demise of democracy? of the nation state?

the demise of the democratic nation state?

introduction.

 

                democratic states, free market economies and free speech are under a two pronged attack waged by islamic jihad for the last 50 years or so, and unrelentingly so by the radical left and the communist ideology since the advent of marxist thought and organizations, such as the com-intern and the various popular front revolutions since the time of lenin, trotsky and stalin.  as to the latter, the west has largely successfully resisted overt and militaristic attacks in europe, in austria after wwi, and in greece and the entirety of south east asia and the pacific rim after wwii: the attack in this whole area was blunted by american efforts in viet nam, in my estimation. but the democratic states have been either oblivious to or unresisting of the attacks of the theories of the left and communism upon those values which form the basis of the free market democratic states, and this unrelenting attack carried out over the breadth of the 20^th century, has been so successful that many otherwise supporters of free society are just about entirely ignorant of the values which underpin our society and culture and politics.  concomitantly, the west is under unremitting terrorist attack, most of it stemming from the islamic jihad’s attempt to kick the west from the middle east, and lately, as an open and avowed attempt to conquer europe, within the context of social and demographic and religious values, and to impose sharia, or islamic law, upon the west.

                it is the thesis of this little paper that these attacks are coordinated by the left and islam. the left very consciously uses the tensions in western political systems caused by islam and islam’s application of jihad, especially via the mechanism of hate speech laws to restrict and destroy free speech traditions to advance its leftist political agendas the world over. the islamic jihad uses the over complicity of euro and ameri leftist thought to provide legitimizing social justification for its terror, and receives direct financial subsidies from organizations like the united nations to subsidize and support it terror campaign, and to promote islamic immigration into the west to advance is demographic campaign to institute sharia.  the left is, in short, complicitous with the jihad in its attacks, and supports the legitimacy of the jihad’s attacks upon western business interests and institutions, precisely to aid the imposition of its agenda antagonistic to the very institutions attacked by the jihad. 

 

                in order to advance this thesis, i am going to examine the various assumptions and values which have held societies and human groups together since time immemorial, and posit those which are also subsumed under the modern nation state.  in other words, what beliefs and values make the constituent parts of democracy what they are together in sum, and which of these values are absolutely necessary to support the continued vitality and function of the modern democratic nation state, founded, as it is, upon free market economies and free speech.  you might ask, why go to this bother?  this is a good question, especially as some of these matters are not mentioned again in the course of the paper:  but, think, if you will, as you read this paper, how many of these ancient values are assailed by the left and by jihad, even as the main pillars of western institutions, free market economics and free market thought, come under the direct attacks of the leftist and jihad agenda.  (this requires some participation on your part.)  then, i will look at the left and the jihad, with a view toward how its attack is very precisely focused on these bedrock assumptions and intellectual premises of the free market, so as to understand the very real danger that these attacks pose on the very existence of democratic states.

                finally, i will try to look at the relative danger posed by the partnership of the left and the jihad.  it is a very complicated situation, and very fluid, and not without some subtle ironies.  for there is no less inherent antagonism between the left and islam as there exists between democracy and islam, and at some point, a reckoning will come between islam and the left as well, as islam will neither brook nor tolerate the rule of the left, and will break from the left and seek to conquer it as well.  and, the euro and american left are no better at comprehending the animus that drives islam than their rightist brethren, who they seek to topple by using islam.  given the inherent fluidity of this situation, i will still attempt to point towards what i consider the greater long term threat to our institutions, and our very survival as free people.

                as the title to the paper suggests, i am not horribly sanguine that america and the west will survive, not because the jihad and the left are so strong, but because we as the adherents of freedom have become enfeebled, and lost our way, having forgotten the basics of what made us great in the first place.  we are, in short, no longer true believers in the values that gave us our wealth and our liberties.  we do not defend them jealously, to the death.

 

i.                      intellectual underpinnings.

 

i will try to be brief in the matter of understanding the values which support democracy, but some attention must be paid to these concepts, even if the treatment of them is horribly superficial, as it is necessary to keep them in mind in understanding the exact threat we face, how these values are attacked, and why it is that when the values are attacked we are attacked.

                the family is held together by love, and by passion,  and, by the continued adherence to these values in times of stress and want, and even very violent discord.  if you doubt this proposition, do but think of the bond that men in combat share with their brother warriors, and that bond is love forged in adversity, suffering, want and the deepest and most atavistic of passions, found only on battlefields vied over with deep emotion.  and so it is with families.

                tribes and clans are not so very much different, the basic building block being an extension of families and family groupings.  the larger element, however, is the affinity found in identity.  in tribal and clan groupings, we see costumes and custom lending a sense of belonging and loyalty to those who live in such groupings.  hats, vests, pantaloons of the same issue, and, often, quite literally, of the same stripe giving each person a place in the society, and often identifying that person’s function and rank, and this runs right down to the cut of the hair, the shape of a moustache and beard, the style of a veil.  flags and banners and symbols are important indicators of affinity.

                feudal and medieval societies were & are the same, with the added notion of function denoted by rank and rigidly fixed by birth.  the stability of such societies is founded upon a rigid adherence to a vast system of interlocking of rights and privileges, duties and obligations, reciprocal in nature and designed to perpetuate stability, which runs between every member of such a society, low and high born, artisan and warrior.  in our modernity, in the bastion of the latter day strengths of the modern state, we tend to look down upon feudal existence as being somehow benighted and primitive, but the vitality of such states is well stated and supported by a simple observation: such societies predominated for a long portion of modern human history, they exist even now with a very thin gloss of modernity upon them, and they served high and low born alike very well, if viewed with any objectivity.  feudal society was a legal society, but legality and obligation were determined by a select and privileged few.  and, it must be remarked, that it is an extremely short step, forward or backward, from a feudal society and collectivist regimes founded upon gussified ideological schemes, which are little more than apologia to excuse rule by an elite, such as the bolshevik vanguard of the proletariat, at the top of the heap.

                the fact that we seem to be sliding back to such earlier forms of existence is eloquent testimony to the strength of their lasting power as organizers of the human spirit, even as some within those forms of society might seek to enslave that very spirit.

