Kimball and Steyn on the end of the West
Two essays in the New Criterion talk about the West almost in the past tense. Roger Kimball's After the suicide of the West pronounces his post-mortem: a civilization suicided from despair; death from want of a reason to live. The contradiction within liberalism -- within multiculturalism -- Kimball argues, is that it unwilling to believe in anything definite, even in itself.
... an essay called “The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society,” ... dilates on this basic antinomy of liberalism. Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even ... those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. But tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. ... As Robert Frost once put it, a liberal is someone who refuses to take his own part in an argument.
And having emptied life of belief, liberalism has not coincidentally also emptied it of meaning. Kimball quotes Douglas Murray to evoke the atmosphere of a civilization partying frenetically on the brink of black nothingness.
It may be no sin -- may indeed be one of our society’s most appealing traits -- that we love life. But the scales, as in so many things, have tipped to an extreme. From seeing so much for which we would live, people in our society now see fewer and fewer causes for which they would die. We have passed to a point where prolongation is all. We have become like the parents of Admetos in Euripides’ Alcestis -- "walking cadavers," unwilling to give up the few remaining days (in Europe’s case, of its peace dividend) even if only by doing so can any generational future be assured.
Liberalism's first step is to render the past, with its ties to memory and tradition, despicable and valueless. From there it inevitably proceeds to make the future futile. The "me" generation is liberated not only from its myths but also from its dreams. Kimball cites James Burnham. Modern liberalism, Burnham writes:
does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, for family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history… . And it is precisely these ideas and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions—pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.
From Kimball's perspective the contest between Islam and liberal civilization is not simply between East and West, but between the living and the dying.
Mark Steyn makes a less abstract argument in It’s the demography, stupid. Steyn's key literary skill is to state the obvious in ways that refute conventional wisdom. In this essay he is at his epigramatic best. The challenge now, he says, is no longer to save the West, but to see if anything can still be saved. For the West, make no mistake, is dying.
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birth rate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyper-rationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a twenty-first-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could only increase their numbers by conversion. ...
That’s what the war’s about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"—as can be seen throughout much of "the western world" right now. The progressive agenda —lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism—is collectively the real suicide bomb. ...
When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it’s hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). ... Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: the grand buildings will still be standing but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world. ...
Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German, and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an “amiable dunce” (in Clark Clifford’s phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. ... Religious cultures have a much greater sense of both past and future, as we did a century ago, when we spoke of death as joining "the great majority" in "the unseen world." But if secularism’s starting point is that this is all there is, it's no surprise that, consciously or not, they invest the here and now with far greater powers of endurance than it's ever had. The idea that progressive Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development was always foolish; we now know that it’s suicidally so. ...
"What do you leave behind?" asked Tony Blair. There will only be very few and very old ethnic Germans and French and Italians by the midpoint of this century. What will they leave behind? ... It’s the demography, stupid. And, if they can’t muster the will to change course, then "what do you leave behind?" is the only question that matters.
Commentary
One of the most remarkable things about suicides is how they struggle at the last. They clutch frantically at the strangling noose they had calmly put around their necks; they swim a few desperate strokes after they've jumped from the bridge; they call for help after they've taken the pills. I predicted Kate Burton would have nothing bad to say about the men who abducted her and her family in Gaza. I was only partly right. She gave a lengthy interview in the Independent, describing her confinement, which paints a more complex picture.
"I got really mad and said: 'I can't believe you're doing this. Do you want me to get down on my knees and say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you?' I was exhausted and started crying. I said: 'I came here to work with the Palestinian people and now I feel I have been stabbed in the back.' ...
Ms Burton said she felt "sorry for the guys" because of their "shattered lives", and the fact that they were, in effect, on the run and had family members who had been killed in the conflict. But, at the same time, she added: "I can't forgive them for what they did and I hope they don't keep doing it in the future. I understand that the majority of the Palestinian people are not like them." ...
She said the kidnappers - who had apparently tracked the Burtons during their tour of Rafah - told the family they had a made a mistake. "They said they thought we were Americans," Ms Burton said. "But when I said you have made a mistake, so why not let us go, they said it was too late." The kidnappers told the family repeatedly that they would be released unharmed "in a few hours".
I wonder what objection would have been raised if the kidnappers had captured Americans, or maybe even Jews; where would the error be? And for a moment, reading the Independent, I remembered the feelings of Winston Smith as the torturers prepared to have his face eaten out by rats in Room 101.
The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment -- one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'
What do you leave behind?
posted by wretchardthecat at 1/03/2006 03:12:00 AM
54 Comments:
you know how to gut-punch, that's for sure
One of the interesting things about suicides as well is the notes they leave. I recall reading a study of suicide notes written by a psychiatrist who had found a huge archive of them in the Los Angeles County morgue--someone had meticulously kept copies of all the notes left by suicides over the years. What struck me was how banal the notes were--concerned with trivia, along the lines of "I've left the keys on the counter and don't forget there is a roast in the refrigerator." There was very little of the "goodbye, cruel world" stuff that you might expect. I can't remember the title of the book. I can look for it.
But that idea seems apt here: the west is committing suicide, yet it is overwhelmingly concerned with trivia.
