Michael Radu in a magnificent piece in FrontPage (thanks to Anthony) argues that the murder of Theo van Gogh shows the bankruptcy of multiculturalism — which of course is exactly what it does.
No one has ever suggested that Dutch filmmaker, columnist and self-described “buffoon” Theo van Gogh, who was murdered this month, was a particularly nice person. His libertine views were ecumenically anti-religious: He had bad words for Jesus, made fun of the Jews sent to Auschwitz, and called Muslims “goat-kissers.” Yet it was not a follower of Pat Robertson or a Hassidic Jew who shot him repeatedly and cut his throat in the center of Amsterdam on November 2, but a fanatical follower of what President Bush and others continue to call, without nuances, a “religion of peace”: Islam.Holland is a country where drugs, euthanasia, and gay marriage are legal, and prostitutes and the military are unionized—simply put, a real country as close as possible to a liberal, tolerant, multiculturalist utopia on earth. And that, as the Dutch have belatedly discovered and become angry about, is precisely the problem. This belated anger — two years after the equally shocking assassination of gay, environmentalist, and equally libertine populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn by an “animal rights” militant claiming to “protect” Muslims — explains the post-van Gogh attacks on Muslim schools and mosques (there have been retaliatory attacks against churches, as well) in a country famous for its strong distaste for argument. Add to that the fact that prior to Fortuyn there had been no political murder in the Netherlands since the 1584 assassination of Wilhelm of Orange, the nation’s founder, and one begins to understand why one murder in Amsterdam may have an even more profound impact on Dutch culture and behavior than 3,000 deaths in America on 9/11....
In fact, van Gogh’s murderer himself, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, was on welfare after voluntarily interrupting his studies in informatics. He was born in Holland, and while he spoke excellent Dutch, apparently he knew little Arabic: His “manifesto,” pinned with a knife on van Gogh’s chest, quoted the Dutch translation of the Quran. He enjoyed dual Moroccan and Dutch citizenship. Widely described as intelligent, he apparently became unhinged after 9/11 and more so after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He had a history of petty crime and a dysfunctional family, and was recruited by a radical imam, Mahmud El-Shershaby, a follower of the Tabligh movement, in the De Baarsjes neighborhood, a known center of Islamic radicalism. Following a path already becoming common in Europe—one followed by, among others, Zacharias Moussaoui, the French-born suspected 20th 9/11 terrorist—Bouyeri was also influenced by a high school buddy, Samir Azzouz, a failed would-be martyr arrested in Ukraine in 2002 while en route to Chechnya.
What was most upsetting to the Dutch public and Dutch politicians was the fact that this would-be martyr — Bouyeri expected to be killed by the police and had a rambling suicide note on his person when he was wounded and apprehended — was not a lone lunatic but part of an international terrorist network with links to Spain, Germany, Iraq, and Morocco. Indeed, according to Spanish counterterrorist judge Baltasar Garzón, one of the leaders of Bouyeri’s cell, 36-year-old Moroccan Abdeladim Akoudad, played "a leading role" in the Dutch terrorist organization known as the Hofstad Group. After the plot to attack the Dutch Parliament was uncovered, he provided logistical support for the Dutch cell. Meanwhile, one of Akoudad's contacts, Mouhsen Khaybar, has been active in supporting mujahedeen insurgents in Iraq, and appears to be linked to the infamous leader of the “al Qaeda Organization in Mesopotamia,” al Zarkawi. As for Samir Azzouz, he has been linked to Abdelaziz Benyaich, now jailed in Spain for his role in the Casablanca bombings of May 2003 and the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings....
As the Dutch seem now to realize, tolerance for the intolerant is suicide. The post-van Gogh Dutch awakening may be the beginning of a more general awakening in Europe and Canada, because what has suffered is not some “fascistic, right-wing conspiracy” to create a “xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic” state, but a way of life tailored by and for the “progressives.” There are some encouraging signs already, especially in neighboring Germany, where the left-wing government exhibits a new awareness of the problems raised by its 3.5 million Muslims and — a new development — admits that such problems are not the result of German “racism” but may have something to do with the immigrants themselves.
'As the Dutch seem now to realize, tolerance for the intolerant is suicide. The post-van Gogh Dutch awakening may be the beginning of a more general awakening in Europe and Canada, because what has suffered is not some “fascistic, right-wing conspiracy” to create a “xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic” state, but a way of life tailored by and for the “progressives.” '
Now. Who think re-electing Bush was a Bad idea? Seeing as Holland (and Canada, seems more likely all the time) is the kind of country the US liberals were trying to create the last 40 years.
