When finally the West takes action, the Left will take the credit for it, just as they are now in changing disastrous education policies which they themselves foisted on us.

Posted by: PG at January 2, 2009 1:12 AM

True - like the Soviets taking credit for being the lead in ending Nazism, despite the fact that it was they who entered into the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, and didn't think it worth ending the alliance until Operation Barbarossa started.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at January 2, 2009 2:19 AM

Ah! So, the Dutch are finally waking up! They couldn't steal money from the Jews and have them deported fast enough during WWII, only to be so kind, and accepting to those that have completely trashed The Nederlands until the Dutch have realized that their indigenous culture is at risk! These are scary times in the Benelux countries...I'm sure most of you know what happened in Antwerp just recently where the Jihadists made a big noise (understatement) and the police had to cordon off the Jewish neighborhoods to protect the safety of the Jews.

It isn't "Stealth Jihad" in an underhandedly polite way anymore; it's all out Jihad now! The mask has been removed and the Islam Jihadists are in an all out war with Western values and cultures...hopefully with this trend in The Nederlands Eurabia is waking up!

Posted by: Zebrabees at January 2, 2009 3:57 AM

This is indeed a favorable development. But it raises an issue, that goes well beyond Islam.

As someone with some experience living in Europe, I am scratching my head, seeing a left wing party talk about a Dutch culture.

If a modern democratic culture is by definition democratic, then it is agonistic. If it is agonistic, then what do you propose people assimilate into?

What is being offered here?

Be a fundamentalist or be Dutch, as in, openly gay, smoke weed, and down mushrooms?

Stand for some notion of the family, or insist, that modern culture has all but abolished this form of "slavery" and families are so old fashioned?

Believe in some form of morality, or accept the Dutch notion that everything is really unreal, and really, so what what.

Anyone with a modicum of experience living in Europe knows, that it is a continent, where simple things like family, morals, and traditions, are quickly becoming Evangelical American imports. Except when the French are doing the "tradition" in which case they are trying to export cheese; or when the Germans export "engineering".

So I am left clueless as to what Ploumen is suggesting in her rupture with the past. If there was actually something to build on - a European value system that didn't consist of outright negation and pooh-poohing of anything smacking of order and reason, it would make sense. But Europe's malaise is far deeper than a few immigrants. Perhaps due to their complexion, they have come to embody Europe's problems, but all they really do, is serve as a distraction from its true source of origin, native European populations who under no circumstances can agree on what is right and what is wrong, that have been suckled into personal irresponsibility and moral frivolity by a massive government theft program which steals from the productive and gives to the listless and hapless and remorseless.

The tragedy of the century, has been the wholesale decline of Europe as a culture and civilization. Few Americans, and outside observers, understand the rot that is Europe. Few, if any, understand that in 20 years time, London and Paris will be indistinct from Mexico City and Sao Palo. The fractured nature of the societies here, in terms of identity and values, is such, as to virtually guarantee a third world country status, in 50 years.

Americans are distracted by our Chinese and Indian immigrants, who work hard, and buy into the American dream - and they compete with equally ambitious natives. In Europe, the few ambitious immigrants all move to America, and they have no ambitious natives to compete against. Ambition, is so un-European. Why its "uncivilized" if you ask any European.

Anyone with any brains gets out of here. There are more French graduates of top schools in America, than in France. At least they don't have to feel guilty in America, about making more money than the street cleaner.

Posted by: SkepticOverAll at January 2, 2009 5:53 AM

Abraham Lincoln said it best, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

Posted by: PorkFatRules at January 2, 2009 7:39 AM

“Anyone with a modicum of experience living in Europe knows, that it is a continent, where simple things like family, morals, and traditions, are quickly becoming Evangelical American imports.”

Oh give me a break, the homicide rates in our western European nations are lower than the homicide rates in America, our crime rates in general are lower. To say were “lacking in morals and traditions” we were doing bloody fine until the fundamentalist religious nut jobs resurfaced again, this time Muslims and more insidious and dangerous than ever before. The reason they have enjoyed so much protection so far is because they are a minority and people assume they have no desire to interfere in the legal system of the country or impose their way of life on anybody, much like the way Hindu’s, Sikh’s and Jew’s quietly integrate into society.

