The Ark and the Titanic
In our indulgent multicultural society, it has become a rule of conduct that one must neither insult nor restrict the expression of another’s religion even if the price we pay for our overweening tolerance is individual suffering and cultural upheaval. But of course, the multicultural ideology of laissez-faire is fundamentally duplicitous and is applied selectively, for Judaism has recently come under fire in the form of anti-Zionism and Christianity tends to be regarded with suspicion, if not contempt. The faith which has been the greatest beneficiary of such relaxed, insidious and self-immolating attitudes is, naturally, Islam, although few will admit this in official and public discourse. As former Islamic zealot Ibn Warraq asserts in Why I Am Not a Muslim, “Western scholars and Islamicists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals. … They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam.”
It is no easy task to get one’s mind around the fact that we live in a society whose intellectual vanguard and its numerous adherents have taken up the case for unstinting immigration, whose chief stipendiaries are the growing number of Muslim immigrants many of whom refuse to integrate into the majority culture and, indeed, are not required or persuaded to do so, owing to the principles of the multicultural ethos. Newcomers are not urged to assimilate but to maintain their cultural identities and usages, even if the practices they import from their countries of origin are, by Western standards, primitive, atavistic or barbaric. Unless indicted for war crimes, everyone is welcome to make their “contribution” to the so-called cultural mosaic.
This is a policy blunder from which we may not recover. It is a grave error to conceive of society as a sort of gigantic and permissive Noah’s Ark in which every creature almost without exception is welcomed and given sanctuary, even those engaged in boring holes in the timber, throwing their bunkmates overboard and blowing up the wheelhouse. Such is the multicultural model currently in vogue and in the long run it doesn’t work. As Salim Mansur, author of Delectable Lie, contends in a recent article, the time has come to admit “the failure of official multiculturalism in securing social harmony, or advancing national interest.” If we do not rethink the premises of that species of demagogic preferentialism we call multiculturalism and its attendant language of obfuscation, the ship of state will eventually founder.
Roger Scruton in The West and the Rest sees the multicultural idea as devolving into “a form of apartheid” in which the newcomer may give his allegiance to his own group rather than to the environing political culture which sustains him, and may even regard the state which defends his freedom and subsidizes his existence as a legitimate target for destruction. “People who see all law, all social identity, and all loyalty as issuing from a religious source,” he writes, “cannot really form part of this political culture, and will not recognize either the obligation to the state or the love of country on which it is founded.” Admission to the culture and the political order must be strict and those who may pose a significant threat, whether individually or communally, must be carefully screened and refused their boarding cards.
As I argued in The Big Lie, a viable society does not resemble the interplanetary tavern in Star Wars serving all the weird and wonderful but also rowdy and uncontrollable denizens haling from every quadrant of the known universe. We will certainly have to become more responsible and less maudlin in determining what array of behaviors qualifies as good citizenship and how to prevent the self-ghettoizing of immigrant communities. But all this, of course, presumes that it is not already too late, for, in the present environment, even if Islamic terror and other forms of incursion, such as sharia law, should be countered, the Islamic baby carriage is hard at work and the issue that must be joined may already have been decided, at least for Western Europe.
Actually, it’s not so much that the multiculturalists are intellectually lazy or dishonest, as it is that they are- simply dishonest.
The multiculti crowd affects to be “anti-religion”, on the grounds that “religion is the opiate of the masses”, as Marx said. (And old Karl knew a thing or two about drugs, from personal experimentation.) But they embraced Islam wholeheartedly for its “authenticism”, once it became blatantly and violently not “just” anti-Semitic, but wholly anti-Western. Just as they told us in Carter’s era to stop being “inordinately afraid” of Communism.
The common factor is that the multicultis, like the rest of the self-styled Progressive Intellectual” set, hate our culture and civilization.
Their reasons vary. Some are deep-ecologists who dream of a non-technological Eden, with themselves lording it over a (greatly reduced) population of serfs spreading night soil in rice paddies. Others are “internationalists” who see nation-states as inimical to their own idea of a “perfect world”- that looks much like Huxley’s “Brave New World” version. And still others simply worship violence and chaos for its own sake; many of them are supporters of the OWSies right now.