 

ii.                   the modern nation state

 

                the modern nation state stands as a very recent innovation, emerging from an amalgamation of early principalities and other political organizations, seemingly a mighty edifice of a distinct kind.  in reality, it contains many elements of the predecessor organizations.  how many times have we heard intoned, “the family is the bedrock of the american state.”  how different is our adherence of loyalty to a flag or other symbols of allegiance, even in the modern state?  how less our reliance upon icon and symbol to embody and encapsulate larger intellectual processes supporting our loyalty to a system?  how different the pep rally from a political convention?  how important is the ritualized combat between city states held sundays across the land, by uniformed eagles & vikings & ducks & beavers & trojans & lions & tigers, and bears?  there aren’t enough vicious and brave animals extent to name them all and the sale of official jerseys and jackets emblazoned with logos of loyalty and affinity consumes millions.

                the modern nation state, however, is founded upon a peculiar & specific attribute of the human panoply of attributes, and that is the power of the hold that abstract conceptions have upon the intellect and emotion.  the power, and the weakness, of the nation state lies in the adherence by the intellect to the abstract notions of the benefit of rational discourse as an engine of social organization, and in the ability of that discourse to obtain material and intellectual benefits and freedoms.  again, faith in rational discourse is the engine of progress in western societies for the last 400 years or so, and it is a faith premised in the perfectibility, or at least improvement, of man.  it is a faith in rational and disciplined thought, and not a faith premised in rapture or emotion or transcendence, as religion, or in utopia, as is ideology.

in the first instance, we find that this is a conscious process, and the chief intellectual expression of this is faith in discourse, and faith that free discourse reaches the greatest approximation to truth capable by human discourse.   we may call this belief in free speech, because that is what it is.  it is, in short, a commitment to free discourse over dogma.

free speech appears to me to have been, in western history, a function of the catholic church, first in discord, then in dissent, then in the development and the advocacy of individual conscience as not only a desired end in society, but as a necessity for the attainment of certain values.  i do not mean to say that the catholic church has been always an institution either tolerating or advocating free speech, but in teaching the basics of philosophical inquiry, and then being probably at once the cause, the fount of and the place of dissent in western thought, and by teaching the mechanics of discourse, it taught the west how to think, if not what to think.

in the second instance, the development of the modern nation state required the development of free market analysis, and the liberation of people from a system in which their station was determined by birth to a circumstance where each man was able to pursue and enlarge his destiny through labor and enterprise.  concomitant with the idea of free market was the notion of the individual’s capacity to contract and to make his own decisions and way in the world, and to prosper thereby: it also embodies the quaint notion of upward social mobility, which fueled social progress and individual advancement in many an emerging democratic & free market state, largely forgotten in our static view of the collective and its victims and exploiters, exploited by a “system.”   i would recommend to you, a wonderful book authored in 1861 by sir henry sumner maine, entitled ancient law: its connection with the early history of society, and its relation to modern ideas: london, john murray, (1861), on line and linked in wikisource, via this link to the article in wikipedia on sir henry maine,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/henry_james_sumner_maine.                 

in addition, the nation state required the birth of a man seldom mentioned anymore, let alone studied, which is indeed unfortunate, as his thought was a vital step in establishing the intellectual premises towards creating and understanding the personal and economic freedoms underpinning the democratic state, and the process by which individual decision making powered economies and political groupings.  i speak of course, of adam smith.  his ideas and analysis are literally, in my view, the underpinnings of the view that individuals may determine their futures without recourse to higher political structures, and that, indeed, for humanity to flourish individuals must follow their own individual paths, guided by their prescriptions and not the notions of others.  adam smith coined the concept of “the unseen hand” as guiding the progress of societies, in one bold indefinable stroke obviating the need for paternalistic oversight of human affairs in politics and economics.  his is a lesson apparently soon forgotten.

the modern nation state as originally developed, and as it flourished, is an applied articulation of individual liberties.  it is also something else.  it is an articulation of individual responsibilities.  no other thing signifies the threat of the demise of the nation state, and the flourishing liberty that it represented, then the lost realization that along with the success associated with individual liberty comes the concomitant risk of failure, and that the seat of both lies in the same person.

but, i am a bit ahead of myself here, as we have yet to discuss the last underpinning of the modern nation state, and in that lies in the most important abstraction of all, (as exemplified in the writings of hobbes, locke, blackstone, rosseau and, in the writings of america’s great political theorists, jay, hamilton and madison, known collectively as the writers of the federalist papers), that the source of political authority, and of political power, springs from the very people of a society who are governed by the society.  in short, the modern nation state is the belief, and application and adherence to the most important words in the american lexicon:

 

“we the people of the united states, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america.”

 

this language is the foundation of the modern nation state, whether or not as avowedly republican in form as is the united states, and whether or not it adheres in perfection to the ideas expressed in the preamble to the united states constitution.  and, it is grievously ignored, treated as perhaps ribbon over the wrapping paper to a christmas present.  but the operative language says it all, “we the people of the united states  …  do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america, “ or more succinctly, “we the people create and are this country, for our own purposes.”

                the audacity of it.

                in terms of the history of the world such ringing words in the faith of the individual to govern himself seldom find enunciation.  truly, it took a man of the stature and intellectual vigor and clarity of abraham lincoln to say in a few words, what has eluded the grasp of many as they look at the events and tumult of the day, as they look at the events of history, and, as they look to the future.  lincoln summarized the import of the civil war and what necessitated that he pursue to its end the carnage of that war:

 

“… --that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, … , that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

 

to lincoln the civil war was the test of whether a nation “… so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

                the audacity of it.

                that people should sing their own song as they compose it, and that from this assemblage of voices rises the voice of the community.  not that a self chosen few, perpetuating their station by force or privilege should define a nation and each person’s place and role in society, and proscribing each person’s destiny as though directed by higher authority.  no, lincoln understood that in our form of government the people should define their roles and their destiny.

                the audacity of it.

                the audacity of it, that it worked and flourished and prospered and delivered social progress and liberty and freedom in ways never seen on the face of the  earth, and which may never be seen again, if we fritter it away from sheer cussed sloth and indifference to our heritage.  the shame of it, the generation to be labeled “the greatest squanderers.”

 

iii.                  Who adheres to the democratic state

 

                more years ago than i like now to remember, i had a brilliant history professor, a giant bear of a man, named fred breit.  he said of czar nicholas ii and the end of the romanoff dynasty, that in order to have preserved the russian autocracy there was needed an autocrat, and that in nicholas ii, a dreamy, indecisive and fundamentally decent man, there simply was not the autocrat or the man for the job.

                which brings me to my point.  that in order to have a republican form of government, in order to preserve it, you need committed republicans, of sufficient dimension for the job.   that in order to have viable nation states, you need persons who understand how those states emerged and were established and how in fact they emerged and were established as persons, and who are committed as individuals to the preservation of those states, and the rights & liberties derived from adherence to them, and who are ready, willing and able to perform the sacrifice and acts necessary to the preservation of the same.

 

                it is my view that the west, in particular western europe, barely exists, because such persons are hardly extent, with the exception of a wilders, or a de winter or a belien, here and there.

                it is my view that the united states, especially with the election of barrack obama and the democratic congress, the most radically socialistic politicians ever to hold office in this country, is rapidly moving toward the situation found in europe simply because we have forgotten our intellectual and political heritage, and with ever more rapidity move towards a collectivist’s view of history and analysis which neither will support our freedoms, nor which will allow them.  in short, we are perilously close to a societal wide repudiation of the values and intellectual premises which underpinned our rise as a society.   our station in this world, or rights and liberties, will not long endure.