"Where is the horse and the rider, where is the horn that was blowing, they have passed like rain on the mountains, like wind in the meadow, the days have gone down in the west… behind the hills… into shadow... "
So much confusion results from the inexact use of language. Liberalism is not socialism, it is respect for individual rights, including the right to property. Democracy is not freedom, it is direct rule by the people. The United States was established as a constitutional republic to protect individual rights. It was then, and for the most part still is, a liberal form of government.
The problem with the West is not liberalism, it is the rejection of liberalism in favor of socialism. Socialism is the cause of Europe's malaise. It is the reason why France cannot absorb its immigrants, and why it has nothing to offer them as an incentive to become Frenchmen.
Conservatives want to convince us that the choice is between theocracy and nihilistic decay. It is not. When the Roman Empire made that choice in favor of theocracy, it fell. The choice for us is between liberalism on the one hand, and all forms of illiberalism on the other: communism, socialism, fascism, and theocracy.
Do conservatives want to defeat Islamist theocracy, or emulate it?
The truth about Europe's 'civilizational suicide' on the ground is also more banal than metaphysical.
Young people have families largely because it's fun and brings meaning to their lives. Older people in Europe have laid such a huge burden of regulations, taxes and politically correct thought supervision on the lives of younger Europeans that, if they have kids as well, their lives are drained of fun, meaning and energy. So young people respond by 'voting with their feet': not having kids, not taking on social responsibilities, not voting and often endlessly drinking, partying and vacationing.
Europe is a short-sighted gerontocracy, with the problems of that kind of society. It is possible to imagine a religious society with essentially the same problems and indeed there have been many and you mention one (the Shakers).
Private clubs, like the many which still exist in London, have been chronically subject to this problem for well over 100 years. If the average age is allowed to drift upwards, as often happens, then the members impose rules which younger people don't want to observe, and they won't join. After a certain point the process becomes irreversible and the club has to be closed down or merged (only postponing the eventual closure).
We are the first generation in history to have experienced a demographic explosion of older people anything like the one now emerging. We should not be surprised to see such problems suddenly being 'writ large' across whole nations.
Wretchard, Friends...
Many of the big thinkers, the strategic and tactical and historically-informed posters here go quiet or ignore my posts, sensing that my belief in Jesus' rightness and accuracy in prophesying His Return (and its corollary, The Promised One Has Come) are more or less signs of my intellectual weakness and spiritual enfeeblement.
Now, you drill into the core poison crippling so many around me, but leaving me untouched, for I BELIEVE.
The "what" of my belief-set is a coherent, unified story honoring and respecting ALL the Divine Manifestations of That-Which-Created-Us; from NOW all the way back to pre-written-history.
What I believe withstands close scrutiny AND raises up a World Community of humans of every color, race and previous religious background, ALL of them willing -nay, eager in many cases!- to live their beliefs, live their Faith even under threat of martyrdom!
And lest you think I only invoke the Iranian martyrs, please know that my friends and co-religionists, one black and one white, were cut in half by shotgun blasts in the 60's...
Islamo-fascism cannot, will not win out, but the energy to change the head-hackers is yet gathering its forces!
One wonders what the last gasps will look like.
Europe didn't invent horror, of course, but they perfected it. I can't imagine its transition will go smoothly.
Having said that, Carridine brings up a good point (though I differ quite a bit in my beliefs). Is faith in purpose necessary to survive in a world of true believers? Is metaphysical constancy a precondition for success? The history of man seems to argue the necessity of faith in a higher purpose.
Knowing that one is alive, and nothing more, is a paradigm in crisis. We must have a macro-narrative to win, I think.
Because I'm musing, another question: Is it the American narrative that keeps us strong, or is it our faith in religion? I am not so sure it is the latter (it may not matter if their effects are similar).
Whichever it is, we know the enemy within. He is the one with no faith, no belief in purpose, the one who spews cynicism and tells us that nothing really matters.
We must keep our children away from this sickness. If we want to survive.
ardsgaine
"Conservatives want to convince us that the choice is between theocracy and nihilistic decay."
You lump political consevatives and cultural conservatives of the west together with Islamic conservative thought. They are not the same.
The founding fathers of our government knew well the dangers of combining the government with religion. I think many in the west have an unhealthy disrespect, however, for religion as a result of misinterpreting their intent.
State sponsored religion = bad.
Religious freedom = good.
I have weighed this issue of despair before, for any who are interested.
It is long, perhaps, but its ideas do not lend themselves to brevity.
The Sickness Unto Death.
Rufus said..
"Something will come along, Some Day. It always does. But, it won't be this day, and it won't be tomorrow; and, it won't be Islam. It's just too fouled up."
I'm not so sure that Islam hasn't already arrived in Europe. A failed culture doesn't have to be ascendent in order to kill its host. I think that's part of Steyn's point. Demographically, the Europeans are simply ceding the field to the Islamists.
What will result? A secularized moderate Islamic Europe? A slow decay into third world hell? Global jihad? A resurgence of Western culture?
The last seems unlikely in Europe.
Nihilistic Post Modern Deconstructionist Liberalism is hell bent on it’s own destruction, which I heartily support, but do these murderers of heritage and splendid opportunity go beyond a rewriting of world history and seek to take those hell bent on cultural survival with them? Should this be so, will they dominate at the ballot box, and if not, what craven acts might they contemplate to will to power their sinister aspirations?
