Posts
All Comments
 |
| Deplorable Men |
 |
| Kemal Atatürk |
 |
| Erdoğan and Obama |
 | |||
| Keeping in Touch with his friend Rouhani |
 |
| Neighbors |
 | ||
| Beohner Balls |
 |
| Understanding the Rackets |
 |
| How Steep the Cliff; How Hard the Fall? |
 |
| CNN Ireport Badge |
Implausible Denial. One of the chief characteristics I have attributed to the left is denial. They deny what's there and affirm what ain't. France defines the standard.
Crime in France is a growing and serious problem. Much of it is -- by empirical standards, i.e., facts -- associated with the growing number of hostile, unassimilated Muslims*. Especially Muslim youths. But multicultural relativism and its ideological partners, elitism and political correctness, forbids acknowledging, and thereby dealing with, the truth.
Faithful to the traditions of Rousseau, Robespierre and the admirable outcomes of the Revolution, France would seem to be the purest exemplar of denial, but the balance of Western Europe is hotly competitive. Sadly, so is America.
But in America we have not yet reached the endpoint of reductio ad absurdum reasoning; in France they have.
At Brussels Journal, Tiberge, a regular contributor, transcribes the absurd rationalizations of a televised panel of French intellectuals -- "experts", discussing whether crime was really anything to be alarmed about -- whether violent criminals bear responsibility for their actions. They take consolation in the fact that, after all, things in France are not as bad as in, say, Pakistan....
This is funny, but pathos plays the trump card.
-----*
A fine first-person article by Theodore Dalrymple about the brazenness of immigrant criminality and the PC passiveness of French government.
Pat Santy and others have written extensively about Obama-Left, Inc. being out of touch with reality and perpetually in denial. I agree with the analysis, but in the interest of simplicity, on the one hand, and praxis on the other, I have adopted a kind of bare-bones way of assessing liberal performance in the world. A way, that for me, answers the question, “so now what”?
I would argue that these people* are absolutely in touch with reality; but it is their reality. Where most of us perform to standards of quotidian efficacy -- i.e., paying the mortgage to keep the house, investing money for retirement, not meddling in other people's business, and so on -- liberals are busy making for themselves a place in Heaven (read Utopian 'justification'). What does it matter if their diplomatic strategy weakens and endangers the nation? If fiscal policy is profligate? If social policy enslaves us? Never mind -- their motives are pure. They have a vision. They belong to a tribe that sanctifies them.
We may call them elitists (which they are) or narcissists (which they are), but we need to know that the reality of our world is not the reality of theirs. We see their behavior as pathological and bizarre, but to them it makes perfect sense. They simply perform to different standards.
A useful conclusion: it is pointless to reason with liberals, for reasoning (in the traditional Western sense) runs counter to their primary goals -- defense of a secular religion and its belief system and the acquisition and maintenance of power. Power (collective power), they understand perfectly. It is their stock-in-trade. And it is opposing, naked power alone -- not persuasion -- that will cause them to change.
One knows one has scored points when hysterical cries of 'righteous' outrage are heard from the left. The potential loss of power threatens their very being. The argument for power is sustained by observing the effects (ranging from defensiveness to open hostility) of tea parties, town halls and the growth of conservative media and the Tenth Amendment initiative. Though the right, historically, has been uncomfortable with the collective exercise of political power and will, when liberty is at stake the time for that exercise has arrived.
It all comes down to this: it is one thing to understand the enemy (I use the word advisedly) but another to know how to defeat him. The left will use whatever power is at their disposal to subject or eliminate -- in one way or another -- those who hold a different world-view. To force non-believers into submission, forced alliance or extinction. Here, there are remarkable similarities to Islam.
One thinks of the dreary, demeaning, undifferentiated existence of persons living in the former Soviet Republics -- statism in one of its more benign forms. But is a short journey to recall crematoria, gulags and killing fields. Only a few years ago I would have dismissed that last sentence as pure hyperbole, but no longer. There is no want of historical precedent in the annals of collectivist governance.
When individual liberty is attacked by political powers that are not amenable to reason or persuasion, it must be defended by political power. Modest conservative organization (above) has so far been surprisingly effective, which suggests that the power of the left may be overrated. But the left, over the span of a century, has had enormous influence in government and society precisely because its power has been organized. Therein lies a lesson.
____*
When I use the terms "liberal" and "Left" in most of my critical essays I am referring to to committed ideologues on the far end of the political spectrum -- those whose intellectual heritage derives from Rousseau and Marx. These are the True Believers and their enablers.
