Meanwhile, David Horowitz continues his crusade to remove any condemnation of homosexuality per se from the public square. At least that’s the way it seems to me.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8164

And here are two comments by me on the article:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=8164&commentID=102420

http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=8164&commentID=102444

Same contradiction as we commented on last week: on the one hand he approves the distinction between things that are and things that aren’t the proper concern of politics (homosexual acts being the latter sort), and on the other hand he acknowledges that homosexuals have a political—i.e., public—agenda beyond merely the repeal of laws prohibiting said acts.

But there’s another another flaw in Horowitz’s reasoning. He calls his argument tactical: it has to do with attracting votes from a segment of the population. But he never specifies how far he isn’t prepared to go. That is, he consistently refrains from formulating a principle that distinguishes between voting segments that should be wooed and voting segments that should not be wooed.

He’d surely agree that there could be a group that the Republican party should refuse to go after, even if this refusal might cost it an election. If so, then he knows what a principle is. Well then, why doesn’t he tell us in the present instance? He might say, for example, that he would not extend his “tactic” to attract the votes of nazis or suppporters of Al Qaeda. But this essay is a fervent plea for going after the votes of respectable homosexuals. So where is the line between those examples? He never tells us. Could it be that by doing so he’d reveal an attitude toward homosexuality that would antagonize many of the people who’ve been supporting him on other issues? Is that principled?

The question “where is the line?” doesn’t make any sense to a liberal like Horowitz. To a liberal the only morally justified assertions of political will are consensual ones. Democracy is the natural formal expression of this principle, and there is no limit on the degree to which formal consent ought to be pursued. Consent IS the “line”; there are no other lines in the “tactical” (i.e. political) realm.

Another way to look at the “line” problem is that a liberal — and to me liberalism is always about Horowitz’ “tactical” domain of politics and the substitution of the free and equal human will for transcendence in that domain — will always _oppose_ authority in a principled way and _assert_ it in an unprincipled way. The “line” is only ever visible from one side, or only has one side. Liberalism is a moral Mobius strip: politics and theology are separate, and only politics is allowed to actually matter.

I love the Moebius strip analogy, although I don’t quite know how to make it work in detail. Isn’t the point of a Moebius strip that things that look like they’re opposed (opposite edges and sides) turn out to be identical? So maybe the idea is that liberalism says the public and the personal are totally distinct and opposed, but ends by swallowing up the latter in the former. Or vice versa. Or something.

One point — I’m inclined to think it’s PC human rights rather than democracy that is the formal expression of the principle of consent. Democracy sticks the minority with the will of the majority, while PC human rights intend to recognize the equal validity of all wills and give them equal effect. The consequence of the latter of course is the totally administered society. It would violate equality to let one will affect another, so everyone has to be powerless. The only legitimate way of life becomes the life of careerism (in which one’s efforts are at the service of the overall machine of production and relate only to oneself) and private indulgence. Politics — including democratic politics — disappears.

As to DH I have no special theory except the obvious, that he wants to build a coalition that includes Andrew Sullivan, with whose views he largely agrees and who he’d rather have on board than Gary Bauer. He thinks public acceptance of a sort of decent and orderly homosexuality is the right and politic thing. Or so it appears.

Mr. Kalb and I used to discuss whether the tendency of liberalism was toward the elimination of all cultural wholes and the reduction of society to the level of bare individual equality(which was more or less his view), or whether the tendency was toward the elmination of only the Western culture combined with the ascendancy of minority cultures, i.e. multiculturalism (which was my view). He would acknowledge that the multicultural paradigm was being effected at present, because the Western culture was currently dominant and therefore the special target of liberalism, but that in the long run all cultures would be reduced.

Mr. Kalb’s present comment offers an interesting refinement on his views. We have a three-stage paradigm. In stage one, which he calls the PC stage and which I would call the multicultural stage, all wills, all cultures, are seen as equal. But since all wills and cultures are not in reality equal, to maintain such equality requires the total administration of society. That’s stage two. In stage three, it become apparant that “[i]t would violate equality to let one will affect another, so everyone has to be powerless.” In other words, politics is abolished. As a result, careerism and private indulgence become the only pursuits.

