Conservatives who still “don’t understand” why liberals refuse to recognize enemies
A Canadian correspondent sent an e-mail to me and to other people, most of whom I am not acquainted with, about how the Muslim Brotherhood is openly stating that it is just using “democracy” as a tool to get power. One of the recipients replied to all, saying, “I don’t understand how stubbornly and persistently the liberal/left refuses to believe the words issued forth from our enemies.” And now I have replied to all.
I don’t normally reply to email groups, I only write to individuals I know, but this time I was moved to do it.
My Canadian correspondent wrote:
Subject: “a pair of slippers”
On December 29, 2011, Adel Al Toraifi, the Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Arab affairs magazine, Al Majalla accurately analyzed the Muslim Brotherhood’s political sophistication. He quoted the former Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mahda Akef: “for us, democracy is like a pair of slippers that we wear until we reach the bathroom, and then we take them off.” Al Toraifi maintains that “The Muslim Brotherhood is skilled at political planning and tactics…. Those who expect—or hope—that the Muslim Brotherhood will … resemble the Islamist experience in Turkey, have no concrete evidence for this whatsoever, rather this is merely wishful thinking.”
A recipient of the e-mail replied:
I don’t understand how stubbornly and persistently the liberal/left refuses to believe the words issued forth from our enemies.
I then replied to the entire group:
Read my website, View from the Right, and my many analyses of liberalism and of the liberalism that calls itself conservatism. Because of the liberal belief that mankind is universal, that all human beings are basically the same, and that discrimination is therefore the worse evil and must be systematically eliminated, it is impossible for the West to recognize enemies and unassimilables or to defend its own existence. It goes through motions of recognizing enemies and defending its existence (i.e. “conservatism”), but they are largely empty motions.
This belief system—along with the automatic slogans that back it up, along with the system of controls that prevents contrary facts and views from being expressed—so totally dominates Western institutions, and is so deeply ingrained in the mind of Westerners, that I do not believe that it will be rejected short of a total transformation of the West—a change that probably will not occur short of catastrophes that will largely destroy the West.
Suicidal liberalism is no longer a perversion of the West. It has taken over the West, and it is the West. Therefore it cannot end until the West, as currently constituted, comes to an end.
Lawrence Auster
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Vivek G. writes:
And the analogy continues. After they reach the bathroom, what they exhibit is Naked Islam!
Randy M. writes:
Subject: If Egyptians want to go to the bathroom with the MB, let them.
I get the impression that you believe we should actively prevent the disaster the Egyptians are about to subject themselves to.
We not only can’t, we shouldn’t.
Our attempts to, basically, save them from themselves served only to create a tenuous pseudo-stability that fostered a justifiable resentment on the part of the populations living under the yoke of “our guy.”
Instead of sleeping in a bed we (partly) made; they’ll sleep in a bed they made, and when that bed turns out to be miserable, they, and we, will know who is responsible for that misery.
That, not any fantasy of Muslim peace and prosperity flowing from the election booth, is why I support the Arab “Spring.”
Appreciate your web site.
LA replies:
What have I said indicating that “we should actively prevent the disaster the Egyptians are about to subject themselves to”?
What I have said is that we should not have interfered in the Egyptian revolution early in 2001, by actively siding with the demonstrators and actively telling Mubarak to step down. Also, I did not say that we should side with Mubarak against the demonstrators, but that we should treat it as an internal Egyptian affair that was none of our business, even as we made clear that the fall of the Mubarak regime and its replacement by “democracy” would inevitably result in the empowerment of jihadists which would certainly harm Egypt’s relationship with us.
In other words, we should have spoken the truth as we saw it, while not politically interfering in internal Egyptian affairs. Without the interference that actually occurred, i.e., the push from Obama, Mubarak might not have quit, or at least not have quit so precipitately. From the point of view of avoiding an Islamist takeover of Egypt, the problem was not Mubarak himself stepping down, but the end of the entire Nasser/Sadat/Mubarak regime, in favor of “democracy.”
At the same time, as partners in a bilateral relationship with Egypt, we do have the standing to set conditions on that relationship. We should have made clear that the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel, or any hostile acts toward Israel, would mean the end of our massive military assistance to Egypt.
But of course everything I’m saying assumes a radically different stance of the U.S. toward Islam, in which we publicly state that Islam is a danger to non-Muslims, instead of, as now, treating Islam as a wonderful thing to be encouraged and empowered, via “democracy” in the Muslim lands and the open immigration of Muslims into the West.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
You say that, as of now, liberalism is the West. Does that mean you think the West is not “declining,” but rather that it is already dead? That we should think of it as something to be rebuilt rather than saved? It seems like an important question if we are interested in a real strategy for gaining the West back for our descendants.
LA replies:
Of course there are many significant exceptions to the generality, “the West is dead.” There are individuals and groups that passionately disagree with the prevailing liberal direction of things. But if we define the statement carefully, as “Suicidal liberalism now forms the West’s official and governing policy and the deeply embedded convictions of its elites and most of its people, and there is no significant opposition to this suicidal liberalism in the West’s public culture, nor any reasonable prospect of such an opposition arising in the foreseeable future,” and if we also recognize that a million individual exceptions or quibbles to suicidal liberalism do not change the fact that suicidal liberalism now is the West, then, yes, the statement, “The West is dead,” is true.
To put it another way: starting about five years ago, I began saying that Britain is dead, because suicidal tolerance was not just a belief that many Britons had, but had become their essence, and therefore the suicidal tolerance could not be rejected short of a “melting down” of the British as they now exist. I also said that America was just a few steps behind Britain. Now I believe that America and the West as a whole are dead.
But again, not dead, period, but in the specific way I have defined the word. There is a lot of “death” in a great nation.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 30, 2011 10:21 AM | Send