Brother, can you spare a dime?
Ever wonder what a world would look like without America, where security is provided by Europe, the UN and the NGOs? The International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress launched the ENOUGH campaign focused on ending the genocide in the Eastern Congo, Darfur and Northern Uganda.
It is a magnificent effort which should be supported and praised. But a look at the desperate but feisty measures suggested by its founders describe better than anything how soft "soft power" is.
- Can the world stop the Lord's Resistance Army?
- Read the short strategy paper describing "Plan B with Teeth for Darfur"
- Attend the World Series of Poker, a star-studded event to raise awareness and provide assistance to the people of Darfur.
These are all very well but they underscore the extreme difficulty of even attempting to manage world crises the NGO way.
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/06/2007 04:57:00 PM
8 Comments:
Wretchard -- a great deal of this can be ascribed to "feminism" and by that I mean the natural rise of women in politics and culture and as a result their viewpoints being adopted by default as the way to manage difficult issues.
Much of the West's prosperity has been built on the liberation of women in their personal lives and participation in the workforce. These are all good and positive things and no one sensible would want to turn them back.
However, because women generally lose in violent conflicts, and find themselves generally useless excepting the homefront and Rosie the Riveter type roles, they tend to view war and violence as wrong in all cases and "beatable" by soft power.
The extreme of this VT with Cho's victims not being defended by young, strong men (instead it was older family men, elderly Holocaust Survivor Professors, who acted). Or your link the other day about Grumpy Old men, old enough to have existed without the feminizing influence making physical action or violence a marker regardless of circumstances of low status that women avoid.
NGO's represent a very feminine and feminized elite. Of course they suggest nothing but soft power because women and feminized men cannot fight.
The corollary of course is that they are therefore easy prey for those that can, explaining why matriarchy is rare.
What I would imagine the future for the West would hold is a rather wholesale repudiation of feminism and all feminist values. Which in some cases will be rather sad since some things were of worth. But that tends to be the flaw of the West, baby out with the bathwater.
Or feminism provokes the women-less men in East Germany to join Neo Nazi groups.
I thought we were all pretty much in agreement that the key to reforming the Middle East and Islam is making them change how they treat women; i.e., empowering Muslim women to be feminists. That the whole problem there is repression of everyone, which devolves very specifically on repression of women.
But Mr. Whiskey is now saying that to hell with Muslim women, leave them barefoot, pregnant, and in their burka's -- and repeal Western feminism so that *all* the world's women can join them in repression. So that Western men can get back to joining Arab males in doing what manly men do: fighting with each other, blowing shit up and burning shit down.
Imagine that. That mindset has worked even better for the Arabs than feminism has for the NGO's.
This is an opportunity for the French military to lead. Don't laugh -- Mr. Sarkozy may very well order such an advance, especially considering that Mr. Kouchner now leads France's foreign ministry.
With America's moxie in retreat, it may very well be France (yes, France) who leads the free world against al-Qaeda and its allies.
As for matriarchy, Aristotle labelled Sparta a gynekratia and he didn't mean that as a compliment. Matriarchal (and matrilocal) societies among plains Indians were extremely warlike and its men were downright ferocious (and some of them still are). Modern feminism isn't matriarchal -- it's feminized patriarchy. If we had real matriarchy, our men would be real men. Have you ever seen men from the Middle East? They're soft, especially the terrorists. At Thermopylae, the patriarchs were the Persians, not the Spartans!
It's sad how our very ideals of masculinity have been corrupted by ancient Near Eastern patriarchy.
The matriarchal societies Aexis cites were probably so because they were in a high conflict environment, it was an adaption to the men being away in battle so much, and their high death rate.
I'm sure people can donate to NGO's such as Blackwater and Executive Outcomes to solve the Darfur vs Khartoum problem.
This is what used to scare tranzi-progressive elites about George Bush and why the megaphone of disapproval directed at the U.S. has been turned up so loud since his election.
His willingness to eschew the approval of others for doing the right (often difficult) thing (ABM, Kyoto, Iraq) was a mirror held up to their impotent selves.
He challenged the illusion that predators can be charmed with 'understanding', 'outreach' and 'conflict resolution', or that doing anything which displeased them was 'needlessly provocative'.
This is why global elites so desperately want Americans to elect leaders more easily seduced by clever European diplomats, more easily conned by third world grievance hustlers, and more likely to resort to talk and concede when confronted by totalitarian gangsters -- if only to preseve their illusions a little longer.
