Resisting 21st Century Communism
The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.
The Greek blogger Phanari has expanded upon my essays about 21st century Communism. According to American writer John Fonte, "Transnationalism is the next stage of the multicultural ideology." It is implemented at a snail's pace as a long-term project, to minimize opposition to it.
As always, Norway and Sweden are at the forefront of enlightened Socialism. According to Karita Bekkemellem, government Minister from the Norwegian Labor Party, female directors must make up at least 40 percent of all new shareholder-owned companies' boards of directors: "This is all about sharing power and influence and it is intervention in private ownership, but it was overdue." Violation of the rules will be penalized with forced dissolution of the company. Magdalena Andersson, who chairs the women's group in Sweden's "conservative" Moderate Party, demands that female members should have 40 percent of the top positions in the party by 2010.
Quotas and employment based on sex, religion, race or any criteria other than meritocracy, the rule of merit, where individuals are chosen through competition on the basis of demonstrated ability and competence, interfere with private property rights. This violates basic human rights of the employer. Historical experience indicates that respect for private property, along with respect for freedom of speech, are the hallmarks of true liberty. Abandoning these principles inhibits the creation of wealth.
Perhaps the new frontier of liberty in the 21st century consists of battling for national sovereignty in legislation, for a nation's right to decide how much immigration it wants to accept, if any, and the fight against the imposition of quotas, hate speech laws, hate crime legislation and other threats to the individual's right to free speech and to defense of his own property, the yardstick against which liberty should always be measured.
I've heard Multiculturalists state specifically that our societies should be based on the principle of Multiculturalism and various ethnic groups only tied together by "human rights." But human rights are a weak glue for a society, to say the least. What's more: Once you decide that your society should be founded upon human rights and nothing but human rights, you give away power to those defining human rights to decide the future of your society and your country, for instance in managing your immigration policies. This is no doubt why so many hardened Leftists support "international law." They hope to become the self-appointed and unelected vanguard to run this transnational, Multicultural Utopia, just as they wanted to become a part of the vanguard in the Communist Utopia.
In Denmark, observers Jacob Mchangama and Christopher Arzrouni warn against the excessive use and misuse of human rights. Originally envisioned as a core of rights ensuring political and individual liberty, today human rights are increasingly used for the opposite purpose: To claim other people's resources, property etc. The very notion of human rights suffers from a kind of schizophrenia. The concept can be traced back to classical antiquity, at least to Solon in the 6th century B.C. The English charter the Magna Carta from 1215 asserted the rights of the individual vis-à-vis the state. This was later expanded by Enlightenment philosophers and inspired the creation of the United States.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, is a crucial document. The first 21 Articles of the Declaration all profess classical Western rights, also called liberty rights or "negative rights," including the right to private property, freedom of speech and equality before the law. However, the Declaration also contains other concepts about rights. Articles 22-27 assert the right to a good standard of living, the right to a job, to limitations on work hours etc. These are "positive rights," which can only be achieved if other people make an effort to achieve them for you.
Negative rights imply the right to freedom from tyranny and oppression. They imply limitations on state power, and will thus help prevent totalitarian regimes. Positive rights, however, imply that the state has to increase its power to transform society and direct the activities of its citizens in order to achieve the desired result. Sadly, according to Mchangama and Arzrouni, at the UN and at Human Rights Institutes, as well as in NGOs and among many academics, even governments, there is a consensus that economic and social positive rights should be considered equal to negative political rights.
The Norwegian medical doctor Ståle Fredriksen thinks that giving homework to school children violates their human rights. He refers to article 24 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stating that: "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours." Dr. Fredriksen believes school children don't have this right.
The French philosopher and cultural critic Alain Finkielkraut thinks that Europe has made human rights its new gospel. Has human rights fundamentalism approached the status of quasi-religion? Have we acquired a new class of scribes, who claim the exclusive right to interpret their Holy Texts in order to reveal Absolute Truth, and scream "blasphemy" at the few heretics who dare question their authority? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a great document, but it is written by humans, and may thus contain human flaws. We shouldn't treat as if it were a revelation from God, carved into stone. Far less should we deem as infallible the veritable maze of regulations and well-meaning human rights resolutions that have rendered democratic nations virtually unable to defend themselves.
Moreover, who decides which "human rights" should take precedence? If you say that free migration should be a universal human right, you trample on the right of the peoples at the receiving end of mass immigration to preserve their cultural heritage. More explicitly, should Muslim nations be allowed to dump their unsustainable population growth in the West? Since they tend not to respect human rights because they frequently conflict with sharia, allowing them to undermine countries that do respect individual rights means that human rights will become a tool for undermining democratic nations in favor or authoritarian ones, precisely the opposite of what was originally intended.
Oxfam, an international of confederation non-governmental organizations, has stated that Western nations "must" pay tens of billions of dollars every year to combat global warming. First of all: Who died and made Oxfam God? Being a Westerner myself, I don't recall electing Oxfam to speak for me nor granting them the right to administer my money on my behalf. Why should unaccountable NGOs be allowed to dictate what a sovereign state such as, say, Canada, should or shouldn't do? And second of all: Even if we assume that global warming is real and man-made, the most intelligent way to combat it would be to institute a Manhattan Project for renewable energy. By freeing ourselves from the dependency of oil from Arab countries, we could fight both global warming and global Jihad at the same time.
