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A couple of days ago I published the following comments in response to a Mark Steyn column in which I tried to grapple with the why of it, why do liberals willfully turned their faces from the reality of the Islamic fascist threat and court a new dark age if we succumb?

The rabbi and I both agree on the symptoms of the disease. I put the label "cultural Marxism" on the collection of symptoms which are crippling us in our efforts to fight this expert global, generational, war for existence. I also distinguish between the liberal elitists and their useful idiots, the latter class consisting of unwitting dupes who exhibit the same symptoms but for reasons that are passive rather than aggressive. The elites I see as driven by reckless ambition.

Here's my take:

All of this is a direct result of the lethal legacy of THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL which gave birth to cultural Marxism which renders the elites of the left incapable of dealing with Muslim terrorists as Muslims. This disease has infected Europe where it has spread on the continent and, as Melanie Phillips pointed out in her book, LONDONISTAN, even Great Britain suffers from a severe infection. In America, the virus is most obvious in the blue states. Nevertheless, we were only a few electoral votes in Florida and 60,000 popular votes in Ohio away from slipping down into the swamps of multiculturalism (Cultural Marxism). If that should happen, we will be hopelessly vulnerable to Muslim terrorism and perhaps even ultimate rule as a Muslim caliphate.

I am of the opinion that when Marc Steyn wrote the following it could have as aptly applied to The Cultural Marxism of the left:

"Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world."

We are in world war against 1.2 billion Muslims or some fanatical fraction thereof. They are maniacal, suicidal, and homicidal. They are not amenable to diplomacy, blandishment, reason, bribery or Western Enlightenment. It is a very formidable enemy.

To have any hope of winning a global, asymmetrical, and generational war with these people we must have our own house in order. We do not because we are undermined by the lethal legacy of THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL: Cultural Marxism.

Pan nationalism (which really means the absence of nationalism), anti-Americanism, feminism (anti-paternalism), atheism (anticlericalism), extreme environmentalism (especially extreme global warming), anti-racism (group victimology), homosexual activism (anti-family hatred), etc. are all excressences of Cultural Marxism. This doctrine was explicitly fashioned to break down the resistance of Western civilization to communism.

It was designed to pave the way for the acceptance of the Russian Revolution in Germany in the 1920s. In doing so it carved out areas against the Western culture which it saw as bulwarks against communism: the family, the Church, the school. Thus it was perfectly positioned at the time of the ostensible and apparent failure of communism at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall to convert the left fully from an economic Marxism to a Cultural Marxism. That is what we have today.

I am coming to the conclusion that the elites in the left are not purblind, not the misguided victims of their own worldview, but cynical high-stakes gamblers who risk plunging themselves and us into a new dark age if it will enhance their own chances to rule. Unless one believes that the top elitists on the left genuinely do not see the threat to Western civilization posed by a Muslim theocracy, there is no other plausible explanation. After all, Muslim fundamentalists stand for everything repugnant to the left-at least on a superficial level: the belief in God; rule by theocracy; the virtual enslavement of women; repudiation of the scientific method; superstition, etc. life in such a society should be utterly insupportable to leftists. Yet they undermine the war against terrorism at every turn, they oppose the Patriot Act, they oppose international telephone surveillance, they oppose vigorous interrogation, they oppose incarceration, to list just a few. Why?

How did Lenin behave as he was taking over power in Russia? He negotiated a sellout deal for peace through appeasement with imperial Germany. Mao behaved even more scurrilously. Because of biased reporting of it is commonly believed in America that it was the Communists in China, rather than the Nationalists who were believed to be corrupt and passive, who were aggressive in fighting the Japanese in World War II. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact Mao betrayed his nationalist allies quite often to the Japanese and otherwise exploited the war to defeat the Nationalists while virtually undertaking no action against the Japanese.

At the time Mao was fully aware of the rape of Nanking and brutality which the Japanese had visited upon his people. He deliberately courted the defeat of China and subjected his fellow Chinese to further brutality in order to advance the interests of communism and especially his own personal lust for power. This was the pattern of Mao's life, Lenin's life, and Stalin's life.

I believe that the elitists on the left, not the useful idiots, are playing the same game.