 

                in short, though its edifice appears mighty, the continued efficacy of the modern state, of liberal republics & democracies, lies in having adherents who can give voice to its values, and its rationales for existence and the exercise of power in its name.  in order to have adherents capable of doing that, you must have adherents who are educated, committed and dedicated to the ends of the modern state.

                and, here, clearly emerges the great weakness of the contemporary modern nation state.

                it has no adherents.

                it has no defenders.

                this is so, simply because it has no one who understands its theoretical and philosophical premises.  that being so, when those theoretical and philosophical premises are attacked, there is neither anyone who will recognize the significance of it nor who will come to the defense of the system and of our way of government.

                democracy cannot stand by ignorance, of who and what it is.  it has to understand itself, and to actively believe in itself, to have vitality.   and, it must profess its faith.

                the modern nation state has lost any one who understands its ethos.  born by the efforts of men who struggled to emerge from situations and modes of government they deemed inadequate to insure prosperity, nurtured by men who fought to preserve the potentials to liberate mankind from various forms of enslavement, preserved then men who practiced those beliefs simply by rote, it has fallen into the unhappy stewardship of men who are ignorant of its antecedents, indifferent or hostile to its essential values, antagonistic to its aims, and ultimately, insufficiently prepared intellectually and insufficiently masculine to preserve it.

                in a short 65 years of so, we have devolved all over the west from men who would wage terrible war in wwii, and in particular, men who waded ashore at normandy and iwo jima and in countless other battles, to defend the values of civilization and democracy, into soft men afraid of conflict who think their positions in the world belong to them of right, and who are ignorant of the though, effort and sacrifice of the men who put them where they are.

                soft men who are afraid to defend and preserve their heritages.  arianna fallacy put it best, describing the mill run of europeans as, … , “mollusks,” she called them.  it rapidly loses its humor, when one understands it may apply to him.

                in short, the modern nation state exhibits all of the dyspepsia and fatigue and lack of faith in itself as the monarchies the rising middle and mercantile classes and industrialists displaced, and who replaced monarchy with the modern nation state.

 

iv.                 the marxist and islamic attacks upon democratic values

 

                and, here, precisely emerges the strength of the contemporary islamic jihad which wages its quite peculiar grand fenwickian war of conquest upon the modern nation states, the war that the modern nation states seemingly are unable to recognize.  this lack of recognition is due to something of a paradox: it is not that islam is so strong in absolute terms, because it is not.  those nations which adhere to islam though large and populous are puny in comparison to even small european states in terms of conventional military strength and in terms of economy and in terms of education or attainment of populace.  no, the strength of islam, slight in some measures, is a strength that lies in the strength of its religious fervor and zeal and commitment.  it is not so much a matter that islam is mighty in a conventional sense, because it is not, it is squalid materially, emotionally and intellectually, it is a matter that the west itself is at a very low ebb and quite weak in its adherence to its values, its religions, and very weak in faith in and commitment to its values.  i will state explicitly, right now, without further pussy footing around the issue that which is the strength of islam:  its adherents are willing to die to advance it, and its leaders are willing to commit that to battle, and quite willing to see them die, in droves, if necessary.  and, i will state explicitly, right now, without further pussy footing around the issue that which is the weakness of the west:  its citizens are not willing to die professing its values, because they do not understand them, they do not understand that dying in defense of western civilization is any sort of imperative, and that the leaders of the west are so unsure of their moral imperative that they are therefore not willing or eager to use the strength of the west in its defense.   it is almost as though western man cannot perceive or feel the blows dealt him every day by islam’s onslaught.  imagine, two men in bowler hats queued at the metro platform, waiting the train, and one fellow looks down to see a pakistani immigrant busily sawing his leg off at the knee, and he looks up to his companion and says, say, old fellow, do you have any idea why that fellow is sawing my leg off, only to return to his cricket match results when his friend replies, what fellow, old boy?  one can almost hear the ancient nobles’ sneer of, merchant, what of the merchants?

                and, why is it that the western man, western societies, cannot even feel the sting of the jihadist’s terror, or recognize the peril posed by the demographic invasion of western societies by muslim immigration, who do not see the same outcome of this as islam, and do not take seriously or even register the promise of muslim clerics that islam shall conquer europe and then the united states, and impose universal sharia law upon the world.  why will the west not take seriously these threats of conquest, even as it watches the riots in france; or the conquest of british law by muslim advocates for expanded rights and liberties, and the specter of dutch cowardice, unfolding before its very eyes?

                why, indeed, does the man in the bowler hat not feel the sting of his leg being sawn off?  why does the west remain indifferent to the image of daniel pearl, or the polish engineer, or the bearded american, having their heads sawn off by thugs who insult their victims by slaughtering them as though domestic animals, sheep for the ancestral bedouin table.  why does not the slaughter at mumbai arouse the universal wrath of the western world, as it would have 100 years ago:  wars were fought, and empires toppled, for far less insult than this, when the west was vigorous and robust.

                why is there no outrage, no wrath, no blood boiling for revenge of our compatriots?

                my intellect struggles with this, because more than killings, these outrages are humiliations and insults aimed at the values which underpin our very national existence, and the very existence of western civilization, as it was once comprised.  these outrages are insults and humiliations which defame our manhood, our masculinity, or very will to exist.

                and, we do nothing.

                the west feels no sense of outrage at these matters, because not recognizing the values which underpin western development, the rise of the west to its penultimate position in the world, achieved by hard work and dedication to realizing the full flowering of man, … , not understanding or recognizing these values, the west does not recognize when they are impinged, does not recognize that the dignity and honor and standing of the west are being insulted at every turn by islamic terror.

                islam understands full well what it does by the terror.

                islam understand fully what it is about in the jihad, overt and by stealth, as robert spencer and others have recognized it, and revealed it for its inner workings, such analysis performed splendidly by pamela geller at atlasshrugs, and spencer at jihad watch, and mark steyn and others.  they reveal daily the insults of islam to the west.

                islam understands fully that it insults the dignity and impugns the manliness of the west at every turn.

                its outrages are designed precisely to do that, to insult and humiliate the west.

                you do not see this, you do not understand what islam feels and understands?

                then, watch the reaction of the “arab street” to each and every successful terrorist operation, such as mumbai, or the 9/11 attacks against the united states and new york city: there is dancing in the streets, jubilation, and, something that western analysts miss entirely, great pride in satisfaction at having bested the west, having harmed it.  have you forgotten the maimed and mangled bodies drug through streets and hung from bridges, of children playing with the burned and charred limbs of dead american servicemen and contractors, all the while the glee of the onlookers egging and urging them on to further outrage.

                what, is your soul dead, that these things are not fresh to you every day?  were these defiled bodies not your compatriots, your family, your fellow citizens?  have you no sense of link to them, at all, sufficient to lend you understanding?

                have you no feeling, no emotion?  no humanity?

                and, one of the greatest satisfactions to the arab world, is that no matter how seemingly great the humiliation or provocation inflicted upon the west, no matter the pain, the embarrassment, the diminishment of the masculinity of the west, …. , the west does not seem to understand, or react, or truly to anger.

                and, to the islamic mind, this is confirming evidence of their analysis that the west is decadent, decays further and faster, and that, most importantly, it cannot even be provoked into defending itself.  islam understands, very clearly, and incredibly salient fact with emerges from this.  and, which gives islam hope and strength.

                islam knows that in all facets of the terror, it acts with impunity.

                islam acts with absolute impunity.

                i am not saying that the west cannot be roused to kill terrorists.  quite the contrary, we are very good at killing terrorists.  look at iraq.  and, if you think that al queda acts with impunity, you are not paying attention to even the most basic fact of the matter: osama bin laden lives in caves, and in remote villages in pakistan’s farthest reaches, in order to stay alive.  the president of the united states lives in the white house.

