A truly remarkable exchange. I notice a thing Mr. Auster’s friend is overlooking, though. “McBealization” seems to only reduce the birthrates of the white women from the Judeo-Christian culture of the west. The Mexicans inundating the USA are quite “McBealized” as far as thier moral conduct and lifestyle are concerned (as are a very large number of American blacks), yet their birthrate has, if anything, increased. He has forgotten the ultimately genocidal goal of the multiculturalist religion - the destruction of the European races. Therefore, if we were to introduce the degenerate culture into the Islamic world, there would be no reduction of any kind in the birthrate - but there would be many young men denied the traditional father/breadwinner role - furious and even more willing to listen to the Ayatollahs.

Some Islamic countries have managed already to achieve stable birth rates without Ally McBeal (or even worse, Sex and the City).

The fertility rate in Lebanon is 2.25, in Iran 2.45, in Tunisia 2.38, in Turkey 2.41, in Kyrgyzstan 2.63.

Admittedly in the Gaza strip it’s 7.46 and in Iraq 5.12. The highest rates though are generally in sub-Saharan Africa, whether Muslim or Christian. For instance in mostly Christian Uganda the fertility rate is 7.03 and in Muslim Mali it’s 6.69.

> Posted by: Carl on October 1, 2002 02:54 AM

> “McBealization” seems to only reduce
> the birthrates of the white women
> from the Judeo-Christian culture of
> the west.

Carl,

The problem is that Larry Auster edited my post. The original pointed out that “McBealism” only affects the portion (let’s call them “Net Tax-Payers”) who transmit Western Culture to their progeny well enough so said progeny can sustain an advanced Western civilization like we (currently) have. High birth rates among the underclass of, say, Detroit, do America no more good than high birth rates in, say, Uganda. (Less good, since we will soon have “governance” problems.)

MY ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS:

Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 10:08:28 -0500
To: “Lawrence Auster”
From: Jim Woodhill
Subject: RE: “Ally McBealization” of the muslim world: “Evil”? Or merely “Diabolical”?

Larry,

Your comment calls to mind the objections of the Politically Correct to Genetically Modified food crops. They insist that we are being Bad People to send GM grains to starving African nations, when it is what we feed our own children at home!

America is at war with enemies that care nothing for their *own* lives, much less our lives, not even the lives of our innocent children. They don’t even care about the lives of *their* innocent children—our enemies will brainwash their own kids, strap explosives to their young bodies, and send them out to massacre women and children selected at random. The culture from which this madness springs is Fundamentalist Islam, and we will never be safe until that culture is erased. In the last 9 months of WW-II Curtis LeMay gratuitously slaughtered something like 900,000 innocent German and Japanese civilians with incendiary weapons and finally 2 atomic bombs. And you blanch at the thought of our using MTV reruns to destroy the Jihadists? Now this is what I call *real* decadence. “The Greatest Generation” was up for doing what it took to preserve our American Way Of Life.

“Kemalism” imposed by a ’00s equivalent of the MacArthur Regency is a necessary start, but note that once it is imposed, the process of “Westernization” begins. And with Westernization eventually comes “Ally McBealization”. I am merely proposing that we consciously accelerate the process so that it is today’s Jihandists whose granddaughters become “thong feminists” in middle school, not their great-granddaughters.

(Of course I agree with you that America’s borders should be closed to *all* immigrants who are not willing to “forswear all foreign princes and potentates” and who cannot honestly swear to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, domestic and foreign”. Obviously, anyone who says that he is for imposing Shar’ia on America does not qualify. It is insane to grant access to our political process to those sworn to overthrow the government of the United States by force and/or violence. I also would not let in any immigrants (not even for family reunification) who don’t score above the United States mean in IQ.)

As for de-Ally McBealizing America, I would love to hear your plan. But any plan would have to deal with the root cause of America’s slide into sexual license, which is the skewed effective sex ratio generated by modernity. Modern societies simply have too many women chasing too few marriageable (not just fully able to shoulder the minimum economic, social, and familial responsibilities of husband/father, but also “acceptable” to the marriageable woman (e.g., smarter, taller, older, more successful, and more educated than her).) Some of the big “culprits” are ending death in childbirth (eliminating the supply of widowers in search of a new mother for their children), and, especially, mass education of women (because women are loath to “marry down” education-wise, while men are happy to).

A surplus of women seeking men operates like a surplus in any other “market”—it drives down the “price” of the “goods” in surplus. One way of articulating what “Family Values” are is that they are “The Price Of Women In The Marriage Market”. When I was a teenager, the “price” of a woman’s sexual favors was “marriage”. By the time I was a young adult (1970s), that price had dropped to just whatever the value was of *my* sexual favors (let’s charitably assume “zero” rather than some negative number ). Girls were having their way with me *before* the first date and then splitting the cost of breakfast the next morning.

What happened in the 1960s? The Sexual Revolution. Why did it happen then? Because the leading edge of the Baby Boom hit the marriage market, and, given the small size of the birth cohorts in WW-II and the Great Depression compared to the Baby Boom cohortes, the effective sex ratio faced by Baby Boom women was unnaturally low. (Note that Hillary Clinton had to marry a man of the same age as her, rather than one the customary 3-5 years older.)

It’s not that The Pill, Abortion-On-Demand, and AFDC don’t matter, but they are “accelerants” in my model, not “causes”. But they *do* cause a bifurcation of outcomes of the underlying sex ratio problem:

- The availability of effective, female-controlled contraception backed by abortion to the middle classes and above results in “Sex In The City”: Men get laid a lot because women are forced to compete with each other for them under “market” conditions which make the traditional female “Cartel Of Virtue” impossible to maintain, but society gets very few babies out of these unions (I have seen estimates of lifetime fertility rates for college educated women as low as 1.0). At least middle class-and-above work is interesting enough/highly compensated enough so that the men of these classes (mostly) work, even though they don’t have to have much of a career for women to have them. (This is not true of the working class—see below.)

- The availability of AFDC (now TANF), food stamps, public/Section 8 housing, EITC, Medicaid, free care at hospital emergency rooms, “emergency” food aid from food pantries, WIC, etc. etc. causes the Working Class to “sedimentate” (A word I made up just for this occasion) into the underclass. The speed of sedimentation depends on the sex ratio, which, of course, is worst for American black women since marriageable black men can (and do) marry non-blacks, black men die violently in great numbers, and are imprisoned in even greater numbers (over 10% of black males in the marriageable ages are behind bars at any given time, I have read.) Also, why would any man work at dull, meaningless, menial, and low-paid manual labor if he is in such demand that some woman will provide him a place in her bed and food to eat without his working?