To be so brilliant, so free, as to doubt the validity of one’s own worth, one’s own right to existence, is the pinnacle of Narcissism. Maslow’s hierarchical echelon of spirituality has been displaced with self loathing. It is supremely ironic that the generation that experimented with free love, LSD, and earthly spirituality would find itself in the depths of the most moribund sentiments possible, not only to hate, but to hate one’s self and to mock the very spirits of the aborigine and to, once and for all, not only decry God as dead, but God as illegal, entirely estranged from the humanity that has formed a government.
The mother taught the daughter that the father was antithetical to true freedom and his love was but lust and his touch was but exploitation. Love what is left of the world my deary for propagation is for the poor and unwashed, love of thy father is for those too ignorant to know, and it is these that shall inherent the earth, and so we will perish from it with firm knowledge that no god in heaven bestows an eternal embrace, but cloak thyself with the spent dreams of a vacuous nothing.
I believe that what is happening in Europe right now is the result of the profound cultural trauma of two World Wars. The horror of tens of millions dead, the years of trench warfare, the Blitz, Dresden, the Holocaust, even the Cold War, have all combined to push the West into cultural depression.
I wonder how the Eurocracy will like involuntary euthanization when it is applied to every retiree whose future medical care is thought to exceed a certain cost. "Sorry auntie, it's the only way to save France! You should have had kids. They could have taken you in."
ardsgaine:
For good or ill the liberal cause in the West made an unholy alliance with Socialists and were consumed by the same. The results are proof of the truth.
Socialism's tenet: 'From each according to his ability to each according to his need', is bound to generate hosts of needy people who have few abilities. Game theory has proven that. The fact is quite simply that the more fundamentally socialist a Western society is, the faster it spirals into a demographic death trap.
Also, aristedes makes reference to a post titled 'Sickness Unto Death'. Kierkegaard's writing of the same name boiled down to a simple theory: Men cannot live on skepticism alone. They must have faith in something larger than themselves to stave off despair.
Finally, a note on Roman history: There is a far stronger argument that Rome's descent into nihilism (free bread and circuses and damn the provinces) was the undoing of the Western Empire. To call the Imperial Roman period a theocracy is a bit of a stretch. If you are referring to Constantine and his successors, it might be noted that Constantinople was still ruled by a Christian Emperor until the 12th century. The first Crusade was organized to help that Emperor repel the Turkish invasion.
Kimball quotes Douglas Murray to evoke the atmosphere of a civilization partying frenetically on the brink of black nothingness.
Ynet reports that in Berlin on New Year's Eve people were drinking and perhaps even having sex amid the Holocaust memorial there.
One of the things I don't quite grasp about Steyn's article is the weight he places on a shrinking worker population. The problem, I think, is just the opposite: a failure of the ownership society to keep up with automation and outsourcing. That is, more and more "work" will be done by capital rather than labor, so a declining workforce should be a problem. The problem is the concentration of capital ownership. If your only source of income is your labor, you're at a big disadvantage.
But the bottom line is that if they can solve this problem by diffusing capital ownership that can just do without the influx of immigrants.
The same thing holds for the US.
The problem isn't that liberalism is committing suicide so much as that the transition from Liberalism 2.x (with it's third way welfare state solutions) to Liberalism 3.x (with a capitalistic rather than a laboristic economy) will be traumatic.
"That is, more and more "work" will be done by capital rather than labor, so a declining workforce should be a problem."
Er, I meant it should not be a problem. Sometimes my fingers can't keep up with my head.
mearstapa,
Leaving aside the destruction of Judeo-Christian values for a moment, ponder this question:
If one wanted to destroy "family values" and insure that the vast majority of the offspring that did emerge in spite of the collective pressures against their survival, which would be the fastest, surest methods to employ?
I think we have experienced the results of such efforts over the past 50 years.
Just keep raising taxes so that both spouses must work to sustain the ever-smaller family unit. Grow the task of administering the money, to be ever-more herculean.
If we suddenly discovered that the most danderous enemies of the West had planned it exactly this way, working from the inside, then would we declare it an act of treason?
Dan and others are correct in disagreeing with Ardsgaine's thesis ("When the Roman Empire made that choice in favor of theocracy, it fell"). The choice was made for a reason -- the status quo was'nt working. Valueless, choose-your-own-God anything goes mores supported infighting (taking from each other) more than building. Constantine and his successors chose to incorporate the strengths of christian culture and it is arguable that Rome and Byzantium were sustained until their respective "official" churches became too corrupt due to state sponsorship. Note how christian culture continued to grow geographically and outlasted Rome and Constantinople. Dan's point about Byzantine studies is apropos, we could learn a lot from it. Likewise Jon and Dan regarding liberal "unbelief" in the aftermath of large scale war. It is arguable that many of the most virtuous citizens were lost in those conflicts, leaving would-be usurpers behind (see Agamemnon) and others who do not have the strength to pull Odysseus' bow.
Carridine's comments would be more relevant if he spoke to the nature of sin. Hey, readers will hardly seek a Savior when they see nothing that requires repentance...the sin cloaked in socialism is revealed by Wretchard and others as they note that the Yurps (great term, Sophia!) seek immediate gratification and will fight for nothing. Carridine, I praise God that the Lord has entered our hearts and given new life. Please try to explain to folks like Ardsgaine that Christ gives us true hope and loving strength in the face of pandemic, self-righteous sinfulness.
Dan said: One modest but effective response in the meantime, intellectually, might be the introduction of Byzantine studies into the curriculum. The parallels or at least analogues between post-war Europe and the course of Byzantine history, though sometimes obscure, are rather striking in important ways. But that probably sounds like an unsatisfying recommendation.