                think of that simple fact, for a moment, and think on the implications of it.  figure it out for yourself, do not wait passively for me to tell you.

                yet, islam acts with absolute impunity.  the west does nothing to retaliate against the institutional and bureaucratic forces within islam which institutes and instigates the jihad, such as the teaching universities and madrassa’s which give it the imprimatur of approval for its operations and acts, and with issue the fatwa’s calling for the institution of various forms of the jihad.

                ronald reagan, the most wonderful cowboy who ever lived, once said he  contemplated lobbing a couple of nukes right in through the bathroom windows of the kremlin.   what a wonderful “message.”  when has any western leader contemplated out loud lobbing a couple of fat ones right in through the bath room windows of the major teaching universities of islam?  i think we should.  a couple of tactical nukes would kill the armed jihad in about ten minutes, and we have the cruise missile launch capacity to do it.

                the fact that it has never been contemplated in polite society proves my contention, absolutely, i think.

                so, islam looks to the fact that it enjoys impunity from retaliation, and therefore knows, that it may wage jihad for as long as it takes, to be victorious.  to islam, to the keepers and guiders of the faith, it really does not matter that the u.s. marines kick the living shit out of jihadi’s each and every time they are stupid enough to join battle, because the death of the individual fighters count for nothing, what is significant to the keepers of the faith is that the faithful are still willing to die, and that the west will take no retaliation against the structure and institution of the faith.  ronald reagan would have understood this silliness instantly, and would have no more thought of being bound by this silliness that he would have been bound by any notion that it was not permissible to find communists and the communist faith directly.  ask mr. kaddafi what he thought, the night the bombs came in through the bathroom windows of his sleeping tent, one night, long ago, in libya.

                (as a final note, let me add this observation, stated directly.  western pacifism incites islam to its violence, as a limp in a wildebeest incites a lion pride.  it invites, … , no, actually, it begs the attack of islam.  the inability of the west to respond in anger convinces the muslim that he is right in his analysis of the west, that it adheres to no values or beliefs, and that it is decadent and failing.  in this, islam may be correct.  to understand the blood lust of islam on the attack, and to understand this predator’s perception is a necessary precedent in support of muslim attack, please read winston churchills’ the river war, for as fine & final an analysis on the psyche of islam as you will ever find.  you are simply remiss if you have not read this book, and if you do not understand it.)

                and, we come next to the subject of europe and the demographic or stealth invasion it brought upon itself, by inviting “guest workers” into its midst, and by making them privileged visitors through various acts of euro union legislation which punish europeans and favor muslims.

                caroline glick and pamela geller have recorded excellent conversations regarding ms. glick's analysis of the european tendency to believe that only if nationalistic sentiment can be eliminated in europe, the evils of european fascism can be avoided, this view failing the realize that evil sprang not from nationalism but from the tendency of man and men to commit evil: it also fails to recognize that it dooms europe and europeans to extinction.  i think this analysis splendid, as far as it goes.

                but, i also believe that this situation has not come about as a result of unthinking caprice, but rather has come about as a very conscious and calculated decision by the european left to further exploit the presence of islam and muslims in europe, in order to attack the basic structures and value assumptions and social policies which support free market states, capitalism, and the nation state itself.

                the most salient of such attack is upon the very bedrock of free states, free speech and association, spear headed ostensibly justified by the need to preserve social order, (which the leftists themselves upset, purposefully i think, via the mechanism of muslim immigration).  oozing sanctimony, euro politicians say that they mean to limit speech only to the extent necessary to prevent violence, but in reality their thrust is focused on destroying free speech.  it is performed by the imposition, the pernicious imposition, of “hate speech” legislation, which makes it criminally illegal for someone to speak derogatorily about islam, or any other religious groups.  it is further performed by the prosecution of such offenses on an ad hoc basis, e.g., by prosecuting political opposition for violation of the “law” while ignoring transgression of these restrictions by favored political allies or groups who favor the leftist advocacy.  thus, in holland, we have the prosecution of geert wilders as mentioned for his film fitna, which is said to defame islam, while the authorities ignored the pronouncements of muslims who call for the death of jews, eradication of the jewish state, and death and beheading and other similar islamic atrocities on opposition political leaders, including, not surprisingly, wilders himself.  opponents of islamic immigration have been slaughtered in the streets, most prominently theo van gogh, nephew or grand nephew of vincent van gogh, for his opposition to muslim immigration.  in short, muslim transgressions are not prosecuted because they create the social climate with permits the imposition of social controls by leftist regimes.

                there are other examples in europe of the favorable disposition leftist politicians have made toward islamic immigration, and towards its establishment.  leftist politicians need the foment supplied by the presence of muslims, in order to have support to impose the solutions to the problems they created, and in order to attack the basis of democratic values.

                they use the hate speech exceptions to destroy free speech.

                in our own bill of rights to the u.s constitution was also have embodied the right of free assembly of likeminded individuals, to advance and propound their ideals.

                my guess, is that this will be the next point of attack by leftist, to suppress the right of free people to assembled and petition or advance their grievances.  as the collectivist impulse advances, it will legislate and force out of existence, voices inconsistent with its own.

                europe heads again to its eternal embrace of tyranny.

                the only question is will it be the tyranny of the left, or the tyranny of the jihad and islam.           

 

                and, here, precisely emerges the great strength and effect of the marxist’s and leftist’s unrelenting and continuing assault upon the modern nation state, in its peculiar free market and free thought status. it is an assault that the citizens of the contemporary democratic state are unable to recognize.   more insidious a matter than that,  it is not simply a matter that the contemporary person is unable to recognize the dangers from the left, or even unable to recognize the competing and inimical incompatibility of the values supporting free market systems which adhere to the concomitant values of free discussion and speech, with those values with underpin the collectivist mantra found in marxist and socialistic thought. it is because the contemporary person has become a quasi leftist without even knowing it.  norman thomas, who was the most successful politician ever to run for president of the united states, losing six (6) times without even being noticed, once remarked that there was no particular utility in announcing a marxist/leninist/socialist platform in the elections, because the platform of the democratic party had become indistinguishable from the platform of the american communist and socialist parties.  it is precisely because of this, that while americans insist upon, and continue to mouth what amount to platitudes with regard to the freedoms associated with individuals making their way in a free market system and insisting upon free and open discussion, they are in fact largely ignorant of the true discussions and values which underlie the concepts.   their democratic “ideals” have in effect been supplant by the platforms of the socialist parties.

                contemporary americans and europeans do not really believe in free speech.  the europeans abandoned any rigorous adherence to it years ago, and standing in absolute and stark proof of that assertion are the european “hate speech” regulations which prohibit any “negative” comment by persons or politicians upon islam, or other religious minorities.  it has become so bad in europe, that a dutch politician by the name of geert wilders is being prosecuted criminally in a dutch court for juxtaposing statements from the organic texts of islam as against films of muslim religious leaders mouthing these same propositions as against films of islamic street violence directed against various persons in conformity with these directives.  a dutch criminal court of appeals has said this is hate speech directed against the religion, and shows the religion off in a bad manner.  do tell.   geert wilders has been denied entry into england by the home secretary, on the basis that to appear by invitation of the british house of lords to explain his film is likely to cause domestic discord.  again, do tell.

