In many ways, Israel is a much healthier and more serious nation than the United States. Israel has a serious wall to stop illegal immigrants, America does not. Israel is run for the benefit of its majority population — Jews, while in America, the majority population, whites, are frequently seen as the major cause of evil in the world and frequently discriminated against (affirmative action for blacks, etc). In Israel, the religious and ethnic expression of the majority is encouraged and carried out in the public square.
* Kids in Israel have not had their heads crammed full of anti-Israeli propaganda. Whereas in america and western europe white kids are told that whites are the demons of history and that immigrants and nonwhites are good and holy. Just coincidentally, that propaganda makes white kids grow up to be ashamed of their race. And just coincidentally that reservoir of white guilt makes it easier for the corporations to get more immigrants into america and western europe. And just coincidentally that surplus pool of workers and consumers suppresses wage growth and increases sales, which increases corporate profits.
* Prior to the Reformation, Europe was basically a Roman Catholic Caliphate. The values that it defined itself against were not primarily Islamic or Arabian, but Jewish. (And very quickly those were the values Islam defined itself against, just as it yearned to establish itself as a caliphate, to the extent histories I read haven’t been retconned by anti-semites.)
Those values, back then, were understood to reduce to the sinfulness of usury. And it’s always good to remind people that what Shakespeare’s Shylock demanded from delinquent debtors was historically accurate: Jewish moneylenders were barbaric bankers.
The history of Europe is, in a blazing way, the history of how a culture fructifies against and amidst usury. This is exactly what Ezra Pound’s Cantos are about. Art sought patrons when it could not seek usurers. Artists created Europe’s identity by making Cathedrals that didn’t stand a chance to make a profit. If you can derive a rule about history from the cultural monuments that give Europe it’s identity as much as the pyramids are yet still Egypts identity, it would be you must cut out the moneymen if you want true identiy; their must be patrons, and those patrons must not assent to Jewish taste. Elsewise you have entertainments, nickelodeons, ect.
* We are on the cusp of another spiritual cataclysm, and the vast majority of our conservative commentators have opted out of the game. To do what? Leave it to Pope Francis and the liberals? Leave it to the Muslims? The left-nihilists?
There’s no spiritual response from the West to what’s happening. It’s like a total surrender. What are we supposed to rally behind Ted Cruz who’ll fix it all by fighting Russia for Israel (or whatever other psychotic, non-sequitur garbage he comes up with)?
Islam is the most democratic of all the Abrahamic faiths. This point is lost on the Ross Douthats of the world. Christianity is fundamentally aristocratic, yet it has totally abdicated its throne.
So we are a people unmoored, without leadership, living in a state of spiritual anarchy, ripe for the picking. If this doesn’t change, we’ll lose. We can’t throw facts and opinions at our enemies and hope that moves people’s hearts and souls. It’s a hopeless endeavor. Trump’s popularity stems from this yearning for conviction that’s been lost since the Berlin Wall fell down. Right or wrong, we need faith more than ever, and we neglect it to our peril and probable doom.
Does anyone besides me and a few other weirdos like Houellebecq even recognize this?
* What would it take to reform Muslim societies to make them compatible with Western civilization?
To begin with, you would have to end polygamy and cousin marriage, break up the clans, outlaw the hijab along with the sequestration of women, and gradually develop representative national institutions that work with, rather than at cross purposes, to the tribal groupings that compose these societies. You would also have to ban the Koran, destroy all the mosques, imprison all imams and jihadis for life, throw the Kaaba stone into the sea and level Mecca to the ground. Madrases would be closed and replaced with a system of secular public education. In place of Islam the original, pure religion of Abraham (hanifya) would be reintroduced as it existed in that part of the world before Muhammad appeared on the scene. As for Muhammad himself, he would be disavowed as an evil false prophet in the same category as Hitler and Mao-Tse Tung.
Clearly it would take generations, if not centuries, to accomplish these changes. It could only be done under the aegis of an authoritarian central government like the one Ataturk established in Turkey.
* Once upon a time I was thoroughly fascinated by [Robert D.] Kaplan and read everything by him I could find.
In his writings on topics where I had some expertise, I came to believe that for all his large erudition, Kaplan’s filter is “is it good for my tribe” and to a lesser extent “is it good for Israel.” Facts that don’t meet this test were simply ignored, no matter how important they are to understanding the topic.
And there ended my interest in Kaplan.
* “How Islam Created Europe”
This quote reminded me of a similar quote written a few months back that was covered in an iSteve post. Someone in the NYT (I think) declared that islam has always been a part of America and that islam in effect contributed to the Founding of America. They were suggesting that since some slaves were muslim, and since a couple more muslims washed up on shore, that the muslims were part of the Founding and that the US and islam are inseparable. I might be misquoting, but that is the gist of what I recall.
Anyway this headline seems similar. It is written in such a way as to portray islam as part and parcel with Europe. My guess is that it is being done like the earlier comment on islam and America to weaken the will of the people to resist further immigration into the USA and Europe of muslims. After all if they created the US and Europe, we can’t keep them out.
Of course the guy’s description about islam and Europe also let’s the astute reader read between the lines and realize that islam has really been at war with Europe for centuries with a goal of conquering it all. But I imagine the author knows that the racism slur can pretty much guarantee that no one will take away that message.
