Two neocon formulae for Western suicide

First Neocon Formula for Western Suicide

In a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute in 2006, Bernard Lewis concluded with these words:

“Either we bring [the Muslims] freedom, or they destroy us.”

I commented at VFR (I recommend the entire VFR discussion):

The statement is almost literally insane. Lewis can imagine no other means of national self-defense than that which is impossible. Even he admits that success in bringing freedom to Muslims is highly unlikely. Nevertheless he bases our prospects of national and civilizational survival on that unlikely event, rather than on something that is achievable, such as the isolation and containment of the Islamic world.

Second Neocon Formula for Western Suicide

From a FrontPage Magazine interview with author Claire Berlinski in 2006:

FP: What will Europe have to do to save itself?

Berlinski: The single most important thing Europeans can do, practically and immediately, is to take urgent steps better to integrate its immigrant population. Not an easy task by any means and perhaps an impossible one. But here is the fact: immigrants are in Europe to stay. They must be integrated; there is no acceptable alternative.

In both cases, the thing we are told we must accomplish is something that we cannot accomplish, because it is not up to us, it is up to the Muslims. We cannot make Muslims adopt freedom if they don’t want freedom. We cannot make Muslims assimilate to our societies if they don’t want to assimilate. Furthermore, the only way that Muslims could adopt freedom or assimilate to our culture would be by giving up Islam. Thus Lewis and Berlinski, in the act of advising the West on what they describe as the only way for the West to save itself, consign the West to death, because the only measures they offer for Western defense are things that the West cannot do and that the Muslims will not do. With advisors like this, who needs enemies?

Finally, notice the similarity between the Lewis-Berlinski formulae for Western suicide and our Iraq policy. President Bush and his supporters constantly repeat that our aim in Iraq is “success” and “victory.” But “success” and “victory” are defined as the creation of a viable Iraqi government, which is not something we can achieve, just as we cannot make Muslims accept freedom and just as we cannot make them assimilate into our culture. To call for “success” and “victory” when those things by definition are not within our power is a lie.

Lewis, Berlinski, and the Bushites all have this in common: they preclude the very possibility of the West or America acting in its own behalf for its own well-being. They place our liberty, our safety, our survival, in the hands of aliens and enemies.

What is the alternative? To act in our own behalf, for our own well-being and survival, so that we are not dependent on Muslims for those things in any way, shape, or form.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 19, 2007 03:53 PM | Send