said, bring it on and let's talk about it, all of it.

X said...

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to say this but I'll say it anyway.

This blaming game has to stop. I don't care, right now, who caused this or who "made" that happen. I don't care. Blaming other people, blaming ourselves, forcing others to blame themselves, all of this is counter-productive. By now we've established that there is a problem, we know where that problem has come from and we need to be creating solutions to it.

I've said this before, too, but I'll say it again: there are comments here along the lines of "europe is doomed no matter what!", most recently in comments on the post about the rather silly Frenchman who blamed himself for being attacked. I can understand why people would say that but I disagree with actually stating it. Europe is not doomed. Europe is an old, tired man, beaten and half blind and unwilling to fight because he feels deep down that he's dying, and so why hasten the inevitable? His days of knocking down entire continents with a single left hook and then siting down to afternoon tea are long gone. He is weary of the fight and wishing that the world would just let him rest. This collective feeling of ancient stupor is very visible at the moment but it will pass. Europe will fight, when fighting becomes less painful than not fighting, because Europe knows, deep down, of a reason to fight that muslims, with their inverted and adversarial view of the world, can never truly understand.

Before that can happen we need to realise that no fight-back will occur until we, this little group, are united in our purpose. That means we have to put aside any recriminations about the past and stop attempting to assign blame or responsibility for this issue or that issue, otherwise we risk the sort of fracture that very nearly blew this entire movement apart not so long ago.

We are family, by agreement, race or culture. Yes, families argue and disagree but first and foremost they stand by each other. They unite in the hard times so they have the liberty to disagree when times aren't so tough. We are family. When it comes to the world, family comes first, always, in all things family comes first, not for the reason the Muslim says - out of greater hate for the outsider 0 but because we, in the west, place family above other considerations out of love for that family. I would say, with that in mind, that the time for all this argument is not now. If we, on this site, are incapable of setting aside our differences for long enough to find a way to deal with this problem then what hope does an entire continent have?

The US, Europe and the new world are family, through race and culture, through association, marriage and friendship. We disagree, but we are still family, and I damn any one of you that would say "I'd throw my son to the mohammedan" the way some of you are saying you'd abandon some parts of this family to Islam. You may call it realism, or an acceptance of simple inevitability but when I was raised I was taught that, when family is threatened, facts don't matter. I love my family. I am not a particularly brave man, neither particularly strong nor particularly easy to rouse to violence but surely you must understand me when I say, if my family were threatened in any way I would be quite willing to kill in order to protect them, as would my father, who once laid into several large dogs for this very reason; as would my grandfathers, who fought in the war to protect their families.

Old Man Europe is old and tired of the fight, and may even be dying for real this time, but deep down he knows that family is threatened and he will stand up, eventually, to fight the threat. But, before he can do that, we have to realise that we are family. We have to realise that we have to present a united front to the world, to remove any hint of disagreement in our midsts until the problems we face are solved. To identify and pursue those goals that we can all agree on with inerrant purpose until they are complete, and to focus all of our energy on the pursuit of those goals, leaving aside the wasteful bickering and back-biting of who is responsible for what until those goals are achieved. And we must do this, because we are family, and because the wayward son or brother or cousin we fight to save is family too.

Czechmade said...

Graham,

absolutely correct.

Every of our comments has an encoded sign of victory or defeat.

I am only not sure we are Old Man. The elites wielding power are really old. In German comments they put them simply as "68er". The others have not yet articulated their view or have no public space to do so.

The most dangerous people are those who take over our agenda and recycle some old stuff to their temporary benefits.

For us it is loss of time and additional source of shame.

We should learn to use simple, exact, flexible language to be able to spread our messages.

By flexible I mean sense of humor - which is always wise and a sign of superior intellectual powers - not for display. Leaving space for other views/facts. Those are often not so much contradictory, rather complementary.

Czechmade said...

The Old Man - for ex. you wonder when you find out that Barroso or Joe Linen used to be happy maoists or something of that kind in their younger age. They can never dream of fighting something akin to this concept. These things made their career possible, they can never find an excuse. They will always react positively to some similar crap.

Winston Smith said...