So tell me Larry, what is your favorite solution to America’s sex ratio problem? The options to solve a “demographic” problem are never appealing, and the options to solve an (effective) *sex ratio* problem are Really Ugly:

- Deny higher education to women

- Selective female fetus abortion

- Selective female infanticide

- Mass male-only immigration

- Mass female-only emmigration

- Formalized (legal) polygyny

- Enforced sexual selection (all males who are not fully able to economically support any children they might father are rendered sterile (e.g., by a male version of Norplant).

- “Exhortation” (a la James Q. Wilson, Bill Bennett, yourself): “Marry and be a responsible and faithful husband because it’s the right thing to do, even though the girls in Middle School are already performing oral sex on their boyfriends.” The problem with “exhortation” in a free society is that it does not work.

- Coercion: Basically, institute a society like fundamentalist Islam! (This would work because it does work.)

Larry, you should give “Ally McBeal” another viewing. It’s brilliantly written and acted. And it’s America’s future. Our “present”, actually. As long as we are stuck with it, we are going to have to make sure the Jihadists are stuck with it too. (And don’t forget the “Sex In The City” reruns. The show should be renamed, “Life In Sex Ratio Hell”.)

Meanwhile, I am hard at work on a plan for restoring American birth rates *without* restoring marriage (which I believe cannot be saved in a society with our sex ratio). The key will be “responsible never-married motherhood”. A contradiction in terms? I will argue in a future EMAIL that such a social innovation is possible. Or at least less unlikely than our turning around what James Q. Wilson calls “The Marriage Problem”. I predict it will be the most “alien” public policy proposal you have ever seen!

Jim Woodhill

Of course, I *like* sexual license. Or the thought of it anyway. In practice, though, it would cut into the time I have to write EMAILs like this one, assuming I was not willing to spend less time with my little Brooks, which I am not. But “Sex In The City” is more fun than “Hate In The Madrasah” (and a *lot* more fun than “A-Bomb On 7th Avenue”.)

It is kind of interesting reading Mr. Woodhill’s attempts to find a technologically rational way to explain our current circumstances and avoid the fundamental need for repentence. Without repentence from liberalism in general, though, Western civilization’s remaining time on this earth is limited. Apparently the notion of a social murder-suicide is more intriguing than just boring old suicide. Why go alone when we can take Ali and Hakeem with us?

An interesting point Mr. Woodhill raises is what it would take to restore a state of affairs in Western society in which men reliably have wives, women husbands, parents children and children parents. It does seem clear that part of what’s needed is more diffentiation in social function and therefore education between men and women. That would of course seem Really Ugly to someone who views life as a universal struggle for dominance and gratification, in which case distinctions like “masculine” and “feminine” can only be rhetorical cover for strategies of dominion. Still, that’s not an inevitable understanding of things.

Whether there’s a reform of Western sexual life no doubt depends on how functional an Ally McBealized world is. To me it seems likely to run into very serious problems. It’s organized to socialize people as reliable and well-mannered units of production and consumption. Everything else gives way to that, so the only social connections taken seriously are market relations and bureaucratic rules and hierarchies. That’s why the attitude toward sex is so loose. The obvious problem is that is a well-socialized woman will view her career and material acquisitions as the center of what she is. If that’s so, she can only treat a child as an optional personal hobby or lifestyle accessory. As a result, it seems inevitable that the birthrate among well-socialized people will always be far below replacement unless the production and rearing of children can somehow be mechanized, which seems unlikely. Propagandizing the notion of “responsibility” among single moms won’t change that. The result is a matter of fundamental structure and can’t be finagled away.

So it seems to me that promoting Ally McBealism because it injures our enemies is like promoting the plague for the same reason. The plague is worse for us than almost any enemy, so it’s not a sensible strategy. Besides, the consequences are unpredictable. Making it rational for all good men to hate us doesn’t seem the road to peace and security. Also, modernization has led to extraordinary outbreaks of fanaticism and violence in non-Western countries and I’m not sure why forcing it would moderate things. Some of the hijackers seem to have been fond of lap-dancing. Watching Ally McBeal or whatever hasn’t made British Muslims nicer to live with. I suppose in theory we could establish military rule over the wogs to ensure that they remain inert in their degradation, and put a wall around America and the West generally to keep them out, but that seems like fantasy.

Clearly repentence is a necessary precursor to any restoration. Unfortunately Nineveh is an exception to the normal historical process. Maybe we can find someone to volunteer to be swallowed by a fish.

I like the comparison of Ally McBealism to the plague. Mr. Woodhill has promised us the most alien public policy proposal we have ever seen. That is possible, although being bizarre for its own sake isn’t helpful. The “lets take everyone with us” megalomaniacal approach isn’t novel but we can see what hopeful technocleverness comes up with next.

I am impressed that all the posts responding to my “modest proposal” to use Western “C-WMDs” (Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction) to basically drain the swamp in which the Jihadist alligators breed were thoughtful (in an aghast sort of way, of course .) A few comments on the comments:

In his post, MATT says that I am trying to find a technological means of avoiding repentance. I hope it is obvious from my comments that I believe the West has to do *something* differently than it is currently doing, or our current course of “auto-genocide” (via sub-replacement birth rates) will continue. “Repentance” is one possibility, though I wish Matt would tell us how we can force people to repent en mass and not become like the Taliban. But in any case, our need for “repentance” (or *something*) would not go away if the Jihadist all disappeared tomorrow.

The question remains, “What is to be done” about radical Islam?

JIM KALB compares “Cultural WMD” with “Biological WMD”, noting that if one unleashes, say, smallpox on an unvaccinated enemy, one’s own unvaccinated population will get caught up in the epidemic. This analogy does not hold, since our own people are already dying left and right of The Plague, so all I am proposing is that we unleash what we are currently dying of on our enemies.

