Frum criticizes the deniers of cultural catastrophe. Physician, heal thyself!

A worthwhile blog entry by David Frum pointing out how contemporary liberal academics have been trying to define out of existence the very idea of cultural decline:

… the idea that decline never happens, that all changes are in fact “positive cultural transformations” holds such a grip on the contemporary liberal mind that even so smashing and universal a catastrophe as the barbarian invasions of Europe gets reinterpreted out of existence. Instead, academics and the journalists who write about them have reinterpreted invasion, the collapse of civil authority, the implosion of Europe’s economy, and the destruction of literacy and culture not as “decline,” but as evolution toward a more vibrant diversity. You know, I’m almost tempted to invite readers to “draw their own parallels” myself.

But in the end Frum flinches. Drawing a parallel to liberalism, he fails to draw the exact same parallel to neoconservatism. For surely neoconservatism also interprets the ongoing demographic and cultural destruction of America as something positive, indeed as a glorious fulfilment of American ideals. Yes, Frum has in recent years made some (reluctant and agonized) criticisms of illegal immigration. But to my knowledge he has never once said anything against the legal mass immigration policies by which America and Europe have been Third-Worldized.

Liberalism denies the existence of cultural decline, as well as of evil, enemies, and unassimilable aliens, because liberals don’t want society to defend itself from any internal or external threat; they want society to go with the Heraclitean flow back into non-existence. Neoconservatism, a variant of liberalism, also denies the existence of unassimilable aliens. It says all people are the same, all people want the same things, all people are democrats, all people are potential Americans. On that basis neoconservatives giddily invite the world into America, even as they criticize liberals for denying the potential for cultural catastrophe.

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Paul Cella reminds me of Frum’s 2003 London Times article about Britain’s moral and cultural degradation, in which Frum expressed attitudes markedly at variance with his present criticism of those who deny or ignore societal decline. Here are Mr. Cella’s quotes from the Frum article along with his comments:

How about this: “The British like to scoff at American political correctness, and indeed by British standards, American public life must seem choked by taboos: against smoking, against cursing, against ethnic jokes. By American standards, in turn, the British seem almost shockingly earthy. At lunch in a fancy restaurant, a friend watched as a British woman pulled her baby on to the lunch table and changed its diaper in full view. You will sometimes catch a glimpse of a drunken New Yorker urinating in a dark alley; Londoners unembarrassedly relieve themselves against the brightly lit walls of the Centre Point building and then zip themselves up to run and catch the bus.” Public urination. Har dee har har.

Or this: “The young Henry Adams served in the US Embassy in London in the early 1860s, and complained in a letter home that the British refused to acquire any new friends after the age of 11. That was old Britain. Today, judging by what my twentysomething friends tell me, it’s probably easier to make friends in London than in New York City—and almost certainly much easier for young men in pursuit of young women to make, um, good friends. The old British obsession with privacy seems to have been transcended for good. On the trains and buses, they happily shout the most intimate sexual and medical details into their mobile phones for all to hear.”

Again, it’s the glibness (not celebration of degradation, as I initially said) that irks me. Some of the things he describes are the marks of creeping barbarism, yet he can’t find a word of criticism.

The point needs to be underscored. Frum in 2003 was not exactly saying that cultural degradation is a positive thing; but he was not saying it is a negative thing either. He found it amusing. In the absence of any statement from Frum disowning his 2003 remarks, it is hard to take entirely seriously his currently expressed concerns about Western cultural degradation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 22, 2006 10:55 AM | Send