Why the French cannot even ask “Why?”
Ben W. writes:
Thank you Yahoo and AP for telling us that the candidates in the French election must “bring alienated young Muslims into French life.”
I’m curious, Lawrence, why Muslims emigrate to Western lands only to become “alienated”? Why don’t they stay in their own countries and as natives there remain unalienated?
Why do Western societies have to “unalienate” them? Weren’t they already unalienated in their own lands? Or were they already alienated within their own Muslim cultures which necessitated the emigration—thus making it western civilization’s task to unalienate them from a previous condition?
I’m confused about the time lines—just when is it that these Muslims became alienated? As a result of joining a Western society or in being forced to move out of their own habitat? And why would they move from a condition of non-alienation (their own society) to a condition of alienation (our society)? [LA adds: Ben has left out the French-born children of immigrants who are the most alienated, but it doesn’t change his main point, since the alienation is still the product people immigrating into and living in a country where they do not fit.]
Something doesn’t make sense as to when Muslims become alienated and why it becomes our task to disalienate them (is there such a word…disalienate, unalienate, whatever Hegelian/Marxist jargon liberals prefer).
Or should we re-alienate them, or over-alienate them so they can reconsider their prior unalienated state?
LA replies:
Your questions, while logical and fair, cannot be asked, because to ask them, the French would have to be able to think and speak of France as an entity with interests distinct from those of other, non-Western peoples. And liberalism cancels such a France out of existence. A Frenchman cannot ask, “Why have you people come here?” if the “here” has no legitimate identity separate from that of the people to whom the question is to be asked.
This is the way liberalism works. Liberalism doesn’t set out by announcing, “We seek the end of France as a self-governing nation and culture.” Rather, it attacks “racism,” it comprehensively puts all “racism” outside the realm of the acceptable, and it says that the French Republic stands for universal principles. From that moment forward, it becomes impossible even to conceptualize the identity and interests of non-Muslim France in contradistinction to the identity and interests of Muslims—even alienated Muslims who hate France and openly seek to destroy her.
It turns out that national suicide happens amazingly easily. All it takes is a slight, barely perceptible change in a nation’s rhetoric, plus an actual influx of lots of unassimilable people.
Ben replies:
This is the crux of the matter when you state that, “It comprehensively puts all ‘racism’ outside the realm of what is acceptable … and it says that the French Republic stands for universal principles.”
This is why I never “join” in crusades initiated by liberals to “stamp out” this condition or that. “Laura Bush Conservatives” such as her own husband are only too eager to demonstrate their own humanitarian credentials by affirming liberal causes that they think are untainted by political considerations. So they “join hands” in celebrating “Jackie Robinson Day” or asserting how MLK Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech sets the standard for civil rights (psychologically as well as politically). All this does is serve the cause of western suicide…
I hear all too often “conservatives” using MLK Jr’s speeches against liberals themselves as if such rhetoric constituted a priori principles of the highest order. Dennis Prager and Jeff Jacoby are prime examples of this. People get sucked into the liberal agenda on the basis of “universal principles” in which they are only to eager to acquiesce.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 22, 2007 03:11 PM | Send