Says who? I've been studying Byzantine history for years and find it a useful counterpoint/parallel to some of what we see going on around us today--both in Europe and America.
Dan said: Rome fell because of civil and external war and attendant corruption - not graft; true corruption: decadence -sustained over the rule of many emperors over 3 centuries.
That's exactly right. Rome persisted for so long as a result of the enormous political, economic, cultural, educational, and especially military capital they had built up over the first two imperial centuries. The third and forth centuries AD were periods where they were exhausting their built-up capital and not replenishing it. Really, the empire had no business surviving the civil wars, invasions, defeats, and partitions of the third century, AD. It was only held together by the common idea that Greco-Roman civilization was good and worth struggling for.
I have always loved this fragment of Priscus which is quite telling. (Apologies in advance for its length.) It describes the meeting of Roman ambassadors to the court of Attila with a man who had been a Roman but after suffering captivity with the Huns, had "gone native."
"He considered his new life among the Scythians better than his old life among the Romans, and the reasons he gave were as follows: 'After war the Scythians live in inactivity, enjoying what they have got, and not at all, or very little, harassed. The Romans, on the other hand, are in the first place very liable to perish in war, as they have to rest their hopes of safety on others, and are not allowed, on account of their tyrants to use arms. And those who use them are injured by the cowardice of their generals, (87) who cannot support the conduct of war. But the condition of the subjects in time of peace is far more grievous than the evils of war, for the exaction of the taxes is very severe, and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others, because the laws are practically not valid against all classes. A transgressor who belongs to the wealthy classes is not punished for his injustice, while a poor man, who does not understand business, undergoes the legal penalty, that is if he does not depart this life before the trial, so long is the course of lawsuits protracted, and so much money is expended on them. The climax of the misery is to have to pay in order to obtain justice. For no one will give a court to the injured man unless he pay a sum of money to the judge and the judge's clerks.'
"In reply to this attack on the Empire, I asked him to be good enough to listen with patience to the other side of the question. 'The creators of the Roman republic,' I said, 'who were wise and good men, in order to prevent things from being done at haphazard made one class of men guardians of the laws, and appointed another class to the profession of arms, who were to have no other object than to be always ready for battle, and to go forth to war without dread, as though to their ordinary exercise having by practice exhausted all their fear beforehand. Others again were assigned to attend to the cultivation of the ground, to support both themselves and those who fight in their defence, by contributing the military corn-supply.... To those who protect the interests of the litigants a sum of money is paid by the latter, just as a payment is made by the farmers to the soldiers. Is it not fair to support him who assists and requite him for his kindness? The support of the horse benefits the horseman.... Those who spend money on a suit and lose it in the end cannot fairly put it down to anything but the injustice of their case. And as to the long time spent on lawsuits, that is due to concern for justice, that judges may not fail in passing correct judgments, by having to give sentence offhand; it is better that they should reflect, and conclude the case more tardily, than that by judging in a hurry they should both injure man and transgress against the Deity, the institutor of justice.... (88) (272) The Romans treat their servants better than the king of the Scythians treats his subjects. They deal with them as fathers or teachers, admonishing them to abstain from evil and follow the lines of conduct whey they have esteemed honourable; they reprove them for their errors like their own children. They are not allowed, like the Scythians, to inflict death on them. They have numerous ways of conferring freedom; they can manumit not only during life, but also by their wills, and the testamentary wishes of a Roman in regard to his property are law.'
"My interlocutor shed tears, and confessed that the laws and constitution of the Romans were fair, but deplored that the governors, not possessing the spirit of former generations, were ruining the State."
enscout, may I restate a thought?
"The founding fathers of our government knew well the dangers of combining the government with religion."
to
'The founding fathers of our government knew well the dangers of constraining religion."
in that the institution of a state religion would preclude the practice of other religions.
Both statements are essentially the same although the first was the basis for the separation of church and state argument.
Kimball and Steyn are voicing yet again what many have predicted: the fall of Europe as we know it, quietly, and, very like the band of men on the Titanic, stoically.
There seems to be no handle to pull to close the gaping holes that allow the deadly floods to enter. There seems to be no message to deliver that will open the hearts of the disenchanted and disallusioned. There seems to be no rallying cry, no "For the Glory of God and St. George" to interrupt the parties and the sleeping.
We had best form up and learn how to profit from this spectacle of disintegration, else we are next.
For God and America!
When I remarked the suicides struggle for life at the last, I had in mind the possible impacts on liberalism by the reality of the endgame. European liberalism is in a terrible double bind. Islamic immigration is, if nothing else, a massive influx the liberalism's foes; and its only effective defenders the people that liberalism scorns. Huge though the inheritance from the 1960s was it is spending much faster than it earns.
The first signs of the crisis are already on them. The rejection of the EU constitution, riots in France, economic stasis, impotence in the face of foreign policy challenges. When thousands of elderly French died in a heat wave I realized that the system might have very little reserve buoyancy; that the ship looked safe only in the calmest of waters. I say might, because I'm not sure.
But I'm watching. Personally I think 2006 or 2007 may be the years when the liberal enterprise is shaken so badly that it will start to lose legitimacy. For that reason, I'm less pessimistic than either Kimball or Steyn. Not that they're wrong, just that their predictions are only going to work if trends remain linear. But they won't; because societies are above all complex systems, full of emergent phenomenon.