We need this:
http://www.historytextbooks.org/
Not the NEA.
This:
http://frontpagemag.com/
Not NPR.
And quite a bit more of people like Mr. Spencer.
Finding news about Islam:
http://www.apostatesofislam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=661
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=Islamic+News
http://www.topix.net/religion/islam
http://islam.newstrove.com/
http://www.terrorism.com/
http://www.trackingterrorism.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
http://www.pressdigest.net/tocnews.html
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/
http://virtuallyislamic.blogspot.com/
http://www.wluml.org/english/
http://www.forum18.org/
http://www.siteinstitute.org/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/
http://www.cis.org/
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/
http://ctstudies.com/
http://www.freedomhouse.org/
http://www.uscirf.com/
http://www.wwrn.org/
http://cultnews.net/
http://www.beliefnet.com/
http://www.infidels.org/wire/cats.shtml#islamism
The Dutch need cheering up, so here's an old joke. Oliver Cromwell (the Khomeini of 17th century England) is the alleged source, and it was originally meant to reflect badly on the Irish, who - with some justification - hated Cromwell in return.
To the Dutch:- don't worry about an Islamic takeover. Even if it ever happened, it wouldn't last. They'd forget to mend the dykes!
goat-kissers?
WTF!
I love it.
Also realize that a lot of euro-anti americanism is rooted in letist ideas. Once the UE as a whole starts displaying awareness of the here-and-now and to conserve the best of their culture against external threat (my defnition of conservatism), anti-americanism will also ebb.
Fact is the west desperately needs US military power to protect them umbrella-like in the coming jihadi storm. Small nations like belgium and holland can do precious little to protect themselves if hit by chem weapons (poisoned water supply for instance) or political violence 9attacks on parliament or politicans). ONLY the US retains the might necessary to decimate entire governments and armies out there that decide to back such covert violence against the west.
All power to a newly reawakening europe then.
Point is the outcome of this strugle is likely to be messy. Worst case you'll have a 1000 srebenicas bloom all over euroland.
Holland and its present hangover is just a sad reflection on our Wester Civilization malaise.
What would you call someone who, being stronger, richer, smarter and situated at a higher moral ground, lets a vastly inferior challenger seriously intimidate him?
Dear JW’ers friends, that ‘someone’ happens to be US and, if the so described overwhelming superiority wouldn’t suffice, our tester is pitched himself against the rest of the world by his own choice. So, besides it all, when it comes to counting the ranks, he is outnumbered five-to-one.
-‘Are they crazy?’, you may ask.
-Perhaps, but this is beyond the point. For sure they have infinite faith in their cause.
-‘Misguided cause’, you may object.
-Misguided against what?, I should reply.
-‘Against our set of values’, the correct answer appears to be.
-Who says that?
Then, on reaching this point, my hypothetical contradictor would indeed have a rough time defining who he represents to, for there are many others around him who would very possibly object each and all of his propositions. We are a pluralistic society after all and while half the Americans love their President, the other half simply hate him. What we are talking here is about unity, the kind of strength favoured by the natural law. And, let’s admit it, we Westerners are sorely lacking it, which is ok when the antagonism is vented trough the ritual we call elections and exhibited orally at our Parliaments. It however has disastrous consequencies in the face of the sort of impending menace difficult to identify or/and assess.
The fact is that despite all our Western Civilization advantages, we, the people at this blog, sound alarmed and, admit it or not, aren’t completely sure about the certainty of a positive outcome on the dispute we are contemplating, discussing and/or bracing ourselves for.
-‘Hey, there must be a mistake here, otherwise we are living a nonsensical nightmare, are we not?’
Well, you open your eyes, pinch your arm and guess it right:
We ourselves are the problem. Not you and me, for sure, but the vast majority of our respective countrymen who do not see, pretend they don’t hear and most definitely dare not speak, the classical monkey trilogy. After what has happened in Holland, who can blame this last group?
Where did we go wrong? That’s the million dollar question but I believe I have a possible explanation: we are soft, the psychologically sort, i.e.: in the sense that it seems something along our social evolutional line has dampened our communal spiritual strength, our faith in ourselves, the harbinger it always is of an impending defeat.
