Sunday, February 13, 2005
2 + 2 = 5
Iraq will be just fine. It's the West that should concern us, with the myriad attempts at cultural suicide visible in every direction. And if the West, particularly America, should lose the self-confidence that will be required to withstand the assault it is undergoing, all of the amusing sport being had by liberals will turn into their own ghastly nightmare.
Mark Steyn eyes the landscape and finds three unrelated incidents that, while seemingly trivial in themselves, all point to a collapse of cultural vigor. It is impossible to know where the tipping point lies; and calling attention to the pattern we see is a passport to ridicule from the uber-tolerant tranzies (that's transnational progressives, for the uninitiated).
Let's consider Steyn's three incidents:
How completely reactionary; how typically paleocon to draw such a gloomy inference from these expressions of cultural diversity, our sophisticated elites will bleat; while perhaps acknowledging that it is really quite savage if the German welfare system should require a woman to enter the world's oldest profession. But of course that can't really be true, can it?; and it could never happen here. And really, the subjection of terror suspects to "inhuman" abuses, such as depriving them of sleep or wrapping them in the flag of their sworn enemy - surely this kind of treatment only proves that the savagery of the Islamicists is a just and legitimate response to our own. And what kind of regime would we be living under if a budding creative artist could not express such enlightened and "proper" sentiments as that the president is the equivalent of one of the twentieth century's most murderous madmen?
Let's hear what Steyn has to say.
Mark Steyn eyes the landscape and finds three unrelated incidents that, while seemingly trivial in themselves, all point to a collapse of cultural vigor. It is impossible to know where the tipping point lies; and calling attention to the pattern we see is a passport to ridicule from the uber-tolerant tranzies (that's transnational progressives, for the uninitiated).
Let's consider Steyn's three incidents:
1) An unemployed waitress in Berlin faces the loss of her welfare benefits after refusing a job as a prostitute in a legalized brothel.
2) A British court has ruled that a suspected terrorist from Algeria cannot be detained in custody because jail causes him to suffer a ''depressive illness.''
3) Seventeen-year-old Jeffrey Eden of Charlestown, R.I., has been awarded an A by his teacher and the ''Silver Key'' in the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards for a diorama titled ''Bush/Hitler and How History Repeats Itself.''
How completely reactionary; how typically paleocon to draw such a gloomy inference from these expressions of cultural diversity, our sophisticated elites will bleat; while perhaps acknowledging that it is really quite savage if the German welfare system should require a woman to enter the world's oldest profession. But of course that can't really be true, can it?; and it could never happen here. And really, the subjection of terror suspects to "inhuman" abuses, such as depriving them of sleep or wrapping them in the flag of their sworn enemy - surely this kind of treatment only proves that the savagery of the Islamicists is a just and legitimate response to our own. And what kind of regime would we be living under if a budding creative artist could not express such enlightened and "proper" sentiments as that the president is the equivalent of one of the twentieth century's most murderous madmen?
Let's hear what Steyn has to say.
The waitress forced into prostitution by the government pimp is, at one level, merely an example of the unintended consequences that follow every legislative initiative. But, at another, it's the logical reductio of the modern secular welfare state.... When you cede to the state the responsibility for feeding, clothing, housing yourself, for your parents' retirement and your own health care, it's hardly surprising they can't see what the big deal is about annexing your sex life as well.... The government forcing women into prostitution is merely the latest example of the internal contradictions of the modern secular state.
SIAC, the United Kingdom's anti-terrorist court, found in 2003 that the 35-year-old Algerian male in question had ''actively assisted terrorists who have links to al-Qaida.'' But he was released from Belmarsh Prison because of his ''depressive condition.'' I'd be in a depressive condition if I were a terrorist: The Afghan camps are gone, the Great Satan's liberated Iraq, and Osama re-emerges from his three-year sabbatical only to release a floppo ''Vote Kerry!'' video recycling a lot of lame Michael Moore gags. The more Islamists in a depressive condition the better. Maybe if they get sufficiently depressed they'll stop being terrorists and become trainee accountants or male hairdressers.... But this surely illustrates the impossibility of fighting terror as a law enforcement operation. By Western standards, every Islamic terrorist is ''depressive'' -- for a start, as suicide bombers, they're suicidal. Sen. Kerry, you'll recall, thought terrorism should be like prostitution: a nuisance.
[W]hen Chariho Regional High School art teacher Lynn Norton set her pupils the task of expressing an idea three-dimensionally, Jeffrey Eden immediately thought of a diorama comparing Bush to Hitler. You might think that ought to be disqualified on the grounds that characterizing Bush as Hitler is about as two-dimensional as you can get, and it's less of a diorama than the diarrhea of leftist rhetoric, as poured forth by millions of moveon.org drones and nude Marin County feminist protesters and European activist puppeteers.... Well, Jeffrey's 17. One day, with a bit of luck, he'll realize Bush isn't Hitler.... But what are we to make of everyone else in this sorry story? The art teacher who gave him an A. The 15 judges in the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards who awarded him their ''silver key.'' The proprietor of Alperts Furniture Showroom in Seekonk where the winning ''art'' work is proudly on display. Are there no grown-ups left in Rhode Island?
I'm not worried about Iraq. As they demonstrated on Jan. 30, they'll be just fine. The western front is the important one in this war, the point of intersection between Islam and a liberal democratic tradition so mired in self-loathing it would rather destroy our civilization just to demonstrate its multicultural bona fides. It's not that young Eden knows nothing, but that neither his teachers, judges nor furniture showroom proprietors do. By contrast, our enemies know us very well, at least when it comes to courtroom strategies and canny manipulation of the fetish of ''tolerance.''
It's an open question whether the West will survive this twilight struggle: Europe almost certainly won't, America might; on the other hand, the psychosis to which much of the culture is in thrall may eventually reach a tipping point into mass civilizational suicide. And then the new barbarians will inherit, and young Master Eden will end his days pining for the rosy-hued nostalgia for the Bushitler tyranny.
# posted by mds : 2:57 PM
