The U.S. government funds the Muslim Brotherhood

The ruling powers of the West are anti-Western. What is to be done?

According to information assembled by Andrew McCarthy at the Corner, the State Department is funding a “citizenship exchange” program run by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The ISNA is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is the main source of modern jihadism in Sunni Islam, and thus the ideological fountainhead of Hamas, al Qaeda, and so on. The ISNA’s citizenship exchange program, according to the ISNA website,

brings young professionals from the Middle East, specifically from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to the United States…The goal of this project is to explore Islam, the functions of Islamic institutions in the United States, and the activities of interfaith work.”

One of the meetings in the exchange program was with Ali Gomaa, the Mufti of Egypt. Gomaa is an explicit supporter of the use of terror against Israel, which he describes as a criminal state.

All that is happening under President Bush—you know, the leader in the “war on terror,” the guy who said, “Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” Yet the conservative establishment tells us that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Jimmy Carter are totally off the chart when it comes to questions of national security, while Bush and John McCain—who is even more liberal than Bush—are the salvation of the country.

The reality is that our entire political establishment is left-liberal (to varying degrees) and stands for the surrender of the West to Islam, continued mass Third-World immigration into the West, the transfer of the sovereign powers of Western nations to transnational unaccountable bodies, and the enforcement of quasi-totalitarian anti-discrimination laws over the entire West.

A new, pro-Western civilization politics is needed that will oppose all of this.

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Adela G. writes:

You write: “A new, pro-Western civilization politics is needed that will oppose all of this.”

I couldn’t agree with you more. But I don’t see how such politics can or will arise, except phoenix-like out of the ashes of the old anti-West system, not to oppose the old politics but to replace it.

The left (or perhaps more accurately, the leftist mindset) controls the educational system (at both state and local levels), the media, all three branches of government, and the military. It will not permit the emergence, much less the continued existence of any viable system in direct opposition to it.

By the way, I don’t blame the public for this. We elect governmental officials to run a government that protects and furthers our interests, not those of people who would do us harm or steal our liberty. Most people here in the West are simply trying to live their lives, to work and support themselves and their families. It takes far more time than many of us have to become and continue to be well-informed as to just exactly what our government is doing. Governmental transparency is not even a factor. The left is so cagey and so adept at doublespeak that gleaning the truth from government pronouncements is not easy.

So if we are ill-informed, government bears some responsibility for that, given the opacity behind which it operates and the ongoing and deliberate deceptions it practices against its own citizenry. I believe most people don’t even know how pervasive and deceptive leftist thought is. The people are ignorant and the governing elites are not only glad but highly motivated to preserve and extend this ignorance.

By the time most Americans are fully alerted to how dire the situation is, any remedy they seek may well be outlawed and/or criminalized.

I would be grateful and relieved for you or anyone else to refute the points I make here.

LA replies:

Here is Adela’s key point:

But I don’t see how such politics can or will arise, except phoenix-like out of the ashes of the old anti-West system, not to oppose the old politics but to replace it. The left … will not permit the emergence, much less the continued existence of any viable system in direct opposition to it.

First, there must be a movement to repeal the anti-hate-speech laws. Without freedom of speech, there can be no politics. So repealing the anti-hate-speech laws is the sine qua non of an anti-leftist, anti-Islamization politics. Also, if the peoples of the West lack the will and force even to protest, let alone successfully to repeal, these totally unacceptable and outrageous laws, then they won’t have the will and force to do anything else.

Once there is freedom of speech, there will be nothing stopping the formation of parties and other organizations representing pro-West principles. They will describe the existing system as it is, as a program for the destruction of the West, its nations, its cultures, its peoples, its freedoms, and will offer themselves as an alternative to the existing system. As the existing system gets uglier, more and more people will gravitate to the new parties.

But these new parties, even if they took government power in some countries, would not be able to do much, so long as the left-liberal ideology remains the all-pervading basis of the culture, the media, the schools, the bureaucracies, and so on. That is why, as with the fall of Soviet Communism, if the liberal system is to be defeated, its own members must cease believing in it, and then it will die from within. The pro-West parties cannot make that happen. But they will need to be in existence and have governing ideologies in place when that event happens so that they can move into the vacuum, just as, when the USSR collapsed, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union were already in existence and could replace it.

What will make the liberal orthodoxy lose the support of its followers and die from within? Its anti-human hideousness, the falsity of its ideas, economic hardship, the decline of the society into multi-dimensional chaos, perhaps the takeover of the society by Islam.

Short of the liberal system dying from within, it would have to be defeated through civil war. In a civil war against the ruling liberal ideology that still has the support of the most of the institutions of society, either the pro-West side would be defeated, or, to be victorious, it would have to kill vast numbers of people and destroy much of the society. This is unacceptable.