Mr. Kalb begins by assuming that the *only* way to restore childhood (“parents children and children parents”) is to restore marriage (“men reliably have wives, women husbands”). As I have told thinkers like James Q. Wilson and Kay Hymowitz (to their horror), I would love to see this, but we had better be working on a “Plan B”. As I have hinted before, I have some thoughts in this area, and they are Really Different (as any *workable* alternative to conventional stable marriage would have to be, if you think about it).

Meanwhile, however, America must deal with the Jihadists decisively. The two options are Kemalism to strip away the muslims’ ability to defend their traditional ways (e.g., via honor killings) followed up with McBealism to poison the then-defenseless culture to the point that it can no longer host Jihadism. Europe’s problem is that it has not mustered the political will/cultural self-confidence to practice Kemalism *within its own boarders*—the radical muslims of the London slums would not be allowed to behave as they do in Istanbul.

Mr. Kalb then argues for more differentiation in male and female roles. I am all for this: I have a totally conventional “Stay At Home Mom” for my son. Indeed, I have three of them (two nannies whose only job in the economy is to help my wife attend The Perfect Child(TM)). But I would argue that America’s problem is not that our women are not willing to give up their careers for the kind of deal my wife got, but rather in a society with our effective sex ratio, men will always be able to get laid without offering such a life to them. Worse, men can get laid without even working hard enough to be in the *position* of being able to someday fully shoulder the social, familial, and economic responsibilities of “father”.

Let me finish by reminding all our “scolds” on this forum that America is at war with a conscienceless enemy that cares nothing for their own lives, much less ours. We will only be safe when we have either killed all their bodies or killed all their souls. If those are the only two choices (and they are), I plump for Cultural WMDs rather than Nuclear WMDs to achieve the needed victory.

Jim Woodhill 10/3/2002 11:13:08 PM

Mr. Woodhill’s proposal amounts to total war against Islam. From a certain point of view, it makes complete sense. Moreover, it would probably eventually succeed in completely destroying their culture. As I mentioned on the other thread, the C-WMD’s are already at work in Iran and elsewhere - steadily eating away and rotting them from within like a cancer (as it has here). Islam may very well be doomed regardless. As Mr. Auster pointed out, they hate us for just this reason - perhaps at some level they realize it’s a real fight to the death. So, the real question to my mind is what can we do to keep a remnant (of traditional Western JudeoChristian culture) alive here? Which is the greater threat to the remnant’s survival - Islam (the whole thing, all 1 billion) or the Transnational Progressive/Corporatist beast?

Carl’s point reminds me that the idea that the Islamic world would buy into rootless modernity has been the hope of the Mideast “peace process” all along. Shimon Peres’s dream has been (and still is, but he’s nuts) a Mideast Benelux. Thomas Friedman’s dream, repeated ad nauseam in his columns and on the Charlie Rose program, was that the Palestianians would support the peace process because what they REALLY wanted from life was “laptops and globalization,” not ethnic-religious warfare. Similarly, many decades ago, the Zionists had the dream that the Arabs would adopt democratic socialism so that Israel and its Arab neighbors would live side by side as socialist brothers rather than as ethnic-national enemies. So liberals, like Mr. Woodhill, have hoped for a modernity-driven dissolution of Muslim-Arab particularism as the solution to Mideast conflict. Unlike Mr. Woodhill, of course, they didn’t see this process as the total destruction of the Muslim culture, but the premise in both cases seems to be the same, that the Muslim world will only cease being a danger to the rest of us when it becomes a collection of free, modern individuals rather than a religiously and ethnically based culture.

The differences between the liberal vision and Mr. Woodhill’s vision are that (1) the liberal vision is not, as I just said, intentionally destructive, and (2) it assumes that the Muslims will adopt liberalism voluntarily. Now that the liberal dream has been exploded forever by suicide bombers and World Trade Center destroyers and the Muslim world’s support for same, Mr. Woodhill’s sterner approach to Muslim “liberalization,” amounting to cultural genocide, becomes a theoretical possibility.

In reply to Mr. Woodhill: your question asks for something that does not exist. We cannot force people to repent en masse, but nevertheless it is necessary for en masse repentence to occur in order for Western civilization to survive. Either there will be enough acute pain at some point to catalyze repentence, or some other catalyst, or Western civilization will die. That is I believe the objective situation, and I think it is better faced up to than not. Making sure we take as many others with us as we can is unhelpful, not to mention megalomaniacal. It seems to me that honorable men can face death without attempting to maximize it.

Mr Woodhill seems to assume in his comments about sex ratios that the average 20 something year old woman would be willing to marry and have a settled family life if there were sufficient suitable men to offer the possibility.

I think this is a misreading of the situation: Jim Kalb is closer to the truth in his observation that husbands and children are at best an optional accessory for women in this age group (especially well-socialized middle class women). I expect a lot of young men pick up on the fact that their work efforts are simply not required until they’re somewhere in their 30s; the pragmatic adaptation to this fact is either to stay at home as a singleton, become a player, look for a wife overseas, or join in the culture of working for purely material status. There’s little incentive to work hard and save, not just because casual sex is readily available, but because there is no longer a culture of marriage (especially among “well-brought up” middle class girls).

If you’re dying of plague a pro-plague policy strikes me as a bad idea. In any event, I am unconvinced of the need for a policy of extermination. And the “effective sex ratio” problem to which Mr. Woodhill points is a consequence of the identical social role, education and upbringing now imposed on men and women. I don’t think Plan A, Plan B or Really Different ideas are relevant to that issue. These things can’t be finagled or administered. If you want social science, Burke, Darwin and Adam Smith are a better guide than would-be social policymakers: ways of living that don’t function disappear and ways that do eventually pull together and extend themselves.

Larry Auster correctly observes that the pacification of the Palestinians specifically and the Arabs in general via “modernization” was the vision of Shimon Peres, Thomas Friedman, and other wishful thinkers. Obviously, it did not work.

It did not work, because it was not tried in a properly “Kemalist” way. Secularization, a necessary precursor to McBealization, cannot be accomplished in a fundamentalist society via the ballot box. It must be imposed by force.

Jim Woodhill here:

Mark Richardson (October 4, 2002 05:03 AM) asserts that America’s problem is not its (effective) sex ratio, but rather its culture. OK, but why did its culture change when it did the way it did?

As for 20-something middle class girls having no use for marriage, someone should check the statistics, because I think most of them *are* married. Our problem is that their marriages don’t produce enough children/collapse under the weight of modern expectations for personal/sexual fulfillment before they can get the few kids they do have out of the nest.