It happens in the realm of spiritual matters the same thing afflicting our tangible universe. In the latter, when we separate ourselves from Nature, be it through the wrong kind of technology (the excess), be it because we are incapable of controlling the natural elements around us (the default) we are endangering our survival. Talking about the former, the moral monuments erected by man’s invectiveness, despite all appearances to the contrary, with the only exception of the American Indian culture, from all the 26 others we know,the ones that became extinct or are in the process to die, all have passed away either by natural death or through a suicidal act. I shall defend this apparently preposterous thesis pointing out that the source of my inspiration is none other than the renowned, XX century English professor Arnold Toynbee. The Roman Empire didn’t fall because of the barbarians, he says. Those woodlands brutes just happened to be there when the body of their arch-enemy became limp in their arms, otherwise there is no rational explanation for the demise of the Romans the way we have learnt it in our History books.
Both Toynbee and the German historian Oswald Spengler situate the spiritual, moral or political (chose your adjective, please) flexing point of the most famous Empire at the time of Julius Caesar, five centuries before Odoacre became the first Barbarian to rule over the by then sadly diminished thing, the yet-tepid corpse I was referring to before.
However, to the possible surprise of many of you, materially speaking, the apex of it arrived under Marco Aurelio’s rule, a thoroughly decadent Emperor, which doesn´t mean he was a crook or anything like that. On the contrary, taking aside the apparently inevitable fact that he continued massacring innocent Christians because he didn’t know better, he was in all other respects a philosopher of sadness who sought consolation in the stoic school, the only sensible intellectual proposition in times of decay. Among other things, this Emperor authored a decree granting the Roman citizenship to all people living within the vast boundaries of his Empire, the beginning of the last phase of the end it was. Any similarities with what is going on nowadays in the West?
Both philosophers of History (for this the title A.Toynvbee and O. Spengler deserve) also concur in admitting the French Revolution was the turning point in Western History where the chart of our collective moral fortunes started heading South. To make matters worse, someone whose name I cannot recollect now but whose judgement I appreciated when reading his essay, has reckoned the statistical mean life of a democracy, any one, is two hundred years. He then described in very eloquent and convincing terms the process by which such a construction becomes obsolete little by little, mostly through stupidity and selfishness.
Not to make this post interminable, let me explain the logical conclusion of it: those islamist rascals are just passers-by or, if you wish, the instrument Nature’s has devised to set the record straight, for according to Its rules, good and evil are defined in terms of resolve and preparedness, that is, the will to prevail. They, the muhammadians, are weaker, dumber and poorer than us but, as I pointed before, have something we lack: unity, at least much deeper and more extensively than us. It is irrelevant to Nature’s ways that their unity revolves around a pathetic idea. Pathetic is a derogative adjective we utter just to show our disgust but not everybody must agree. The truth of the matter is that on the unity count he are the hens and they are the foxes.
When watching one of those fantastic BBC-Nature TV documentaries showing one of the big cats galloping behind a graceful gazelle, I always wish the terrible beast fails in its murderous attempt. But when things return to normal, I change sides to fervently wish to be a ferocious lion rather than a graceful gazelle. For the same token, I never turn my other cheek when someone slaps me. I wish all of us Westerners would behave in the same fashion when confronting our enemies. Nature favours the strong, which doesn’t necessarily mean muscles or brute force but a combination of it and the will to use it. And we are miserably lacking the latter.
Are we doomed? Is History an already written tale? What’s to be done?
Any comments?
"... in a country famous for its strong distaste for argument"
What a telling remark!
I was discussing the Fortuyn and van Gogh murders the other day with a couple artist friends of mine from Amsterdam and their comments on the situation reflected this 'strong distaste for argument'. I got the distinct impression that they were more appalled with the things Fortuyn and van Gogh were saying than what happened to them. Furthermore, they seemed more concerned with the rise of "nationalist" (their word/term, not mine) political parties than the rise of jihadism in Holland.
It seems, in the minds of multiculturalists - not just the jihadists - that some topics are indeed taboo. Anything that might be considered controversial, uncomfortable or critical was best left unsaid in the interests of harmony, regardless of whether of whether it was eating at the foundations of their pluralism or not. These folks are like Nero fiddling during the immolation of Rome - I'm not convinced the message has gotten through to everyone, it actually seems to have hardened their unwillingness to "rock the boat".
One has to wonder if these Dutchmen will end up like the American Left post 9/11 - they'll be upset about the whole damned thing for as long as their attention spans will allow, and then amnesia will set in and they'll go right back to their old suicidal tendencies. The signs, disturbingly, are all there.