What they all have in common is that each and every one is certain that he is the smartest human who ever lived, and deeply resents the fact that the rest of the Western world is not compelled to obey his orders derived from his superior consciousness. Therefore, they all dream of erasing the West, and replacing it with a “rational” culture- run by themselves.
Their romance with Islam is identical to Lenin’s principle of the “useful idiot.” They see Islam as a tool to use to destroy our culture, after which they will build Utopia on the ruins. With themselves in charge, of course.
They are oblivious to the fact that Islamist radicals have exactly the same view of them. And, being from a tribalist culture, will ‘dobe-wall them first after any “Islamist triumph”, on the grounds that anyone who betrays their own people can generally be counted on to double-cross their new overlords in turn. Unless, of course, they are “disposed of” before they get the chance to try it.
Which is something that Islam is very good at, historically speaking. Of course, the multiculturalists don’t believe that history “applies” to them. And most of them are profoundly ignorant of it anyway, except insofar as they can “rewrite the narrative” to suit themselves.
The Islamists are fond of that, too. And they tend to do their “rewrites” by “erasing” anyone who has a different opinion.
clear ether
eon
eon, you knocked out of the park. Thanks.
“The common factor is that the multicultis, like the rest of the self-styled Progressive Intellectual” set, hate our culture and civilization. ”
Well said and astute.
The multicultis confuse their dissatisfaction with their own lives as a universal ill that needs to be “fixed”. Simultaneously, they can’t help but imagine reinventing everything when the thing they have is all in shambles. In other words, rather than change and adapt their way of thinking (IOW “compromise”) and work within the system to find some satisfaction, they feel this incredible urge to start over. And when that fails, they start over again.
I’m sure there’s a clinical term for this behavior. But it smacks of defeatism and fatalism. These OWS pukes with their high-and-mighty “ideals” seem to me to just be angry. Yet they, themselves have no idea at what they’re angry. They THINK they know but in every interview I’ve heard and read, they really don’t get it.
So their answer to their dissatisfaction? Throw everything out; Start over.
With what?
How?
Has anyone even laid it out on paper how such a thing would happen? And trying to make it happen through rioting and vandalism is never a very good start in this, OUR society. For, like it or not, the majority of Americans don’t like temper tantrums in the public streets and on the public dime and time.
So, the answers lie elsewhere. Hate our culture and civilization all you want. But remember, no society in any place on Earth throughout human history has ever been perfect. Look through the bible…not religiously…but historically. Study Roman, Greek, European, Chinese, Indian history. Violence, mayhem, and from a personal standpoint, when I started reading translated Roman texts, I was amazed at how “pedestrian” it all was. Why, much of them could have been written last week.
So what is lacking, I think is the teachings of elders to the younger on how to become self-sufficient, happy in their little slice of the world, content and how to look for the good and be happy with that. Something my grandparents were all very good at. They all worked very hard, came up from poverty and retired in their own homes, and when their health started to fail, they were well-cared-for. They had saved and planned and made decent lives for themselves.
They didn’t hate our civilization or our culture. They marveled in it because of where they came from. Maybe the people in this OWS (bowel) movement are this way because they are spoiled, never been told “no” and are suddenly realizing that they are unqualified to do the most basic of jobs. If they were lied to, then the problem lay not in “society in general” but with the administration of the college they attended in particular. And so on.
And, they garner very little sympathy from even those who still watch the MSM news. This is because, even as left-leaning as much of the population can be, they still know crap when they see/hear it. And the OWS whining is pure crap.
The perfect analogy is a cancer. A mutated cell cluster forms ( 1960′s) and feeds more and more off the body (producers and society itself), as it grows and grows (liberalism et el). Further, the body doesn’t distinguish a cancer cell from a normal cell, much like how authoratative hands are tied to simply identify the culprits and cut them out. In fact, the authority is downright hospitable to the cancer. This suggests the immune system has still not identified the cancerous problem and is feeding it’s hungry parasites with a game ending Hopey-Changey abandon. So, if the analogy is good, it implies we are still undiagnosed. We are not getting medicine, though we may talk about it we are as helpless as individual cells.