The key challenge for policymakers is to ask themselves 'how can we prepare for a crisis in Western liberalism if it comes?' There are warnings from the now-distant past. When systems die as after the Great War terrible new faiths arise; arise because nothing sensible steps into the vacuum.
Peter UK,
Nevertheless, maybe the storm petrels are come. Part of the reason the Left ascribes such a diabolical cleverness to George Bush, Karl Rove and a handful of neoconservatives is that it provides an explanation for what would otherwise be incomprehensible events. To wit: why was a system capable of abandoning Vietnam incapable of halting the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? How did Bush win, not once but twice? Why did the EU constitution falter? How is Bush still in power when Nixon was hounded out on a much thinner basis? Where are the massive antiwar demonstrations? It must be because Karl Rove has made a pact with the devil, because Bill Roggio is twisting the minds of the readers, because Michael Ledeen convinced some Italian intelligence men to claim there was yellowcake in the Niger.
The neocon conspiracy explanations are too small in scale -- even if true -- to account for what's happening. In a way, the Left's fixation on President Bush is hastening the process of decline because the patient is focusing on the irrelevant, like a man with cancer worried about his zits.
re: florentius: 11:51
Great post.
We have at our nations core this amazing document that is its Constitution. It prevails upon all of us the ideal that all men are created equal (under its umbrella of laws).
So long as we can uphold these ideals in practice and so long as we manage to find amongst our ranks "a few good men" who will afford us leadership that will engender a trust, we should prevail.
These things, along with the hope and faith that is provided by a recognition and praise of an all-knowing benevelent God, will sustain us.
We cannot walk away shaking our heads that all is lost. As Thomas Paine wrote, "These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. ....yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder that conflict, the more glorius the triumph."
I do not agree that Western Liberalism is suicide. I do believe that Western Liberal Moral Relativism is cultural suicide. When all are equivalent, none is better. When all are equivalent, right and wrong loses significance. The inevitable consequence of this path is moral decay and societal disintegration.
That is not to mean theism is the solution, as intolerant theism will lead us only to fascism, whether it be islamofascisim of hindufascism or whatever else.
The middle path of moral tolerance, meaning there are rights and there are wrongs and while we may not expect you to be right, we certainly will not tolerate you being wrong on us.
wretchard:
A more apt metaphor for the behavior you describe in this sentence: "The neocon conspiracy explanations are too small in scale -- even if true -- to account for what's happening." is probably that of a drunk.
It always seems to be someone else's fault, and if everyone in the drunk's life would follow his script, his life (and everyone else's) would be perfect.
The funny thing is that this attitude imposes victimhood on the holder. To say: "I have no part in the areas of my life that aren't perfect" denies any power to change those areas. It also disrupts any sort of valuation on behavior. If the consequences I experience have no relation to my actions, then my actions have no value. This, of course, leads to the irrational (but highly rationalized) behavior that anyone with a drunk in the family can attest to.
The positions get less rational, the behavior gets more radical, and pretty soon all the honest friends are gone -- its just a bunch of people with the same problems talking each other up like drunks in a skid row bar. I'm thinking of starting a Liberals Anonymous program and holding interventions.
huan:
Can you have theocratic facism in a society that has multiple gods? I mean the Thug cult was as Hindu as Ghandi... I'm not sure Hindufacism is entirely feasible.
m.a.:
Please do relate some examples of these "Right p.c." incidences. I'm fascinated at the idea.
haun:
Nobody can dispute the fact that all men are NOT created equally. The very idea is a corruption natural law and is the core problem with communism and socialism.
We are made as unique individuals, differing by degree in talents and abilities.
By making that statement I am not at odds with the Constitutional ideal of men being treated equally by law. Something that neither communism, socialism nor tyranny can guarantee. I should say that our system is not perfect but it at least does attempt some objective standard of protection.
A major problem I have with the postmodern left is that, in order to survive, it cannot allow itself to be exposed for what it truly is, which is a corruption of liberal application of law. They call themselves liberal although they are nothing of the sort. It is as close to fasciism as anything.
Their double standards have to be cloaked in some way so as to give the impression that they know the secret perscription to all that ails us. Abortion (murder of an innocent unborn human) is tolerated because it represents freedom (from resposibility)& choice for the femminist. Death for cold-blooded murderers of innocents, however can't be tolerated. That would be playing God and be judgemental.
Under this ambivilence and moral subjectivism up becomes down, red becomes blue and all the pretzel logic and vitriol they spew is right and everything else is wrong simply because they say so. To not allow them that would be mean-spirited which should get us thrown in jail long enough 'till their memory runs out.
"Does liberalism mean the death of the West? No, but even if it did, anything but liberalism means the West is already dead."
Was there ever a better description of a monoculture or established religion? Was there a West before liberalism? Can there be a West after liberalism? No and no. There cannot if Liberalism and the West are one and the same.
The demise of liberalism won't mean a return to the some earlier era, where everyone will go back to watching Father Knows Best. It will simply end the artificial timeout which sees liberalism as the End of History. History hasn't ended which means liberalism in its current form must change or perish.
m.a. says:
"Conservatives are the moral relativists these days, willing to give up on their supposed core beliefs (such as freedom from government intrusion) if it helps Bush or gets a few extra wars started. I stand proudly against moral relativism, against Bush's big government, against Kimball and Steyn's shallow, stunted, distorted caricature of Western culture, against fear and cowardice. I stand for what is best about Western civilization and Western tradition: liberalism."
