Fall of the West? What is to be done?
Updated...
School started Monday, and so the fate of Western Civilization, i.e. how I want to approach my class this semester, was already on my mind.
But Pat Buchanan has a new book, "State of Emergency" -- building on his recent "Death of the West" that is chock full with demographic facts that should alarm any right thinking American -- which he has brought out to underline the dwindling prospects to stop the trends and which MAY yet wake up enough people in time for this coming election. The Washington Times has a good overview of the book's argument and implications: "Buchanan Warns of Flood of Illegals." I hope you won't mind if I do some thinking out loud here on some of the points that I will subtly want my students to think about this time around...
Studying the rise and fall of many world civilizations, not just Roman, has led me to certain conclusions about the inter-related economic, political and moral causes of these things. As I have been teaching in my Western Civilization classes for some 15 years, the demographic numbers and socio-cultural trends of today leave one inescapable conclusion: Western values and institutions will be drowned by primitive tribal civilizations (socialists and Islamists) within three generations unless DRASTIC action is taken.
When success in Iraq is so pivotal, it is dismaying that the war seems as if it is being fought with an absolute ignorance about the tidal forces at work in the world. The Islamist wave is only one of the major fronts of the crisis that threatens the West. The broader crisis involves cultural horizons that extend around civilizations and into people's heads regardless of their location.
Moral relativism is an assault on the soul, working on people's cultural beliefs and hopes indirectly, and therefore much more difficult to address than either illegal immigration or Islamist expansionism. Physical force, especially applied from the top down or over long distances, should always be the last resort in policy at the very least because it is imprecise, inefficient and leaves consequences difficult to predict. But when addressing a cultural assault, it is nearly always counter-productive.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Ox Contract for America, my approach has always been guided by an understanding of what I (based on the political philosophy of Aristotle, Aquinas, and similar Greeks) call "the three motors of human action": material interests, social interests, and intellectual-spiritual interests.
Atheism, hedonism and relativism has already all but conquered Europe and left it defenseless against the physical onslought of barbarian hordes and the crude morality they bring with them. America is only slightly better off. The cultural Left's influence in academia, the courts, the press, Hollywood and even Madison Avenue has the U.S. set on a trajectory of utter capitulation and defeat in front of the aggressive barbarian mentalities of the socialists and Islamists, working hand in hand as allies, taking advantage of every useful idiot they can find, to defeat the values of life, liberty and property, and the beliefs in a loving God, the unity of body and soul, and the goodness of creation, all of which are at the core of Western beliefs and freedoms.
Fences and quotas, and all of the passive disincentives I recommend and have often discussed in these pages ought to be supplemented with things like private lawsuits against companies that hire illegals for unfair trade practices and other potential causes of action -- see this website (illegalemployers.org) that helps with such suits -- and see this post at GOPUSA.com on the economics of the law suits.
Such practical measures are useful but they will never be sufficient to keep America vibrant and free if the cultural and moral tide is not turned first... Everything else depends on that.
On another, related topic, what to do with Iran?
The western alliance is working up a package of carrots and sticks. Good luck with that. The Iranian mullahs are quite adept at the "rope-a-utopa-dope" strategy that Liberals fall for every time.
On the other hand, as I commented over at Regime Change in Iran, economic sanctions are not a great way to go for a multitude of reasons:
"Economic sanctions have a very dubious moral underpinning. In "just war" terms, it would seem that the principle of inflicting harm in as narrow a fashion as necessary to achieve the just objective is violated, to say the least.
Before the Iraq invasion, Liberals and World Radicals were all upset about the 100,000 children dying in Iraq each year--and rightly so. I was opposed to sanctions, and indeed favored the invasion partly because of that. Then with the war, all of that concern for children was forgotten by the Left!
President Bush actually acknowledged the injustice of those sanctions in his 2000 campaign--I remember it well.
The argument that the sanctions were only hurting innocent people has NOT been made by the Bush administration simply because economic sanctions still need to be kept as an arrow in the government's quiver of responses.
But it is rarely a just one, and neither is it clear that it is a prudent or effective one as a rule.
Success in Iraq is absolutely essential for stability and growth in the Middle East--but I have heard no good argument why "success" in Iraq ought not equal division of Iraq along sectarian and ethnic boundries. I say put the oil resources of the region into a private trust with dividend paying stock issued to every current Iraqi citizen, regardless of what new state they end up in. PRIVATIZE Iraq's oil resources and create a stake in stability across ethnic and sectarian lines. Split up the political rule to satisfy their tribal urges. Duh.
Then on to Iran..."
And in case you weren't worried enough about Iranian lunatics, read this summary of why we all should be afraid...
Republicans may not have the big picture they need, but the Democrats have ZERO to offer. As always, for the Liberals and Radicals, Your Suffering = Their Power.
Stay tuned...
OFFICE DEPOT! Toshiba Week! Save $150 After Mail-in Rebates on Select Notebooks! Expires August 26th.
Related posts from CAII -
Illegal Immigration Blitz
Buchanan Warns of Flood of Illegals
Illegal Immigration Increases Medicaid Costs
Civil Disobedience in Mexico
Immigration Report Cards
Firms Hiring Illegals Get Sued
**This was a production in cooperation with The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the link here to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let us know at what level you would like to participate.