“I think is the teachings of elders to the younger on how to become self-sufficient, happy in their little slice of the world, content and how to look for the good and be happy with that. Something my grandparents were all very good at. They all worked very hard, came up from poverty and retired in their own homes, and when their health started to fail, they were well-cared-for. They had saved and planned and made decent lives for themselves.” I’m sorry, but our elders, that is to say the Baby boomers, have basically been the most privileged generation in the history of mankind and they (left and right) have left the world in shambles, economically, morally, environmentally. So it’s a nice fairy tale and all but we are living in different times. How much did you grandparents education cost? Your education? Next to nothing. What was the unemployment rate post WWII? Near zero. You are talking about a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Unemployment today among 16-25 year olds is 55% or thereabouts. If you go to college you end up with over 20,000 dollars in debt. If you go to graduate school, 100,000 dollars. How much did health insurance cost back in the day? How much did food cost? America used to have industry. It used to make things.Now everything is off-shored. Let’s deal with reality here folks, not crazed mumblings about the good old days and leftist conspiracies. The “left”, that is to say Obama and the democrats, are minions of the finance industry just like the right. There is very little difference. Look around, step out of your comfort zone and talk to people. It’s rough out there and it’s not because things have gotten more “multicultural”. That’s just a ridiculous assertion. The vast majority of the biggest criminals in the US government and on Wall Street are white people in nice suits. Blaming multiculturalism for where we are is like blaming an ethnic looking waiter for the sinking of the Titanic. That’s not the problem folks. They might be a convenient scapegoat, but once again, look around: Who launched a useless Trillion dollar war on false pretenses in Iraq? Bush. Who appointed a bunch of Wall Street stooges to run his government? Obama. Foolishness, all of it. Wake up.
spot on
The marxists and islam are allies in the destruction of western culture.
The common factor is that the multicultis, like the rest of the self-styled Progressive Intellectual” set, hate our culture and civilization.
The Left’s affinity for Islam as another in the long line of its affinity for totalitarianism…
“Strange as it may seem, today’s Western “progressives,” whose domestic political fixations include gay marriage and abortion rights, nonetheless frequently find themselves making common cause with Muslim fanatics for whom such things are anathema.
This seemingly strange affiliation has partly to do with a shared loathing, among radical leftists and radical Islamists, of the U.S. and Israel. But as Revel astutely notes, the deeper bond is what he calls the “excommunication of modernity”…
Last Exit to Utopia
Excellent job, eon.
Well, the Marxist-Leninist vanguard with its absolute certainty in their superior understanding of history, faith in the dialectic and self satisfaction with the concept of the false consciousness of everyone who doesn’t agree actually thinks that after Islam destroys western civilization, they can be won over by the “truth”. You are right to say that Islam has always operated with basically same premise and have been much more successful at it.
I don’t think for a second the marxists think that their allies, the islamicists, can be won over to the truth.
They expect to annihilate them. Like everybody else who opposes them. It isn’t a club of happy-go-lucky buddies.
Actually, I think both of you are partly correct. Some of the postmodern, multicultural “elite’” honestly think that they can wow the Islamists with their rhetoric, dazzle them with their brilliance, and convince them to “shut up and sing”. Others do, indeed, dream of erasing the Islamic world from the new map of a pristine Gaia sans humans, right along with the rest of us.
But the largest contingent seem to suffer from the Manson Syndrome. As with Charles M. and his dreams of “Helter Skelter”, they believe that once the Islamists have destroyed our civilization, they will suddenly experience an epiphany, and realize that they are too stupid to run everything.
At which point they will also somehow instinctively recognize the “innate superiority” of our self-styled intellectuals, and will fall on their knees and beg- beg!- those “superior ones” to tell them what to do.
