Facing the existential Islamist threat, demography, ten-point solutions, and oh, yes: Sam Harris -
The most alarming sentences that I have read in a long time came from the pen of my fellow atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, at the end of a September Los Angeles Times column upbraiding American liberals for their masochistic attitude toward Islamist totalitarianism. Harris concluded:
“The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization [emphasis Hitchens].”
Consider it polemicism squared. Well worth reading.
Ah, Hitchens, at his best!
In vinas, veritas!
A good read.It may take years and lots of hardship before some of his solutions are implemented but by and large, aside from Christians forming another crusade (fat chance), something draconian will have to happen for the wake up to occur. Obviously, sadly, 9-11 was not enough.
The challange for those who would “quickly withdraw” from the battle in Iraq is, what is your strategy to defeat the GWOT?If not to engage on the battle field, then WHAT, HOW, WHEN?
The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
I saw this coming, and started getting worried about it, two years ago, back when Le Pen did so well in the French presidential election. It’s one of the classic patterns in politics: if there’s an issue that the voters really care about, and the only politicians talking about solving it are extremists, then the voters will empower the extremists to solve the problem, without regard to what else those extremists might do while they’re in power.
Right now, the only European politicians talking about fighting the islamist invasion are fascist nationalists. And they’re gaining in the polls as a result.
I maintain the biggest threat to Western Civilization was and is “The Pill”.
Indeed, Le Pen predicts big gains in this election, and I think he’ll get them. One of Steyn’s points is that pose-WWII European politics are designed to insulate the political ruling class from the people, and it is the eruling class that has sold out their populaces in pursuing the socialist dream. Thus, they are left no choice but to turn to “populist” movements such as the National Front, the BNP, or neo-Nazi groups. Last week, stepping lightly through Piazza Garibaldi here in Napoli, I noticed that the walls were covered with posters from an Italian nationalist movement, most noteworthy because P. Garibaldi is the most North African place in Napoli. Hitchen’s criticisms don’t really hold water, but again, he doesn’t really disagree with Steyn’s major points, only with the ability of European governments to catch up to the reality facing them. Hitchens, like so many others, hasn’t yet come to grips with his cognitive dissonance.