No Nanchee -- I am explicitly NOT calling for repression of women. Which in the ME amounts mostly to control over women to assure paternity, given that there exists a severe shortage of women due to polygamy and matches are arranged not due to free choice i.e. romantic love.
However the feminist assault on male values of courage, physical bravery, etc. is obvious to anyone. As is the hatred of the upwardly mobile male through traditional avenues of bravery and soldiering etc. Feminists who are essentially upper class white women are obsessed with one thing: organizing society so they may pursue and win the highest status male.
This means among other things the explicit rejection of use of force, the utility and desirablity of military action independent of international approval, and the like. Because such a social structure would reduce the control by wealthy, upper class men and women and open up competition to ambitious young men.
You don't honestly think Feminism has anything to do with improving the lot of women now do you Nanchee? It is merely a means of extending hereditary sinecures to women as well as men, and closing off the ladder to the less well born.
What is the dog that didn't bark? NGOs wishing to use their power to transform the world? No. As their ability to project influence across the globe increases it is utterly unsurprising that they would wish to project power.
What the dog not barking in the night-time is, folks, is the complete rejection of the most obvious means to power in the corrupt and brutal third world: military power. Where is the new East India Company? The Hudson's Bay Trading Company? And so on? With a significant, well organized, and effective military expeditionary force that allows the NGO to act with independence and freedom.
There is a complete rejection of such a thing, despite it's obvious needs. Because such a force is threatening. It brings ambitious young men who wish to advance the ability to do so through physical bravery and intelligence. Profoundly threatening to the new "landed elite" who's "land" consists of influence and power.
Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy: Matriarchal societies are exceedingly rare because they do not work when the neighbors want to conquer you. Which is most of the time. Feminism has no answer but deluded fantasies for aggressive and dangerous powers.
The instability of the Muslim world is likely well related to the scarcity of women for young men (polygamy causes shortages) and thus the willingness to engage in jihad, the utterly unsurprising misogyny (men denied women are unlikely to be favorable to them), and desire to control every aspect of women's lives so that some other man won't snag them or cuckold them. A likely outcome because as with feminists matches are based on status of the man. Sex and the City and the harem are simply two sides of the same coin.
Bernard Lewis notes that in the 1600's Muslim visitors were aghast at the social and sexual freedoms accorded men, and Western visitors appalled at the restrictions in the Levant. The Western model is largely based on individual choice, romantic love, and freedom to marry who you want, with relationships based on trust. A man could go off to work the fields, factories, or what have you and be relatively assured his children would be his, and his wife would not up and leave for a higher status man.
More importantly, unlike a seething pool of frustrated young men in the East (ever wonder WHY 72 Virgins, and they are virgins? Because that means no other man has had them or will take them away from them), the opportunity for marriage by upward mobility (chief among these being military service) is profoundly different.
Take the Greatest Generation (which feminists loathe): a man could serve, if he survived he had the GI bill, could get an education and advance himself, marry and have his own wife in the safe suburbs. To feminists this nuclear family is hell on Earth (likely because the man and his offspring will compete with their own) and have tried their best to destroy it. Certainly feminists have been at the forefront of attacking force, the military, and the troops at every turn, preferring "soft power" and feminist harangues.
Which has in large part succeeded in sending the message: the troops or men who exhibit physical bravery and courage are not what women seek in mates. Hence the passivity that feminists encourage when Cho attacks at VT, or the failure of the young men to aid the Police Captain in his sixties. That only older pre-feminist men in both cases acted is instructive.
The old Greatest Generation balance, of both freedom and opportunity, served us well. Unfortunately the dynastic impulses of feminists (who are merely the feminine side of the liberal dynasts) have closed this down in favor of upper class passivity.
But ask yourself why NGO's have not formed their own Blackwater, considering the freedom of action and power it would confer. I suspect you will find your answer there.
“However, because women generally lose in violent conflicts, and find themselves generally useless excepting the homefront and Rosie the Riveter type roles, they tend to view war and violence as wrong in all cases and "beatable" by soft power.” – W
In history past, women generally got to have sex with new, stronger, dark strangers when their men lost at war. Women see war against their homeland as a possibility to extend their genetic pool to new lands and live new and romantic lives and possibilities. Perhaps this would explain why so many harbor fantasies of rape and abduction. Sick, I know, but women are not threatened by the Mongols the same way as men are and so, nowadays, wont support men in their desire to protect their civilization. OK now, this is a broad over simplification about female attitudes about war but still, I think there are some ancient genetics present along these lines.
PS. The Spartan matriarchs were proud to send their boys off to war.
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