Thus, according to this theory, the “best and brightest” will be the rulers of the Brave New World, with the Islamists as their fawning acolytes- and of course the thugocracy who will keep the peasants in line. Thereby teaching those peasants (i.e., those of the rest of us who survive) that they should have let the “elite’” run things the first time they demanded that we do so.
No, narcissism and delusional constructs masquerading as reality are not just the exclusive property of a few at the top, like The One and his cronies. The majority of their most faithful supporters, to say nothing of the rest of the multiculti crowd, aren’t exactly well-grounded in reality, either.
cheers
eon
No need to ignore history and man’s nature. Push always comes to shove. The feminist movement is on the cusp of being on the receiving end. The racial equality movement is already seeing pushback. The Islamists who refuse to become acculturated will have their day, so much the quicker because of the experience of the prior two cultural phenomena.
“William Gairdner warns in The New Criterion, “multiculturalism has mutated into multi-fascism, a trend that is creating mini-nations within nations, many of which, as in France, are now violent ‘no-go’ zones for the police.” Or even worse, we may awaken one day to find an alien ship sailing upon our waters.”
This was all started by the liberal west’s strange view of multiculturalism. Believe it or not, NOT all cultures are equal. That IS a fact. There are still headhunters in New Guinea and that doesn’t make them right. I do believe that my culture is a hell of a lot better than a culture that still eats people. Headhunters are not to be “admired” or even given any sympathy. They are a culture that is still stuck in the Stone Age and should be treated as the animals they are. In addition, no law says that I HAVE to admire them, either.
Not to the Europeans. According to the Europeans, all cultures are equal. Noone is better than anybody else and all cultures are to be accepted and treated equally in Europe. Tell that to the headhunters. Sorry, but NOT all cultures are the same. And any Muslims that actually believe that women should be treated as property, that men have the right to mutilate the genitals of young girls, that women should be covered like furniture, that gays should be hanged and that Jews should be killed, any culture that still believes that stoning is an appropriate form of justice or that “honor” killings are OK, any “religion” that actually calls non-members of that faith “infidels,” is not equal to nor will it ever be equal to anything we have here in the west. These are practices that would land anybody here in the west in JAIL, as well it should be. Yet in Europe, most of these practices (except for the stonings) are pretty much accepted these days under the guise of “multiculturalism.” And if we’re not careful here in the United States, that’s what will be in store for us.
Objection! Christians were using the term “infidel” to describe unbelievers long before there was such a thing as Islam.
Oh, golly…maybe that’s why Christians were thrown to the lions.
Why don’t you move your act to Iran and bust a few myths there?
Borders. Language. Culture. It says it all the govt won’t defend our borders and when individual states attempt to do it they are ridiculed by the press and pundits and hounded by the Feds. The ballots and driving tests in NJ are in about 12 different languages resulting in chaos and balkanization of the citizenry. And even though our culture can’t be defined there is a specific American culture which the media/Hollywood/govt elites try to breakdown every single day.
Is there any hope that we can save our country? Maybe after the hippie/ counter culture generation leaves office and dies off we can reclaim America the land of the free
Alas, the passing of the Baby Boomers will not help. It will only make things worse.
(Note, as an example: the Boomers didn’t elect Obama. A majority of them went for McCain. It was the post-Boomers that drank that Kool-Ade.)
As someone once said, “the Ark was designed and built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.”
That statement says so much about so many things these days.
You know nothing, if you know what I mean.
I take a biblical point of view – and it’s all coming down on us now. For it to happen the US must die. Well, I would never have believed it but look at the damage done to us in the last three years. I don’t believe we will survive this intact. In Revelations England is there – the US is not. Persia (Iran) is there – Babylon (Iraq) is not. Everybody fighting about what happens in a little city (Jerusalem) in Israel? Who would have thought anybody cared about apartment buildings being built? If it was San Francisco, Paris, London or Mexico city would anybody care? One world religion and if you don’t join you get your head cut off – who does that sound like? The only thing left to make this really work is something happening that decimates the population to slavable numbers. Oh – and the web of our slavery will be our own creation.
