a long, somewhat rambling, but interesting e-mail from Mr. Particular Swede, touching on many topics, all centered on the problems of liberalism and perhaps the crack-up of liberalism. He also finds similarities between Sweden and the United States.
Your article on “The laughable impotence of liberalism” illustrates your criticism of liberalism better than anything else. And look who is a speaker at this upcoming march: Maryam Namazie! That figures…
The paradigm of liberalism is cracking apart by its inner anomalies faster than I expected. Liberals end up in blatant self-contradiction almost every time nowadays. But the Bush Administration takes the prize. In rapid sequence we have had their laughable impotent liberal reactions to the Muhammad cartoons, the Ports deal, and now to the reaction to the death penalty of the Christian convert in Afghanistan. The U.S. State Department here express that transparency of legal processes is a more fundamental American value than the right not to get killed for your religious beliefs. This is the problem with liberals. They cannot order their priorities. They lack any sense of proportion.
Brave Americans, with a fighting spirit, on forums around the Internet, when the problems of the world and Islam(ism) are brought up, when the debate goes on long enough, always end up talking about all the impressive bombs and weaponry America has, and how America will always win since it can bomb any other country into a parking lot. But what’s the point of having a big dick, if you are impotent?
Speaking of impotence, Sweden comes to mind. In the course of events of the cartoons affair, the landscape has shifted substantially here. The two main symbols of Nazi-like intolerance for Swedes has been Denmark and the “far-right” Sweden Democrats. Now both are suddenly put in a positive context. Especially Denmark, with all the Danish flags on all freedom-loving websites around the world. Swedes still claim that Danes are awful people (the majority that voted for the current government), but it will never be possible to credibly paint Denmark as Nazi-like again, not even in Sweden.
And now the firing of [Foreign Minister] Laila Freivalds for shutting down the website of the Sweden Democrats. The day before all the big Swedish newspaper demanded that she must go, and while doing so defended the rights of the Sweden Democrats. This is new. These are the newspapers who all until now refused any op-eds, letters to the editor, or even a single ad from the Sweden Democrats. This time the Sweden Democrats is put in a positive context. So while it does not bring the Sweden Democrats to any heroic position comparable to Denmark, at least they have been upgraded from subhumans to humans (still awful and despicable, of course, but humans and existing). By Swedish measures, that’s a major breakthrough. The totalitarianism starts cracking up.
Sweden is an amazing little country, which has always excelled in whatever has been the overall pursuit of the West. When the name of the game was industrialization and entrepreneurship, we excelled in that. Now that the name of the game is non-discriminatory totalitarianism and cultural suicide, we excel in this too. Once liberalism has broken down under the weight of its blatant self- contradictions, the overall pursuit of the West will change. It will be interesting to see what happens to Sweden then. I’m afraid we’ll be overdoing it again.
In fact Sweden is the most Americanized country in Europe. American cultural imperialism has cut deeper here then anywhere else. But when you think about how the American nation was built on a mix of nationalities already from the start, and how Sweden is in the other extreme, having been the most ethnically homogeneous nation of the world. And then think about how cultural leftism and multiculturalism has damaged the U.S., then you can start imagine to what degree Americanization has set Sweden on a course to suicide of a nation (actually our ‘nation’ was officially dissolved a decade ago by our parliament). But the nation of Swedes still exists of course, and since liberal non-discriminatory totalitarianism has hurt us more than any other nation, I expect the counter-reaction to be stronger here. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned ugly.
If it seems that I connect Western cultural leftism to America, that is correct. Wilson struck the chord. The European socialists helped of course, or rather, America empowered them, enabling them to dominate the scene of cultural influence in Europe. Since Wilson, America has been the imperial center of the Western civilization (an empire in denial, of course). America is the imperial embodiment of the liberal world order.
People will fail to see the connection between American liberalism and European socialism, but they share the same modern cult of victimization. America as the former colony, and a nation built on egalitarianism from day one. America and European socialists became natural allies in fighting the “bad old” Europe, the power hierarchies that once built the greatness of the West. With the Wilsonian era, started the socialist era of Europe. The anti-Americanism of European socialists today blind people to this connection. But quite as Sunnis and Shias, America and European socialism are better understood as rivals, rather than enemies.
So keep up the good fight for a traditionalist America! Still though, I would prefer the West to be an empire. It is an open question who would be able to lead that.