It's "Goat Fuckers", not "Goat Kissers"
How the hell are Muslims expected to relieve their sexual frustration by kissing a goat?
Crazy Puritan Yankees.
And WTF is wrong with a humanist drug policy, legal prostitution, gay marriage and euthanasia?
Let's not pretend the Dutch would like to get back to some religiously motivated dark age morals m'kay?
Mike, when talking to your Dutch conversationists you should have remembered the old Greek proverb: "When the Gods seek the perdition of a man, They turn him blind". I however prefer a slighty different one: "When the Gods.... turn him an idiot".
Agree?
Van Dutch: What does WTF mean?
Fascinating post, Cid.
I think the big problem, at least in the US, is that people are either too intellectually lazy and/or preoccupied with their day to day routines to learn about the nature of this conflict and our enemies. How many Americans have picked up Robert Spencer's "Onward Muslim Soldiers" or Bat Ye'or's "Islam and Dhimmitude", much less anything by Bernard Lewis? How many people have bothered to read a translation of the Qur'an and find out what Osama bin Laden is talking about when he invokes the Verse of the Sword, or what Allah demands of his subjects in Sura 9:29? How many people took the time to watch the decapitations of Nicholas Berg and the other victims of Jama'at Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad?
Certainly the media is complicit in its silence, but we should not let ourselves off the hook because the networks are preoccupied with pandering to their own interests. It is our own responsibility to pick up the history book by Lewis or Ye'or, or the book about jihadism by Spencer or Emerson, or to get on a mailing list from Daniel Pipes or Andrew Whitehead. Certainly this is one thing that frustrates the posters on this blog - the endless expanse of apathy and ignorance, and the nagging worry that people aren't going to wake up unless something far more catostrophic than 9/11 occurs.
That's one thought amongst many...
Mike, people are inmersed in their daily preocupations and our media guys pander to their special interests, etc. But, where the hell are our politicians? Is anybody serving the public doing anything useful? Here in Europe -and more especially in Spain- it seems they are doing exactly the opposite, appeasing the muslims, manytimes at the cost of other legitimate institutions. The Gods turning some of our people morons indeed. It is quite scary.
To El Cid:
I read Spengler several times and I think that he is wrong and misleding in the point that history seems to have its own rules.
One has to regard him as a typical exponent of pompous German professorship who doesn't recognise rational behaving rather than ideology and doom or fate as motors of history.
Only his remarks about parallels in the development of societies are new and outstanding.
The best proof of his false theory is the history of China with its longstanding development, with its mistakes, with its successful and unsuccessful absorption of foreign ideas and inventions.
If a country possesses an elite with the will and the power to change things it should be possible to do so.
By the way:
I guess WTF means "What the f***"
I agree, Cid.
Somewhat in the same vein, P.J. O'Rourke made an interesting (and humorous) point in his latest book "Peace Kills" that Americans are more suspicious of immigrants because we ARE a bunch of immigrants ourselves. We know all about the dirty little cultural secrets, biases and agendas because we dragged them over with us ourselves. If that makes any sense, it might help to explain why things are a little different here than in Europe.
I guess that would help to explain where me and my Dutch friends part ways on freedom of expression. I think it's important that people lay down the gauntlet on freedom of expression, and that these people have to be supported, in spite of what we may think and believe. The assassinations in Holland have really reinforced this with Americans such as myself.
Nippon-
Right you are!
Nippon,
I too think O. Spengler missed the mark on many points. He foresaw however the advent of the Nazi era in his country but made the gross mistake to extrapolate it to make a universal thing of it, not to mention the erroneous assumption that the emerging hero would prevail over the meek democracies of the time. However, when he got it right he did it with a bang. ¿Have you read his ominous premonitions on the impending demographic disaster on the West? I admit his deterministic theory is hard to swallow but when a look around and see what’s happening to us against all odds, it makes me wonder. Then you have the concurrence of his French Revolution assessment with that of his much more down-to-earth- English rival, Mr. A. Toynbee. But this one also failed at identifying who could possibly be our Western Civilization undertaker…
Mike,
You say:
'I guess that would help to explain where me and my Dutch friends part ways on freedom of expression. I think it's important that people lay down the gauntlet on freedom of expression, and that these people have to be supported, in spite of what we may think and believe. The assassinations in Holland have really reinforced this with Americans such as myself.'
As you have noticed, English is not my frst tongue and that is why I fail to understand the above paragraphaf oy yours. Will you please explain it to me with other words? The key question is who are you referring to when saying "these people": your artist friends or Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn?