The answer to fighting a superstition based belief system isn’t to fight it using another superstition based belief system, our heathen secular society was doing very well until god’s zealous followers turned up on our doorstep again telling us they have the one true holy book and the one true way of life that we all must follow.

Posted by: Daniel at January 2, 2009 7:40 AM

Totally agree with you Daniel.

I don't know if you've been here before, but please post here more often.

Posted by: Voltaire at January 2, 2009 8:01 AM

Today I had the opportunity to talk to a Western European diplomat, who works in Dar al-Islam, and whose views on giving asylum to muslims in Western Europe are exactly like Hugh's, as stated in his comments on the article below:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/023991.php

It's extremely encouraging to see that more and more people are managing to see the truth, despite the efforts of many to hide it in the suicidal fog of political correctness.

Posted by: Proud_Kafir7908 at January 2, 2009 8:59 AM

The problem is by the time the lefties finally wake up, the enemy is firmly entrenched, and usually in large numbers. What then? Some say assimilation is not on their minds, oh contraire, assimilation is exactly what's on their minds, only its "you" who is the one that is to be assimilated. What will happen to France? In the not so distant future when muslims reach a pop. percentage past 50%, will the remaining indigenous French settle for dhimmi status like the 40% Infidels in Malaysia? At this point what options would the infidel French have left? Civil war? Perhaps hoping to annex a part of their own country as a desperate means to preserve what culture and freedoms they have left. Maybe ask India about that one. One thing is certain they now have a long road of strife ahead of them, all because they bought into one of the biggest lefty lies in history that "all cultures are equal". Maybe the French will be the first European country to have that engraved on their historical gravestone.

Posted by: KrazyKafir at January 2, 2009 9:29 AM

The heathen, secular societies provided so much calm, rational behavior in the 20th century, right?

Daniel, how about having a go at the true history of Europe? Before the EU totally wipes the truth from Big Brother's books.

Posted by: RerumNovarum at January 2, 2009 10:57 AM

Well why tolerate that which does not tolerate anything that is Non Muslim. This is what really gets me when I get to discussion with Muslim apologists. I remind them that the very thing you espouse to in terms of leftist ideals is the very thing that sooner or later if you continue to tolerant Islam will come and haunt you. It is a fact that Islam will never tolerate anything that is not Islamic. Period!

Posted by: savsiv at January 2, 2009 11:32 AM

retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

which should make it easier to expel 80% of them

Posted by: Borg at January 2, 2009 11:33 AM

I suppose Daniel lives in the reality in which Yobs or Athen's don't exist. Murder may be one thing - agreed - but when a population is so lethargic it can't even reproduce, let alone create a family, and by extension, raise individuals with solid family values, then please, let the geryatric drop dead, or don't complain about the color of the crutches.

Come on, what do you want immigrants to integrate into - pub nights, pub fights, or gay rights? In the last 50 years, Europe has produced virtually nothing worthy of note in culture, or science. Its cultural infrastructure sucks. Its newspaper, suck (except England, since its part of the USA). Its journalism sucks. Its universities suck.

So yah, while you're having a great time downing your pints mate, the rest of the world actually marches on, and good American, Chinese, and Indian kids with ambitions hit books, get degrees and keep things moving. Europe just skims the cream off of everyone's back.

Scandinavia is an exception. Now go and imagine Europe without those four sparsely populated countries in the north. And subtract the 75 percent of Germany which produces nothing but hop and barley. You're left with something approaching Brazil.

Posted by: SkepticOverAll at January 2, 2009 1:16 PM

A few thoughts in response to various posts:

'Abraham Lincoln said it best, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."'
Posted by: PorkFatRules

No, but apparently one can fool enough of the people enough of the time. Islam's been fooling most of the people in Islamic countries for fourteen centuries.

"Oh give me a break, the homicide rates in our western European nations are lower than the homicide rates in America, our crime rates in general are lower."
Posted by: Daniel

Largely true, but with important qualifications. True, American homicide rates remain higher than European ones, but American rates have fallen considerably in the last 15 or so years, while European rates have been rising. For overall crime rates, European rates are rising, and american ones falling. Many Euro countries now have rates higher than the U.S.: such as Finland, the U.K., and Denmark. For examples of certain types of crime: burglary is more common in Denmark, Finland, the U.K., Poland, Switzerland, Czechia, and Hungary than in the U.S.; and car theft more common in Denmark, the U.K., Norway, France, and Italy.