Stage three represents a return to a kind of pure, reductive individualism, where society has been stripped of any larger wholes (since some larger wholes will always have more power than others and that can’t be allowed). All that’s left is the narrowest kind of individualism.

What’s interesting here is that unlike Mr. Kalb’s earlier view of multiculturalism as merely a holding action to get rid of the white West, after which the true reductive work of liberalism on culture per se would resume, in this new paradigm multiculturalism itself leads to a terminal liberal individualism under a bureaucratic regime.

By the way, I don’t agree with either paradigm. After liberalism destroys the white West, liberalism itself will die because it can’t exist without the white West. Having died, liberalism will not be able to destroy the non-Western cultures. So the final result of liberalism will not be a world without any cultures, but a world without the white Western culture.

Mr. Kalb writes:
“Isn’t the point of a Moebius strip that things that look like they’re opposed (opposite edges and sides) turn out to be identical?”

I confess that it was an off the cuff thought from a perverse mind. The initial notion was that a Mobius strip looks like it has two sides to it, when in fact it has only one. Liberalism claims to make room for theology, religion, morality, and the transcendent in general by separating it from the political (e.g. the Horowitz article). Liberals seem to genuinely think that it does so, the trick being to limit the scope of discussion to the political and simply assert that this other “private” side exists and is somehow equally relevant. But like a Mobius strip there is really only one side to liberalism despite its dualistic appearance.

I should have said that democracy is _a_ natural formal expression rather than _the_ natural formal expression. It is right that democracy subjects the minority to the tyranny of the majority, just as it is right that bureacracy subjects everyone to the tyranny of the bureacrat. My own view at present, as always subject to the acquisition of greater wisdom, is that liberalism has no definable end state because it is fundamentally incoherent. When it achieves the perfect state of terminal liberal individualism under a bureacratic regime, and discovers that perfect individual political freedom and equality can’t be found there either, it won’t just stop in its utopian pursuit (or didn’t stop, depending on whether one thinks the Soviet experience fits here). A new set of rebels will arise, express their liberal individuality, rebel against the tyrannical machine, and pursue the next “end of history”. This will continue until either there is nothing left for liberalism to devour, or until there is a self-aware widespread repentance from liberalism (or, I suppose, until some outside force e.g. Islamofascism actually succeeds in destroying the West).

Isn’t it interesting that the Roman Catholic Church - which is allegedly opposed to homosexuality - doesn’t have a problem engaging in joint religious services with the Episcopal Church?

How is it possible for the R.C. Church to have joint service with Episcopalians. The R.C.’s don’t recognize the Anglican communion. As far as I understood, an Episcopalian cannot take Communion at a Catholic church.

http://www.ewtn.com/expert/expertfaqframe.asp?source=/ewtn/experts/conference.htm

Click on “Liturgy and Sacred Music” and then “Communion of non-Catholics/Intercommunion” (the site doesn’t have a static link directly to the FAQ). Mr. Auster is correct. Where did the RCC come into it, anyway? Did I miss something in the original post?

“[U]nlike Mr. Kalb’s earlier view of multiculturalism as merely a holding action to get rid of the white West, after which the true reductive work of liberalism on culture per se would resume, in this new paradigm multiculturalism itself leads to a terminal liberal individualism under a bureaucratic regime.”

I don’t see how my views have changed. “Multiculturalism” is really “no-culturalism,” the abolition of the public authority of every particular culture. As such it demands the privatization of value (which means that career, self-indulgence and PC are the highest standards) and makes bureaucratic administration by “experts,” “therapists,” and “facilitators,” along with money, the principles of public order. Since its demand is only that cultural authority be destroyed as a practical matter it need only be aimed at the dominant (white Christian) culture.