Therefore the only scenario I can see as workable and acceptable is that the liberal ideology dies from within. And for that to happen, liberal society must undergo a sustained period of crisis, with much individual and collective suffering. Liberalism is so much a part of the essence of modern people that only great suffering will make the majority of them stop believing in liberalism and be ready to accept something else.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

In response to Adele G.’s comments, I agree that the left largely controls the means of intellectual production in this country (the education, media, and entertainment industries) and exercises the predominant influence over the organs of political power at the federal, state, and local levels. However, there is nothing “inevitable” about this. It is the result of a concerted effort by the left and its sympathizers and dupes to seize and wield power to achieve their vision of a “just” society.

Nothing is stopping conservatives from engaging in the exact same “political warfare” to shape the future of our country. But, for the most part, they don’t. They don’t organize, they don’t protest, they don’t boycott, they don’t propagandize, they don’t engage in civil disobedience, and they don’t threaten violence if their demands are not met. Why not? The left does each of these things. And let’s not forget that the patriots who founded this great nation also did each of these things. The brilliant intellectual achievements of the Constitutional Convention would not have been possible without the Stamp Act protests, the Boston Tea Party, and armed rebellion.

One last point that all conservatives should ponder deeply: The people who enforce this corrupt, irrational, destructive modern liberal order are, with few exceptions, not liberals, but conservatives. I am not talking about George W. Bush or Condi Rice or John McCain. I am talking about the police, the sheriffs, the marshals, the federal agents, the military. I call these people “the men with the guns.” Overwhelmingly, these people are conservative by nature and belief. Yet these are the people who, at the point of a gun, will throw you in jail—or even kill you—if you do not obey the law, if you refuse to pay the tax man, if you attempt to defend yourself and your property against criminals, if you refuse to associate with people who do not share your values, if you place your individual rights above the “good” of society, if you do not follow the edicts of the authorities.

I cannot help but think of the horse in Animal Farm, a kind, decent creature whose strength was exploited and manipulated by the pigs for their own dark purposes.

The nine members of the Supreme Court cannot enforce their unconstitutional decisions. The 535 members of Congress cannot enforce their tyrannical laws. Even the tens of thousands of government bureaucrats across the nation cannot enforce their freedom-destroying rules and regulations. In short, the left cannot enforce its own vision. Only the men with the guns can enforce the left’s vision. The question we must ask ourselves is: Why are they doing so?

A true conservative “counter-revolution” will not occur in this country until the men with the guns decide to stop doing the left’s bidding.

Alan Roebuck writes:

I don’t want to disagree with anything said by the participants in the discussion so far. The points made are all valid and important. And I have no great desire to sound like a broken record.

But I would just reiterate one thing: The only reason the “men with the guns” enforce liberalism, and the executives execute liberalism, and the legislators legislate liberalism, and the judges judge liberally, is that THEY BELIEVE LIBERALISM TO BE TRUE.

And that is why, in addition to the many other things that will have to be done, we will have to do the hard work of convincing people of the falsity of liberalism, and of the truth of traditional conservatism.

Also, we don’t have to wait for society to get worse. We can do it now.

LA replies:

You’re right.

Now, I and you and others make arguments about the falsity of liberalism to other conservatives. What you’re suggesting is that we make arguments about the falsity of liberalism to liberals. How do we do this? Where do we do this? How do we get their attention?

All along we’ve assumed that this is more or less impossible. People who reject liberalism in principle are outside the liberal sphere and liberals are not interested in them. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe we can write for liberals in a way that gets their attention.

For example, I can imagine various VFR-type articles for mainstream publications aimed at getting liberals to think critically about liberalism, say, about the unprincipled exception; or about how non-discrimination is the ruling idea which makes various values that liberals themselves care about impossible to sustain; or about the non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism.

But to write for liberals, we must have a common ground of shared values with them. What would that shared ground be, since our aim is to end the rule of liberalism?

Mark P. writes:

Steven Warshawsky wrote:

A true conservative “counter-revolution” will not occur in this country until the men with the guns decide to stop doing the left’s bidding.

Steven seems to find it odd how the conservative “men with guns” enforce the liberal orthodoxy on the rest of us. Yet, this is exactly why the power of ideas matters. A disorganized mass of conservative men, no matter how well armed, will never be a decisive force in political matters if there is not an effective leadership to move them.

In fact, if the mere presence of such heavily armed conservative men is all it took, then most of the Democrats would already be in jail.

No, leaders need to emerge to lead these men into using their armed advantages against the liberal orthodoxy.

Lawrence also wrote:

What will make the liberal orthodoxy lose the support of its followers and die from within? Its anti-human hideousness, the falsity of its ideas, economic hardship, the decline of the society into multi-dimensional chaos, perhaps the takeover of the society by Islam.