Cid Campeador
Yes, I agree with you concerning Spenglers parallelism of "Caesar- Hitler", but he was cured in 1933.
It is said of him making following quotation:
"I cannot eat as much I could vomit".
Nippon,
When answering a post in thhis very page from Mike, I came accross the title of P.J. O'Rourke's book "Peace Kills" that he mentions to make his point. It suddenly brought into my mind a famous O.Spengler sentence that makes me shiver whenever I rememorate it: "There are very few countries who can stand a long war without getting their soul rotten. But no one can stand a long peace.", he said.
Is it deterministic or just a darwinian aftertought?
But to answer your question:
One should be aware of the deadly nucleus of self destruction on every level of enlightment.
Friedrich v. Schiller (who also wrote a drama about Don Carlos), made this clear in his dramas and novels:
Freedom of Feudalism and Tyrannism can be achieved, but every person has to be aware that freedom means restriction of every persons own heart and desires to do the right and moral things and not to follow the path of hedonism and shere dissipation.
So the children of enlightment, free masons, liberals, socialists et altera forgot this and did reject the goods of Christianity.
El Cid,
I would prefer a dualistic view on history like the old Daoists did:
The weak succombs the strong, but later on, the strong has to hold his gains and thus gets weak himself.
Who has nothing to lose has everything to win.
While the strong has to take action, the weak can wait.
Nippon,
When some brute tramples on my dead body it is utterly irrelevant whether the forces behind him were dualistic or deterministic. The only thing that really matters is not to take anything for granted and, paraphrasing William Cromwell: "Pray as you like but keep passing the ammunition, brother"
Cid-
Sorry, I was on another thread.
The people I refer to as "these people" are Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and any other person out there defending freedom of expression. Their efforts to defend our human rights must be universally supported - it's one of those united we stand, divided we fall things.
My point, based on the conversation I had with my Dutch friends, is that Americans seem less willing to diminish their freedoms for multiculturalism's sake. I guess, since we are a nation of immigrants, we take multiculturalism for granted - it's not something we have to overzealously protect.
Of course, I could be wrong. I'm making this observation based on limited information.
BTW, your English is marvelous - I wish my French was as good!
Hans Jansen, the eminent scholar of Islam in Leiden, has written an article within the last week in which, it seems, he has declared that Bat Ye'or's warnings about Eurabia were exactly right. I have the text -- and have sent it to Robert. But neither of us can translate it, and it is certainly worth reproducing here.
Is there, among the Dutch readers of Jihadwatch, one who might volunteer to translate this text, which will be smoothed out, if it needs it, and then published here? If so, kindly communicate with Robert Spencer.
Bat Ye'or has over the years been given a hard time -- or perhaps just not the time of day -- by Bernard Lewis and others. Gradually, however, as the evidence mounts, as the significance of her research becomes clear, as people are being less impressed with the favorite guests of Charlie Rose, that arbiter elagantiarum of all that's best in what's thought and said, her ungainsayable research becomes ever more unwilling to listen to those who want us, above all, not to read or buy her books, or for that matter, to unearth all the scholars before her, from Mary Boyce to Snouck Hurgronje to Dufourcq to K.S. Lal and Sita Ram Goel, whose own research reinforces her.
So when Jansen (who years ago did a brave review of Ibn Warraq, unlike someone who shall here go unnamed who dithered for two years while the TLS waited, and finally said he couldn't do it), a professor at Leiden, which with its Snouck Hurgronje Center has one of the most important MIddle Eastern Studies departments in the world, comes out and says these things in public, it needs to be put into English quickly.
For those who might want to read in English Jansen's article about Ibn Warraq, originally published in the Dutch HP/De Tijd on April 4, 1997, it can be found at pp. 137-144 of Sita Ram Goel's "Freedom of Expression" (published by the Voice of India), which also has a series of short but telling reviews of "Why I Am Not a Muslim," among them those by Antony Flew, Jan Knappert, Anwar Shaikh, Shabbir Akhtar, and Ibn Al-Rawandi.
This is a kind of Lend-Lease in reverse. Hans Brinker, and your Silver Skates, we are asking not for a finger in the dike, but for you to lend a hand, a dab translating hand.
I'm not suprised to read Hugh's comments re. Bernard Lewis and Bat Ye'or. Lewis seems smitten with Middle Eastern culture to me. Things like the devshirme don't seem to be a big deal with him the way they are with others who have a less sympathetic view of the Islamic world.