Our problem is that every generation has more “social entropy” in it than the last. The quintessential expression of what is going on is an inner-city attempt by a fatherless girl of a fatherless mother of a fatherless grandmother trying to make a “relationship” work with her male equivalent, and this going on in a milieu where functioning males are so scarce that a lot of other women are constantly hitting on her man.

I come from one of these multi-generational dysfunctional families. Back as far as we know, every generation has been addicted to some form of obssessive/compulsive, self-destructive behavior. My great-grand father, my grandfathers (both sides), and both of my parents were alcoholics, and I start software companies (and, lately, spend all my time doing posts like this one). But it’s really all the same thing. Abused children become abusing parents, and then the cycle repeats.

Jim Woodhill here:

Jim Kalb on October 4, 2002 07:21 AM stated that he did not see a need for a policy of “cultural extermination” (of, I assume, Fundamentalist Islam). I would love to hear the plan for *assuring* that if we allow Islamic Fundamentalism to continue to share the planet with us, none of their young men will ever again attack The Great Satan.

A clarification: Some C-WMDs are more awful than others. I would not use AFDC(/public housing/WIC/Medicaid/etc.) for never-married mothers against any Arab population but the Palestinians, whom, I feel, have behaved so atrociously that they have no claim on our mercy.

I’m not sure the nomenclature of “C-WMDs” works. A WMD is a weapon that has massive destructive power but still some specificity of targeting. WMD’s like most chem/bioweapons and neutron bombs target not only geographically but specific entities within that geography. Mr. Woodhill’s C-WMD’s kill not only the target but the shooter as well. There may be other weapons like that, where no geographical or other protection can apply. I’m not sure it is ever justifiable to use such a weapon — think Kurt Vonnegut and Ice-9. It isn’t just victory or death, it is victory or universal death.

If we are to take Mr. Woodhill’s analysis seriously, disease is a better one. Under his analysis Islam hates and fears us because we are a carrier of a disease that promises not only our death but theirs as well. We aren’t an enemy as much as we are lepers. That may be accurate as far as it goes, but I fail to see what insuring the universality of our illness accomplishes.

I think one has to assume that Mr. Woodhill at heart likes the disease even though he acknowledges it is killing us, rather like an addict who wishes (despite its implications) that the whole world was a culture of addicts. The addict doesn’t really wish that, because then there would be nobody left to feed him and take care of him, but nevertheless the mindset is persistent. The addict doesn’t really want his life to end in a murder-suicide, but then part of him does want that. I don’t think Mr. Woodhill’s policy recommendation becomes explicable any other way.

It’s true I don’t have a guaranteed cure-all. That seems an odd standard though. I would think it’s enough to point out that forced McBealization would promote something that’s killing us and won’t obviously make others easier to live with.

Jim Woodhill replies:

Matt at October 4, 2002 03:04 PM insightfully observes that of all “regular” WMD, C-WMDs are most analogous to bio-terror agents like smallpox. I concede his point, but I think the experience of Cortez leveraging smallpox to conquer the Aztec Empire is apt. Yes, Europeans were not immune to smallpox, and many died of it, but they were more resistant than the never-before-exposed South Americans. I expect the same differential susceptibility in the general muslim population to radical feminism.

Hey! If we *really* want to devastate our enemies, let’s educate *only* their females. Higher education demographics in the United States are getting so skewed toward the distaff side that we are going in this direction ourselves, with the predictably catastrophic consequences for marriage (because educated men are happy to marry uneducated women (my first wife had only 2 years of high school), but the reverse is definitely NOT the case).

Jim Woodhill here:

Matt (October 4, 2002 03:04 PM) says

> I think one has to assume
> that Mr. Woodhill at heart likes
> the disease even though he
> acknowledges it is killing us

One does not have to assume, since I explicitly stated in a previous post that personally, I *like* sexual degeneracy. I like the fact that America’s effective sex ratio is so skewed that when I was single even an unattractive geek like me could get laid. It’s just that I am now married, have a toddler, and have to be concerned about the future of any civilization where males have commitment-free access to the sexual favors of so many attractive professional women.

But speaking about the future of our society, whether or not we can save ourselves from ourselves in the long term, in the short term we must utterly crush Jihadism and eradicate the culture that sources it. Part of the feminization of our society is that our elites no longer instinctively understand the difference between “criminals” and “enemies” (some don’t even think there are “criminals”, just disadvantaged mentally ill), much less agree with Conan The Barbarian that the right thing to do is “Crush your enemies! Drive them before you! Here the lamentations of their women!”

This is no time for ethical squeamishness. This is WW-III. We must win.

Carl on October 1, 2002 02:54 AM frets that our imposing “McBealism” on the Arab masses will result in

> young men denied the traditional
> father/breadwinner role - furious
> and even more willing to listen to
> the Ayatollahs

This simply is not what happens. Men do not really desire “children” and they certainly don’t *desire* family responsibility. Just look what happens when female earning power + female-only welfare allows men to abdicate their “provider” role without their children dying.

America’s underclass males are not listening to Ayatollahs like Louis Farrakkan in any great numbers. Instead, they are getting themselves drugged up, locked up, and covered up (in graves). They are a danger only to themselves.

America’s middle class males don’t seem very angry to me either. They are having too much fun “hooking up”.

To see real anger, one must look at our females. The Right sees Feminism as an assertion of female power, but if they are so powerful, why are they so angry and resentful and bitter? It’s because whatever political or economic power they have gained, they have lost even more in “marriage market value”, and, at some level, they know it.

Jim Woodhill here:

Carl on October 1, 2002 02:54 AM worries:

> but there would be many young men
> denied the traditional father/breadwinner
> role - furious and even more willing to
> listen to the Ayatollahs.

Lionel Tiger worries about “reproductive unemployment” in his book THE DECLINE OF MALES, but there is no evidence for the effect that concerns Carl. Rather, underclass males get themselves drugged up, locked up, and covered up (in graves) while middle class males lie around on couches until they are almost 30. Neither group rallies to the banner of radicals like Louis Farrakkan.

Surely Mr. Woodhill does not think I was suggesting that smallpox does not kill, or that its killing has no political consequences? Rather I was discussing the moral and political merits of deploying it _on purpose_.