"Anyone with a modicum of experience living in Europe knows, that it is a continent, where simple things like family, morals, and traditions, are quickly becoming Evangelical American imports."
Posted by: SkepticOverAll

Unfortunately, one could re-write that sentence as: "Anyone with a modicum of experience living in [America] knows, that it is a [country], where simple things like family, morals, and traditions, are quickly becoming [Hispanic] imports."

Posted by: ebonystone at January 2, 2009 2:15 PM

In the last 50 years, Europe has produced virtually nothing worthy of note in culture, or science. Its cultural infrastructure sucks. Its newspaper, suck (except England, since its part of the USA). Its journalism sucks. Its universities suck.
"So yah, while you're having a great time downing your pints mate, the rest of the world actually marches on, and good American, Chinese, and Indian kids with ambitions hit books, get degrees and keep things moving."

Posted by: SkepticOverAll

In the last 50 years Europe has produced 103 Nobel laureates in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine; and another 30 in Literature. To be sure, some of the Lit winners are the forgettable, PC non-entities that the Swedes are so fond of. But the 103 in the sciences is surely "something of note".
As for culture, what have America, China, and India contributed? America: bad Hollywood movies, worse TV, and rap music -- nothing to brag about there; China: sorry, can't think of anything at all; India: Pallywood movies, even worse than Hollywood's. The best TV I've seen comes from the U.K., but I realize we only get their best efforts here in the U.S.; and I'm not at all familiar with German, French, or Italian TV, altho I hear it's pretty terrible.
Journalism and newspapers? American journalism is shallow, sensationalist, and hysterical; and our newspapers are largely advertising pamphlets. We have nothing (despite the NYT's claims) to compare with the solid reporting and analysis and coverage of the elite papers of the European countries, each country generally having a couple. And yes, I do realize that most Euro papers are junk, but in the U.S. they're virtually all junk.
Universities? Apart from a few leading graduate schools in certain (mainly scientific) subjects, which are indeed some of the world's best, the bulk of American colleges and universities are pretty mediocre. A student can get an excellent education at some of them, but most students do not.
So Europe isn't as bad as you may think. Certainly, China and India are no models to follow

Posted by: ebonystone at January 2, 2009 3:17 PM

"... we were doing bloody fine until the fundamentalist religious nut jobs resurfaced again, this time Muslims and more insidious and dangerous than ever before."

Posted by Daniel

Oh, really?

I hardly think so. Consider the cultural posture of Europe in the years of "doing bloody fine":

Two world wars fought predominantly on your own continent and necessitated by Europe's impotence in the face of bullies like Bismarck and psychotics like Hitler (your hides in both cases - and arguably in others - saved only by the intervention of the forces of the British Commonwealth and the United States), governments unwilling to take measures to defend their sovereign borders against totalitarian aggression other than by hosting American nuclear missiles on their soil (all the while daring to think themselves superior to the "uncouth" Americans) and too fearful to respond to petroleum blackmail other than by capitulation to dhimmitude and Arab colonization, and a population too habituated to a life of ease and too morally and intellecually shallow to foresee the all too obvious problems inherent in an increasing reliance on cheap third world labour to ensure basic services because of a birth rate leading to extinction are hardly the markers of "doing bloody fine".

As one who quixotically struggled for years (prompted partly by the ideas of a now deceased generation of leaders who appeared to be leading the Canadian centre-left in the direction of a moderacy and sense of balance that I was, in those days, sure would become fixed and permanent) to fuse Social Democratic ideals with the "superstition based belief system" that you denounce, only to instead see the Left in Canada become crazier than ever in the last few years, and have to turn my electoral support over the Conservatives as the only party offering any hope for the preservation of advances that the Left struggled for in earlier times, it's clear to me that you still don't get it, Daniel.

