The only way the West can be saved

It is among the evils, and perhaps is not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel, before they will see. When this happens, they are roused to action—hence it is that this form of government is so slow.—George Washington to Henry Knox, 8 March 1787.

The wages of sin is death, and the wages of long-standing indifference to the informing genius of a culture is—not just the death of the culture, but the pain and fright that attend death.—L. Brent Bozell, Mustard Seeds

I keep saying that the West must endure much more suffering and horror, many more surrenders and losses, before it will abandon its liberalism and start to defend itself from Islam—if it ever does. But no matter how many times I’ve said this, I realize I haven’t yet got to the core of the problem.

We must focus our attention on the fact that the key to this unfolding disaster is LIBERALISM. I am not speaking of liberalism in the classical sense, as constraints on the power of government, as free speech and free inquiry, as a single rule of law for all citizens, as individual rights. Nor I am not speaking of liberalism in the New Deal sense, as the use of government to correct imbalances in the economy. I am speaking of liberalism in its pure, modern sense, the sense in which it is most authoritative and active for us today—liberalism as non-discrimination, liberalism as non-judgmentalism, liberalism as the belief that individual rights and individual freedoms constitute the defining content of our society, the principle that rules all other principles. All of which comes down to the belief—for us, a sacred belief—that we must not define ourselves as a group, a collective whole, and therefore must not define any other group as fundamentally different from our group.

This is the belief that led the West to admit millions of unassimilable, hostile, and dangerous aliens into the West, and this is the belief that even now makes it impossible for Westerners to think critical thoughts about Islam as such, let alone to take effective action, or even imagine taking effective action, against it. In April 2001 I wrote an article called “America No Longer Exists,” by which I meant that America no longer sees itself as a nation, culture, and people, and therefore is unable to respond to obvious threats to itself as a nation, culture, and people. The same state of spiritual non-existence is much further advanced in Europe, especially Britain. Liberalism, by taking over the minds and hearts and souls of the Western peoples, has literally dissolved them as peoples. Having done so, it is now leading them to their political and civilizational destruction as well .

Now, what can turn this hideous situation around? There is only one thing that can do it: Westerners must feel the horror that liberalism has wrought. When they see their societies progressively taken over by Muslims, when they see Muslim sharia being implanted and enforced in more and more parts of their country, when they see Islam being taught in their children’s schools and promulgated in the mass media, when they see Muslim imams in the councils of state, when they hear the Muslims’ increasingly strident demands for every more Islamization, when they see Muslim razzias (a.k.a. riots and “random” murders) grow in intensity and audacity, when they see the government paralyzed even in the face of the most palpable crimes and threats, and when, most importantly, they feel the horror and despair and pain and humiliation of all this, and when, finally, they see that this situation was brought about by and is sustained by LIBERALISM, by the liberal belief that the acceptance of alien cultures is the highest virtue of society, then, only at that point, they will see that LIBERALISM, which they had imagined to be the fairest good, is the darkest and most disgusting evil, the smiling destroyer that has seduced them to their ruin. Then, and only then, will they be ready to repent of their liberalism and start defending themselves and their civilization.

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Reader Alex sends this discouraging word:

Sometimes something stares us in the face yet we just don’t see it.

We seem to forget that where Islam has taken root it has never departed.

Turkey was at one time was part of the Byzantine Empire, Egypt was Christian, India is now three states (India, Pakistan ,& Bangladesh). The Muslims are still in the Balkans and Chechen, even parts of China. Indonesia is so predominantly Muslim its folly to think it will anything else in the future. Does anyone think that Islam will ever retreat from Africa?

Only Spain has ever managed to recover and then only after over 300 years of constant warfare that forever changed the character and complexion of its people. I agree with you that the root core of this problem is liberalism. But it will not disappear overnight and time most definitely is not on our side. What is lost today we won’t get back cheaply or quickly tomorrow, if at all.

A Europe changed by Islam is a Europe changed forever.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 21, 2006 09:31 PM | Send