It seems to me that if the fata compli of our liberal culture is the destruction of western civilization then why does it seem so strange that the Islamic fundamentalists see Israel, a western liberal democracy, as a malignancy that must be removed? Perhaps the Islamic fundamentalists rightly see Ally McBeal as the Visigoth coming over the hill offering no quarter and they must desperately fight to avoid cultural genocide. Given the inherent destructive powers of western liberalism the actions of the Islamic fundamentalists don’t seem all that extreme.

Rick DeMent at October 4, 2002 07:05 PM writes:

> Perhaps the Islamic fundamentalists
> rightly see Ally McBeal as the Visigoth
> coming over the hill offering no quarter
> and they must desperately fight to avoid
> cultural genocide.

You are starting to catch on! I wish “43’s” advisors had this figured out.

I don’t think the Jihadists are smart enough to articulate this fear well, but they obviously are driven by this danger. And really not just “danger”, more like “absolute certainty” that continued contact with our morally degenerate but frighteningly seductive culture will destroy their culture.

And its not just the loss of their culture. From a sociobiological perspective, Western Secularism means death—the slow extinction of one’s DNA through below-replacement reproduction. Who could blame a people for not wanting to be subject to genocide, even what I call “Auto-Genocide”?

I had the surrealistic experience of listening to a speech by Bill Bennett to a Heritage Club “major donor” event (note that in my EMAIL address, jim@vrwc.net, the “vrwc” stands for “Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy”). In his talk, Bennett denounced Osama bin Laden as a “nihilist”—a man inexplicably bent on trying to destroy America for no reason other than America was Good and OBL was Evil.

As it happened my son’s Congressman (not mine since unlike Brooks, who lives in St. Louis, I am a Houstonian) was sitting at the next table, and he was exclaiming hearty “amens!” to every point Bennett made. So I engaged the good Congressman in conversation. Ironically enough, I came to learn that Akin’s wife home schools all *five* of their children. Why home schooling? So they won’t be exposed to kids steeped in America’s corrosive popular culture! So his daughters won’t be going to their 7th grade classes in jeans cut so low that they have to shave in front so their pubic hair won’t stick out their waistbands (which the middle school girls at the K -> 8 private school where my son just started preschool *do* wear to class).

To my surprise and pleasure, Todd Akin had a very sharp mind and was intellectually honest, so he was able to hear my assertion that he and Bill Bennett had a *lot* in common with Osama bin Laden in terms of their opinion of America’s popular culture. It’s just that OBL is the wiser man—he *knows* that either his Jihadists destroy us or his female descendents will eventually be “thong feminists”.

The only difference between me and Akin, Bennett, and OBL is that I smile when I see a pretty girl walking around essentially naked in front of strangers and they frown. By age 2 the mothers in my son’s Play Group had already decided that in high school Brooks would be the “Hunk Of Burning Love” (their term). Great! Since I was 50 when he was born, about the only chance I have to see grandchildren is if Brooks gets a couple of his high school sweethearts pregnant…

Of course, if I had a *daughter* who was as physically beautiful as my son, I might see things differently…

Mr. Woodhill might be pleased to know that the parallels between Islamic fundamentalism and American evangelicals is not totally lost on those who occupy the seats of the loyal opposition. And while the notion that Ally McBeal is the sociobiological personification of the barbarian horde is an interesting one, at the end of the day she is only a commodity. It might be more instructive to divine the motives of those who are the purveyors of pop culture. Could it be that Ally McBeal is merely a predictable manifestation of our peculiar brand of all-hogs-to-the-trough, much derided by the American left, capitalism? Is it possible that instead of the world being destroyed by western secularism, that Bill Bennett, Osama bin Laden and your friend the congressman, are simply being bitch slapped by the invisible hand of the free market?

Rick DeMent at October 4, 2002 10:09 PM asks if America’s moral slide is really the result of the Invisible Hand of Capitalism. The short answer of whether our capitalist masters (who themselves are commanded by the Elders Of Zion, let us never forget) are responsible for the collapse of the price of women in America’s “marriage market” is “no”.

Of course, moral degeneracy is expensive, and only market-capitalist nations are wealthy enough to afford, for example, a permanent underclass. Market capitalism also generates technological progress that enables sexual license such as birth-control pills and antibiotics for STDs. (Indeed, the marketing “tag line” I recommend for the West’s biomedical War On AIDS is “Make The World Safe For Promiscuity!”) Market capitalism also allows many women to earn enough money to live independently of men, even to support themselves and a family.

But if, somehow, America magically acquired Mainland China’s sex ratio in the marrying years (about 120 males/100 females), not even the “Invisible *Fist*” of market capitalism could prevent us from ending up with a female “married” percentage much closer to Mainland China’s (over 99%) than to the American sub-population with the worst sex ratio (Afro-Americans: 30% of women married).

Mr. Woodhill makes a good point. It’s enlightening to see the positive benefits that leftisum has to offer. All we need to do in order to bring about the desired male / female ratio here in the US is impose an atheistic, Marxist, dictatorship. Sure we lose Ally McBeal, but look what we gain, stability in the marriage market. But there seems to be a chicken and egg quality to this idea. Did decadent western secularism create the market for the all-hogs-to-the-trough capitalists to sell their soul rotting pop culture? Or did the Elders of Zion cleverly insinuate western secularism in order to boost third quarter profits?

How would the marriage ratio hold up in China if the EOZ and their Captains-of -industry lackeys were given a free hand, invisible or otherwise, to ply their trade? Obviously the first thing they would have to do is purge the Chinese government of its obnoxious enthusiasm for reproduction regulation. Then they would have to implement an economic system that would unleash the inner consumer of the Chinese people in order to bring about the desired permanent underclass. Finally, to cap it all off, the Mandarin Broadcasting Systems season premier of …well whatever the Chinese call Ally McBeal.

Really, first Osama bin Laden, now China. How long will it be before Russia insists on a Strategic Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction Arms Limitation agreement?

Commenting on “Imposing America’s Decadent Culture on Muslims” is like commenting on an AIDS carrier rationally discussing giving AIDS to people he dislikes and fears. The evil of such an act is paralleled in much of this discussion.
I must say Mr. Woodhill’s comments are some of the most nihilistic, Machiavellian, sick, scared, and bizarre I have read. Knowing one’s disease and liking it is too deranged for rational response, then dehumanizing others as fit recievers of one’s disease (which one likes) is simply satanic.
Maybe what Mr. Woodhill doesn’t want to face is that the U.S. and extreme jihadis deserve each other.

