Posted on 09/25/2006 11:18:13 PM PDT by NZerFromHK
If our cultural past isn't worth defending, why should our future be?
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Five years after the (a) all too predictable blowback to U.S. foreign policy born of decades of poverty and desperation or (b) controlled explosion by Bush-Cheney-Halliburton-Zionist agents (delete according to taste), I get a lot of mail on the lines of: C'mon, man, cut to the chase--are we gonna win or lose?
Well, let me come at that in an evasive non-chase-cutting manner and circle around to it very gradually. I gave a speech in Sydney last month and among the audience was a lady called Pauline Hanson. A decade ago, Miss Hanson exploded onto the political scene Down Under on an explicitly nativist platform, forming the One Nation Party and arguing that Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians." She was mocked mercilessly as a former fish'n'chip shop owner, a 14-year-old school-leaver, an old slapper of dubious romantic attachments, etc. On the last point, I must say, having seen her in a little black number on the TV show Dancing with the Stars, I thought she was a fine-looking woman, an impression confirmed when she stood up to ask her question.
Nonetheless, her question was a little overwrought. After some remarks about "grave concern for Australia," flag-burning, immigrants who "do not want to assimilate," and "a push for multiculturalism," she ended with: "This is not just happening in Australia. We see it happening worldwide, as you said, in the western societies. I want to ask you who's doing it, why is it happening?"
Now I don't happen to agree with all the "swamped by Asians" stuff. An ability to prioritize is essential in politics and, simply as a practical matter, there's no point in our present struggle in making enemies of large numbers of potential allies. So I took refuge in a big philosophical answer, and said I thought it all went back to the battlefields of the Somme. The ruling classes of the great powers believed they had lost their moral authority in the First World War and, although they rallied sufficiently to defeat Nazism and fascism and eventually communism, they never truly recovered their cultural confidence.
There's always been a market for self-loathing in free societies: after all, the most effectively anti-western idea of all was itself an invention of the West, cooked up by Karl Marx while sitting in the Reading Room of the British Library. The obvious defect in communism is that it's decrepit and joyless and therefore of limited appeal. Fascism, likewise, had many takers in those parts of the cultural West that were politically deficient--i.e., continental Europe--but it had minimal support in the heart of the political West--i.e., the English-speaking world. So the counter-tribalists came up with something subtler and suppler than communism and fascism--the slipperiest ism of all. The great strength of "multiculturalism" is not that it's an argument against the West but that it short-circuits the possibility of argument. If there's no difference between English Common Law and native healing circles and Tamil Tiger fundraisers and gay marriage and sharia, then what's to discuss? Even to want to debate the merits is to find oneself on the wrong side--for, if the core belief of multiculturalism is that there's nothing to discuss and everything's equally nice and fluffy, then to favour honest argument puts you, by definition, on the extremist side.
I'm sure most of my colleagues at the Western Standard have found themselves in this situation on call-in shows or at public meetings. You point out, for example, that there are very few "free" Muslim societies. And your questioner retorts: "Well, that's just your opinion." And so you pull up a few facts about GDP per capita, freedom of religion, life expectancy, women's rights, etc. And she says: "Well, you're just imposing your values on them." And you realize that the great advantage of cultural relativism is that it renders argument impossible. There is no longer enough agreed reality. It's like playing tennis with an opponent who thinks your ace is a social construct.
To be sure, there are still those who are beyond the pale. Indeed, in a culture of boundless tolerance, there are all kinds of things we won't tolerate. Hating Jews, for example, is strictly verboten. Well, it's verboten if you're an elderly white male of German extraction, like Reni Sentana-Ries (formerly Reinhard Gustav Mueller) of Edmonton. Herr Sentana-Ries was sentenced to 16 months in jail by the Court of Queen's Bench for anti-Semitic screeds on his widely unread website in which he referred to Jews as "subhuman" "debauched" "demons."
On the other hand, if you're not an elderly white male of German extraction, if you're a large crowd of persons of, ahem, non-German extraction and you march through downtown Calgary with placards reading "DEATH TO THE JEWS," nobody prosecutes you. If you're the A-list imams at the Grand Mosque of Stockholm and you sell cassettes referring to Jews as "the brothers of pigs and apes" and urging believers to go out and kill them, Sweden's chancellor of justice, Goran Lambertz, says no problem, these are just the routine designations "used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict"--i.e., threatening to kill Jew pigs is just part of the vibrant multicultural tapestry. The president of Iran, like the hapless Herr Sentana-Ries, is also a Holocaust denier and one with rather more advanced plans for resuming implementation of the final solution. But he gets photo ops with the UN secretary-general and EU officials.