Or, more simply, those who run the liberal orthodoxy must lose power.

Van Wijk writes:

Steven Warshawsky wrote: “One last point that all conservatives should ponder deeply: The people who enforce this corrupt, irrational, destructive modern liberal order are, with few exceptions, not liberals, but conservatives. I am not talking about George W. Bush or Condi Rice or John McCain. I am talking about the police, the sheriffs, the marshals, the federal agents, the military.”

My personal experience with police officers (and authority figures in general) is probably quite different from other VFR readers. The desire to help the community and apprehend genuine criminals is not the only thing that attracts people to law enforcement. Many times it is simply the position of authority, the power over private citizens, and bearing arms on behalf of the state. Couple these with a good paycheck, pension and guaranteed vacation time and you have a very attractive package to people who are by no means the salt of the earth.

The above can apply to military careerists.

If a burglar breaks into your home and you shoot him dead, the officers who show up will take your firearm away and you will, at the very least, spend the night in jail. Everyone you speak to at the precinct will make it very plain that they do not approve of your actions, they do not approve of private citizens being “allowed” to own firearms; essentially they don’t approve of any self-defence except calling 911 and then putting your head between your knees. If you’re lucky, after long deliberation the powers that be might decide not to prosecute.

It should never be assumed that your average cop is a real conservative. Even if he privately sympathizes with you, he won’t be risking his pension for you. We cannot trust our lives to them.

As I’ve said before, the armed citizen is the ONLY guarantor of a free nation.

Dan M. writes:

Steven Warshawsky writes: “The people who enforce this corrupt, irrational, destructive modern liberal order are, with few exceptions, not liberals, but conservatives.”

Really? I’ve known quite a few of them, and I’ve never met one I would call conservative.

“Law and Order” types don’t do what they do because they believe in or understand a legitimately constituted moral hierarchy, the obedience to which is the essence of morality—they do it for a love of the power delegated to them. They don’t understand the difference between power and moral authority. And they’re every bit as liberal-minded as everyone else in this country.

The essence of the “conservatism” we need in order to restore the West is not native to these shores. If we’re only talking about restoring the order that existed prior to the Sixties, you can forget it. It will never be enough. The liberalism of the Fifties led ineluctably to the liberalism of the Sixties, just as the liberalism of each age of the last 700 years led to the liberalism that followed. So many good-intentioned “conservatives” don’t realize how very ancient is the tendency with which we are dealing. Right-liberal American “conservatism” has no answers. It knows nothing beyond its decadent cry for “liberty.” The roots of tyranny lie right here. Godless liberty-worship leads straight to the guillotine.

The problem of writing for and educating liberals is that there are no non-liberals to do it. Outside of fora like VFR I’ve never met one. And even here, liberalism in its earlier stages is thought to have brought about certain “good” things—a notion with which I disagree.

You write: ” … we must have a common ground of shared values with them. What would that shared ground be … ?”

I take your implicit assumption to be that there is none, and I quite agree. How would any hypothetical non-liberal begin to teach that “liberty” is not a principle of universal good, that “equality” is only a principle of pure mathematics, that democracy is not greatly to be desired, that capitalism destroys nations and cultures more completely than any communism or war, and best of all, that atheism, materialism, empiricism, positivism, nominalism, relativism, hedonism, evolutionism, globalism, environmentalism, naturalism, physicalism, and nihilism are philosophies of death? Our positive teachings would amount to Christianity, faith, obedience, reason, subsidiarity, distributism and culturally particular history, literature, mythology, philosophy and religious practice. I think the only way to accomplish this would be a brain transplant.

So, I guess what I want to say is that engaging liberals is a nice idea, but first we’ll have to find some illiberal cultural traditionalists. And then we’ll have to find some liberals who will sit still long enough to accomplish the transplant!

If our hypothetical cataclysmic event doesn’t involve mass conversion to faith in God, there will be no way in which the liberalism they knew could be rationally opposed. As well, I assume we would not be preaching a return to the Constitution, for conversion back to the liberalism of the Founders would only end up the same as it did the first time. We won’t want to repeat those errors expecting a different result.

LA replies:

Dan is making sweeping statements that are not warranted. For example, he incorrectly conflates the French Revolution and the American Revolution when he says, “The roots of tyranny lie right here. Godless liberty-worship leads straight to the guillotine.” If Dan wants to argue that a renewed medieval order would be best, he can do so. But to declare that there is nothing good in the American tradition, nothing that does not lead automatically to the hyperliberalism of today and beyond, is simply wrong.

Also, Dan may be interested in checking out Jim Kalb’s blog, Turnabout, which is more radically critical of the American tradition than VFR is.

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Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 26, 2008 09:57 AM | Send