Mike, I appreciate your praise but if your French were as good as mine you´d do poorly, 'cause I am Spanish.
By the way, I have just listened in our radio that an Imam who wrote a book giving advice to his followers in Fuengirola (a southern touristical resort in Spain)on how to deliver due punishment to their wives without leaving body marks, has been sent to prison and actually he is spending his first night there today.
If only all the news coming from the Spanish dhimmi front were like this one...
Cid:
I suspect the reference you are looking for is
Prof. [University of Edinborough] Alexander Tyler's "The Fall of The Athenian Republic".
Life in the Netherlands brings to mind this quotation from Ignatius of Loyola:
"...that my soul is a prisoner in this corruptible body and that my whole self, body and soul, is condemned to live amongst animals on this earth, like someone in a foreign land."
The Dutch destroyed their Edenic world by themsleves, by their won choices. What they do with the exile they face within their won land is mostly up to them. Maybe there will be a Moslem bonfire of the vanities, a pile of infidel works wrinkling and smoking in the flames, van Eyk, van Dyke, van Gogh. Maybe the Dutch nightwatch will be the sight of their history going up in flames.
Cubed argues this is the result of Kant. I beg to differ, not being Dutch myself: I argue it is a mix of natural fascism in the Human soul, so truely visible in Plato's Republic, but more covertly and more dramatically in the Naziism of the Left enviornmentalist/philobarbarist homoeroticism as seen in T.E. Lawrence and Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, et al. White, Red, and Green fascism all of a kind. I blame Heidegger and the Left fascists who hate people but love the system that controls them, that is the Natural Way of Nature, i.e., fascism of the Blood Purity of the Ur Man.
How do people like the Dutch get wrapped up in this sort of travesty of Human life? By the sanctimonious cliches of philobarbarism, by the romaniticism of Naziism, and by the cynical manipulation of "moral superiority of the Left" over the hostile philistines of the Right. Who, indeed, wants to think of himslef as a greedy idiot only interested in ripping and tearing to fill his filthy gob? Sensitive, intelligent, socially aware people want peace and good-will toward all men. And let the Nazi Left combine with the Nazi Right to show just how maral they are by defending the rights of the barbarian oppressed, the Palestinians. I choke.
Who will stand up for the Dutch in that false-moral milieu? Is there some Ajax lurking in the dark who will sneak out of camp under cover of night to slaughter the enemy? Yes, and in the morning it will be revealed that those he slaughtered were goats. Our hero: thsoe whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad; and who could be madder than Moslems with all their sex partners dead in the field.
Or maybe it will end with the Dutch so disgusted by their own body politic that they simply yearn to shed the whole thing and flee into the next world, hoping for the best.
Daniel Davrot,
Will you please ellaborate?
Sonofwalker,
Though I would express it differently, I agree with your devastating assessment on the sorry shape of the communal soul of the people you are referring to, not the only ones deserving such harse judgement indeed.
You quote the well-known sentence :'Those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad' which I use frequently myself in these times of confussion. However, in my own language we translate "blind" instead "mad" the corresponding Greek word, for I understand the sentence belongs to Sophocles, does it not?
I like your version better, for it makes more sense when I paraphrase it to become: 'Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make them idiots', the logic of it being that it is not madness but sheer idiocy the cause of the Western Word disorientation.
Oh, I don't know. I suppose I still have a bit of an optimistic hopefulness when it comes to multiculturalism. I don't think it's a bankrupt idea. I think it can work fine, as long as one of the cultures in the mix is NOT Islam. The rest of us can probably get along okay, with a few arguments along the way, but we'd settle down. Maybe we wouldn't exactly be enamoured with all the other cultures, but we'd be able to respect each other enough to live and let live.
But the problem with Islam is that it is insanely, rabidly MONOculture. Everywhere it goes, it just swallows up and stomps on any other culture and it all turns into a backwards 7th Century mini-Arabian cesspit, where everybody has to be the same. Think the same, dress the same, live the same. It hates other cultures. Preaches death to them, or reduces them to a 3rd class inferior, subjugated group that lives in fear for its very existence, while paying protection tax. That's what they tell their kids from day one. That's what they preach in their mosques til the day they die. Even when they move to progressive Western societies, they can't drop the hatefulness. They can't see what's around them, they're blinded by their hatred and disrespect for non-Muslims. Even when born in the West. It's like it's inbred in them, part of their DNA.