In other words, Jew-hating isn't the problem, only Jew-hating by certain narrowly defined types of Jew-haters. Even white men can get away with Jew-hating these days--not the old-school neo-Nazi white-supremacist jackboots-a-go-go Jew-hating, but certainly the new school of Jews-are-today's-Nazis disproportionate ambulance-targeting neo-apartheid Jew-hating.
The Fuehrer isn't coming out of retirement and, even if he does, there aren't enough Jews left in Europe to man a decent genocide. And it seems oddly apposite that the more we fetishize an extinct enemy the more Jews in Britain and Australia and even Montreal are targeted by the new Jew-haters. The question is: what other than Hitler is our society prepared to make a moral judgment over? Bernard Lewis, the West's pre-eminent scholar of Islam, worked for British intelligence through the grimmest hours of the Second World War. "In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told The Wall Street Journal a few months ago. "It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy."
That first is the most important: it's not just that "we don't know who we are" but that cultural relativism strips the question of its basic legitimacy. In Britain, they used to say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the sort of line it's easy to mock as a lot of Victorian hooey. But it contains an important truth. This present conflict will be won (if at all) in the kindergarten classes of America's grade schools, and Canada's, and Britain's and Europe's. Because the resolve necessary to win a war can't be put on and taken off like a suit of armour. It has to be bred in the bone, and sustained by the broader institutions of society. And the typical western education, even when it's not telling you that your country's principal legacy is racism and oppression, teaches history in a vacuum--random facts, a few approved figures, but no overarching heroic narrative. And, if the past isn't worth defending, why should the future be?
Which brings me back to where we came in: are we gonna win or lose? I'd say right now the best bet for much of the world is a slow ongoing incremental defeat, the kind most folks don't notice until it's too late. That's to say, in 20 years' time many relatively pleasant parts of the planet are going to be a lot less pleasant. That doesn't mean "Islamofascism" or "radical Islam" or even just plain "Islam" is going to win. But it's interesting that big-shot analysts in Moscow and Beijing have concluded that, just as Hizb'allah is a useful proxy for Iran, so the broader jihad can be a useful (if unwitting) proxy for Russia and China. I doubt that will work out too well for them in the long run, but they're not wrong to conclude that a civilization's overwhelming military dominance, economic dominance and technological dominance count for naught if it's ideologically insecure. The issue is self-defence. If you're a genuine cultural relativist--if you really believe our society is no better or worse than any other--you're about to get the opportunity not just to talk the talk but to walk the walk. Good luck.
a civilization's overwhelming military dominance, economic dominance and technological dominance count for naught if it's ideologically insecure. The issue is self-defence. If you're a genuine cultural relativist--if you really believe our society is no better or worse than any other--you're about to get the opportunity not just to talk the talk but to walk the walk. Good luck.
Most of the libertarians I know in New Zealand tend to be self-loathing leftists except when it comes to economics. Many of them are out-and-out cultural relativists. Take heed the words of Steyn, these libertarians.
Ping!
Meanwhile, their fellow travelers in Britain turned out for an anti-war pow-wow. Moonbat Media was there to capture the keffiyehs and peace signs and stickers like this one. Look closely:
It says "Stop Dictatorship Now. Support A Caliphate." I'm not kidding. They're quite popular.
bump or later read
Great piece by Steyn. He nails it. I especially like the final sentences.
Et Dona Ferentes - Rudyard Kipling
In extended observation of the ways and works of man,
From the Four-mile Radius roughly to the Plains of Hindustan:I have drunk with mixed assemblies, seen the racial ruction rise,And the men of half Creation damning half Creation's eyes.
I have watched them in their tantrums, all that Pentecostal crew,French, Italian, Arab, Spaniard, Dutch and Greek, and Russ and Jew,Celt and savage, buff and ochre, cream and yellow, mauve and white,But it never really mattered till the English grew polite;
Till the men with polished toppers, till the men in long frock-coats,Till the men who do not duel, till the men who war with votes,Till the breed that take their pleasures as Saint Lawrence took his grid,Began to "beg your pardon" and-the knowing croupier hid.