I think you are probably right about Islam being the one world religion that decapitates those who will not worship their god. It even says that they will believe they are doing the work of God. Very interesting. But I’m wondering what will bring it about. And how much time it would take. Also, it seems to me that other given factors spoken of in Revelation i.e. the whore of Babylon (which doesn’t seem to jive with Islam’s deprecation of Woman) would imply some sort of amalgamation or change must occur. Perhaps, a very celebrated actual woman’s revolution is something to watch out for in Islam?
The whore of Babylon is the whole world – no one is innocent and everyone has partaken.
-The author, David Solway confuses Judaism with Zionism. One can detest the policies of Zionism and not be antisemitic.
Zionism IS anti-semitism. That is like saying you support the troops but not their baby-killing mission. It’s a lie.
All zionism is, is a DREAM of a Jewish homeland. For people to begrudge that to the Jewish people is blatant anti-semitism especially since islam (the grievance mongers) have been imperialist conquerers for 1400 years and no one EVER asks them to give a pieve of dirt back.
I do not begrudge a homeland for Jewish people. But when Israel was created, it was created as if no one lived in Palestine…
And yes, I do support the troops and I don’t care for the baby killing either. You can support one and NOT do the other. -I have a Combat Infantry Badge, and I can make that call.
Liberal lies. You do NOT support our troops. The baby-killer term is YOURS. I real dispise you liberals.
And the winners of WWI and WWII can carve up a land any way they want. The arabs didn’t have any problem with how GB carved up the rest of the lines in the ME and Jordan is the pal (no such animal – all arabs) homeland. Invasion because you are an anti-semite doesn’t give you squatters rights.
“Liberal lies. You do NOT support our troops. The baby-killer term is YOURS. I real dispise you liberals.”
-lolly, I AM one of “our troops”, and i’ve seen the dead, and yes, some were babies. Despise all you like…
-I fought (…so i thought…) for the right to express any opinion you desire. You’re welcome.
@DWalters – whatever. Thank you for your service, blah, blah, blah – and oh yeah – I hate anti-semites. That’s what you are. Wanting to kill every Jew on the planet and push them into the sea isn’t being anti-sion, it’s anti-semitic. It’s the outright wishing of genocides on an ethnic group. Do.You.Understand?
Your repetitious ‘Lovely Earth’ ‘satire’ even has you confused.
lolly,
“whatever” is the best you can do? And I do kind’a know a bit about the neighborhood the state of Israel is located in. But I’ve learned to reject the silly notion that in order to protect people, you must kill (murder?) civilians in the process. You seem sort’a cavalier in your attitude about dead people
@Jane & Walters:
Apparently both of you are anti-semites who want the entire Jewish population dead. After you push the whole population of Israel into the sea were will you go next? New York? I hear tell they have lots of Jooos there.
You people just blow me away. No one ever said anything about killing people (well you both have. You seem to like dead Jews) but I’m not adverse to forcible relocating them from where they came from. Jordan and Egypt. You both also seem to forget that 800,00 Jews were forcibly ejected from their homes all over the ME and forced to march (trail of tears style) to Israel. Now you want them to give up more and more land (land that was invaded by Jordan) so the arabs can ethnically cleanse them off the face of the earth.
Your attitude is why the US is doomed. God will not bless a nation who wants His people dead.
At the time Israel was created, it was a majority Jewish state. The borders were actually set up to mirror the facts on the ground. There really were that many Jews living there, and there still are.
Meanwhile the Arab population was busy bringing in many new immigrants LEGALLY under British mandate while Jews were being turned away and sent back to WW II Europe.
Mr. Walters, you really need to read the history of the region before you repeat such lies.
Mr. Gork,
So I am to believe Israel’s location has been unoccupied from the time Titus captured Jerusalem and led the Jewish survivors into slavery out of Israel…
yeah, I’m clueless about history. Served as a member of the M.F.O in Sinai in 1985, read classified regional studies published by the CIA…
-and i remember history:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3319663041501647311
The state of Israel is NOT our friend. I feel sorry for all Jewish and Palestinian people living in that sad nation.
