Stoking up the lie that the West, until the day before yesterday, treated women the way Muslims do

James P. writes:

The UK Telegraph reports that British historian David Starkey believes that the actions of the Asian sex gang in abusing young white English girls were just an expression of their unique, vibrant culture: “Those men were acting within their own cultural norms. Nobody ever explained to them that the history of women in Britain was once rather similar to that in Pakistan and it had changed.”

LA replies:

Starkey’s ignorant equation of Muslim treatment of women with pre-feminist Western treatment of women is of a piece with the common Western view (constantly repeated by “conservatives” such as Daniel Pipes and Condoleezza Rice as well as liberals) that the West prior to the rise of modern liberalism was at least as tyrannical and cruel and bigoted as Islam. The Western liberal and conservative intelligentsia tell hateful lies about the traditional West, constantly describing Islamic extremism as “medieval,” i.e., as the equivalent of the medieval Western period which was the matrix and parent of the modern Western period, and then they expect that the West, having been taught to despise its own spiritual and historic roots, will somehow survive the challenge of an antithetical civilization that has been imported en masse within its borders.

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Sage McLaughlin writes:

You said, “[T]hey expect that the West, having been taught to despise its own spiritual and historic roots, will somehow survive the challenge of an antithetical civilization that has been imported en masse within its borders.” This is very well and succinctly put. The left, of course, expect and hope for the West to go extinct, which is why they are importing hostile foreigners into its midst as assiduously as possible, while dishonestly denying that there is anything threatening about it. This at least is rational from their point of view. For a self-described conservative to engage in such double-dealing is something else entirely, and while some people have accused you of focusing on the sins of other conservatives too much, it’s a dirty and necessary job that somebody has to do. [LA replies: It’s true. I am Dirty Larry.]

After all, they are the ones supposedly manning the battlements of our civilization, yet they as much as say that the West has only been decent and just since it was taken over by liberalism. Treason, as Chesterton said, is the surest harbinger of catastrophe.

Paul K. writes:

If they make a Dirty Larry movie, this is the short speech Larry Callahan will make to one of his cowering liberal opponents before annihilating him:

I know what you’re thinking, punk: “Did he already destroy this liberal fallacy?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is traditionalism, the most powerful critique of liberalism on earth, and one whose logic will blow your head clean off, before you argue with me you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 11, 2012 07:02 AM | Send