What to do about Islam, according to the left

For an amazing look at how liberals and leftists would have us deal with Islam, see Serge Trifkovic’s discussion of the The New America Foundation Conference on Terrorism, Security, and America’s Purpose which was held in early September (individual talks can be played here). The proposals put forward by the participants cover the gamut, from Joseph Biden calling for debt relief for Muslim countries, to Warren Rudman calling for a war on global poverty and disease, to the ineffable Francis Fukuyama saying that the problem is young Muslims’ alienation from modernity, which we must help them overcome by teaching them how to choose a personal identity the way we do. As for Muslims in the West, the Conferences’s report simply said that we must be nicer to them, eliminating security measures and immigration protections that “have made America less attractive to students and visitors” from the Muslim world.

As an organized, considered response to the Islam challenge, this conference is the largest piece of evidence so far backing up my contention that the West’s post 9/11 confrontation with Islam represents the apocalypse of liberalism, the uncovering of its essential nature and of its final destiny.

Rejecting the left/liberal/neocon madness, Trifkovich’s article, published two days ago, ends on pretty much the identical point I made here last night. He writes:

Rediscovering who we are is the essential prerequisite for [dealing with the Islamic menace]. The victory in the war on terror ultimately has to be won in the domain of morals and culture. It can be won only by an America (and Britain, and France, and Italy … ) that has regained its awareness of its moral, spiritual, and civilizational roots.

Or, as I wrote in the closing paragraph of Erasing America:

Which returns us to the question with which we began: Is our culture facing the threat of destruction, or has it, in essence, already been destroyed? Whatever our answer to that question may ultimately be, and whatever form our resistance to the destruction may ultimately take, this much is clear: If we Westerners are to have any chance of surviving the nihilism that is dissolving us from within and the demographic invasion that is swamping us from without, it can only happen through a rediscovery of our spiritual, cultural, and ethnic roots—through a reawakening of our particular identity as heirs of a particular people and a particular civilization.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 24, 2005 02:07 PM | Send