The parties of the Left (though not only those of the Left but, in many cases, it must be said, those of the Right as well) have brought Europe to the brink of destruction, and appear to be doing the same everywhere else, because they have failed to moderate themselves by foreseeing, and proposing to their adherents, the obvious need for reasonable and sustainable limits to a culture of material and moral entitlements. They opted for the intellectually lazy assumption that all change is, by definition, progress. This ethos is the essence of the "culture" that you want to call "doing bloody fine". It is this that must be expunged from European society forthwith if Europe is to survive, and I would argue that Europe's current Left can only impede that movement and must be expunged as well - by way of both massive and terminal electoral defeat and, where necesary and warranted, criminal trials for their corrupt and treacherous EU and Eurabian policies. Whatever new and progressive force emerges in place of the current Left can only succeed if its free of the taint of the current crop of scoundrels and unstained by its repulsive and failed ideology. Your attempt to scapegoat Europe's traditional religious identity as a bogeyman responsible for the continent's problems while ignoring its role in safeguarding Europe's authentic historic and contemporary identity, including the crafting of Europe's secular values, is part of the old way thinking the perpetuation of which can only lead to more of the trouble you face on the Old Continent, not less.

It is reasonable to reject and to bar the kind of religious obscurantism of the Middle Ages and the pre-Enlightenment era - very little of which, I must add,is actually found in Europe's religious institutions today - but it can not be called anything but the most disabling addiction to denial to suggest that the Europe of the last two centuries, with its genuine lack of a spiritual and moral point of reference, can be characterized as "doing bloody fine".

Posted by: templar at January 2, 2009 4:35 PM

A very interesting report, and rather encouraging.
Lilianne Ploumen sounds an admirable woman, and I hope that we will hear more from her on the same theme in the near future.
Some good comments attached also, though I cannot help wondering why some Americans seem to so enjoy telling Europeans that it is "too late", instead of applauding such firmness?
It would be wonderful if 2009 came to be remembered as the year in which all the frogs of Europe looked over the edges of their pots and said "Oi !! What is with all those flames ?"

Posted by: Al_Batross at January 2, 2009 4:39 PM

None of this should prevent any honest Dutch citizens of Left leaning tendencies or supporters of the Labour party who genuinely care about their country from moving to scrap the party and its program, retiring its leaders permanently to the political garbage heap, and starting over again from scratch. An organization that is so collectively demented that it can actually see fit to censure people like Ayan Hirsi Ali and Ehsan Jani deserves neither respectability nor political support nor, quite arguably, even an ongoing legal existence, in any constitutional democracy.

For that party to expect, or hope, to have any credibility now, after years of damaging pursuit of the very OPPOSITE policy, is beyond absurd.

It ought to be thought an embarassment to its members and supporters, a byword for political falsehood and corruption, an emblem of moral high treason, and a pathetic laughingstock deserving only of history's contempt.

And I say this all this as a guy who voted for the party's ideological cousins in Canada for nearly my entire adult life!

I wouldn't trust them now as far as I can throw them!

Posted by: templar at January 2, 2009 5:14 PM

Sure, Europe over the past fifty years, or indeed over the past two centuries, has produced some appalling things.

But I do not believe that anyone should start anticipating the funeral.

Just in the last century or so this decadent, supposedly dead Europe has produced, just to name a few, Jacques Ellul and Olivier Messiaen and Brother Roger of Taize, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the blessed Maximilien Kolbe, the Ten Boom family, and Oriana Fallaci, and let us not forget Geert Wilders. In Estonia - Arvo Part. In Poland - Kieslowski. In England: John Rutter, unashamedly Christian composer.

And in this decadent Europe in which the church is supposed to be quite, quite dead, no hope at all, we have Patrick Sookhdeo on an English campus in the 1960s falling in with Christians, and abandoning Islam for Christ; and Magdi Cristiano Allam, in Italy, converting to Christianity - having been influenced, in childhood, by missionary Catholic nuns...somehow nonreligious Italy with its dead church, produced those nuns...produced that other nun who was martyred in Somalia, and that priest who was stabbed in Turkey...and Germany, in which of course the church is 'dead', produced the young German Christian who went to his martyr death alongside his ex-Muslim Turkish companion martyrs (I wonder: were they originally converted to Christianity, by German Christians, in Germany?), after suffering atrocious tortures, in Turkey, only last year.