On the contrary. Tens of thousands of people lived there prior to 1948. The Turks ruled the Arabs, Christians and Jews living in Palestine for 500 years and did absolutely nothing with the country. It was a wasteland with swamps. Just read Mark Twain’s account of his travels there in the late 19th century. Not until the Jews started moving en masse in the early 1900′s did prosperity come to that tiny piece of land. Cities, businesses, factories, kibbutzim, theatres, roads all sprung up as a result of Jewish immigration, which created jobs for Arabs as well as Jews. The Arabs did nothing with the land. They deserve NO CREDIT for the only democracy in the Middle East.
When God prescribed the precise dimensions of the Ark, He knew its capacity to an animal; to a person. Only eight persons would be saved. Yet all the world was invited; and failed to respond appropriately. And so were lost. He promised never again to drown the world; but to destroy the entire cosmos when He next returns to judge all men.So, whether the satanist arabists prevail temporarily or not, they will ultimately be cast into the outer darkness when Jesus Christ returns. In the interim we may be able to persuade some of them to live, not under Sharia; but under the Law of Christ. Through a display of military strength we may be able to dissuade many of them from molesting innocents. The one thing we must not do is to pretend that their attitudes and conduct are tolerable.
…the newcomer may give his allegiance to his own group rather than to the environing political culture which sustains him…“People who see all law, all social identity, and all loyalty as issuing from a religious source,” he writes, “cannot really form part of this political culture, and will not recognize either the obligation to the state or the love of country on which it is founded.”
Exactly
For most of the new breed of immigrants to North America, Europe, Australia etc., Islam doesn’t even allow a choice of allegiance. If immigrants to a nation based on the notion of individual liberty don’t believe in individual liberty (or, for that matter, don’t even subscribe to the legitimacy of the nation state), “assimilation” isn’t going to be high up on their list of objectives.
While holier than thou western sorts whine about the importance of multiculturalism, many recent immigrants just see that as another convenient hole in space-time, one to exploit in the name of growing the Ummah.
“Western scholars and Islamicists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals…They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam.”
As for critical faculties, I don’t understand how some reasonable and well very well spoken Muslim Americans (e.g.,Dr. Zuhdi Jasser) can defend Islam at all, on its merits, on the Koran, on the life of its Prophet.
…the Islamic baby carriage is hard at work and the issue that must be joined may already have been decided, at least for Western Europe.
Mullah Krekar, that Sunni/Iraqi Kurd & devotee of Osama bin Laden that Norway can’t seem to expel …spelled that one out…
“We’re the ones who will change you,” Krekar told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in his first interview since an uproar broke out over cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims.
“Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries are producing 3.5 children.”
“By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim.”
I agree that after a certain point, the Federal Government should tell the Muslims what they cannot do in raising their families. Their homes are NOT their castles, after that certain point of wife-beating etc is reached. We can now all agree that some of these things ARE within the purview of the guvment.
Insightful article. The multiculturalists got their ideas from anthropology. Anthropologists study cultures–mostly pre-industrial ones–not civilizations. So any generalizations anthropologists make about equality or inequality of cultures have nothing to do with civilizations and how civilizations survive.
In contrast, history and historians study civilizations. The stupidity of current multicultural policies shows how the abandonment of the disciplines of history, literature, foreign language study has harmed policy decisions. Multiculturalism is based on “research” from the social “sciences” like anthropology and sociology, and the inadequacy of current multicultural policies now shows us the inadequacy of these supposed “sciences.”
Spot on article; bottom line is that there are many in the West who now pretend to despise success as immoral and take the side, especially of minorities, of any sign of failure.
In this scenario Haitians and their conspicuous and consistent failures are a badge of honor and spirit and putting men of the moon some brutally stupid techno success devoid of humanity which no one can now explain the reasons for doing. Soon no one will be able to figure out HOW it was done if we continue to import ‘success’ from the depraved Third World.
Pit a few million Israelis against tens of millions of Muslims intent on Israel’s demise and have Israel come out on top and that’s no fun. Contrast that with the group failures of the entirety of the Middle East and the Muslims now come out as heroes; the more they lose the better they look.