                 a person or society which held free speech as a vital and vigorous value in its society, would say, at this point, precisely.  that is what free speech is supposed to do.

                and, in the form in which it has been practiced in this country, free speech is the peculiar weapon of the lone maverick who advances often unpopular and unaccepted views much to the chagrin and irritation of the larger society.  to recall socrates, is to recall the role of the gadfly in society, who brought into open conflict the competing values and practices of the dominate society as those who held disparate views.  in the past, the underlying assumption in a free society is that the expression of many voices and views competed upon an open market of ideas, and that society would choose from amongst those competing values those which were of the most utility to it.

                we have lost that view, in those nation states and societies called the west.

                in the west, “freedom” now means the absence of conflict, turmoil and perhaps violence between contending views, at the expense of course, of the force necessary to bludgeon the contending parties into quietude, or, as the matter exists in europe, that quantum of force necessary to bludgeon indigenous europeans into accepting muslim immigration and the imposition & recognition of islamic sharia in their domestic law.  the immediate effects are twofold, to perpetuate leftist dominance in politics by the use of islamic voting blocks, and to keep “needed” muslim populations suitably “appeased.”  the long term effects are the eradication of europe run by europeans, soon to be a quaint concept and then to be a dim memory.  any speech in opposition to these two agendas on the part of the left is prosecuted in the criminal courts, while of course muslim populations regularly speak of eradicating israel and jews and killing those who oppose them, without suffering prosecution.

                please see a brilliant exposition of these free speech issues at  atlasshrugs2008, the proprietress of the website, pamela geller.   this article covers the ongoing debate before the house of lords, re: the exclusion of geert wilders from england by the home secretary, after he had been invited as a dutch member of parliament to speak before the house of lords, the article, … , “**new video**  debate for the same, the survival of a nation: the house of lords”, and the link:  http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/02/a-debate-for-sake-the-survival-of-a-nation-the-house-of-lords.html,  this post has the text of wilder’s intended remarks before the house of lords, which he did not get to deliver because of his exclusion, … , “geert wilder: the speech he didn’t give: “freedom must prevail”, … , the link:  http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/02/geert-wilders-the-speech-he-didnt-give-freedom-must-prevail.html.  the following article is a compilation of posts at the blog, pertaining to wilders, the title, … , “new wilders website: book mark it”, … , the link: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/02/new-wilders-website-bookmark-it.html.  these articles report history in the making, and reflect the shaping of free speech in england, fast becoming a former bastion of anglo saxon freedoms and traditions, fast becoming a muslim focused sharia state.  an england, fast becoming a nation of cowards, with its prime minister “the biggest coward in europe,” as opined by geert wilders, and, i must say, i share the sentiment.  or, else i would not have printed it, now would i?

                we have joined the simplifiers, the reducers, the “one-worlders,” the collectivists, who though they speak with many mouths speak with one voice, with one belief, with one ideological perspective.  and by ceding our voices, we have abandoned our consciences and our identity.  as we do not struggle as individuals to arrive at what we think instead allowing others to speak for us, we are singularly removed from the intellectual process that once helped define our individual identities: we think no more, for ourselves.  and, within the grand collective, we have classifications and strata’s, or victims of poverty or oppression, of want, and of demeaning status, somehow all oppressed by a nameless and cruel and unforgiving system, which robs and betrays the true worth of those oppressed by, … , gasp!!, … , economics.  it is all palpably silly, but accepted seemingly whole cloth by academics and progressive minds the world over.  and, seemingly a system of thought being imposed on us with alarming rapidity.

                contrast this view, if fairly described, with books 15, 16 & 17 of “song of myself” from the great work of walt whitman, leaves of grass, the first (1855) edition, penguin books, isbn no.: 0-14-303927-x, introduction by harold bloom.  in “song of myself,” whitman exalts in his individuality, but he exalts in the community of americans created by this individuality of each, as asserted uniquely by each, in, … , a tumultuous song of rhapsody, to whitman’s ears:

     15
the pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
the carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane
    whistles its wild ascending lisp,
the married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,
the pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
the mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,
the duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
the deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,
the spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
the farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and
    looks at the oats and rye,
the lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,
(he will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
    bed-room;)
the jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
he turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
the malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
what is removed drops horribly in a pail;
the quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by
    the bar-room stove,
the machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat,
    the gate-keeper marks who pass,
the young fellow drives the express-wagon, (i love him, though i do
    not know him;)
the half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
the western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their
    rifles, some sit on logs,
out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
the groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
as the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
    from his saddle,
the bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their
    partners, the dancers bow to each other,
the youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the
    musical rain,
the wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the huron,
the squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth is offering moccasins and
    bead-bags for sale,
the connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut
    eyes bent sideways,
as the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for
    the shore-going passengers,
the young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it
    off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
the one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne
    her first child,
the clean-hair'd yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the
    factory or mill,
the paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's lead
    flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering
    with blue and gold,
the canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his
    desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,
the conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him,
the child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions,
the regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white
    sails sparkle!)
the drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray,
the pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling
    about the odd cent;)
the bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock
    moves slowly,
the opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips,
the prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and
    pimpled neck,
the crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to
    each other,
(miserable! i do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)
the president holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great
    Secretaries,
on the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms,
the crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
the missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
as the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the
    jingling of loose change,
the floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the
    roof, the masons are calling for mortar,
in single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather'd, it
    is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows,
    and the winter-grain falls in the ground;
off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in
    the frozen surface,
the stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
    with his axe,
flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees,
coon-seekers go through the regions of the red river or through
    those drain'd by the tennessee, or through those of the arkansas,
torches shine in the dark that hangs on the chattahooche or altamahaw,
patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
    around them,
in walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after
    their day's sport,
the city sleeps and the country sleeps,
the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
and such as it is to be of these more or less i am,
and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

     16
i am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff
    that is fine,
one of the nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the
    largest the same,
a southerner soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and
    hospitable down by the oconee i live,
a yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest
    joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
a kentuckian walking the vale of the elkhorn in my deer-skin
    leggings, a louisianian or georgian,
a boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a hoosier, badger, buckeye;
at home on kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen
    off newfoundland,
at home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
at home on the hills of vermont or in the woods of maine, or the
    texan ranch,
comrade of californians, comrade of free north-westerners, (loving
    their big proportions,)
comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands
    and welcome to drink and meat,
a learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
a novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
of every hue and caste am i, of every rank and religion,
a farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

i resist any thing better than my own diversity,
breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
and am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(the moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
the bright suns i see and the dark suns i cannot see are in their place,
the palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

     17
these are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
    are not original with me,
if they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
if they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
if they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

this is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
this the common air that bathes the globe.

--walt whitman, leaves of grass, “song of myself,” books 15-17.

(if you fail to see that romance and aesthetic are a part of the democratic state’s self conceptualization, then your soul is dead, numbed by collectivist pap.  simple as that.)

