This, from Mark Steyn: [1]
Among his other coy evasions, President Obama described tonight’s events as “an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share”.
But that’s not true, is it? He’s right that it’s an attack not just on Paris or France. What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world – an attack on one portion of “humanity” by those who claim to speak for another portion of “humanity”. And these are not “universal values” but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta “universal” when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those “universal values” are utterly alien to large parts of the map today.
And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don’t want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live – modern, pluralist, western societies and those “universal values” of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who’s been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.
The problem, of course, is Islam. It’s a problem that 70 years ago we had an answer for. Since 70 years ago we have been preached at by the left in this country in elsewhere that we the United States needs to become more like Europe.
And yet predictably has Richard Fernandez [2] points out, it’s all coming off the rails.
The dream of a “borderless Europe” has taken a body blow. Now all courses run ill. The momentum of the migrant tide is already too great to simultaneously pacify public opinion and avert a human tragedy
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The dilemma the West now faces is that it cannot survive on the basis of the platform which its elites have carefully constructed since WW2. They are being beaten to death with their own lofty statements. They must either continue to uphold the vision of open borders, multiculturalism, declining birthrates, unilateral disarmament and a growing state sector at all costs — in other words continue on the road to suicide — or retreat. As recent events at American campuses have shown, when faced with the choice of saving the Left and saving the actual world, the odds are that “the world” goes over the side first.In attempting to survive on its own terms, the Left will tear itself apart. In its agony it will destroy much else. It may be that Europe will rediscover its culture; it is possible it will develop the will to defend itself; it is conceivable it will hold off extreme fascist movements; it could even plausibly reconstruct its demography. But it cannot do this without an upheaval that will leave nothing unscathed.
The good news is that the West must soon squarely face choices it has been avoiding until now. The bad news is that nothing will escape unscathed.
Radical Islamism’s greatest challenge is it that ruthlessly exposes a fatal flaw which has existed in the ideology of the West for the last 70 years. It is representative of a question that won’t go away. Can it face the facts just as they are and think its way out of a jam? What Samantha Power called theProblem from Hell [3] is really theKobayashi Maru [4] test of European civilization. Faced with a no-win situation [5], will the West find a path through?
The answer, as in most cases in history, is “maybe.” Maybe if we get it right, if we think out of the box, if we are lucky then perhaps we will survive. In a world accustomed to “safe spaces” and guarantees, this may seem unsatisfactory. But each past generation was offered no more than this, from the hunter gatherers who ventured out of Africa to the fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain. That is all that is on offer. Take the maybe or walk away empty handed.
Fernandez is right to a point. But I think he’s overly optimistic in terms of solving the problems.
Consider that we’re talking about a left that ignores the inherent problems with Islam, and considers global warming and a safe space for the College cry babies to be the biggest problems we face.
Last night’s response from the White House to all of this, does not lead me to believe that anything is about to change without an overwhelming outcry from the people the likes of which has never been seen before.
The good news is that the stock in Donald Trump and Ted Cruz just went up on an order of scale. Will it be enough?