I suggest that those in danger of succumbing to despair - and, therefore, in grave danger of giving up and doing nothing - should first obtain, and read, three books. G K Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" and Charles Williams, "The Descent of the Dove"; and Jacques Ellul, 'Hope in an Age of Abandonment".

Chesterton makes it quite clear that 'Europe', considered as the offspring of Greco-Roman civilisation, should have died long ago. Both Chesterton and Williams record that Indeed, and especially since it became 'christendom', it has died, it has been pronounced dead many times before this day.

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting/part2c6.htm

The major irony of this otherwise excellent chapter 'The Five Deaths of the Faith' is that Chesterton does not see that the pattern he describes, in the life of European Christendom, is identical with - indeed, it may be regarded as a 'translation', a transposition into the lives of other peoples - of the pattern one sees in the life of the House of Israel in the TaNaKh, and which continues to be expressed, parallel to 'christendom', in the life of the House of Israel, now mostly represented by the Jews. The thing dies, it dies over and over, seeming to fail from within, and/ or murderously assailed from without by a phosphorescence of hatred; and yet it does not die, it returns, and returns, and returns.

Israel, along with those peoples inhabited by that which struck outward from Jerusalem at Pentecost, lives under the sign of the Phoenix: death...and resurrection.

Perhaps one of the best modern representer, in art, of this principle is Kieslowski: see 'Decalogue', 'The Double Life of Veronique' and 'Three Colours: Blue, White, Red'.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at January 2, 2009 6:37 PM

Well, a conservative is just a Liberal who's been mugged, or so the saying goes.

I'd be a bit skeptical, however. Is there an election coming up soon in the Netherlands?

May be too soon for Geert to take his finger out of the dike.

Posted by: Lt. Presley O'Bannon at January 3, 2009 4:55 AM

Dutch "tolerance" wold have been fine if only all the citizens - old and new - believed in the same code of conduct.

BUt when you ahve a bunch of tolerant, civilsed citizens and then a bunch of emotionally primitive types who still live in a dog-eat-dog mindset move in, you cannot afford to be so "tolerant" because they will kill you.

At least they're starting to recognise a few things.

Posted by: carpediadem at January 3, 2009 5:01 AM

Israel, along with those peoples inhabited by that which struck outward from Jerusalem at Pentecost, lives under the sign of the Phoenix: death...and resurrection.
Posted by dumledoresarmy.

Beautifully put, DA! I may use that elsewhere, with your permission.

Posted by: carpediadem at January 3, 2009 5:09 AM

carpediadem

you're welcome.

anything I post here, I assume to be in the public domain. If you like it, if it helps clarify something for you, use it.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at January 3, 2009 7:03 AM

Should we start calling them Islamophobes now?

Posted by: Jimmy the Dhimmi at January 3, 2009 2:44 PM

Finally, a site where intelligent, thoughtful, and thought provoking posters come to play. I think I'll abandon posting things to the CBC for a while.

I have little to add for the moment, but I do feel that there is hope, in this reversal of leftists' mindsets.

When the most tolerant of peoples begin to question their position as the turkey at the Christmas table, it is, at least time, for a smidgeon of cheer.

The General

Posted by: The General at January 4, 2009 10:17 AM

Too Little Too Late!
The Left, particulary the Communists and Marxists
since the 1960s, has sought to eliminate western culture. They have come close to succeeding be allowing immigration without assimilation into their countries. As result, parts of Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Bradford, Frankfurt look more like the GAZA or Pakistan instead of Europe. The level of tolerence is decreasing aka the Odense Mall shooting and the Antwerp anti-Jewish riots. Oh The Left( Communists and Marxists) have much to congrulate themselves on.
Now that Islam is starting to threaten them they complain. The Left has only themselves to blame

Posted by: Douglaz at January 4, 2009 11:35 AM

Great news, Robert, thanks for posting that item. My own theory has always been that the appropriate sense of alarm would have to spread from the right fringe to the political mainstream, and I see this as evidence that this is happening, at least, in Holland.

Posted by: Family Values at January 4, 2009 10:20 PM

The Dutch starting to wake up? I'll believe it when a major terrorist incident occurs and people genuinely become aroused enough to take direct action. Think all those guys in the marijuana/coke bars in Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Leiden will take part? Never mind. They won't even be aware that anything has happened.