 

this paean to individual diversity, of striving and sloth, of talent and mediocrity, and attainment and failure, points to the common diversity of the free enterprise free market community that is the democratic nation state, and of which perhaps only the poetry of a celebrant of this froth of life can describe the community that is achieved thereby, a thriving community that no collectivist planned state has ever achieved, with a freedom of expression, ambition, success, and yes, failure, that no planned state has ever remotely approached.  nor, might i add, has any such state produced a poet as walt whitman, though the book “concrete,” written by a fellow highly regarded by joseph stalin, stands as pretty eloquent truth of the obverse/converse of what i am asserting about “song of myself:” community in the celebration of the powers and weaknesses of the individuals comprising it.  a community made and defined by the lives of those individuals, and not one defined by bureaucrats and stale intellectuals.  in stark contrast, i will simply assert, that for all the collectivist pap forced upon us in this last century by warmed over marxists, and avowed communists, that none of the collectivist sentiment has given rise to any sense of community, or an actual society, anywhere, that i am aware of.  and, in those situations in which marxists and socialists have seized any power whatsoever, such societies as “resulted” have achieved their cohesiveness by one mechanism, and one mechanism only, that of the brute force of the police state.  disagree if you will, but please be so kind as to name and identify an exception.  the leftist assault on american values of free markets, both in matters of the intellect and in matters of government policies pertaining to economics, economic policies, and the social policies of income and asset accumulation and distribution derivative of the same, has destroyed our adherence to the values that gave us liberty, prosperity and personal freedoms in ways and magnitudes unknown in the history of man, … , yet, curiously enough, have not replaced those values with any other values positively adhered to by anyone.

                what is has done is made us a nation of pious whiners and complainers, a veritable nation of critics who complain, but a nation curiously lacking in adherence to any coherent belief systems, and curiously abandoning wholesale the concepts of building, contributing to the growth or welfare, of, well, … , just about everything.  americans especially, delivered wealth and power and prestige and a voice and a contribution to things just about unheralded in human history, can do little else than complain about it, and complain that it is not guaranteed, nor distributed equally to everyone.

                so, i think that any fair and objective mind would have to conclude that marxism and socialism have very skillfully eviscerated the value systems underpinning american and european adherence to free market societies, whether those the values of those markets are intellectual in nature, or whether they are values dealing with economics, production, or allocation and distribution of the fruits of those markets amongst the general population.

                but there is a fundamental point to be made here, and one which leftist and marxists are loathe to admit, and will not admit, because they are hopelessly hidebound ideologues: they have no adherence to concepts such as truth and intellectual consistency, and do not recognize and will not acknowledge the same.

                i think it an inherent weakness in ideologues, and almost always a fatal flaw. the left has destroyed democracy’s faith and itself and its underpinnings by relentless criticism, and, left the democratic states adrift, without faith or values, having abandoned almost all forms of same.  the catholic and protestant churches, and the jewish synagogues, were well springs of the west’s values, and they with the exception of the jewish faith which remains vital, are shadows of their former selves as institutions, the zeal of the faithful almost lacking, their churches empty, their priests tired and listless at best, and hedonist pleasure seekers at worst.  they simply do not oppose the left anymore,  and indeed, the catholic church in south america is almost exclusively marxist in the orientation of its clergy and preaching, and becoming more so in the rest of the world, especially africa.  in the meantime, american  jewry which is socially conservative remains stubbornly and mystifyingly predominately liberal in its political orientation, even while the left in america and the rest of the world become more and more virulently anti-Semitic with each passing day.  but, while the left has destroyed adherence to democratic values, it has neither supplanted nor replaced them, instead it has left the familiar and comfortable shells and platitudes of those values intact, substituting policy and structure and the execution of marxist policies in the stead of overt enunciation and adoption of marxist values:  indeed, such is the abhorrence in the west of the archetypical enforcement of collectivist thinking, that being the gulag state and brute force, that marxist do not preach the content of this leftist doctrine, knowing it will be rejected, but just use their criticisms of democratic philosophy and through to justify their insinuation into and almost absolute control of the institutionalized policy making of western societies and governments.

                so, while the leftists control, they deny it.  they are loathe to admit who they are, even as they dominate the scene: they prefer the sheep’s clothing of democratic value to the exposure of their wolves’ desire to devour all, and to dominate all.

                a marked departure from this practice has to be the announcement by one of the most prominent house organs of the left for many years now, newsweek magazine, that we are all in fact socialists now.  i guess somebody forgot to ask me.

                the fact is western socialists and communists are loathe to admit that they are marxist/leninists, and generally prefer the sobriquet of socialists to communists.  the fact is, that they do not and will not assume the historical mantle of their bolshevik predecessors, because of the looming image and historical fact of the police state, and gulag, and thought control that has inevitably accompanied collectivist “experimentation.”

                and, there is one other subject that is taboo amongst communists and leftists.

                and, for good reason.

                abhorrent to them intellectually, and avoided at all costs for public consumption because of its grossly negative anticipated impact, is that every communistic regime and economy that has been tried in the 19 & 20^th centuries has been a monumental failure, in terms of social practice and theory, in terms of economic practice and theory, and in terms of the absolute maladroit nature of their administrations.

                look to the example of africa, where many a developing & promising capitalistic market system on the european model of the colonial states has been cast aside as theoretically exploitive of the african black in the eyes of the socialist critic, and racist and paternalistic as well (never mind that not all these criticism are entirely consistent as leveled against the evils of the colonial relationships involved), and socialistic planned economies and vast state building projects instilled, have left formerly thriving economies in abject ruin and decay in the successor socialistic states, rife with tribal violence, hunger and corruption.

                look to the history of the soviet union, which collapsed in bankruptcy and insolvency, unable to feed, clothe or pay the military and secret police forces which propped it up for decades, and, when its oil and gas reserves falter and diminish and disappear, the same fate awaits the dismal experiment that has been the russian soviet remnant state.

                of all the marxist economies, only china’s prospers.  and why?  because it has explicitly adopted the values of the democratic free market economy to run its economy, and even accepted, in its particular chinese fashion, a great many aspects of free discussion and speech, as a way of managing and guiding this economy, and the politics of the governing communist party.  (ask google, that paragon of progressive leftist thought, about the peculiarities: for money, they have no hesitancy to advance & implement totalitarian control on a society, as first exhibited in china and latterly in the united states in their “doctoring of” and  “ministering to” the truth about their friend obama.  let that be an abject & didactic moral lesson to you.)

                so, while the socialists have succeeded in grand manner in leaving the u.s. and europe in the curious situation of talking like democrats and republicans and not having the slightest idea why, or any adherence to the underlying values which created these systems and governments in the first place, they have also failed magnificently in substituting their own systems values and actual teachings in the old values stead, instead merely insinuating the bureaucratic forms of socialism in that stead.

                in short, while the values of democracy have few adherents, save thee and me, the values of socialism have absolutely none who will go public, and absolutely none in the general population.  take a poll, and see how many americans describe themselves as socialists or communists: it will not be many.