True that the Republican leadership in the evecutive and legislative branches have become pro-big government and more "liberal" if that's how you define it.
I would call it a new pragmetism that may be just as dangerous. It's all about politics and winning elections - staying in power - wooing the electorate. Washington may be the last place in the world to find a truly principled trustworthy leader.
In the eighties, I commented that John F Kennedy woulld scarcely recognize the Democratic establishment of today.
Today I say that the Republican establishment has become so pragmatic that it has displaced the left leaners.
Where ya gonna go?
I wonder sometimes if Europe’s enervation is less due to the trauma inflicted by the world wars than by the “Spirit Drain” due to the creation of colonies, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. All of those countries were started – and occasionally refreshed – by people who got disgusted with Europe and left. This process is still going on - and not just in Europe. Across the street from me lives a man from Liverpool with his wife, whose parents came from Italy in the early 1970’s.
It is sometimes difficult to imagine the current citizens of the United States emulating our pioneers, and it is even more difficult to imagine the current occupants of Europe winning a raw and untamed continent.
What are the long term effects of not only wars that destroy so much of a country’s bravest youth but also the fact that options exist that enable the more spirited to just chuck the whole nonsense and leave for greener pastures?
"Please try to explain to folks like Ardsgaine that Christ gives us true hope and loving strength in the face of pandemic, self-righteous sinfulness."
Y'know, Evanston, I can't even explain to people like you, that I love "the RIGHTEOUSNESS that is Christ". I say righteousness and you hear Jesus. I try again, saying "the righteousness that is Christ", hoping to help you see, but too often you turn back to your fixation on Jesus, ignoring the importance of "righteousness that is Christ", in part because you wait for "Jesus" return.
But I accept the return of "the righteousness that is Christ", in His New Name (Rev2:17), with followers having His New Name (Rev 3:12).
You "scoff and deny our Lord who redeems us" has returned, even when I point out to you that OUR HOLY SCRIPTURE, IIPeter 2:1, warns us that to 'scoff and deny' is a damnable heresy! Evanston, "damnable heresy"!
I'm not scoffing and I'm not denying our Lord has returned. "For those who love His coming, He shall return", for those who want to find reasons to deny His return, its as if He never returned at all...
But if He IS Who He says He is, then it matters not if some don't believe, for He shows forth 'the righteousness that is Christ', albeit in the human form which was born in 1813 and died in 1892, whether I believe in Him or not.
And that leads to sin: He tells us many directives and guides, any of which serve to save us from 'missing the mark', as 'sin' means.
O Emigrants!
The tongue I have designed for the mention of Me, defile it not with detraction. If the fire of self overcome you, remember your own faults and not the faults of My creatures, inasmuch as every one of you knoweth this own self better than he knoweth others.
And pertinent to the MACRO- view of this thread vis-a-vis Western civilization:
O Oppressors On Earth!
Withdraw your hands from tyranny, for I have pledged Myself not to forgive any man's injustice. This is My covenant which I have irrevocably decreed in the preserved tablet and sealed it with My glory.
Good old Dr. Jack Kevorkian embodies this liberal nihilistic embracing of suicide. Isn't it strange and disturbing then that the few things liberals believe in with vim and vigor are so persistently destructive? I doubt that Dr. Jack would be in jail if he had confined his "good works" to within the EU. No, rather he would be proclaimed Hero of The Netherlands.
Not Even Dr. Jack could vanquish the worms.
Tiny worms survive shuttle crash
Miniscule research worms kept in special aluminum canisters aboard the doomed space shuttle Columbia survived after plunging from the spacecraft and hitting the ground with an impact 2,295 times the force of Earth's gravity, according to a research paper in December's issue of the journal Astrobiology (click here for PDF).
Seems to me there are two fallacies in most of these arguments:
(1) The "West" and "Europe" are not one and the same thing. I have absolutely no problem with Europe going belly-up and am, indeed, personally nudging that conglomeration of pseudo-superiority over the edge with every opportunity I get. But I think "the West" can equally be defined as America /Canada /Australia (in addition to Britain which may be a survivor of Yurp's downfall) and these countries are all in the rudest of health and brimming with vigor. (Well, Canada's a little peaked, but I think it could be brought back to life if we hooked it up to the right energy infusion systems.)
2. Fallacy the Second: Why must change be seen as annihilation rather than evolution? Don't we *want* to change and expand to a different state? Again, I don't see that leaving cob-webby Yurp behind is going to be that big a deal. Personally, I'm tired of the "clash of civilizations" and would like to start a push to go Out There, and leave the Muslims and the Democrats here on earth to fight it out among themselves.
It seems to me the *real* fear is not the death of "the West" but that crazy Muslims will somehow get their grubby paws on left-over nuclear toys and come after us. We can fend them off in all other ways -- physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, scientifically -- even if there are only three or four big countries of us, and that's leaving out India, Africa and South America who might want to be part of the change(s) and not necessarily on the side of the Islamists. (I leave out Russia and China because they're nuts and can't be predicted or depended upon.)
I think if Steyn wants to be pie-in-the-sky predicting Armageddon, an argument could be equally well made that if what we're doing isn't working -- i.e., no one wants to be tied down with babies any more -- then we need to change it. We certainly have the technology to do that.