Great posts guys,

I particularly agree with Graham Dawson's comment, although I do agree with Patriot too.
The blaming game has to stop and it has to stop right now. The greatest ally Europe could ever have is America and vice versa. Being British, I judge people as I find them and I have no problem with Americans whatsoever. I find most to be polite, friendly, somewhat ignorant on Europe and history(not all of course) and of course proud of their country.
What people do not realise, is that united we stand, divided we fall. This is the plan of the Marxists and the Islamists. They want us to collapse within and they will merely come along and pick up the pieces. The blacks in America and the world are totally ignorant on the Islamic slave trade and were they to know the truth, you'd find many stop abusing "Bad Whitey" and realise that Islam was and always has been far, far worse.
Many whites are totally ignorant on Islam too. The very fact that a white man could convert to Islam is simply astounding, worse still a woman!
The Internet(while it's still free) has given us the ability to share views and realise the threat from Islam. If it weren't for the Internet, I wouldn't be as clued up as I am. I've learned much. There's no doubt on that. I've read many books(from websites recommendations) and interacted with some fine minds, who have greatly helped me see things clearly.
America, Europeans can be funny people at times. Remember that much of America's ancestry is in Europe and many here including Conservative Swede are angry, because their cultures are under attack from a far inferior one - Islam. They are angry because their elected politicians, who are supposed to help them are selling them out to Saudi Arabia.
We have to unite people, together as one, the same as they did in 1683, to fight the Muslim horde. If we do not; if we do not educate everyone we know of this serious threat then we will enter a new Dark Age that will last for a very, very long time, if that is it ever ends.

Stop the fighting, unite and be as one, or else kiss goodbye to western culture. It's that simple folks.

Good article by the way Baron Bodissey - Kudos.

xlbrl said...

I vaguely recall it was one of the Romans who saw up and down as being the same direction. Wilsonian liberal and universalist philosophies have become conservative policies.

As Burke explained, different ages will dress the same pretext in differnt fashion. While we are discussing the fashion, the very same vice has assumed a new body, and is re-invigorated in its new form. It walks abroad, continuing its ravages, while we terrify ourselves about the old form. In abhorring the old ways and principles we are left unaware in feeding the same vice in different form.

The perfect con is one we believe to be of our own making. The most powerful reading for understanding what is beyond American conservatism and liberalism on this subject is Garet Garrett's 'Rise of Empire', and Afred Nock's 'Our Enemy, the State'.
I cannot speak for Nock, but Garrett was an American patriot. Both were interested only in truth, the subject of this blogpost, and neither had the slightest idea anything they wrote would do more than chronicle this drama as it played out.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Graham. That kind of defaitism I have seen on various forums and blogs here in Sweden too. People who already see the war as lost long ago. People who wants to wait just a bit longer in hope that the Sweden Democrates will save their country alone and if that enough they will emigrate to any muslim free zone in the world. Some are just waiting to finish their education before they will leave permanently. To stay and fight is obviously not an option for them.

Then we have those defaitists who wants to give up whole cities and towns to the savages. Södertälje, south of Stockholm is one such. Malmö the third largest city is another. Not far mo Malmö is Landskrona a small town badly enriched which they also wants to give up as lost. Some will even build a wall around it to contain it. Some even wants to give up Skåne, the whole region Malmö and Landskrona is located in. If you have seen the Wallander tv-movies with Kenneth Branagh, then you know what it looks here, since they are shot on location. That is what the defaitists wants to forever surrender to these savage muslims and their barbaric traditions. Personally I say hell no, I'm born here and I will NOT give in to this. These savages has no right whatever to it. We, the people has not invited these barbarians here, the politicians has. We the people has elected them, that is true. But these traitors has also fooled us all to believe in their multiculti gospel for too long.

I'm willing to fight for it even if I'm really too old for sh*t like that. I rather die here where I am born than in some far away place in the world. No matter how nice that place is in itself, it is still not my home and never will be.

As for the topic of the thread itself, this blog are not and shpuld not be a place for flame wars.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Sorry for the typing mistakes in the above post. It should read:

"People who wants to wait just a bit longer in hope that the Sweden Democrates will save their country alone and if that ISN'T enough they will emigrate to any muslim free zone in the world."

"Not far from Malmö"

"As for the topic of the thread itself, this blog are not and should not be a place for flame wars."

Whiskey said...

As far as the US policy towards Serbia and Kosovo is considered, we must remember two things.

First, the Bush 1 policy towards Serbia was comprised of two objectives:

A. Keeping the Rump Yugoslavia together to prevent a general Balkan mess and

B. Reflexively bashing Serbs who were the proxy for Soviet/Russian influence.

The Clinton policy was driven by undue consideration for European concerns. The NATO forces, principally the Dutch, German, and French forces, had intervened in the conflict to both stop massacres on the Serbian side (driven by domestic politics of their Muslim populations) and keep a tidal wave of refugees washing up on their borders from a general, widening Balkan War.