                the leftists politicians in europe and america may think that they can subsidize and exploit islamic terror and jihad in order to secure the reins of power in government, and that when the time comes to rein in islam, that they will be able to do so.

                in this, i think them grossly mistaken.

                the soviets had no adherents in the streets to fight for the preservation of the soviet union, when it collapsed.

                when the soviet bloc nations collapsed, one by one in rapid succession, no adherents and supporters appeared for them in the streets to resist the movement of history, or to "formulate" the movement of history as its continuing vanguard: they abandoned the thugs who ruled them in droves.

                and, i am very curious as to what makes the french or german socialists think that french or german youth will take to the streets to fight islam in the name of collectivist socialism, when no french or german youth have done so to this point to protect their native lands.  in the name of what?  the fact is, that socialist and leftist thought having made nihilistic cowards of its supporters via its criticisms of capitalism, is going to be stuck with the same nihilistic cowards it created by which to oppose islam.

                it simply will not be able to do so.

                generation upon generation of cowards, who believe that nothing is worth dying for, are cowards no matter their stripe, as unbelieving democrats and republicans, or as unbelieving and disbelieving and disillusioned marxists and socialists.

                in short, the successor marxist states will be as little able to oppose islam, as their predecessor democratic states, the socialists suffering from the same disabilities to rouse the general populace as they created in the democratic states.  the youth of europe, having been indoctrinated in the values of tolerance and multi culturalism, in the beliefs that the values of their fore fathers were racist and nationalistic and belonging to only the low brows of society, and in the concepts of brotherhood with and love for their islamic neighbors, are not going to suddenly develop spines and biceps and sinews by which to eject their conquers, they having been so thoroughly equipped with intellectual blinders by their indoctrinators.  they will simply wake up some morning and find out they are subject people in a land and heritage handed to them by the sacrifice of their fore fathers, and they shall have squandered the heritage without a struggle.  i doubt they will find the experience disquieting at all, really.

 

v.                   the greater enemy

 

                i view islam as the greater threat to our existence that leftist politics, in the long run.

                the reasons are relatively straight forward.

                historically speaking, the ills of socialism though capable of great evils in the form of the secret police, thought control, intellectual rehabilitation and the naked gulag, have been capable of far surer and quicker correction that subjugation to islam has proven.

                the collectivist know that their power grabs have historically been unsuccessful in the long run, even after having been cloaked in secrecy and disguised in order to gull unsuspecting and unvigilant societies into accepting them.  in the united states and europe they have flat out lied, disguising this aspect and that feature of their take over’s, because they know if they come out and admit who and what they are, and what they intend, they will be opposed.  and, inevitably, they fail.

                why do they fail?

                they fail because they do not use or have recourse to open and frank debate about social and economic policy.  in short, they fail because they do not emulate the mechanisms of the free democratic state for assuring that such discourse habitually takes place, and that adjustments in governing and theory take place to accommodate what is learned through such discussion.  collectivist orthodoxy will not admit of such discussion in private, nor will it admit of it in public discussion, and ultimately, not within its own inner circles, it administration and in its bureaucracies: oddly enough, the rulers of collectivist societies are as imprisoned in orthodoxy as those they rule with the iron fist.  they fail, for the obverse and converse reasons that capitalistic and free market systems thrive, that being that the latter systems are dynamic and vital because of the choice engendered by open decision making in the intellectual markets, and because of the dynamic force generated by open decision making amongst producers and consumers in open and free economic markets.  i was always a great fan of the spectacle of the great communist state five year and seven year plans, none of which ever worked, and morbidly fascinated by the humor of a great country like the soviet union not being able to “plan” the correct supply for such commodities as toilet paper, and tooth paste, and not being able to keep meat in supply in domestic markets, and of rotting and decaying fertilizer left in open box cars and railroad containers along soviet sidings, with no rail capacity to move it or storage capacity to put it in, when it reached its destinations, simply because the poor benighted planners could not anticipate, nor duplicate, nor duplicate, nor duplicate,  (nor substitute adequate judgment about) the millions of decisions made by the millions of participants in a free and unsupervised free economic market system.  and the poor soviet women, always without proper bra’s and or in sufficient number.

                socialistic systems fail, and they prop up their shortcomings through secret police and gulags, until the failure is so complete that they collapse suddenly and catastrophically.

                it is logic based upon observation, history and thought which dictates that this be so.

                if any soviet planner had read walt whitman, or if he had been permitted to have read walt whitman, he might easily have figured that out.

                no, in the long term, it is islam that has the greater staying power as an ideologically repressive regime and regimen.  accordingly, in my view, islam is the greater enemy short term, and most decidedly long term.  once islam has taken root and control, there seems little evidence to suggest that it evils can be either corrected (not in 1400 years), nor thrown off.  only the spainards have been able throw off the islamic yoke, in any history of which i am aware.

 

vi.                 conclusion.

 

                this paper really is an examination of the issue, who do we fight first as between islam and the left, if we do not fight them together.

                this has been a subtext in all my writing in this blog.  i view the left, and its members especially as they have become entrenched in all our institutions, e.g., political structures and bureaucracies, as the enablers and accomplices of the islamic jihad.  the main stream media which serves only as a propaganda arm of the democratic party, now apes the famous soviet witticism that there is no izvestia in pravda and no pravda in izvestia), is the direct accomplice of the islamic jihad.  the academe provides the intellectual justification for islamic conquest, and makes it palatable for western domestic consumption: the chief triumph here, is the portrayal of hamas and the other palestinians as victims of israeli violence, conquest and occupation, when in truth of fact, palestine is subsidized by the west and by israel.

                the left’s doctrines, it analysis, provide a powerful intellectual immediacy and legitimacy of many of the islamic justifications of their heinous acts against their oppressors.  islam already has a tremendous impetus to violent attack on western institutions, in order to eject western influence from the middle east.  but, the interjection of the leftist support as the cause célèbre adds tremendous impetus and support in europe, and increasing support in the u.s.

                the euro left has been quite content to let the muslims and arabs do the heavy and violent lifting against the institutions of the west.  i, for one, have not forgotten those halcyon and innocent days when the beider meinhoff gang machine gunned business executives and governmental person from the back of speeding café racer motorcycles; or when turkish radicals attacked american servicemen almost as a weekly incident; or when the japanese leftists attacked people in the tokyo subways or in the lobbies of the israeli airport.  nor have i forgotten the exploits of carlos the jackal or the incredible war waged by children against their parents in south america in the name of socialism, and as inspired louis feuer to write an inspired book, entitled “the conflict of generations,” looking at something for him which was in almost unfathomable occurrence, that being politically inspired patricide.  i have not forgotten black september, nor the munich olympics.

                i think the munich olympics was a bit of a turning point for violent european leftists, as was the explosion in brooklyn that killed all of bill ayers friends & girlfriends within the weather underground, as the romance of killing and bombing others in random acts of violence against which no person could take preparation, began to diminish when society and its police agents began to hunt down and kill its aggressors.  the euro and american leftist found much that was attractive in killing, and posing as killers, but they found less attractive the very real and concrete possibility of becoming and being corpses.  even little black scarves around a corpse’s neck do very little to add the cachet these radicals found in the costumes and attitudes and romance of killing: dead is not very romantic.  that is why the che guevara poster of popularity is not the one showing him with all the bullet holes festooned around his body.  he didn’t look so romantic on the morgue slab.