The covenant with Noah calls on the survivors of mankind to be fruitful and multiply. Obviously, our multiculturalism and immigration policies have been a response to the desire of most Westerners to have few or no children. Even in this piece Mr. Solway holds out the wan hope that we can have the kind of immigration policy that leads to assimilation of newcomers to Western culture. Obviously that is possible at certain levels of immigration where there is still a mass of people who re-member the bedrock of Western culture and to which a newcomer would reasonably wish to join as a condition of successful participation in economic life. But at a certain hypothetical tipping point, the numbers will dictate that an immigrant is more likely to want to remain in some neo-feudal subcommunity than to assimilate into a declining Western univeralism where what is valued is all that furthers the cause of individual (not “communal” or neo-feudal) freedom. Neo-feudalism, however, would require increasing government intervention, with redistributive dictates, in economic life. No doubt multi-national corporations could make peace with such dictates if the political will turns in that direction.
Neo-feudalism is much more likely in a context where those who have the hard-to-acquire human capital necessary to a society and economy predicated on individual freedom fail to reproduce in sufficient numbers, or even where there is simply an intellectual refusal to pursue the novel revelations that a society that puts individual freedom first will be ethically superior to the alternatives, even if this at first is counter-intuitive to many given the current dispositions of some our more primal ethical impulses regarding “equality” (which the left wrongly distinguishes from freedom). We have long heard from the left that “bourgeois” values are not in fact progressing in the cause of universal freedom but are just a “hegemonic” screen for some neo-”Jewish” conspiracy of privileged “white” males. (Karl Marx was the most important founder of modern antisemitism – http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw406.htm)
So ultimately it comes to a question of how men and women might learn to talk to each other in new ways about their responsibilities to the cause of individual freedom without this being just about maximizing careers and consumption but also making the sacrifices to raise children for future freedom and to deny the leftist moral blackmail of “the privileged”. This strikes me as a conversation in which the lyric voice will need to play a key role. Let’s get to work poets.
Dear truepeers
This is a fascinating analysis, which dovetails with an article I’ve just submitted called “The Death of the Individual.” I would have liked to be able to quote you.
David
Thanks David,
Let us know when it is published.
When judgement became an accusation Mankind’s goose was cooked. The planet is on a collision course with Eternal Truth.
…and the truth will set you free. God didn’t promise anyone any promise land.
However, post holocaust, the world promised the jews a homeland and you apparently expect one for Arab Palestinians. A homeland both could have if one side accepted the first premise. Your comments are troubling as are all that call themselves or behave as “anti-zionists”. Have you read Goldstone’s latest revision of his report? It certainly contradicts your vision of Israel as “that sad nation”.
Read the bible. The Jews were promised Israel. The only nation ever promised anything by
G-d. He also promised Noah that he would never to destroy mankind again and sent the rainbow as his promise. If the world as we know it ever ceases to exist, it will be by our hand, not G-d’s.
um – He said he wouldn’t destroy the world with WATER again. Next time will be by fire. Flood people got off lucky. He’s really going to do a number on us this time because we should have known better.
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. (Genesis 8:21-22)
G-d’s promise does not mention water, only that he would never again destroy the earth. If I am mistaken, please direct me to the passage where it says ‘by water’
Your post is is so foolish it merits no response.
To those who have bothered to respond I offer the eternal advise of Maimonides-
” I seek no victory- For the honor of my soul and character consists of deviating from the paths of fools, not in conquering them. “
Above addressed to Walters.
The Ark may not be as good an analogy as you suggest
As I remember, while most animals went in two by two,
the kosher ones went in seven by seven.
Mr Solway, your op-ed herein offers up the ultimate irony by invoking the christian Ark whilst simultaneously bemoaning the lack of muslim integration. This is typical of PJM scholarship: cheer muslim efforts for more secularism and imply that what’s wrong with the west is (drum roll) secularism. That neither you nor the rabble here seem to see the obvious is mind boggling.