At places like Srebenica, and Sarajevo, the impotence of the European forces, driven by feminized populaces and pacifist policies, was revealed. The European militaries could not even fight. And thus the protector of the last resort, America, was dragged in.

Clinton was eager to prove his multilateralism, and had objected during the campaign to Bush passivity in the Balkans. Thus the air war over Serbia, and the continuation of those general policies by Bush II, driven by Saudi and European pressure.

If Conservative Swede wishes to point fingers, he might point them at Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome. Where Europeans have pushed for domestic Muslim reasons the US military to assume the burden they cannot, keep the lid on the Balkans, and placate their domestic Muslim population. As for Turkey's promotion in the EU, that's been a Cold War legacy of Turkey as an Aircraft Carrier anchored to the south of Russia. It's probably not going to survive past the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, who does not consider, pointedly, the US as a Christian Nation.

Whiskey said...

As for Europe being doomed, well parts are and parts are not.

In order to fight Islamization and takeover of Europe by Muslim demographics, murder/intimidation, and the like, social forces must exist to counter-act those broad social forces.

The young French man who made excuses for his attackers because they were Muslim is desperately seeking validation for being "anti-Racist" because that is what young women reward in seeking out sexual and romantic partners. Men his age have one thing on their mind, and act accordingly to what they believe women desire in men.

However, women and feminized men are poor street soldiers, and even the various anarchist groups would be easily crushed by disciplined groups of men fighting under a unified command. Such was the case in Fascist Italy, Germany, and Spain.

The most likely results of the continued "anti-Racism" or what amounts to an extended campaign against the average native European by elites, Muslim immigrants, and women, allied in mutual hatred/fear of the average European, is a military coup in response to a brutal, existential terrorist shock and civilian appeasement.

ONLY such an existential shock, mass murder on the scale of hundreds of thousands to millions would provoke a coup, but the bad news (and it is bad news) is that such mass casualty Muslim terror attacks are quite possible technologically, and socially through weakness, appeasement, and feminized responses by civilian authorities in Europe.

Most of Europe lacks a cohesive military that is both respected enough, and large enough, to seize power after say a capital city is nuked and Muslims make demands for Sharia nation-wide. In the case of Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Ireland, such an event would prompt immediate and abject surrender to Muslim demands and those nations would promptly become Islamic and under Sharia law. Most of the elites and women would welcome such a shift, because it would destroy their most hated enemies: the Average European Male who is a competitive threat for money and power.

However, if Paris or London or Zurich or Rome were nuked, the nations of England, France, and Switzerland would posses militaries both respected enough and large enough and cohesive enough to seize power, conduct military operations to expel all Muslims, and operate along the lines of Pinochet, Franco, or post Tiananmen Square China as "saviors of the nation." Italy is a special case, as it has enough Camorra and the Northern League combined, along with Carabinieri, and other paramilitary forces, to engage in the same sort of activities although more fractured and less unified -- all face existential threats by Muslim demographics and have enough men with guns to enforce their will if Rome were nuked out of existence and demands for national submission to Sharia issued.

Most of Eastern Europe would fight as well, and likely win. This includes the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and probably Austria.

In all cases, the issue is who will put the most men on the streets with guns in the most organized and ruthless manner to seize power after a shocking mass murder? In the UK, as bad as it is among the people, the Royal Army is still big enough and strong enough to take power even after London is vaporized. That's not the case in Germany. Or Denmark, the rest of Scandinavia, or Spain or Greece.

I don't think for the record a coup would be likely if some few thousand people were killed. But a good section of a capital city, most of the government, and hundreds of thousands to millions vaporized? Yes. Particularly if a weak, feminized response designed to preserve PC political power structures by surviving civilian authorities seeks to surrender/temporize with Jihadis.

It's like Nathan Bedford Forrest said. Firstest with the Mostest.

PRCalDude said...

Finding the current atmosphere here uncongenial to Americans, he indicated that he will no longer be visiting our blog.

I get so tired of hearing stuff like this.

"Uncongenial to Americas?" Why? How? Isn't it run by Americans? Why does everyone need congeniality?

Let's just anathematize one another into a standstill. That'll fix things.

Henrik R Clausen said...

There's a lot of worthwhile stuff to comment here!