Anyway, there aren’t three temporally separate steps, although one can of course point to different aspects of a single process (which obviously can’t go to completion).

It’s a difference of point of view between Mr. Kalb’s more abstract and my more concrete way of seeing things. Mr. Kalb subsumes multculturalism under the dynamics of managerial liberalism. I don’t think he sees it in its concrete specificity as the actual growth and empowerment of new cultural groups in this country. While it’s true that multiculturalism means the destruction of the majority culture, it does not mean the destruction of the minority cultures, but (even if in a somewhat bureaucratized form) their ascendancy and usurpation of America.

It doesn’t seem likely that those minority cultures will survive the process to completion though. Maybe there is more than a difference in perspective here. I see liberalism as destroying the cultures it proposes to advance every bit as much as the anglo American culture it more directly attacks. It is rather like heroine for those minority cultures, giving them a sense of empowerment that is illusory and ultimately leads to death. It is also analogous to what the volk became under the Nazis — was that authentic German culture, or was it the dead corpse of German culture hollowed out and filled with a this-worldly secular will-to-power? A “triumphant” minority culture under liberal multiculturalism ceases to be itself: it is merely the dead skin of its old self stretched over the empty frame of liberalism, with unseeing eyes made of stone.

In broader and less poetical terms, if Mr. Auster is suggesting that there are any ultimate winners here I disagree.

We’ve gotten far away from the Episcopal church and gay pride parades but that’s my fault. :-)

My whole point is that there won’t be any liberal multiculturalism for the minority cultures to be under because, once the white culture is destroyed, there won’t be any liberalism.

Second, in the global picture, the cultures of the West will have been destroyed by diversity and multiculturalism, while the non-Western cultures will not have been. The non-Western cultures will survive after the West is destroyed.

Mr. Auster writes:
“The non-Western cultures will survive after the West is destroyed.”

I suppose it is exactly that about which I have doubts.

There will be a cultural winner: Hispanics. Not only because of defective liberal ideology, which drains the will from Americans, but because of other and maybe more powerful forces: low birth rates among white non-Hispanic Americans (caused by nonideological reasons) and an open border with Mexico, a populous and poor Hispanic country.

The Hispanic culture may or may not embrace liberalism. If homosexual people are accepted in the future Hispania, it will probably be for the same reason they have gained so much acceptance today: politics, not ideology.

The question though is whether the new Hispania will be something other than a racially hispanic liberalism. I don’t think it is likely that an independent illiberal hispanic culture will survive. The Latin American experience seems to cast doubt on the possibility, at least prima facie.

Mr. Auster appears to believe that as soon as the white faces disappear liberalism goes with them. (If I thought that were so I could almost become a form of paleo and applaud it). I acknowledge that this is in the category of wild conjecture, but I think liberalism-qua-liberalism is stronger than Mr. Auster believes. It is a parasite, but some parasites are remarkably resilient and are capable of jumping from host to host. I think liberalism is like that. Ultimately it will either self destruct in spectacular fashion, or there will be repentance. I don’t think that “the West dies and illiberal Hispania arises” is a high probability expectation; but my crystal ball isn’t any better than anyone else’s, of course.

The key difference is that in Mr. Auster’s view, a putative culturally loyal Black or Hispanic has reason to invest good hope in the current process rather than in repentance from liberalism. A rational Black or Hispanic can agree with Mr. Auster completely and yet make the rational choice to collaborate with liberalism, since in the long run it is good for him. If the putative Black or Hispanic agrees with my view and expectations, on the other hand, then he will recognize that path as suicide.

It is no doubt true that there are cultures in the world which are isolated enough to survive liberalism’s self-destruction. The cultures involved in the multicult are not among them, though, at least in my view.

I think that suicidal liberalism is almost totally a white phenomenon. I’m not making a prediction of the end of the white West and the end of liberalism; I’m saying that if liberalism does succeed in destroying the white West, it will then have destroyed itself as well.

