Posted on 12/05/2002 3:15:51 PM PST by TomB
I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark. What's wrong with the Islamic world is relatively straightforward. With Europe, it's harder to foresee any happy endings. The good news is we won't have to worry about another Hitler or Mussolini because, on present reproductive trends, the Italians and Germans are going to be out of business in a couple of generations. Few people have ever been in less need of lebensraum. Instead, the European Union figures it will require another 50 million immigrants in the next few years just to maintain a big enough working population to fund the lavish social programs its vast retired army of baby boomers expects to enjoy.
The main source of European immigration is Muslim youth from North Africa and the Middle East. Whether these are the chaps to keep Hans and Pierre in the style to which they've become accustomed is a moot point: According to some Scandinavian statistics, 40 percent of those on welfare are immigrants. And, while it's not true that every immigrant on welfare is an Islamic terrorist, it's a good rule of thumb that every Islamic terrorist in Europe has been on welfare, living in radicalized ghetto cultures with nothing to do but sit around the flat plotting the jihad all day. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, who recently held a pro-Osama rally in London, has demanded the imposition of Islamic law in Britain, and at one time called for the assassination of then-Prime Minister John Major. Given that it's Mr. Major's ministry, and now Tony Blair's, that has financially supported Sheikh Omar ever since he arrived 15 years ago, that seems a tad ungrateful.
In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, Europe's young Muslims are less assimilated than their parents and grandparents. Instead of becoming more European, they're becoming more Islamist. If the "root cause" of September 11 is Islam's difficulty with modernity, we shouldn't be surprised that this manifests itself less in Indonesia than in Holland, the epitome of the boundlessly tolerant post-nationalist state, a liberal utopia of cannabis cafés and gay marriage--for now. Sheikh Omar's demand for the imposition of sharia doesn't seem so absurd when you consider that in 20 years the majority of the Dutch under 18 will be Muslim.
A multiculturalist society has a hard time even discussing these things. In the advanced technocratic Euro-state, almost any issue worth talking about has been ruled taboo. Continental voters, faced with a choice between Eurodee and Eurodum, have been turning elsewhere. The beneficiaries of this tune-out, in Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and elsewhere, don't have much in common--some are maverick magnates, some fascist nostalgists, others gay hedonists. What unites them is what they're against: the traditional European cultural consensus that's now sleepwalking its way to suicide.
In Holland, a militant vegan killed the flamboyant homosexual nativist Pim Fortuyn during the election campaign. Surely the first time in Dutch political history that a fruitarian had killed a fruit Aryan. This murder is an apt summation of what Marx would call the "internal contradictions" of the rainbow coalition.
Popular politicians who survive their campaigns shouldn't expect a congratulatory telegram from the grandees at the European Union. In February, the Belgian foreign minister, speaking on behalf of the E.U., threatened sanctions against Italy if its citizens voted for Umberto Bossi's Northern League. Those Continentals who attacked President Bush for presuming "to tell people who they can vote for" when he gave an anti-Yasser Arafat speech forget that in Europe they do it all the time.
Before it too offended the E.U., the perfect emblem of the post-war European state was Austria, where regardless of how you voted you wound up with the same center-left-right coalition government. That was the whole point. Europe's post-war political structures were specifically designed to stifle the populace's baser urges. Indeed, Europe has been so focused on what went wrong in the past it's been blind to what might go wrong in the future. The future is now here. A collapsed birthrate, accelerating immigration, lavish welfare, an evasive political culture, phony transnational structures: For Europe, this is the Perfect Storm.
If they stay true to form, they will plunder Europe and leave it a devastated wasteland. There may be more of them, but they won't be any stronger.
Traditional religious belief may very well be one factor. But it isn't the only factor.
Our form of government which allows for different parties to hold the White House and the Congress is also one of those factors. It's held us closer to the middle than the European parliamentary systems have.
With the western shift to socialistic thinking (and we are certainly not immune to it here) we'd probably have gone down the same road as the Euros and the Canadians had we been left with a parliament instead of the Constitution.
You religious types wish to forget that many of us on the right are not religious at all -- we're here, though. And I guess we help each other.
In Western Europe, "So far, so good."
Sell your Euros.
Is the very idea of defending your culture now taboo?
Stunning news. Frightening, even.
The Dutch are forgetting who they are. Some, anyway.
Or they are not proud of who they are. Which is the same thing.
Not to say that we don't have the same problem in the United States.
This from a doughty little country that colonized almost a third of the known world, using small, round-bottomed boats...
I suppose that I can just kiss off my modest investment in a European stock fund, made eight years ago, when I didn't know any better.
The caveat, of course, is that we don't make the same mistake that Europe is in the process of doing: destroying our national identity.
Is the very idea of defending your culture now taboo?
Not if you're a Muslim...
So true...and the Democratic Socialists in this nation seem to think these nations are a good model. (Remember how often we heard "the Europeans are laughing at us for making such a big deal out of having a sleazeball like Clinton defiling the Oval Office"?)
This nation didn't become great by following any other nation's lead.
As for your point about their being more afraid of Bush and the "Christian Right", such witness to the fact that this is the Truth that the Deceiver does not want those he is leading astray to discover is seen all the time. One can have lengthy cocktail party discourse on the various aspects of Buddhism, or Islam or Hinduism or any world religion, but mention the name of Christ and people start getting "offended". It's a phenomenon that is fascinating to hear people, such as myself, talk about the experience of having been blind members of the wrong army in the continuing spiritual warfare that most in the world have no idea we all are active participants in and have the blinders fall away.
Changed lives!...the only tangible proof of the Truth of the Bible and God's wonderful plan of salvation...PRAISE GOD!
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