Terminally lost in the maze of liberalism
Jeff in England writes:
Did you listen to the episode of The Moral Maze I sent you a few days back on the Labour government’s policy against language associating Islam with terrorism? Melanie Phillips was impressive.
LA replies:
I listened to quite a bit of it. But I found the discussion deeply demoralizing. All these highly educated people going on and on working their way through the moral maze of liberalism (which is the real though unintended meaning of the title of the show), their endless invocations of tolerance, rights, equality every time they opened their mouths, as though they couldn’t tie their shoes without thinking about equality and tolerance, all to try to get to the point of saying that maybe it’s ok to say the words “Islamic extremism.”
These people are lost. We’re lost. Once you get into a dialog with the kind of the slick talking Muslim Brit who is the first guest on that show, you’re lost.
In fact, listening to the show strengthened the feeling I’ve been having the last few days. It’s not possible to turn back the suicide of the West. I’m not just talking about Britain, but the whole thing. The total domination of the Western mind by liberalism makes the awakening from liberalism impossible. Westerners are incapable of thinking in the non-liberal concepts that are needed for survival. We have to let the destruction take its course and burn itself out. Only then will there be the possibility of Westerners giving up their liberalism. The hope is that the destruction will be partial and reversible, not total and irreversible.
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Mark A. writes:
I’ve been having the same feelings. The suicide is happening and there is nothing we can do about it. However, I am proposing an act of civil disobedience: all conservatives should stay home this November. Voting in this election gives our tacit approval of our perverse system of government. I will not reward McCain for his behavior. I will not reward Clinton for her corruption. I will not reward Obama for his white-guilt socialism.
Bruce B. writes:
Keep your chin up.
I read the following Chesterton quote recently:
“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
That’s us. We’re still alive.
Bert R. writes:
All UK broadcasters and programmes are egalitarian, of which the BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze programme is the least bad. For example, they had Professor Richard Lynn speaking on the Watson affair; they accepted his academic credentials and did not perform the usual smears or ambushes.
Lawrence Auster wrote: “The total domination of the Western mind by liberalism makes the awakening from liberalism impossible. ” I would refine this to “The total domination of the Ruling Class by liberalism makes their awakening from liberalism impossible and their replacement essential. ”
Lawrence Auster wrote: “Westerners are incapable of thinking in the non-liberal concepts that are needed for survival.” I disagree. I comment regularly at the heart of the beast, the Guardian newspaper website, where I would hazard a guess that roughly half of the commentariat acknowledge significant differences between males and females and the existence of races and racial differences. However virtually none will acknowledge that logical deductions from the statistical analysis of empirical data rule out a viable multiculti state. Also, the massive differential in crime rates and racially motivated violence against whites is almost never mentioned, even by the victims. On a positive note, The Guardian newspaper website publishes all of my comments, unlike other newspaper websites. I would also say that in the one year since my first comment online, there has been a dramatic improvement in the level of knowledge of the commentariat.
As most decisions regarding government of the UK are now made in Brussels by non-elected commissioners, it is hard to see how democratic change is possible before the collapse of the EUSSR, as described by Vladimir Bukovsky.
Working for the admittedly unlikely event of democratic change is worthwhile, as:
“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
— Winston Churchill.
Buddy writes from Atlanta:
Mark A. writes:
“…all conservatives should stay home this November. Voting in this election gives our tacit approval of our perverse system of government. I will not reward McCain for his behavior. I will not reward Clinton for her corruption. I will not reward Obama for his white-guilt socialism.”
We can do better. Staying home is not the right path. I will not vote for McCain, Clinton, or Obama for all the reasons discussed on this site. But I *will* vote for Republicans in House and Senate seats. The effect we should be trying to achieve is a president elected with (comparatively) few of the votes cast and major congressional wins for Republicans.
My prediction is that McCain will lose to whomever the Democrats nominate. So the narrative on election night should be (1) President Clinton or Obama was elected with very weak support and (2) the country has sent a very clear message that they want a divided government unable to accomplish much. Staying home achieves very little—in fact, it empowers Democrats because their down-ticket candidates are helped by a likely Clinton or Obama presidential win. If you think a President Clinton or Obama is bad, remember that either one *with increased Democrat majorities in the House and Senate* is even worse.
LA replies:
I couldn’t agree more with Buddy. No one should speak of “staying home in November,” as though the presidential election were the only one that matters. Yet those words are stuck in everyone’s head, like a bad advertising jingle, without people realizing its disastrous implications: an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. There needs to be a global search and replace function that will go through the brain of every conservative in America and change that misbegotten phrase, “stay home in November,” to “not vote for the Republican presidential candidate in November.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 13, 2008 01:47 PM | Send