BTW, isn’t Turkey trying to get in the EU by playing the same card? They say that the Turks have been a part of Europe for centuries and played a crucial role in their history. Of course they don’t dwell on the fact that their role was one of outside occupier and slave taker.
* I am ever so glad that Western civilization has these Ashkenazi moral guideposts to chart our course and point out our failings. I just don’t know where we’d be without them.
* In the final analysis, Kaplan is actually questioning the right of Europeans to exist.
– that is what all the flowery overblown rhetoric and cod scholarship reduces down to.
Now, the ‘right to exist’ is a curious term. At the most basic, fundamental level, it is *the* principle behind all life on this planet be it microbiological, vegetable or animal, since the very first replicators emerged from that much hypothesized ‘soup’ billions of years ago.
It is also the guiding principle of absolutely every human societal construct from the family, to the tribe, to the nation to Microsoft and Apple, and even iSteve and Steve posters daring to sound their voices.
So, Robert Kaplan is in, effect, calling for the voluntary extinction, nay, negation, of the primordial impulse of this existential universe, as manifest in its highest bearers.
Even a flea fights for its life.
* Frankfurt School is a symptom, not a cause. A place with civilizational confidence would have laughed in their faces or done much worse. Why doesn’t Frankfurt School mojo work on the head choppers in Mosul? Did Christianity cause the fall of the Roman Empire or did it move in when praying to the old gods no longer worked? European lions fought with each other and then the jackals came to finish off the wounded animals.
* Jews just are not going to admit that their model, their experience–transnational tribalism–is anomalous and an *inferior* model for organizing the world. Most people across geography and history have been around people like them–same race, language, culture–and much prefer that. (At the boundaries … there is conflict. ) People don’t actually like being bossed around–dictated to–by a racially or cultural different overclass. With nationalism you can have republics, representative, democracy, civil rights, the joys of shared culture, community harmony and peace and prosperity. In contrast the Jewish diversitopia model, suppresses republicanism, gives you a bullying overclass, an intrusive state bureaucracy, speech codes, political allocation of everything, continual cultural contention (schools, communities, neighborhoods, nations), reduced community and atomization. It’s just unpleasant. It’s inferior. But admitting that pretty darn obvious fact, messes up the Jewish narrative of being the multicultural heroes by their separatism and refusing to assimilate with the local populations.
* I have a Bronx-born Jewish friend who loved to regale me with tales of how horrible the mean, nasty American white people were and are to the innocent, humble black people. I used to try to rebut, temper and contextualize his arguments, but he always had more energy for this kind of thing than I did, so I finally just let him go on uninterrupted until he said everything he had to say and he took my lack of rebuttal for assent. Offhandedly, I said, “And that’s why you just moved to the whitest zip code in the country,” and then changed the subject.
I haven’t heard white supremacy complaint since.
* Kaplan’s fundamental problem is that he seems to think that opposition to large scale immigration has to do with opposition to people who look different and have different languages and customs. That’s a bit of it, but I don’t think that much of it.
The problem is that any concept of “universal values” is not going to work, when the immigrants favor things like FGM, and the hosts do not, when the immigrants carry on blood sports, and the hosts do not, when the immigrants engage in child marriage, and the hosts do not, when the immigrants have attitudes towards small mammals, conceived either as demonic or as food, that the hosts do not, when the immigrants proscribe certain foods or drinks, and the hosts do not, when the immigrants believe they are entitled to carry out honor killings, and the hosts do not, when the immigrants believe various sexual behaviors ranging from loss of virginity to pederasty to same sex behaviors have to be conducted, or not, according to their customs on penalty of death, and the hosts do not, when the immigrants believe the free exercise of their religion involves the use of force or terror, when their hosts do not, etc. etc. etc.
And, of course, when the immigrants feel no need to assimilate or change their “universal values” to the “universal values” of their hosts.
Now of course there are some outliers in the West that diverge from the presumed “universal values” of the West (e.g., Mennonites, some Hassidic sects, Romany). But these groups are relatively small, and the divergencies are also small.
Ultimately, if this level of immigration continues — and I didn’t even speak of “universal values” in terms of politics, family and tribal ties, social organization, etc. — Kaplan will be schooled as to the polymorphous nature of “universal values.”
One more point worth making: Western whites, especially Western white bourgeois, have small families because of their “universal values” about parental investment and protecting the environment, while many people who comprise these immigrants have completely different “universal values” not only in terms of the prestige of having large families (e.g., 3 wives, 17 children) but also a sort of general thoughtlessness about the consequences of having so many children. Put another way, when the population of Great Britain reaches 200 million, or the population of the United States reaches one billion, that will not only put a severe crimp on any of the multicolored sets of “universal values” but it will also put cause celebres like Climate Change completely in the shade.
* In the 90s, my Jewish friend who’s the biggest promoter of all things NAM proudly owned and lived in a lovely property in the Mission Hill section of Boston, a dicey area hard by Roxbury…until it was time to send his kids to school. He then decamped to tony, 98% white/Asian Weston. And no, he didn’t cop to the hypocrisy.