Will rayford: I doubt that Dr. Jack would be in jail if he had confined his "good works" to within the EU. No, rather he would be proclaimed Hero of The Netherlands.
I was just thinking that. Now, if we could just send Dr. Jack Kevorkian to Europe... then to the Middle East ... and even to OBL's hide out.
But Mr. m.a, doesn't art express the inner message of the artist? If his inner message is crap, then so is his art.
ma and dan:
A conservative artist is engaged in an entirely different enterprise that what is the mode today. Dan is right; conservative artists and art critics have no power at all in our great cities and universities. They are considered beyond the pale--not serious. Representational art has been junked--in favor of what? Modern art is unredeemable crap because it is in service and expression of nothing larger than the artist himself, his persona, his "ideas," his concepts, etc. Of course that leads to work that is small in spirit.
Like I said, it is a different enterprise that what went on before. There is a grand inheritance in art, as in music, the sciences, writing--and the inheritance of centuries of representational art, for which men and women far better than ourselves gave their lives, they studied and practiced and cared about it and taught it and wrote about it and passed it on--almoste entirely gone. Gone in favor of the sort of preening we see in artists today. It is an enterprise that I do not wish to be associated with.
You can check out my blog to see the sort of art that I am trying to learn how to do. Fortunately there are a few die hards left.
While religion plays a large part in preventing population decline I can’t help how much of the problem is built into the social welfare system? Before social insecurity one reason for a large family was to avoid overburdening any one child in your old age, social insecurity circumvents that because the government will take care of you. Of course for their Ponzi scheme to do that it needs pyramid structured demographics, but now no one feels the needs to play their part.
Dan,
"nd give me a break, even if you ever had a conservative professor unless you were at Bob Jones University or Anapolis I doubt any professor ever treated you in any manner remotely Stalinist of even the political cartoon variety"
What does that mean?
Allison,
Not only Japan, but China, with it's one child policy, is courting demographic disaster. And Russia is possibly in the worst state of all. Very few of Kimball's liberal antinomies can be invoked in those settings, although Steyn's idea that making child-raising uneconomical retains its applicability.
What distinguishes Japan from Europe is the presence of labor sources like the Philippines whose immigrants tend to behave somewhat differently from North Africans and Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe. As practical matter there won't be any cars burned on New Year's Eve in Japan by Filipino "youths".
What's unclear is whether China or Japan, should they one day decide that demographic renewal is in the national interest, will not resurrect it's birthrate in a determined manner. After all, if you can implement a "one child" policy with an iron hand, you can probably implement a "three child" policy. In this sense, neither China nor Japan has 'lost' its will to live or preserve their culture.
Steyn is suggesting that Europe is different: it is aware, cannot help but be aware, that the arithmetic is foreboding (as in badness is happening right now), but it cannot get itself to yell stop. Because to yell stop would be politically incorrect. I'm not sure this perception is simply a bee in Mr. Steyn's bonnet because immigration, borders and nationhood lies at the heart of the most heated of today's European political controversies, whether EU expansion, immigration policy, or the dispute between Mssrs. de Villepin and Sarkozy. Liberals may think that a cabal of conservatives determined to exterminate liberalism have dreamed up this issue but that is an extremely unintelligent and dishonest argument. It is the policies of the last half-century that are in the dock.
One age pretty much lands on top of the next like in the intro to the Wizard of Oz where the house falls on the wicked witch of the east. There's nothing showing but her toes. and even that soon withers.
Burnham was certainly an interesting man. known for his work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, which heavily influenced George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". ... Burnham was a leading Trotskyist in the 1930s, forming what became the Socialist Workers Party ... and left the communist movement altogether and worked for the Office of Strategic Services during the war. After the war he called for an aggressive strategy to undermine Soviet Union power during the Cold War. In 1983 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan."
Orwell's retrospective of Burnham was written before 1950 (Orwell died in 1950) and contains many interesting judgments of Burnham's early thinking and much else, some of which are:
... The only exception I am able to think of (besides James Burnham) is Bernard Shaw, who, for some years at any rate, declared Communism and Fascism to be much the same thing, and was in favour of both of them. But Shaw, after all, is not an Englishman, and probably does not feel his fate to be bound up with that of Britain.
... As late as the autumn of 1945, a Gallup poll taken among the American troops in Germany showed that 51 percent ‘thought Hitler did much good before 1939’. This was after five years of anti-Hitler propaganda. The verdict, as quoted, is not very strongly favourable to Germany, but it is hard to believe that a verdict equally favourable to Britain would be given by anywhere near 51 per cent of the American army.
One of the striking things, to me at least, in the careers of people like Orwell and Camus, as with Burnham above, is how unafraid they were to cross what would now be impenetrable intellectual borders. They illustrate the difference between a liberalism that is the ability to commit while being free to change your mind as new evidence emerges, and the shoddy academic liberalism of today which is the inability to believe in anything at all. Men like Orwell, Camus and Burnham understood the need to act upon their best understanding of the truth, so long as they remained open to counterargument. The cheaper imitations of today are unable to act in the absence of the ultimate truth, whose existence they deny anyway.
Iran's President Ahmadinejad's Resolutions for the New Year.
It seems to me that Europe is just seeing history reassert itself. Religion isn't going away, and falling populations are callimitous. Europe has been here before: the black plague killed about a third of the European population in the 14th century. That is what is happening now, except the agent is age, not a disease. Since we all die of something the result is the same.
