Why Western elites don’t fear Muslims

A reader responds to my thoughts about the West’s suicidal double standard regarding non-Westerners and non-whites:

Besides white guilt and white self-loathing as explanations for this suicidal behavior, I think there may also be the opposite—a white sense of superiority that leads them to feel that no matter how oppressed they may be by blacks or Muslims, etc., it doesn’t matter, because they will come out ahead. This sense of superiority is not limited to KKK types or anything like that, rather it is the liberals, including neo-conservatives, who feel themselves to be invincible. There are no limits to their generosity towards the Other because, at bottom, they cannot conceive of actually being subjects to the rule of blacks. This feeling of invincibility stems from their contempt for blacks as inferior beings who could never become their masters. I think (though I’m not certain) that the same applies to the whites’ attitudes toward Muslims—they believe they can win over the Muslims, to better rule them. So, there is a mixture of inferiority complex and superiority complex governing white behavior and one could almost speak of “suicidal elitists.”

The reader has supplied a key stage in the liberal psychology. Liberals need the presence of dysfunctional or unassimilated people in society in order to have someone upon whom to exercise the liberal virtues of compassion and non-discrimination, which are the very purpose and justification of liberal society. Since being the dysfunctional and marginal objects of liberal non-discrimination and compassion is the role of these people, it doesn’t occur to the liberals that these marginal objects might become actors in their own right and take over the society. That’s not part of the liberal script. Since the liberals are focused entirely on their own psychological and ideological agenda, namely the acceptance and inclusion of unassimilable minorities which in turn legitimizes the liberals’ power and position, they can’t conceive that that agenda may lead to their own dispossession.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 06, 2005 01:47 PM | Send