A multiculturalist utopia is one that does not include Islam.
One may wish to consider the following as a resource in the contest with Islam
The Sword of the Prophet
Islam, history, theology, impact on the world
by Serge Trifkovic
published by Regina Orthodox Press
see site at www.reginaorthodoxpress.com.
Also read his work at Chronicles Magazine.
Do a google search for Chronicles. Good stuff..
Prince Bernhard is the much-beloved husband of the late Queen Juliana, who was Queen of The Netherlands from 1948 to 1980. Prince Bernhard is suffering from an inoperable tumor, his health is gradually deteriorating, and his family is gathering at his bedside.
Despite that...
Mr. Darwish's poems are a tribute to "the Palestinian struggle and resistance." That wouldn't be the same "Palestinian struggle and resistance" that breeds terrorists and celebrates 9/11, would it?It sure is! Which leads one to ask: WTF???
See my blog for updates on the situation in Holland.
'As the Dutch seem now to realize, tolerance for the intolerant is suicide. --
You're forgetting, friends, that the Dutch early on developed a tolerance for suicide which now includes pressing the expensive old Bestevaer (Grandfather) to exercise his "right to die"--no matter what Bestevaer's anachronistic Calvinist or Catholic conscience might tell him about suicide. Perhaps multi-cultie philobarbarism is nothing less than a suicidal impulse in Western culture.
Cid and a few others--back in the late 1930's, a bunch of Viennese thinkers named Moritz Schlick, Friederich Waismann and Josef Schaechter wrote a book _Ethics and the Will_. It's an interesting one that basically tells us that, re the Vienna Circle's desire to rebuild all thought on the basis of scientific positivism, that there is no way to get from the empirical "is" to the ethical "ought". Yet at the same time, these thinkers lamented at the absence of a "Socratic man" to stem the tide of the babarism that was advancing (it was the eve of Hitler's Anschluss of Austria). The fact is that the scientism of the 19th and 20th centuries routed not only religious obscurantism, but also the possibility of the "Scoratic man" the Vienna Circle philosophers sought--and they themselves had put their finger on the problem.
The Islamic influx (including its radical Islamicism) has thus shown the heirs of the enlightenment that they are rapidly reaching the end of their tether--that the bungee jump they took was one in which the rope was tied not around the ankles, but around the neck.
Feralee,
You once again strike it at the bull's eye. Certainly, getting along well with the rest of the people around us despite our differences really is the apex of civilization and we Westerners were dwelling in these excelsial heights when a combinatiion of sheer stupidity greed, ignorance, lack of vision and political reckleness -remember Enoch Powell?- forced the situation we are immersed in now.
As you hint, permitting the instalation of a historically hostile culture in our midst was not just a mistake but a crime. We have a proverb: 'Two people cannot quarrel if one of them doesn´t want to' (It takes two to tango). But when it comes the islamic people this proverb doesn't work unless the reluctant part is prepared for submission. We are stupified at the sight of the gross act of ingratitude on the part of those who knocked at our door begging for a loaf of bread and were welcomed in, only to watch them making themselves at home and finally demanding without a trace of shame separate quarters first and the whole property at the end. Where you expect a little gratitude you get disdain, for these peoples see weakness in a tender heart. That psycological trait might explain the success of tyrants in their societies. I believe it was Aristotle the one realizing first in his study of the existing political Constitutions that 'those asians are born slaves' and therefore their monarchies were in fact tyrannies. And they carry on themselves this trait wherever they go.
The words we use in everyday life are taken for granted that we assume the meaning for them is settled. The truth is, what we mean by those words have changed......
Take multiculturalism and tolerance. Tolerance should never mean that there is no limit. It is a word that does not specify to what extent it is tolerated.
Someone correctly said, that multiculturalism and tolerance have meaning within all religions, except, of course, Islam. The other religions do urge upon their followers to propagate. But not so aggressively as Islam.
I do not know how many would remember a program in BBC's Asia today on that fateful 9/11 where a Muslim Scholar ( I do not believe it is possible to be both ) admitted that it is the duty of every Muslim to propagate with force. The issue was of few Muslim boys bothering a Sikh woman to convert. I was waiting for the next episode that was cut down by the 9/11 that happened about 11 hrs later.
The message was clear; we are here to convert. All of the others are more interested in keeping religion as a private domain, mostly, and allow our lives to be dictated by the demands of the modern living. We work hard, earn, take care of children and are mostly keep religion as a safety net when we need one. I can understand another man , when he says he is pround to be a Christian or Jew or whatever I am not. There is not competitive aggression about it.