The difference is that Renaissance Europe then embarked on a population explosion in the next few centuries, only slowing down a hundred years ago.
What we are going to find out over the next fifty years is how much economic growth is dependent on population growth. If a country doesn't become an advanced capitalist economy before demographic decline sets in it will be in even bigger trouble than Europe is now.
This has obvious implications for the muslim world, where birthrates are declining, though not yet as much as Europe.
Population growth has been one of the biggest boogeymen ever. The problem is that it is hard to imagine a successful society with a falling, aging population. Future students of history, watching the population of the planet decline, will scratch their heads over all the ink spilled over the problem of 'too many people.' The fact that nothing gets done by itself, and that natural resources are useless without someone to use them, seems to be lost on most people. China will pay dearly for its one child policy. That policy may turn out to be what keeps China from becoming the dominant world power. The future United States' 500 million people will be one third of China's 1.5 billion, instead of our curent 300 million being one quarter of 1.2 billion. Worse for China, we may end up with a younger, dynamic, immigrant- rich population against an aging China. Who can tell?
Lastly, I think we are heading for a more religious future. Religious people of most faiths tend to have more children despite economic and social disincentives. Over time the religious proportion of a population may grow. This has happened with Orthodox Jews. After the Holocaust they were reduced to less than 5% of all Jews worldwide. They are now over 25% and growing.
This also has obvious implications for the muslim world, although the religion does not have to be dangerous.
This is akin to what James Taranto refers to as the "Roe Effect," abortion proponents failing to pass on their beliefs to their non- existent children.
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"Men like Orwell, Camus and Burnham understood the need to act upon their best understanding of the truth, so long as they remained open to counterargument"
---
One wonders if thinking freely came more easily when one was not looking over their shoulder every time they uttered something "freely" as we do today.
Certainly people in general, at least adult males in this country, spoke more freely in the past.
The opposite has occurred in my lifetime, whether due to age, political correctness, or personal experience.
...an objective judgement of that being impossible, by me, at least.
m.a. wrote:
"the conservative reaction to Spielberg's Munich is a good example: much of the criticism is classic P.C. in that it condemns the film for raising certain issues (about killing, about terrorism, etc.) without ever engaging with those issues..."
Because conservatives don't think it is an "issue" when innocent people are massacred. Spielberg invites viewers to contemplate mass murderers as "human beings" when those monsters have scoured all humanity from themselves. Spielberg generously invites the viewer to forgive or at least "comprehend" unsurpassed horror visited upon innocent others. But what of the grace and beauty of the Israeli atheletes cut short? Does it count for nothing? By asking us to contemplate the "reason" of the murderers is to equate their acts of murder with the life-enhancing achievemnets of the Israeli atheletes. So, stop: life is not an object lesson in senseless butchery m.a. Life is made for the kinds of achievements of the Israeli atheletes; a murderer is his statement, incapable of making his case to the living.
I have a right not to think senseless murder an "issue". That is not close-mindedness. Maybe as a good talky liberal you can enlightne me about the joys of the knife. Over to you.
TrangBang:
"Carridine, if your ideas are not taken seriously maybe its because you advocate strict adherence to the tenets of an esoteric cult that rejects the Judeo Christian narrative in favor of The Glory of God."
"Carridine, if your ideas are not taken seriously maybe its because you advocate strict adherence to the tenets of an esoteric cult that rejects the Jewish narrative in favor of Christ-ism."
"Carridine, if your ideas are not taken seriously maybe its because you advocate strict adherence to the tenets of an esoteric cult that rejects the Judeo Christian narrative in favor of the Revelation for This Day promised BY the Judeo-Christian prophets."
I suppose that it is my generation--that has lived through the reign of despots such as Hitler, Stalin (et al),Pol Pot,and Mao, and recently, Saddam--that instinctively wants to slap down rising dictators or strongmen before they get going bigtime.
We know what big, really big, casualty lists are, and the suffering they imply. We know that wars and near-wars are a necessary means for slapping these people down. We know that a strong defense is the best way to avoid war. And we know that nipping these men in the bud is preferable to eventually warring all over the globe, with horrible waste in lives and living conditions. We do believe in taking a long view of world affairs.
Most of all, I think, we have a sense of duty to our nation and our people to defend our freedoms and our way of life. This is better done on foreign shores than here in the US.
Prosperity. We're dying of too much prosperity and too long a lifespan. The megacorps that drive our lives have convinced us that we can be young and healthy forever.
Why should we have children when everything we see on the screen, watch on the tube, or read in the ubiquitous ads tells us that we can stay children ourselves for our entire lives?
Greed, as it always does, has made us stupid, and undercut our fitness as a civilization. So we shall pass, as so many civilizations have passed before us, and another shall rise. Blaming "liberals" is a sideshow, an ideological confusion of effect with cause.
My bet's on Asia, BTW, not the Caliphate - they're just too self-constrained to pull it off.
Ideology and property are the keys in this beyond the tipping point world of the BCP. When I was young, I think it was Paul Ehrich and his, seemingly unanswered, Population Bomb argument. For me, the answer was that other societies were not restraining themselves; so social survival superseded. Then to have children you need money, a wife who is comfortable with the level of income for expenses per child. Ideological good such as integration here in the US, which made educating white children more problematical, expensive, for instance, has probably favored reproduction by others.
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