Glenn Beck, liberal

George writes :

This week, Glenn Beck has a series discussing the possibility Al Qaeda may launch simultaneous Beslan style atrocities in largely defenseless American schools.

Given this grave subject matter, can you guess what Beck spent most of this night’s episode [here’s the video, and here is the transcript posted and commented on by Vanishing American] worrying about with guests Bernard Kerik, a token “Moderate” Muslim, and a security “expert”?

Yes Lawrence, they wrung their hands in terror that the American people (in large numbers, not a small fringe) may react violently against Muslims in response to hundreds/thousands of American children being slaughtered in our schools.

Beck was quite visibly shaken about this possibility, he even pleaded with the “Moderate” ethno-religious fifth columnist to alert his fellow Muslim immigrants to wake up and turn the bad guys in before Americans realize that Muslim immigration could be problematic.

Then, of course, Bernie Kerik and the “expert” bravely and stoically told Beck that the correct way to prevent an obviously unpreventable terrorist attack on our schools (made possible solely by our immigration policies) is to remain, yes, “Vigilant.”

And even, “Alert.”

Of course, if someone who is actually vigilant and alert tells the authorities that a Muslim is acting like, well, a Muslim, the courts, media, and government will drop the murderous hammer of “Tolerance” on this “Alert” American.

There was not a word about immigration, naturally. At least Beck and the panel could have proposed letting teachers take guns to school, one of the few policies that could actually be of some use against terrorism while the borders are open. But even that is beyond their mental horizons.

Can there be any doubt that Orwell would be absolutely astounded at what is going on today?

LA replies:

Great observations.

Beck’s reaction illustrates a point I’ve made before, that Islam’s renewed historic jihad against the West has brought liberalism into a crisis from which it cannot emerge alive.

Look at it this way. The thousand-year-long Muslim threat to Europe ebbed after the defeat of the Ottomans outside Vienna on September 12, 1683, 324 years ago today. Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government, the seminal work of liberalism, was published in 1690, the date of publication symbolically expressing the idea that it was the defeat of Islam, the removal of its ever-present threat, that made possible the benign and hopeful view of human nature that is at the root of liberalism. And now, 300 years after liberalism began, Islam has stirred from its sleep, like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, bringing an unappeasable evil into the world that liberalism cannot acknowledge and remain liberalism. For Glenn Beck not to be more troubled at the thought of Americans retaliating against Muslims after Muslims mass murder attacks on American children, than he is troubled at the terrorist attacks themselves, he would have to give up his liberal belief that Muslims are basically like us and that everyone can get along. But he can’t admit that Muslims as such are different from us and dangerous to us. Therefore, for him, the prospect of Americans using violence against Muslims, or even, I’ll bet, the prospect of Americans simply deporting Muslims, is far more horrible than the prospect of Muslim terrorists mass murdering tens of thousands of Americans. The latter would only take our lives. The former would destroy our (liberal) souls.

It’s the same with Daniel Pipes, it’s the same with Melanie Phillips, and with so many others. These people cannot admit the simple, obvious fact—almost as obvious as the facts of life—that Muslims are not compatible with us and do not belong among us. Liberalism is an extreme ideology which insists that reality is something other than what it is. To admit that realty is what it is, would destroy liberalism.

So, if liberals respond adequately to the Muslim threat, liberalism ceases to exist; and if liberals refuse to respond adequately to the Muslim threat, liberalism discredits itself as the governing philosophy of the West, and so ceases to exist. Either way, liberalism is doomed.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 12, 2007 10:37 PM | Send