Whither the West

Unknown soldier statue, Longhua Martyrs Park, Shanghai

Mark Steyn links to a Canadian blogger who finds his grim prognosis for the end of the West thru demographic suicide and dhimmitude too, well, grim. The guy --an immigrant from Estonia--makes a case for the West coming through, but not without some serious cultural change and violence. Civil wars in Europe between the native (white) peoples and the Muslims, for example. A replay of the Spanish Reconquista with consequent expulsion of the aliens? Or The Caliphate, Act 2?

I have to say that if there is Muslim vs Euro war in Europe, both sides will have only themselves to blame for it. Those who act horrified and surprised were, as the bumper stickers suggest, simply not paying attention. It is not the only possible outcome, but it is hardly unthinkable.

Liberals seem to believe that with the advent of their enlightened institutions, like the UN (!), and their doctrines of multiculturalism, human rights and "the global community", etc. the normal business of humanity should come to a stop and people should learn to behave nicely and get along because, well, it's the nice and enlightened thing to do. They act as if inter-group competition, self-interest, hatred and violence are some kind of aberrant mistake; in Obama's words, "a man-caused disaster." Previously, this was called history.

And history, for conservatives, is the best way to learn about the race. Not philosophy, least of all political philosophy (like the Satanic illusion of Marxism), but history. The Founding Fathers studied law and philosophy, but I think they were interested most of all in the chastening illuminations of the study of history.

B writes from Shanghai, in the wake of sending me some pix of monumental statues, that he continues to wonder why the West no longer makes memorials like this (and the one above).

My theory: we no longer make heroic memorial statues because we no longer believe in heroes. And since heroes are idealizations of ourselves, we apparently no longer believe in ourselves.

In the liberal narrative of the world, where there are only oppressors and victims, groups who have been successful must be oppressors. And therefore without moral standing, without right of self-assertion, without the right to live.

The earlier post I put up about the history of the Middle East is instructive. From Egypt until the Ottomans, all the various successful groups were referred to as Empires. But then we have the expansion of Europe titled as "European Colonialism". As if all the others were something else...

I paraphrase again the great James Burham, author of The Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (1964!): The liberal finds himself morally disarmed in the presence of anyone he deems less well off than himself.

The successful group, aka the oppressor, having power, therefore has no moral right. The unsuccessful group, aka the victim, lacking power, has nothing but moral right. Since the liberal is a moralist, suicide is his only option.


_________________