-----

"The answer to fighting a superstition based belief system isn’t to fight it using another superstition based belief system..."
Posted by: Daniel

This might be true in an ideal world, Daniel, but you didn't propose an alternative. Got one?

-----

templar at January 2, 2009 4:35 PM
Great post!

-----

'...the year in which all the frogs of Europe looked over the edges of their pots and said "Oi !! What is with all those flames?"'
Posted by: Al_Batross

LOL. Very good. Will have to remember.

-----

The General - welcome to JW/DW. There are some terrific and very knowledgeable posters on this site and I'm sure you won't miss CBC at all after hanging around with this group for a while. Loved your comment about turkeys.

-----

Posted by: Eastview at January 5, 2009 12:10 AM

Wow, 103 Nobel Prizes for an entire Continent! Whawawa-Wee.

Now where did the other 700 prizes go?

Pick your contine...ups, I mean country -

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

So since Europe has had about three times the population of the USA, since 1901 its been able to get five times more Noble Prizes. And the important factor is time. Prior to 1950 Europe was pretty dynamic, since then, its been downhill. Take the field of economics, US dominance is breath-taking.

As for the intellectual output of Europe?

Ellul-who?

The only "intellectuals" in America known from Europe are a bunch of French toads which pontificate self-hate, and self-abnegation, and have occupied American campuses with the prefix "post".

Other than that - every bloody modern piece of technology, from the phone to the telegraph, comes from America.

Why compare Europe to India and China? There are much more appropriate comparisons, deep in the EU's fragmented psyche -

Japan,
South Korea.

Even puny South Korea exports more electronics and hi-tech goods to Europe, than vice-versa. Poor Nokia and Ericson are panting to keep up.

France is stuck exporting leather bags and cheese, while German automakers are relegated to a luxury sector, in which their product doesn't keep up with the Japanese.

---------

Now lets look at demographics. The only country which actually "re-produces" in Europe, is France. And guess what, it barely nicks the 2.0 rate. Subtract the "immigrant" component of this 2.0, you get about 1.79...i.e. even the toads can't reproduce. Then if you went deeper into the number, from that 1.79 you can subtract a further x, for the non-indigenous population, and you get the pretty picture.

A visit to a French suburb, will wake some of you nay-sayers. But lest you think it is the immigrants fault - think again. Interview a few French people, and see if YOU can find anyone who hears the word "marriage" and doesn't shreek.

Good luck.

Fortress Europe sunk long time ago. When its conscience began to teeter, and it didn't know which way to turn. It went from crime to crime, and yet it became wealthier every year. Spiritually, its been empty for at least 100 years. The intellectual strains which led to a destruction of its identity, were necessary and inevitable, and they reflected a culture on the spiritual decline. If there is something Europe has never had, its a strong spiritual tradition. That belongs to India and the Middle East, and hence these two regions were always a source for European cultural borrowing. But it leaves a funny and confused picture, when you see Europeans trying to "free" themselves of these borrowings, and make up silly games of searching for lost arks and holy grails, and then feeling empty and mindless.

There is no way to save Europe. You can only dance on its grave.

Posted by: SkepticOverAll at January 5, 2009 7:21 AM

'Skeptic'

If you don't know who Jacques Ellul is, and dismiss him with such utter contempt, having not even bothered to try to find out, with google and wiki at your disposal, why should *I* bother attempting to enlighten you? Would it tell you something about him, to tell you that his tree stands in the Avenue of the Righteous, at Yad Vashem?

In any case: why so ferociously intent on repeating counsels of despair? Why so intent on promoting attitudes that will split Americans from Europeans and hand everything to the barbarian Mohammedan hordes, without a fight?

As for your abysmally stupid remark:"if there is something Europe has never had, its a strong spiritual tradition."

NEVER?

WHAT? Is the music of J S Bach evidence of superficiality and weakness? Is the Divine Comedy of Dante, evidence of 'weakness'? Thomas Aquinas? The Lady Julian of Norwich? Piers Plowman? Francis of Assisi? Hildegard of Bingen? Teresa of Avila? St John of God? The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610? All of Rembrandt? WEAKNESS?? Good god. Hagia Sophia and the Duomo of Milan and Notre Dame de Paris, evidence of WEAKNESS? Olivier Messiaen? Maximilien Kolbe? Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Hans Urs von Balthasar (look him up - oh, I forgot, you're not even interested in researching these sorts of people). The spanish are still hard at work finishing the Gaudi cathedral.