The question of the true interests of minorities vis a vis white Western suicide is a different matter. A few minorities might like liberal civilization, recognize that it’s threatened, and therefore seek to contain the excesses of liberalism includuing the immigraiton of other nonwhites. But many minorities are excited by the prospect of white ruin, and so cheer on the very process that will bring an end to white-majority liberal society, and, along with it, all the good things that minorities get from that liberal society.

Mr. Auster writes:
“I think that suicidal liberalism is almost totally a white phenomenon.”

Right, the substantive difference in our views is now clear. My view is in the end based on personal experience, not rigorous research. I live in California, a state in which caucasians are no longer in the majority and where liberalism is stronger than anywhere else in the country. I have neighbors, colleagues, and friends from every race and religion in the multicult. When I take a taxi in New York it is not uncommon for the driver to have and express a … a racial consciousness, shall I say. In northern California that never happens: he would lose his job in an instant. Ideologically you will find no place in the world where liberalism is stronger and the white race qua the white race is weaker. I think you could eliminate every white face from San Francisco and the result would be an increase, not a decrease, in the strength of liberalism in that city, for example. And as I mentioned the latin american experience is also instructive here.

So in the end my perceptions and expectations come down to personal experience, and they differ in a crucial way from Mr. Auster’s.

If you like analogies think of a tar baby. My asian and hispanic neighbors may benefit from liberalism after a fashion, but they will never escape from it now that they have sold their souls to it.

What Matt has to say about his perspective from California is very interesting. If what he’s saying is true, and represents a possibility for other areas besides California (which may be unique), that would entail a re-thinking. For one thing, it would hand the pro-diversity, liberal/conservative orthodoxy a strong argument that diversity is indeed a sustainable and viable basis of society, therefore American liberalism and prosperity don’t need whites, and therefore we don’t have to worry about the loss of whites.

One of my arguments has always been that the destruction of the white majority would bring not only the destruction of our traditional, white culture, but the destruction of liberalism as well. Liberals don’t care about the first, but they do care about the second; therefore, even if they’re are not personally concerned about the white race, they ought to be cautious about displacing it.

But, if Matt’s Northern-California Multicultural Paradigm holds true, that restrictionist argument loses its force.

Mr. Auster writes:
“…it would hand the pro-diversity, liberal/conservative orthodoxy a strong argument that diversity is indeed a sustainable and viable basis of society, …”

Ah, but I don’t claim that any of this is sustainable in the long term. Liberalism infected white european culture first. WEC has the most advanced form of the disease, and is the most advanced in terms of rotting from the inside out. Nonwhite Californians aren’t magically immune though, standing by and waiting to take the keys to the kingdom once the last white drinks the kool-aid.

The crystal-ball difference in expectations is not that I think that the multicult specifically or liberalism in general can form a stable basis for society. Liberalism has never formed a stable basis for society — not for whites either. It has only ever subsisted on traditional social and moral foundations that it at the same time destroys (sometimes gradually and sometimes with breathtaking speed). No, the difference is that I expect the cultures of the multicult — Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Philipino, East Indian/Hindu, Mexican, Latin American, and yes Black American and a number of others — to go down with the ship. Will there be remnants of these cultures back in their mother countries, far isolated from the liberal hegemon? Possibly. But tar-baby contact with liberalism is no benefit.

Ok. I actually make an argument much like Matt’s in my essay or pamphlet (I don’t know what to call it), Erasing America.

Mr. Auster,

A Roman Catholic can’t take communion in an Episcopal church, but they can participate in a non-Catholic service. Also, there are joint services for “Christian unity” that are held from time to time.

For example, Cardinal Law went to far as to attend a Moslem service.

Multicultural liberalism may be possible in northern California even with a white minority because northern California is still an integral part of white-dominated USA.

“Multicultural liberalism may be possible in northern California even with a white minority because northern California is still an integral part of white-dominated USA.” — Arie Raymond

But won’t be for long because the USA won’t be white-dominated for long.

Certain forces took California away from us and are going to try to take the entire country.

Let’s stop them.