Liberalism and dhimmitude

What is liberalism? Tolerance of evil and enemies, a cringing subordination of oneself before evil and enemies, leading to the diminishment and ultimately the destruction of one’s society.

What is mental dhimmitude? The attitude, as a writer on Islam once described it, of an “inferior servile class whose duty it is to win his master’s approval, to cringe before him, and to please him…”

The similarity between liberalism and mental dhimmitude raises the question, is liberalism a type of mental dhimmitude, or is mental dhimmitude a type of liberalism? Which comes first? Certainly liberals showed classic dhimmi attitudes toward blacks and other minorities decades before Islam became a visible presence in America.

Another possibility is that both liberalism and mental dhimmitude are sub-categories of some larger category we haven’t yet identified. Yet another possibility is that liberalism and mental dhimmitude are two completely distinct phenomena, with completely different etiologies, that just happen to overlap at some points.

Carl Simpson thinks the differences are more important than the similarities:

The dhimmi is a subservient slave, cowering before his Muslim masters. The Western liberal certainly displays the cowardice but there is something more, the western liberal hates his own culture with a passion. The folks who enact hate-speech laws like the one we see in operation in Soviet Blairistan (formerly known as England) are fierce about crushing and stamping out any vestiges of white, Christian identity in a way that dhimmis, depressed lackeys, are not.

Remember the flap in the UK a couple of years ago about hot-cross buns? It wasn’t done as a result of Muslim demands—the Muslims were laughing at the ridiculousness of the idea. It was the true believers in liberalism—Blairite bureaucrats—who banned the buns so as not to offend the precious Other. Western liberals demonstrate a pathological, genocidal hatred for our civilization and the people who brought it into being that isn’t present in the sad dhimmis living under Islam’s boot.

Whether they are arrogant, cocky liberals (like George W. Bush) who believe that Islam will fall before liberalism eventually, or the cowardly kind who want to surrender outright (the EU model), liberals are united in their hatred of the traditional West and its people.

Another reader complements Mr. Simpson’s point that the overweening self-esteem of liberals distinguishes them from dhimmis:

“Another possibility is that both liberalism and mental dhimmitude are sub-categories of some larger category we haven’t yet identified.”

Ayn Rand would call it “altruism” (which she detested). Nietzsche would call it the “slave morality.” Kierkegaard would call it the “aesthetic.” Kant would call it the “categorical imperative.” Hegel might call it “Absolute Spirit.”

There are differences here, however. Rand, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard all regarded this attitude, or state of being, with contempt. Kant and Hegel extolled it.

Contrast this with writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Burke, Madison, etc., who were all deeply suspicious of human nature, and insisted upon clear distinctions.

Politically, it was Locke who provided a philosophical basis (the “social contract” and the “tabula rasa”) for the emergence of liberal principles as the highest good.

Personally, I believe liberalism stems from man’s compulsion to think highly of himself. This accounts for the insufferable moral superiority of liberalism, and its self-assurance that its values are immutable and ultimate (which is one more manifestation of idolatry). This results in the strange combination that we so often see in liberals: adolescent narcissism and self-destructive “tolerance.” Bill Clinton almost perfectly embodied this combination.

I will think more about your question, because I think it’s a good one.

I especially like the reader’s point that it was Locke who made it possible to think of liberal principles as the highest good.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 11, 2005 01:09 PM | Send