Jim Woodhill here:

Rory Dickson on October 27, 2002 11:02 PM
comments:

> I must say that Mr. Woodhill’s comments
> are some of the most nihilistic,
> Machiavellian, sick, scared, and bizarre
> I have read

That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me/my ideas! I will treasure these comments forever! (Note that my Day Job is in venture capital, where being Truly Evil is an occupational requirement—just ask any entrepreneur. ) They remind me of Hunter S. Thompson’s famous line, “I hate to advocate alcoholism, drug abuse, bizarre, kinky sex, and insanity, but they have always worked for me!”

However, I do take issue with:

> [Jim Woodhill’s ideas are analogous to]
> an AIDS carrier rationally discussing giving
> AIDS to people he dislikes and fears

It’s a bad analogy. More accurate would be that what I am proposing is like an AIDS sufferer plotting to give HIV to people who have murdered a bunch of his relatives and have proudly announced their intention to murder more of them just because they hate his family so much.

We did not start this fight. We have no word for them that is the equivalent of “infidel”. We have not called *them* “Great Satans”. The culture of Fundamentalist Islam is a threat to me and my loved ones, and so I say that culture must be destroyed. What do you say?

(One of the great things about having a kid who just started preschool in a boring Midwestern suburb is that one gets to meet a bunch of soccer-moms-to-be. As it happens, these first-wife/mothers-of-your-children talk of nothing but sex (as much as I might try to engage them in my ideas about, say, Welfare Reform), so one picks up information useful for devising new/better C-WMDs (Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction). Did you know that there is an HBO series entitled “Real Sex”? From the description I got and (especially) the intensity of this one mom’s interest in the show, I got the impression that if “Sex In The City” is the equivalent of our pioneers handing out smallpox-tainted blankets, satellite-casting “Real Sex” into Iran would be more like bubonic-plague-flea-invested blankets—the next best thing to federally-funded chapters of NOW+Planned Parenthood clinics in every muslim village over 100 people—which I also believe we should do once our military has crushed their menfolks’ ability to resist.

(Did anyone see the THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE’s Nov 4 review by Joe Scotchie of ROBERT NISBET: COMMUTARIAN TRADITIONALIST, by Brad Lowell Stone? I was especially taken with Stone’s citing Nisbet’s statement that “…feminism is the most revolutionary—and destructive—force in our lifetime.” I could not agree more, which is why I believe the United States should use it as a weapon against our enemies—hence the N.O.W. chapters .)

Speaking of crushing the Jihadists will to resist, did you see the ATLANTIC MONTHLY article about the Bold Tigers F-15 Strike Eagle squadron? One of their (backseat) weapons officers is a woman flyer, so when she snaked a 500-pound GBU right into the grill of the front truck of a speeding Taliban military convoy, annihilating the entire column, her pilot exclaimed, “You have just been killed by a *girl*!” Given the Jihadists’ macho culture, we should do everything in our power to make sure they know (and their wives know) that their military butts are being kicked by *women*!

Like I say, America does not today justify being called “The Great Satan”. But I think we can rise to the challenge of filling The Prince Of Darkness’s demon-shoes!)

Mr. Woodhill, I agree with you that Islamic extremism is something that needs to be crushed, but Islamic societies are not simply extremist, and although I appreciate your humour I would reply that supporting traditional tolerant, spiritual Islam would be more effective in shutting up fundos than simply giving them more reason to blow themsleves and us up. Traditional Islam and neo-Islam (Bin Laden’s brand of choice) are at odds with each other, and supporting the more friendly traditionals would most certainly counter-act the strength of the neos, where as trying to corrupt both would just alientate the friendlies and further peave off the nasty neos.

In terms of who started the fight, let’s just say (for the sake of argument) that fundamentalists did start the fight, and did kill some of your relatives first, that still doesn’t justify targeting their distant cousins, which by the way would cause those more friendly cousins to want to fight you as well.

On your final comment of rising to the name Great Satan; if you are merely having fun with concepts and ideas (ie: good and evil)to gleefully soar above their relativity, that’s all fine and ‘good’, but if you really feel like societally earning the name ‘Satan’ why do you care that people would want to destroy your society? In other words if you think your society should be as evil as what your enemies say, (ie you think that your enemies are right) and you don’t want to make it better (you don’t want to make them wrong), why do you care about it?

Jim Woodhill Responds:

Rory Dickson on October 28, 2002 06:19 PM asserts that:

> supporting traditional tolerant,
> spiritual Islam would be more effective
> in shutting up fundos than simply giving
> them more reason to blow themsleves and
> us up.

I see no reason why your approach could not be done in parallel with my approach—if your approach can be done at all. But please tell us all how you propose that we “Infidels” can “support” a milder form of Islam without our mere association with it discrediting it.

> fundamentalists did start the fight,
> and did kill some of your relatives first,
> that still doesn’t justify targeting their
> distant cousins, which by the way would
> cause those more friendly cousins to want
> to fight you as well.

Fundamentally, you are making an argument that the only justifiable response to an attack on one’s society is “Law Enforcement”—identification of the specific perpetrators responsible and punishing them (or at least deterring them). I am specifically arguing for “war”, which is a very different model, one that does involve assaulting all sorts of not-directly-responsible folks. For example, in the process of getting to Saddam, we are going to kill a lot of Iraqi conscripts with whom we have to real quarrel, and who would surrender in a heartbeat if their officers would let them.

What I am saying America must specifically do is make war on a culture—that of fundamentalist Islam. I propose that we use cultural weapons in this war such as free, academically-oriented education in English for all the girls/women of the societies we need to subdue, rather than just “military” weapons.

> if you really feel like societally earning
> the name ‘Satan’ why do you care that
> people would want to destroy your
> society?

I *like* American society. What a country! In a single generation my family went from no-high-school blue-collar to Jedi Geek Venture Capitalist wealth. Ours is the only society that makes *progress* against the *true* oppressors of mankind—disease, want, even old age (HGH actually works, it seems—right now I am getting physiologically younger rather than older.)