Then the bandsmen with their fiddles, and the girls that bring the beer,Felt the psychological moment, left the lit Casino clear;But the uninstructed alien, from the Teuton to the Gaul,Was entrapped, once more, my country, by that suave, deceptive drawl.
As it was in ancient Suez or 'neath wilder, milder skies,
I "observe with apprehension" how the racial ructions rise;
And with keener apprehension, if I read the times aright,
Hear the old Casino order: "Watch your man, but be polite.
“Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how -`Nous sommes allong ar notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'"
So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far..."Let 'em have it!" and they had it, and the same was merry war - Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot - Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot.
Then the oil-cloth with its numbers, like a banner fluttered free;Then the grand piano cantered, on three castors, down the quay;White, and breathing through their nostrils, silent, systematic, swift - They removed, effaced, abolished all that man could heave or lift.
Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle runs - The pitfall of the stranger but the bulwark of thy sons -Measured speech and ordered action, sluggish soul and un - perturbed,Till we wake our Island-Devil-nowise cool for being curbed!
When the heir of all the ages "has the honour to remain,"
When he will not hear an insult, though men make it ne'er so plain,When his lips are schooled to meekness, when his back is bowed to blows -Well the keen aas-vogels know it-well the waiting jackal knows.
Build on the flanks of Etna where the sullen smoke-puffs float - Or bathe in tropic waters where the lean fin dogs the boat - Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite - But oh, beware my Country, when my Country grows polite!
"Which brings me back to where we came in: are we gonna win or lose? I'd say right now the best bet for much of the world is a slow ongoing incremental defeat, the kind most folks don't notice until it's too late. That's to say, in 20 years' time many relatively pleasant parts of the planet are going to be a lot less pleasant..."
I find some comfort in this (not much, to be sure): "most folks" don't ever notice, anyway, so they don't matter. So long as the US, Canada, Australia, Poland, Japan, and a few others notice, at least those areas will be safe. The UK always finds a way to muddle through somehow, and if Sweden can turn rightwards like it did last week, there's hope for almost anyplace.
As for the rest, well, nothing's forever, especially not something as aggressively primitive as fascistic Mohammedanism.
People from some cultures get along much better with western culture than people from other cultures. And people of one culture aren't getting along well with any of the others.
Most New Zealand conservatives (and those US conservatives/libertarians fond og NZ) will stab me for saying this, but I believe all the achievements of market reforms will come to a nought if we no longer feel what we stand is the right one, and we are willing to defend it, and the importance of morals as society's fabric.
New Zealand may well score high on economic freedom, but its pacifism and social liberalism will be the cancer that kills it in the long term.
I do believe I've heard that before. Steyn is hardly what I'd categorize as a defeatist but this stuff was common currency during the darker days of the Cold War. It was with considerable resentment that its purveyors in France, for example, woke up one day to find the "inevitable" victors in ruins, and they've never really forgiven the real victors for it.
I don't think they're going to be given the luxury of riding this one out as they did the last one. That they were able to ride it out is the principal reason that multiculturalism has managed to gain cultural dominance essentially unopposed. That is the ideology of the intellectually lazy, a refusal to make a judgment, to take a stand, because they didn't have to before and why now? Well, because this isn't that and now isn't then, and it's time to drop the pretense and make some hard decisions. But why trouble to decide when one never had to before? Because now one must. And that's not going to be an easy sell.
"Then up spoke brave Horatius
the Captain of the Gate
'To every man upon this Earth
death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds
for the ashes of his Fathers
and the Temples of his Gods'."
From "Lays of Ancient Rome" by Lord Thomas B. MacCauley
Not much of this sentiment in the West today.
Until it becomes painful NOT to take a stand, many of our citizens won't. It is very easy to simply immerse yourself in your job and family. Many people probably don't REALLY believe that America, as a whole, is vulnerable at all. After all, we've been on top a long time.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Steyn is, as always, correct. We face two huge enemies: the Islamo-fascists and the leftists. Both take turns, in their own inimitable destructive ways, to undermine and ultimately kill western civilization.
Isn't that a DeadHead button? If only the Islamists would listen to Jerry, they'd get straightened out (and start smoking more).
"In our time, the greatest sin one can be guilty of is not saying the right thing but taking a stand at all in the first place."
That's true. Yeats': "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
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