First, you overrate the importance of the frankfurt school, which had some cultural influence among pinhead socialists certainly, and helped peddle various ideologies to the contemporary left through the 60s or so, but was just one type out of many that all shared a complete unwillingness to blame anything about hard left thought for the disasters of the 20th century, which were systematically somebody else's fault. That somebody morphs gradually into a loose association of all capitalism (or moralism, for that matter) with fascism, that becomes more and more conspiracy-nutty-paranoid as time goes on.

"there is no other plausible explanation."

Sure, there are about a dozen. I'll give you some reports from the front about what the elite left actually thinks and believes.

"After all, Muslim fundamentalists stand for everything repugnant to the left-at least on a superficial level:"

True, but they also fight the same oppressive capitalist fascists that the left dreams it is on the point of losing to (that's the rest of us, for those in Rio Linda), which will of course plunge us into the endless dark night of fascism.

Contemporary leftists think George Bush is Hitler, that the war on terror is the new politics of fear, that mankind is being manipulated by shadowy corporate and cynical political cabals into endless war in order to perpetuate the power of those cabals, raves about the military industrial complex, diligently researches the history of Germany and the rise of fascism and reads tea leaves looking for signs it is happening here (in the US, not Iran), expects near term total economic collapse and/or hyperinflation, about half think capitalism has never actually worked and must be rotten at the bottom, another third think freedom to print money and a spread of non profit enterprise can smash the corporate oligarchy, etc.

And I am talking about hundred millionaire dot com tycoons, movie stars, full professors adn brilliant researchers - not muttering bums down at the Greyhound terminal. This is what they talk about over dessert on Nantucket after a day out on their boat, or at scientific conferences when they are unwinding in the bar after the lectures etc.

You cannot possible overrate their simple paranoia, driven by political pessimism and a pomposity that can capture light by gravitational pull. The left experiences short term loss of power to the likes of Bush and Cheney as something on the order of the fall of Rome.

>>>>>We are in world war against 1.2 billion Muslims or some fanatical fraction thereof. They are maniacal, suicidal, and homicidal.

People of the Middle East, whether they be Arab or Kurd, have a long history of being cutthroats of one kind or another.... murderers, thieves and liars. Its been a way of life for several thousand years. Mohammad came along and created Islam. Islam unified the people of the Middle East behind a religion that promotes jihad, violence and death to all non-believers. Death to all infidels.

In the 20th century, the discovery of great oil reserves in the ME gave these followers of Islam, these religious fanatics and jihadist killers, huge monetary gains and a pathway to the best education money could buy. Many of them took advantage of every opportunity that came along. Osama Bin Laden is the perfect example. These Islamofascists don't just want the west out of their homelands. They want to take control of the entire world, spreading their religious fanaticism to ever corner of the globe.

Its true, right now western civilization led by the USA is unprepared for prosecuting a long term war against these warriors of Mohammad. The people of the free world have grown complacent, lazy and are far too easily intimidated. Instead of wasting time attempting to understand every detail about these terrorist barbarians, we need to realize, its kill or be killed. You can't negotiate with people who dwell in a religious and spiritual world of the 8th century, and who have no respect for human life, whatsoever.

Muslim radicals want the west to fight a long protracted war against the forces of Islam, in the hope that this will wear down the worlds democracies and make it easier to conquer the infidels. They've made a good start over the last 25 years. I doubt they'll be ending their hostilities and aggressions anytime soon. If the democracies of western civilzation don't face this enemy head on, in the end, the Islamofascists will be the victors and we will be under their jackboot of totalitarianism.

We can't afford to play this war by their rules, we need to start fighting this war using OUR rules. Some of the same rules we employed against the nazi's, imperialists and communists from wars past. We can't wait until the Islamofascists nuke a European or US city to understand that either we kill them, or they'll surely kill us. Maybe that's what it will take for America's anti-war left and the anti-war Eurosocialists to finally get off their butts and join in the fight. Freedom is under attack from the forces of evil.

As President Ronald Reagan once said:

""Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

When someone asked Ronald Reagan, what his strategy was for fighting the Cold War, he gave a simple answer: “We win; they lose.” I like that strategy.