But no society is perfect, and alongside all its wonders of scientific and technological progress, our society has generated a corrosive, degenerate popular culture that horrifies upholders of traditional morality from Bill Bennett to Osama bin Laden. Indeed, I often say that the only difference between the two men is that the latter has a clearer view of where America’s pop culture will take the world if that pop culture is not somehow destroyed first.

Unlike Larry Auster and others on this forum, I can’t think of any way to counteract our societies slouch (sprint?) towards Gomorrah. What I *can* think of ways to do is to use our seductive culture to destroy the (fundamentalist Islam) culture that spawns Jihadists who threaten the safety and prosperity of my loved ones. So this is what I propose we do.

I say that (after the election—we need our Christian Right to turn out and vote!) “W” should make a speech analogous to the one Kruschev delivered at the UN where he said: “We will bury you! Your children will live under Communism.” Except in this case (where we are readying an attack with Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction), “W” would say something like: “We will seduce you. Some day soon, the women of Islam will be posing naked for a PLAYBOY pictorial entitled “The Women Of Islam”, with the same pierced nipples and pierced, depilated genitalia (labia, and even pierced clitoral hoods) that our daughters in college are showing off to that magazine’s cameras in “The Women Of The Pac Ten” pictorials! Your daughters will become thong feminists, screw a different guy every week, and abort their babies without your ever knowing it happened! Just like ours do!”

After such a statement by the President of the United States, I am sure that even men who really do love Death as much as we Americans love Life would suddenly know what it is to be afraid! (God knows, whenever I peruse a “men’s” magazine (for cultural-research purposes only, of course) *I* certainly am afraid! (And they are not *nearly* as scary as COSMOPOLITAN.))

Again, this land that we all hold dear has been attacked by remorseless foes that would kill us all if they could.

> Islamic extremism is something that needs
> to be crushed

You and I agree on this point. My proposal is to use C-WMDs to destroy the culture that gives rise to Islamic Extremism. What is your proposal?

RE: Jim Woodhill Nov. 1/02
Well Mr. Woodhill, I’m sure you will be dissapointed that I no longer think of you as an incarnate of evil, bent on the nihilistic destruction of everything good and beautiful, I see your point,and your descriptions of genital piercings and Cosmopolitan were hilarious.

In terms of how to support friendly Islam, you are not entirely right that nonbeleiver support would discredit it, the move in the west towards an Islam that is culturally European and American is growing, and support by western power would not be out of the question. Support in the middle east could be done indirectly by supporting regimes that maintian moderate Islam such as Morocco, Jordan, etc. (I suspect the U.S. is supporting these regimes partly for that reason). As well, somehow stopping the flow of Saudi oil money to the fundos would do wonders, as this money is their main lifeline at the moment.

So, I would propose that the best way to destroy extremist Islam would be to do all of these things, plus I would say that the U.S. should take a little more of an isolationist stance in world politics. This would mean toning down its global capitalism, settling for a little less material wealth, developing more sustainable local economy. Leaving its huge military bases all over the middle-east and central asia, and basically stepping down somewhat from world-power status, and economic dominion. As well attempting to move away from a profit based society would no doubt stem the flow of profit-motivated cultural degeneracy that is rotting American culture, and that you propose be used to rot hostile cultures.

Otherwise, the U.S. is setting itself up for an inevitable fall, and to use a hopelessly worn out cliche, “the bigger they come, the harder they fall”.

Rory Dickson on November 1, 2002 02:10 PM tells me that:

> you will be dissapointed that I no longer
> think of you as an incarnate of evil, bent
> on the nihilistic destruction of
> everything good and beautiful

Darn! What do I have to do to salvage my reputation??? But you are
right, I am not about the destruction of “everything good and
beautiful”, but rather “everything fundamentalist/Islamist”. And I
do agree with you that *first and foremost*, we must take away any
and all oil revenues that are being used to fund (/buy off) the
Islamists. It’s just that I don’t think that is all we should do.

> and your descriptions of genital piercings
> and Cosmopolitan were hilarious

Yes, *I* think sexual degeneracy is actually pretty funny—at least
it’s not boring like “piety”. But if you read the comments about
muslim reaction to America’s “moral degeneracy” by Bernard Lewis from
his recent article in THE WASHINGTON POST, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59594-2002Sep9.html, it’s
at the heart of why we cannot just withdraw from the muslim world and
have them respond by leaving us alone. The truth is, that we have an
*aggressively* corrosive pop culture that would still be “attacking”
their societies, even if we withdrew every soldier from overseas.

> The basic reason for this contempt is what they perceive
> as the rampant immorality and degeneracy of the American
> way — contemptible but also dangerous, because of its
> corrupting influence on Muslim societies. What did the
> Ayatollah Khomeini mean when he repeatedly called America
> the “Great Satan”? The answer is clear. Satan is not an invader,
> an imperialist, an exploiter. He is a tempter, a seducer, who,
> in the words of the Koran, “whispers in the hearts of men.”

I advocate our proving Khomeini wrong by not “whispering in the
hearts of [muslim] men”, but rather positively *shouting* into the
hearts of muslim girls (and boys).

> Another aspect of this contempt is expressed again and again
> in the statements of bin Laden and others like him. The refrain
> is always the same. Because of their depraved and self-indulgent
> way of life, Americans have become soft and cannot take casualties.

Perhaps true, but as in Desert Storm-I, we sure can *cause*
casualties on their side. And slaughter them we must to undermine
the legitimacy of their current Jihadist-friendly regimes.

Jim Woodhill

Here is a further exchange I had with Mr. Woodhill last month on his “McBealization” strategy. My posting of his thoughts on this matter should not be seen as an endorsement of them. I regard the Islamic world as currently constituted as an threat to our civilization, and therefore am interested in any ideas that take that threat seriously, just as Pentagon planners play war games involving all possible military options, some of which they would never think of pursuing in the real world.

LA to JW:

Jim,

Regarding the deployment and use of C-WMDs on the Muslim world, I’ve been meaning to ask you this question: Why should they necessarily have the effect you expect? Why would turning Muslims into depraved MTV watchers lessen the threat of extremism? It seems that such a discombobulation of Muslim society, even if it turned many of them into welfare consuming, illegitimate-children-producing couch potatoes is not going to have that effect on ALL of them. Many of them, seeing the ruin of their culture and religion, are only going to become a lot madder at us than they are now, and want to hurt us even more.

What’s your answer?