Presumably you are arguing that because Christianity in Europe was not purely autochthonous, that because it was something learned, something chosen, something brought and then embraced and developed and agonised over and celebrated and fought over, lost and then rediscovered again, through painful centuries, it was 'weak'???

When all the evidence is that when Christianity entered Romanised - and also NON-ROMANISED - Europe it transformed whole cultures from within, not annihilating them or silencing them, note, but transforming them, dramatically, releasing an enormous efflorescence of creativity.

In Ireland, the time-honoured indigenous autochthonous cultural practices of headhunting, human sacrifice and slavery stopped: me, I don't see that as evidence of the culture being weakened, I see it as a vast improvement and I am very glad my long-ago Irish ancestors embraced Christ. Just as I am very glad my long ago Danish ancestors became Christian...and stopped worshipping Odin Glutter-of-the-Crows, to whom the Blood Eagle sacrifice was performed on the battlefield. Ever thought about the fact that Uppsala used to be a major centre of ...human sacrifice?

Sure, Europe 'borrowed' from - no, rather, LEARNT from Jerusalem in the Middle East. What's wrong with that? I don't see 'weakness' in the ensuing 2000 years of red-hot theological and spiritual and intellectual ferment.

Jewish followers of Yeshua brought 'Jerusalem' to Athens, to Rome, and then those whom they convinced and taught, then moved on to parts westward, northward, eastward; and the culture of the tribes of Europe was, over time, transfigured. (Nobody in western Europe or for that matter central Europe or Russia, owes anything much, spiritually or politically or religiously speaking, to India - where the hell do you get that idea from? Number system, yes; ideas about god and man and the world and how they relate to each other, NO. One word: karma vs one word: FREEDOM).

One 'case study' of the transformation of a society upon its encounter with the Gospels may be seen, for example, in Tom Cahill's "How the Irish Saved [western latin] Civilisation".

Who are you, 'skeptic'? If you are a U S citizen, then face the facts: *unless* your ancestry is pure First Nations and unless you speak a First Nations language and practise First Nations beliefs 100 %, NOTHING about your culture and philosophy is any more autochthonous, any more deeply rooted, than the Anglo-Latino-Romano-Greco-Jewish culture of western Europe from which your own physical and intellectual ancestors came. The spiritual tradition that nurtured generations of your ancestors, came from the European Reformation - triggered by a German, Martin Luther, who was inspired by a north african Roman Christian, St Augustine, and by a Jew, St Paul, and a Jew, Jesus. The political tradition comes from the interaction of that tradition with indigenous European ideas about oathkeeping, for example, and with southern European Roman and Greek ideas.

IF you are an Anglo-American or Latino-American US citizen, 'Skeptic', then if you indulge in contempt toward the 'weak' because 'derivative' culture of ancestral Christian 'Europe' you are spitting on all those people - Augustine, Gregory, Benedict, Boniface, Alfred, and far too many others to list here, it would fill a book - who helped to create the world that alone made *your* world possible. Were you Afro-American you would have to concede that it was those 'weak' Christians - descendants of converted tribal Europeans - who moved heaven and earth to try to end slavery.

Remember this command: "Honour your father and your mother".

In your attempts to persuade the non-Europeans here to join you in your vitriolic contempt not just for present-day Europe but, it appears, for all of Europe throughout all of its history; in your eagerness to write off as 'weak' the whole of the past 2000 years of European civilisation in all its forms (eastern and southern as well as western?), to bury it and then spit on its grave, you make me wonder indeed whether you may not be a Mohammedan dementor seeking to spread despair and division.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at January 5, 2009 5:11 PM

Why Europe matters; why we should care; why those of us here who come from outside Europe should be pouring on the intelligent encouragement for those people - from the UK, from continental Europe - who come here for information, and for refreshment, and to 'vent'. Why those who *are* still struggling to resist Jihad and Sharia, in the UK and Europe, should be encouraged, and supported.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/006213.php

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at January 5, 2009 5:19 PM