Personally (I'm Danish), I'd like the British-American "Special relationship" to all of Europe. We have a common ancestry and culture of very high value - unfortunately being undermined by the European Union.

For that to work, we do need some improvement in the area of mutual respect:

When France and Germany - in retrospect correctly - refused to join the Iraq War, they were derided as "Old Europe", not taken seriously. We would all have been better off if their objections had been taken seriously.

When the US routinely bends the collective arms of Europe to admit Turkey into the European Untion, we in Europe shake our collective heads about American ignorance and arrogance.

When Clinton competed with George Bush Seniour demonizing the Serbs (election campaign 1991), none of us probably had any idea just how damaging that was to be for Europe.

These are three serious objections to US foreign policy involving Europe. Three cases where the US is doing harmful things in violation of law and treaties, and which has caused and is still causing serious trouble.

Note that none of these have to do with Europeans begging the US to pay for and/or execute our defense.

I believe we have a common problem between us of unaccountable elites manipulating democracy in order to stay in power for their own benefit. Here it's EU, in the US it is to a great extent Wall Street people, as indicated by Obama's 'choice' of advisors.

We have a common challenge of taking democracy back.

Anonymous said...

It is "Manifest Destiny" and "Providence" (as American like to say)

It's protestantism (now reduced to anti-Rome and anti-Orthodox sentiment, but anything else goes, especially Islam, as the perhaps best vehicle for world order -- therefore the need to invent "moderate Islam" -- and anything that destroys the family and traditional culture), materialism, the drive for a unifying mission, order, world markets, unrestrained "capitalism" (a Marxist notion), related to the absence of countervailing authorities in the US system.

As opposed to the Christian European idea of estates, and balances between the King, nobles, Church and guilds, in the US, there are supposed to be checks and balances, and states' rights, but the states are ever more weakened, the judiciary is politicized and legislates from the bench, the presidency is more imperial with every administration, the Church is shut out of public life (if one can speak in America of "the" Church -- better to say all religions are expected to submit to secular rule) and overall the political process is corrupted by kleptocrats (moneyed interests with no national loyalties, including banks, insurance, multinationals, the military-industrial complex), "NGO"s, and slave-media.

Leaving nothing but a drive to expand, conquest, enlighten the savages, while at the heart of the nation corruption runs rampant.

Henrik R Clausen said...

How about actually permitting a couple of those Sharia-run enclaves that the radicals demand?

With strict 'border' controls and no welfare payments to anyone inside, of course.

That should teach people what kind of misery Sharia brings about...

Henrik R Clausen said...

Clinton was eager to prove his multilateralism, and had objected during the campaign to Bush passivity in the Balkans.

Correct. As early as during the 1991 election campaign, he went on record to show himself a Man of Action by demanding that the Serbs should be bombed.

Of course that target was somewhat arbitrary, but given his superficial knowledge of the history of Europe - and the Balkans in particular - it was an obvious choice of enemy. Back in 1991 we didn't really know much about what the Serbs were facing in the Balkans anyway.

The media, conveniently helped by PR agencies of Croatia and Bosnia, had decided to smear the Serbs as well as possible, and an infamous ITV broadcast even suggested that the Serbs were forcing the Bosnian civilians into concentration camps similar to those kept by the Germans during WWII.

Proving himself a Man of Action helped Clinton in the election. But it wasn't good for the Serbs, nor for Europe at large.

Jason Pappas said...

I’ve always find it amusing that many of us who are tough critics of our government’s overbearing presence, both home and abroad, will nevertheless circle the wagons when bombarded with criticism from foreigners. For those of us on the right, it may be instinctual since the criticism is usually from the foreign left against the remnants of our founding principles. Still, I try to separate criticism I respect and share from the ill-intentioned anti-liberal (in the classical sense) attacks common among the leftist-dominated talking heads.

Personally, I was appalled when Clinton bombed Serbia. I didn’t know the details but I was highly suspicious of the media narrative. In general, we don’t have to know the details because we can oppose policing the world via general principles. I’m suspicious of professed “good intensions” because of the obvious bait that leads a population down the “road to hell.” Some of us on the right have tried to encourage a return to more traditional (or our more traditional) stance but we’ve been drowned out by absurdist criticisms generally emanating from the left.

That’s why I enjoy the debate here, as heated as it gets. At least we find a decent ratio of intelligent criticism to distracting noise. I haven’t had time to add to the debate but I’m glad it’s going strong whenever I return.