School started Monday, and so the fate of Western Civilization, i.e. how I want to approach my class this semester, was already on my mind.
But Pat Buchanan has a new book, "State of Emergency" -- building on his recent "Death of the West" that is chock full with demographic facts that should alarm any right thinking American -- which he has brought out to underline the dwindling prospects to stop the trends and which MAY yet wake up enough people in time for this coming election. The Washington Times has a good overview of the book's argument and implications: "Buchanan Warns of Flood of Illegals." I hope you won't mind if I do some thinking out loud here on some of the points that I will subtly want my students to think about this time around...
Studying the rise and fall of many world civilizations, not just Roman, has led me to certain conclusions about the inter-related economic, political and moral causes of these things. As I have been teaching in my Western Civilization classes for some 15 years, the demographic numbers and socio-cultural trends of today leave one inescapable conclusion: Western values and institutions will be drowned by primitive tribal civilizations (socialists and Islamists) within three generations unless DRASTIC action is taken.
When success in Iraq is so pivotal, it is dismaying that the war seems as if it is being fought with an absolute ignorance about the tidal forces at work in the world. The Islamist wave is only one of the major fronts of the crisis that threatens the West. The broader crisis involves cultural horizons that extend around civilizations and into people's heads regardless of their location.
Moral relativism is an assault on the soul, working on people's cultural beliefs and hopes indirectly, and therefore much more difficult to address than either illegal immigration or Islamist expansionism. Physical force, especially applied from the top down or over long distances, should always be the last resort in policy at the very least because it is imprecise, inefficient and leaves consequences difficult to predict. But when addressing a cultural assault, it is nearly always counter-productive.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Ox Contract for America, my approach has always been guided by an understanding of what I (based on the political philosophy of Aristotle, Aquinas, and similar Greeks) call "the three motors of human action": material interests, social interests, and intellectual-spiritual interests.
Atheism, hedonism and relativism has already all but conquered Europe and left it defenseless against the physical onslought of barbarian hordes and the crude morality they bring with them. America is only slightly better off. The cultural Left's influence in academia, the courts, the press, Hollywood and even Madison Avenue has the U.S. set on a trajectory of utter capitulation and defeat in front of the aggressive barbarian mentalities of the socialists and Islamists, working hand in hand as allies, taking advantage of every useful idiot they can find, to defeat the values of life, liberty and property, and the beliefs in a loving God, the unity of body and soul, and the goodness of creation, all of which are at the core of Western beliefs and freedoms.
Fences and quotas, and all of the passive disincentives I recommend and have often discussed in these pages ought to be supplemented with things like private lawsuits against companies that hire illegals for unfair trade practices and other potential causes of action -- see this website (illegalemployers.org) that helps with such suits -- and see this post at GOPUSA.com on the economics of the law suits.
Such practical measures are useful but they will never be sufficient to keep America vibrant and free if the cultural and moral tide is not turned first... Everything else depends on that.
On another, related topic, what to do with Iran?
The western alliance is working up a package of carrots and sticks. Good luck with that. The Iranian mullahs are quite adept at the "rope-a-utopa-dope" strategy that Liberals fall for every time.
On the other hand, as I commented over at Regime Change in Iran, economic sanctions are not a great way to go for a multitude of reasons:
"Economic sanctions have a very dubious moral underpinning. In "just war" terms, it would seem that the principle of inflicting harm in as narrow a fashion as necessary to achieve the just objective is violated, to say the least.
Before the Iraq invasion, Liberals and World Radicals were all upset about the 100,000 children dying in Iraq each year--and rightly so. I was opposed to sanctions, and indeed favored the invasion partly because of that. Then with the war, all of that concern for children was forgotten by the Left!
President Bush actually acknowledged the injustice of those sanctions in his 2000 campaign--I remember it well.
The argument that the sanctions were only hurting innocent people has NOT been made by the Bush administration simply because economic sanctions still need to be kept as an arrow in the government's quiver of responses.
But it is rarely a just one, and neither is it clear that it is a prudent or effective one as a rule.
Success in Iraq is absolutely essential for stability and growth in the Middle East--but I have heard no good argument why "success" in Iraq ought not equal division of Iraq along sectarian and ethnic boundries. I say put the oil resources of the region into a private trust with dividend paying stock issued to every current Iraqi citizen, regardless of what new state they end up in. PRIVATIZE Iraq's oil resources and create a stake in stability across ethnic and sectarian lines. Split up the political rule to satisfy their tribal urges. Duh.
Then on to Iran..."
And in case you weren't worried enough about Iranian lunatics, read this summary of why we all should be afraid...
Republicans may not have the big picture they need, but the Democrats have ZERO to offer. As always, for the Liberals and Radicals, Your Suffering = Their Power.
Stay tuned...
OFFICE DEPOT! Toshiba Week! Save $150 After Mail-in Rebates on Select Notebooks! Expires August 26th.
Related posts from CAII -
Illegal Immigration Blitz
Buchanan Warns of Flood of Illegals
Illegal Immigration Increases Medicaid Costs
Civil Disobedience in Mexico
Immigration Report Cards
Firms Hiring Illegals Get Sued
**This was a production in cooperation with The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the link here to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let us know at what level you would like to participate.
... Always Open Trackbacks!
posted by Dumb Ox at 8/23/2006
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