Larry

JW to LA:

Larry,

A key argument of the Anti-War Party(ies) ever since 9-11 is if the U.S. does this, that, the other (e.g., crush the Taliban), it will just make “The Arab Street” madder/hate us more/attack us harder.

The reverse has happened. The reverse will continue to happen. The truth is, those guys already hate our sick, morally degenerate asses just as much as human beings can hate. Fortunately the human psyche has only so much energy to devote to emotions, so adding fear, loathing, despair, hopelessness, and outright moral panic to the mix (which I am sure a single viewing of “Sex In The City” would accomplish if it were accompanied by American “advertorials” telling them that this is their future) can only lessen the Jihadists’ rage.

Not to mention adding shame and humiliation via decisive defeats by small groups of American soldiers that include *girls*.

“even if it turned many of them into welfare consuming, illegitimate-children-producing couch potatoes is not going to have that effect on ALL of them.”

Well, no. The Left’s social programs have not (yet) reduced all of America’s blacks into welfare-state zombies either, but we have been able to co-opt the still-functioning with low-skilled-but-well-paid jobs tending the dysfunctions of the poor bastards (literally, in this case) we have succeeded in miring in permanent, multigenerational dependency.

Your satanic friend,

Jim Woodhill

LA to JW:

Jim,

Ok, now you’re expanding the idea beyond the destruction of their culture to the demoralization of their minds. The idea is that destroying the enemy’s capacity (whether military, industrial or cultural) to wage war on you is only one part of the kind of total war that we may find ourselves obliged to fight; the other part of such a total war is to demoralize the enemy so utterly that he gives up the very hope of waging war or defeating you in the future. In this regard, your thinking resembles that of Gen. Sherman.

So perhaps the strategy should be re-named Woodhill’s March through Islam.

Larry

JW to LA:

Larry,

It really should be “Ally McBeal’s March Through Dar al-Islam”. But yes, I would hope that poisoning the souls of the Muslims’ young with America’s popular culture will have at least the same demoralizing effect on them that it does on us.

I like the analogy with Sherman. I don’t buy the Buchananite notion that if we withdraw and leave the Jihadists alone, they will leave us alone. Islam is an “expansionist” religion/ideology, and, given that it can’t escape exposure to the West, its fundamentalists will become more and more desperate over time. We are going to need to scorch some serious earth over there, especially culturally.

The easiest way to understand is, again, to take them at their word.

Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gottingen University in Germany, gave an interesting speech a few months after 11 September. “Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them,” he said. “The word ‘peace,’ for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam or House of Islam to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought.” Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar al-Salam, or House of Peace. The objective isn’t a self-governing Palestine but the death of the West.

LA to JW:

Jim,

Remember, Sherman’s destruction of Southern property, while very large, was only of a sixty mile swath extending a few hundred miles. Most of the South, along with its food-producing and other economic capacity, was not affected. The main effect of the March—and Sherman intended this—was to make the Southerners feel utterly helpless at the spectacle of a Union army moving at its leisure through their land and destroying their property. Men in Lee’s army in Virginia, on hearing what was happening to their property in Georgia, deserted to go home to tend to their families and farms. The Southerners began to see Sherman as a dark demigod whom it was impossible to oppose. Sherman’s aim and his achievement was not just victory, but a peace and a re-unification of the country that would endure because the Southerners’ fierce will to rebel had been crushed.

Larry

I found this old thread by following links from recent articles; pardon my late addition to it.

There is a fundamental logical flaw in assuming that American native birth rates can never get back above 2.0 again. There were a variety of factors that contributed to the decline from large families to a current white fertility rate of about 1.8. These include many changes that are not likely to be reversed soon, but there are also other factors that can be reversed. All that is required is to reverse a few of the influences, and the birth rate could easily be 2.1 again. The goal is not to restore the fertility rates of say, 1820. In that case, Mr. Woodhill’s pessimism would be warranted.

Others have written about the influence that immigration plays in driving down birth rates, such as: helping ruin schools and neighborhoods, leading to VERY expensive white flight that is partly a conscious effort to price one’s home out of the reach of the riff-raff; crowdedness, sprawl, traffic, smog, etc., which send a signal that no more population is needed, thank you; the high taxes of the welfare state, which drive down take-home pay; the economic stagnation that comes from orienting an economy towards cheap labor; etc. These factors can be ameliorated by sane policies. The fact that other factors are more intransigent means only that birth rates might only climb back to 2.2 instead of 4.2 or 6.2 or 8.2. Big deal.

I agree with Mr. Coleman. There is an odd syndrome, somehow connected with late modernity, which wants to turn any existing “trend” into an idol. (Perhaps part of the motivation for this is that in the absence of transcendence, secular “trends” become a substitute for God; the cover of Time, Newsweek, and the NY Times Magazine routinely convey the attitude I’m talking about.) And so it’s assumed, for example, that the native fertility rate in Western countries must remain below replacement. But this could easily change. Things change all the time.

You see the same thing in sports. People assume that the team ahead is going to win, and then they act as if it’s a big surprise and drama if the other team catches up and wins. But such reverses are entirely natural and predictable. Everyone forgets this and assumes that the way things are going _at this moment_ is the way they must continue going.

Last fall the Economist made just this point, and claimed to back it up with figures. The apparently suicidal birthrates of Europeans were just an artifact of the first generation of women to delay marriage for work. They should be inching back up again soon, as they did in America, which embraced feminism a decade or so earlier than Europe.
Or so sayeth the Economist…

I felt a major weakness of Buchanan’s Death of the West was the way he treated low European birthrates as a constant persisting into the future as far as the eye can see, rather than as something that could very well change. It was almost as if he _wanted_ things to look as hopeless as possible.

The record of demographic predictions supports Mr. Auster’s skepticism — they have a well deserved reputation for being wrong,e.g predictions in the 1930s that the US population was already leveling off and would decline. Any number of things could reverse the European and native American birth decline. In any case, importing outsiders, and refusing to even attempt to assimilate them, as the left wants, is no answer to the problem.

There was a fascinating line relating to this in Whit Stillman’s film “Barcelona”. An American residing in the city tells his visiting cousin that Spanish women came to the sexual revolution somewhat later than American woman, but embraced it even more thoroughly.

Stillman lived in Barcelona during the time depicted in the film, and speaks from first-hand experience.