                so, the euro and american leftist, who always regarded themselves as precious and precocious, (destined to lead and rise to the top of society) suddenly took a sober look around at their world, and decided it was best to cop pleas and become education professors and to go back to being the children of rich folk, and let the cannon fodder of the middle east carry their fight forward for them.  in return for which, the euro and american leftist provided the islamic types with the intellectual fodder by which to attack western institutions, and by which they could make intellectually credible screeds and polemics justifying the same, as would appeal to entire generations of euro and american students being nurtured on marx, and marcuse, and saul alinksy.

                and, the arabs and islamists have seized upon these doctrines, and posed besides them, as john wilkes booth posed in his tights by curtained columns, an air of legitimacy never quite leaving him.

                this is how the left drives its agenda against capitalism and free markets the world over, using its proxy muslim cannon fodder to attack the west, advancing the arguments enabling and encouraging arabs to do this, all the while the leftist sit astride european leftist politics, advancing the cause of the green parties and global warming, and its controls on the mechanisms of production, all the while remaining safely above the fray, removed from the killing, and very much removed from the being killed.

                while this is going on, the left continues its intellectual onslaught upon free market societies and means of production, in an effort to wrest political control from more conservative views, as held by more conservative elements of society.  gays, greens, pink ladies, … , all sorts of niche advocacies parade continually before us, advocating this encroachment upon traditional values and that expansion of the rights to be accorded the fashionable perversity become normal of the day.  it is not pointless.  it is the intellectual version of the death of a thousand cuts.

                even though the western left uses islam to advance it goals and objectives, and even though the left poses a lethal threat to the west, i think, on balance, that islam is the greater peril.

                and, i think they should be engaged earlier, and, here in the united states, way in advance of the nascent european response to the peril posed by the demographic jihad of europe, by the not so stealthy advance of islam.

                my opinion in this regard, especially after having enumerated the ways in which the left attacks the west, is quite simple.--  it is because islam has the foot soldiers, who, if suitably inspired, are very very dangerous.  the point is this: on its best day, beider meinhoff could not put more than two or three assassins to work, let along people on a street to do battle, as opposed to islam’s ability to put 100’s of activists in the streets, at almost any given moment.  and, even today, as the left assumes the dominant voice in european and now american politics, i am not aware of any radical student or youth group, or any old gray hairs from the 60’s for that matter, that indicate they have much willing to go out and join the arabs in fighting and dying for socialism, or for the palestinians, for that matter.  again, the point is, while the left has eroded the loyalty of the west’s systems to its values and service in the name of the west and its civilization, neither has it done much to instill the values of “patriotism” amongst its adherents.  the left has not yet demonstrated it can put soldiers in the street, though the euro’s can still mount impressive protests.  it’s the dying part.  if nothing is worth dying for, if you’re a leftist, then nothing is worth dying for, even if you are a leftist.  if that makes any sense to you.

                the supply of islamic young men willing to die, to become martyrs is stunning by contrast, and given the demographic realities of the islamic birth rate.

                it would appear to me that islam is the entity first to be fought, and, the sooner the better, in my view, this view expressed in many different places in this blog.

                this is not to say, however, that i do not recognize certain situations in which the left would have to be fought first.  the election of our current president, along with the most radically leftist congress ever assembled in north america, does nothing to allay the concerns about the left trying to impose hegemony upon american politics, … , in short, a coup by the left to seize and institutionalize its hold upon power in the united states.

                i believe obama and his minions, if they attempt to do this, will do it by adopting and implementing a legislative scheme very similar to that of the euro union and Canada, with regard to hate speech issues.  it will also be accompanied by attempts to limit or eliminate the private ownership of firearms, e.g., gun control, even though by every measure and indicia of any merit, gun violence as a social problem goes down every year in america, as has the incidence of violent crime for a long, long time.  obama and his minions will also attempt to implement these standards by treaty and compact along the same lines with the united nations, and will arrange via treaty to allow “monitoring” of u.s. compliance via such mechanisms as the united nations rappatour. [forgive my spelling, I just do not care enough about the correct spelling to look it up.

                if that is the case, if that should come to pass, then there is nothing to do but take to the streets in armed combat with an oppressive government, and to put the test to the will of g_d.  in short, we take our place on the great mandela, and we fight, and we see how it all turns out.  and, if it comes to pass that we fight our domestic left, before we fight islam, that is just fine with me.

                it remains my belief, however, that there are ways to deal with the left, who are fundamentally cowards, when removed from the protection of their minions:  they lack convictions, most of them, and they lack physical courage. you do not have to kill very many of them to get your point across, and to halt unacceptable behaviors: look at little bill ayers, he got his jones with killing a few people, and was content to sit back and re-enter his sinecure of respectability, to do his dirty work from behind the cloak of respectability and to avoid the downside of being a dashing rebel.  look at the beider meinhoffs, … , they became one with the radishes and broccolis’s of the world, and are content to let the arabs do the real dying for their cause.

                not so the islamists.

                they are willing to fight and die for islam, and more and more are being indoctrinated and bred every day, just to do that.

                for this reason, i believe them the greater and more immediate and long term enemy of the western democratic states in general, of those of us in the united states in particular.  we must fight them first, and relatively soon.  then, we can deal with the left.  and, if the left presses its coup of our country, and advances this agenda more quickly than is anticipated, we simply take them on and take on islam at the same time.  there will be no shortage of targets.

                and, the reality of it is, it makes little difference how we go about it, for combating the jihad is in fact combating the left, and combating the left is in reality, dealing with the jihad, because the jihad does not exist with the enabling, subsidizing and legitimacy lent it by the left.  as it stands right now, even the propaganda arms of the left cannot completely explain away the carnage and the damage done to the west by the jihad, cannot stop the western governments, principally the united states, from dealing with the reality of the taliban and al queda, cannot completely remove public support from combating and attacking those who attack us.  the media has, however, almost completely isolated isreal in her fight against the palestinian al queda, known more “popularly” as hamas, though they be in fact one and the same.

                so, by destroying the jihad, or by attacking those portions of it in the united states that cannot shield their allegiance, affinity and participation in it, we maintain a more respectable stance that if we move directly against established pillars of the leftist community, be they politicians or just “citizens.”  it does seem, however, that sooner or later, if we are to preserve our freedoms, we will have to defend our liberties against the left.  do not be overly surprised, moreover, if the left defends with its surrogates worldwide, that being with arab and muslim canon fodder to do their dirty work here, as they have done elsewhere in the world.

                in short, it is all the same, in the long run.

                it is a battle of good vs. evil, and a battle of the assertion of individual rights and liberties as opposed to the suppression of individual rights and liberties.  just what do those who would oppress us, fear from us, anyway?  the only possible thing they can fear is our resistance to their tyranny.  otherwise, we would just be content to sit at home and raise our babies and our grand babies.  but, it appears that the american left is not wise enough to just leave well enough alone: they want more control, and they are to have it.

                over my dead body.

 

john joseph jay, @ 02.14.2009