The difference is, Islam has taken a very offensive and aggressive stand that either it is accepted as the superior way of living or else.......
The message is being understood by everyone now. Those who thought the madness would fade away now know that we are dealing with a serious threat.
The best way to deal with the situation is to shut the doors on the Muslim immigrants. Let the stew in their own Islamic Heaven. Leave them there.
As for the ones already in Europe, separate those without proper papers and send them back. Send mail to the local politician that if he wants to be re-elected, the place is to be cleansed.
Keep the Muslim population to below 1% of the total population. Get your own population up. This is something each and every nationalist should feel and do. The women will have to take time to do what is natural and what their country needs! I am not joking.
We are stupified at the sight of the gross act of ingratitude on the part of those who knocked at our door begging for a loaf of bread and were welcomed in, only to watch them making themselves at home and finally demanding without a trace of shame separate quarters first and the whole property at the end. Posted by Cid Campeador
The ingratitude of muslims who have invaded our countries bothers me immensely also. Their unabashed arrogance is maddening; it's as if they really believe the entire world is theirs for the taking.
Muslims remind me of an old song which I believe might be based upon a Biblical story; I'm not sure. The song is about a woman who rescues a wounded snake, takes it home, nurses it back to health and when fully recovered, the snake delivers a fatal bite to his savior. The kind lady asked the snake why he bit her after she saved his life, knowing the bite would kill her. His reply was something like this: "You knew I was a snake when you took me in, so you should have known that snakes bite." In other words, you got exactly what you deserved. Muslims think along these same lines. Once they establish themselves in Western countries, they see themselves as being oppressed by their inferiors. Their resentment escalates and when there are enough of them, the jihad begins.
Plenty of us knew what muslims were when we took them in, so why should we expect our kindness to change 1350 years of hate, intolerance, and hostility? If we have learned nothing else from this debacle, I hope we now realize that hate cannot be defeated with kindness, generosity, and tolerance. Centuries of ingrained antipathy and delusions of superiority, reinforced daily in the mosques, won't miraculously vanish just because we're so nice, hospitable, charitable, and tolerant. They hate us; that is why they do not assimilate into our societies. They want all the good things the west has to offer, but they completely reject the civilization that made their good fortune possible.
We are not all "basically the same"; the liberal, multiculturalist motto is a lie. Muslims belong in their own miserable, non-pluralist, xenophobic hellholes of tyranny, ignorance, and stagnation, separated from the civilized world. Western culture and Islamic culture cannot coexist in harmony, and muslims will not meekly retreat and let us live in peace. Brute force is all they understand.
dear Cid from Spain,
I believe you are mistaken that the saying "whom the gods wish to detroy, they first make mad" - that you so eloquently altered for me - was by Sophocles, if I recall correctly it was Euripides.
Sophocles was the one who said "It is terrible to speak well and be wrong" - qoud erat demonstrandum.
Anyways, my only point is that I strongly disagree with the notion that humanist policies like gay marriage, legal cannabis and euthanasia is - as Mr. Radu seems to suggest - "the problem". I do not see how these topics are related in any way to the current 'rethink' of multiculturalism.
I would go even further and state that one who believes that it is ok for gays to be discriminated is on the same moral level as those who think Sharia is acceptable.
You see, the perverted ways of Islamo-Fascism are well known to me, and like many Dutch I have drawn my conclusions.
At the same time we shouldn't forget that Christianity has had it's Fascist moments - remember the Dutch defeating the Spanish Inquisitors in the 80-years war?
At present there are still clerics in the USA - and elsewhere - who consider gays "sinful", touting their ideology without reason ("Religion") as an argument.
Anyways, like the great JC "El Salvador": said "you won't see it until you understand it" (you from Barca? - they rule)
Erasmus was right, Luther was wrong.
And Blasphemy is a commandment.
As an aside, the last religious murder before Van Gogh was the execution of the "Martyrs of Gorcum" in 1572. Pretty impressive huh, 432 years? Now the curse of the Netherlands is to stare Islam straight in the eye, define and win the fitna we're facing.
Sorry if I come across incoherent - I'm not stoned though.
Hi, I'm Dutch and have a lot of experience in writing essays and papers in English for college. I would like to translate the article, if help is still needed. However I can't find any way of contacting anybody on your site.
If you're still interested you can contact me at pkloos2@hotmail.com!
Cheers,
Marc