Most readers will remember that Dr. Jack Kavorkian came to public notice because he was overtly engaged in the medical specialty of euthanasia. His clients, who were terminally ill and/or in constant, unbearable pain, engaged him to hasten their demise in a quick and humane manner. The courts ruled that his activity was illegal and ordered him to desist. He did not, and he was consequently imprisoned.
Mr. Obama and his party are similarly engaged, but with multiple “clients” – the American polity. Similarly, the plurality of that polity has entered a contract with government to assist them in the matter of assisted suicide. This analogy is sound but limited. When we broaden our examination we find notable differences between Dr. Kavorkian and the Obama government.
First, the polity is reasonably healthy and without severe pain. Second, the manner of death will be neither humane nor quick. Third, and most importantly, there is the matter of informed consent. Dr. Kavorkian, to his great credit, was careful in the extreme to ensure that those under his care (and their families) were perfectly informed regarding alternatives to suicide, and what could be expected in the final moments if they opted for death. And finally, the government will not be subject to prosecution.
We have proceeded from analogy to metaphor. Now, let us consider facts.
Security – economic, political and existential – has and continues to be aggressively undermined. We begin with economic security. The conceit of piety rather than the care of probity drives policies that are certain to weaken or destroy the economy. The wanton spending and printing money in the name of a litany of Utopian purposes seizes money from those who have earned it and distributes it among those who are content to live on government largesse in lieu of honest labor. Under current economic policy America is destined to become a third-world nation – Obamastan, if you like. Despite the stated intention of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, that gap will remain. But it will now be between a ruling bureaucratic aristocracy, on the one hand, and everyone else on the other. Worse than the loss of wealth will be the continuing and accelerating usurpation on personal liberty. Once liberty is surrendered the state will become totalitarian and ultimately murderous. (1)
In the matter of defense diplomatic and military decisions are being taken that make America appear weak in the eyes of our enemies. A posture of appeasement invites challenge from other nations on fronts military, political and economic. The most immediate threat, Islam (2), seems to have escaped this administration's notice; or, perhaps, they seek the comfort of denial. In either case failure to confront aggression in the Middle East serves only to encourage it. (3)
Voting for the services of Dr. Obama seems to have been unwise.
(1) The reader may ask if I am not taking an eschatological view of the world. I would reply that one has only to glance over his shoulder at recent history to note the appalling number of deaths in totalitarian (esp. Socialist/Communist) states. Excluding Nazi Germany, a million times 149.
(2) I use 'Islam' rather than the PC circumlocutions such as, 'Islamist', 'Militant Islam', etc. Diana West has a good article on the matter of corrupted language and the assertion of the right to free speech.
(3) It is vital that we recognize that Islam, in particular, is the natural and enduring enemy of liberty and democratic forms of government that flow from it and – ideally – support it. Where Islam does not threaten violence, it is corrosive to representative government (as we see clearly in Western Europe and increasingly in America).
Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, has included on her list of persons banned from England the name of talk-show host Michael Savage.
Now Savage is not high on the list of well-known public Conservatives that I admire. Emotion (see previous post) and the sense of outrage trump careful reasoning in his polemic. He is deliberately provocative, and he is aggressive, often to the point of being obnoxious, but he does not encourage hate or violence.
The Left, however, is ever ready to characterize provocative* challenges as "hate-speech". They fear Savage precisely because emotional outrage is their own lingua franca, and they know it is psychologically powerful and an effective means to short-circuit debate.
Luc Van Braekel, a too-rare Belgian who speaks out in defense of free speech, is a featured writer in today's Brussels Journal. His article includes short video clips of recorded statements by Jacqui Smith and Michael Savage.
This incident, taken together with the Geert Wilders affair and others, clearly shows that Britain's fear of tolerating offensive speech has become pathological. Political Correctness, as I have said before, is nothing more nor less than cowardly dishonesty masquerading as comity and good will.
*----
The difference in meaning between "provocative" and "inflammatory" is worth noting.
At the Gates of Vienna blog I found this series of eight short videos that follow the history of the crusades. Historically accurate and engaging (if a bit scary), they are sobering and instructive. Warning to multiculturalists: this series is not Politically Correct!
Among other things, it is clearly shown that -- in contrast with Utopians of the modern West -- Muslims have no illusions about who they are.
For those among us who find themselves wondering about the passiveness and denials of the left (and, increasingly the center) Dr. Joy Bliss, of Maggie's Farm, probes for answers from the perspective of psychiatry. I found this article (Part I) on Dr. Sanity's blog, and I think it is a useful analysis.
