Liberal horror at conservative response to Fort Hood

(Note: speaking of bigots, see comment number 69 in this post at Pajamas Media where I am called “an odious character” and “a blatantly anti-black racist,” for … for saying terrible things about blacks? For denying blacks’ humanity? No. For saying that there are differences in intelligence between the races, which happens to be an undeniable fact. Talk about declaring entire sectors of reality off-limits and surrounding them by dragons.)

Two writers at Huffington Post, Brian Levin and “Hussein Ibish,” cry that “Fort Hood Tragedy Is Being Exploited to Bolster Discrimination.” But after they go on for a while about prejudice, discrimination, bigotry, and Islamophobia, when they actually start quoting the “bigots,” the bigots make a lot of sense. Far from “exploiting” anything, they sound like people who are genuinely concerned that Islam is a threat to America. Levin and Ibish of course never even address that possibility. To them, the statement that it is Islam’s mission to Islamize the world is simply hateful bigotry, something that no decent person would think or say.

The authors’ evident terror of conservatives’ sincere concerns about Islam leaves one wondering: what is it like to be a liberal, for whom vast sectors of reality are simply off limits, and anyone who ventures into those sectors is a hateful bigot? Is it enjoyable? Is it satisfying? Since liberals’ great object is the unconstrained freedom of human desire and the complete fulfillment of our human potential, do they find it fulfilling to live in the liberal equivalent of medieval map of the world, where one step too far in any direction drops you into an abyss filled with dragons?

In any case, the article’s quotations of some startlingly frank statements by various conservatives about the nature of Islam and what to do about it give me hope that at least some conservatives are starting to wake up.

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Astraea writes from England:

LA wrote: “The authors’ evident terror of conservatives’ sincere concerns about Islam leaves one wondering: what is it like to be a liberal, for whom vast sectors of reality are simply off limits, and anyone who ventures into those sectors is a hateful bigot? Is it enjoyable? Is it satisfying?”

From what I’ve observed, liberalism is enjoyable to liberals and does, in the short term anyway, facilitate the pursuit of “unconstrained … human desire” for the following reasons:

First of all, the sort of liberals who refuse to see the obvious, are usually those who don’t as yet need to see. The people who are most able to do something about the problems associated with Islam and mass immigration are also the ones who are most able to ignore them, because they are still the least affected. Many of them work with and live next door to “people of all races and religions” but these are usually the well-educated “nice” people of “all races and religions” who living next to and working with causes almost no problem. The middle classes will continue to ignore the implication of hordes of unassimilable foreigners in their midst—because, for the most part, unassimilable foreigners still only affect other people.

Secondly, modern liberals have a very, very strong denial mechanism, which enables them not to join up the dots. Wilfully not joining up the dots means that you can go on enjoying that nice bottle of wine or whatever it is that makes you feel good. And it is all about feeling good. Now, the really cunning stunt with regard to liberalism is that liberalism allows you to fulfil all your desires, and still remain a “good” person. So long as you sign up to the non-discrimination principle, you are a “good” person, a “nice” person, and so you can sleep soundly in your bed at night. To see things for what they are, to get “worked up” about them, will mean that you won’t be a “nice” person anymore and then you won’t feel good about yourself. For a liberal, enjoying life is about two things—taking pleasure without repercussion, and feeling good about yourself.

Now, one of the things that gets in the way of liberal enjoying himself is the resentment of the Other. So pandering to this resentment solves the problem—at least temporarily. The Other resents, and the liberal, either out of misplaced guilt, or a desire to keep fulfilling his desires, “bribes” the Other to go away and leave him alone. It’s a Faustian pact. And because modern liberals no longer have an understanding of what makes a civilization successful, they do not have the guts to do what is necessary to uphold civilization. For example, one of the things that has always been incumbent on civilizational “winners” is to absorb the resentment of “losers.” That means winners have to be willing to be regarded as “the bad guys” to some extent, something that no modern liberal would be able to stand. So, yes, as long as you can bribe the Other to go away and leave you to your pleasures, your self-esteem, liberalism is enjoyable. The problem for us is that this policy will take everyone down, “winners” and “losers” alike.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 14, 2009 01:57 AM | Send