When reading Oxfam's website, I find that the organization is dedicated to "achieving lasting change" and an end to poverty by fighting injustice and addressing the structural causes of poverty. To me, that sounds suspiciously like a code word for global redistribution of wealth — in other words: Socialism.
I suspect that for some NGOs, fighting global warming isn't nearly as important as using it as an excuse for bleeding the West financially and implementing global taxes through the back door. Many NGO's tend to be run by heavily left-leaning individuals who champion good causes, in fact so good that they should bypass the electoral process to implement them. It's the blueprint for 21st century Communism. The same groups that wanted to abolish private property rights in the 20th century now want to abolish sovereign nation states in the 21st century, starting with the West, of course. There clearly is some kind of connection here. Maybe they've decided that the most efficient way to abolish private property, according to Karl Marx the stated goal of Socialism, is to destroy the instrument for enforcing and protecting property rights: The sovereign state.
These people always claim to be champions of some Great Cause. They claim to fight for women's rights, but barbaric practices of forced marriages, honor killings and gang rapes are now spreading in the West because of the immigration policies they support. They claim to fight for homosexual rights while gays are being physically attacked by Muslims across Europe. They claim to fight for tolerance, yet frequently end up in bed with the most intolerant forces on earth. They claim to fight for diversity, yet cheer for Islam, which is destroying cultural diversity across the world, replacing it with universal sharia. They are also extremely intolerant of diversity of opinion, if these opinions happen to run contrary to their Cause. They claim to fight for "human rights," but deprive their opponents of one of the most basic human rights of all: The right to free speech.
So why are they doing it? Maybe it's due to hatred of the West, or maybe it's just because of the intoxicating rush of feeling that your Cause is just and that you are therefore allowed to do whatever you want to with your political opponents.
The German professor of sociology Gunnar Heinsohn worries about what he calls the "demographic capitulation" of European nations. He fears that the imploding birth rates will lead to the collapse of the welfare state, and that immigration cannot solve this problem. He does not believe that material aid to countries with large youth populations will prevent wars and terror. On the contrary, it may in fact increase unrest and violence, since starving people do not fight, they just suffer. In order to create unrest, they have to be both physically and mentally fit, but lack the positions and the respect they think they deserve. This is consistent with the fact that Islamic terrorists tend to have above average education and at least average income.
This supports the view of Eric Hoffer in his classic book The True Believer: "The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for 'an inspiring super individual goal which could give meaning and dignity to their lives?' They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement."
Over the course of five generations (1900-2000), the population in predominantly Muslim countries has grown from 150 million to 1200 million — an increase of 800 per cent. Heinsohn notes that Western countries are funding the Palestinian population explosion, for instance, and thinks that we must cease this support, so that the Palestinians pay for the children they bring into the world. He also believes that the West should stay out of the affairs of Muslim countries with expanding populations as much as possible, and only interfere briefly if they threaten us directly:
"If you have to go in because you have been attacked, then you must do it, but as soon as the danger has been defeated, it is necessary to withdraw. It is up to the Iraqis and the Afghans themselves to ensure that there is a balance between the size of the population and the number of positions society can offer. And as far back in history we look, we can see that this balance has been maintained by young men killing each other. We have done it in Europe, and it has happened elsewhere. We cannot allow them to send their young men over the borders to kill others. (…) We should stay away. If we interfere, we cannot avoid siding with one party and help killing that party's opponents. Then the population will see us as doing the dirty work for one side or another."
In June 2007, British PM Tony Blair, along with Chancellor Gordon Brown and Conservative Party leader David Cameron, met Muslim leaders at a major conference organized by The Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme (CIP). In his final days as prime minister, Blair opened the conference by defending Islam as a religion of "moderation and modernity" as he announced a £1M government fund to aid teaching of the religion and train imams, and designated Islamic studies as "strategically important" to the British national interest.
Timothy Winter, lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, said: "The question facing British society, and society as a whole, is not how we encourage minorities to engage with western countries, but how those countries define themselves as a collage of different religious cultures." In other words: Britain, and Canada, Germany and other Western countries, are no longer to be nations with a distinct heritage, only random spaces on the map with a "collage of different cultures."
According to Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch, Western nations should not be allowed "to take a special interest in, or have a special affection and tenderness for, their own countries and histories. They are not allowed to worry about cultural continuity, and cultural continuity as being connected, possibly, to other kinds of continuity, including that of ethnic makeup. These are impermissible for that 'white, Western world' — even if perfectly permissible for everyone else. (Compare, for example, the policies toward immigration and immigrants in Japan, Korea, China, or the same policies toward non-Arabs, directed especially at black Africans, in Egypt, Libya, Chad, and Morocco). The rest of the world is entitled to preserve itself. We, on the other hand, in North America and Western Europe and the outposts of the former British Empire, such as Australia and New Zealand, are required to give up whatever 'local' patriotism, interest and pride in our national histories and cultures, and open ourselves permanently to the world. Other countries can remain countries. (…) The United States is not to remain a country. The United States is, rather, to be transformed, in the determined if unstated view of so many of the ideologues at NGOs. It is to be turned, by slow degrees, into one great big… NGO."
The Danish writer Carsten Ringsmose was a speaker at a conference at the University of Odense on the immigration-related topic of "Recognition and integration." He outlined the projected population growth for the Islamic world, and stated that if recent prognoses are correct, the Islamic world will witness a population growth more than the equivalent of all EU member countries combined within just a few decades. One of the other speakers suggested that this population boom could be solved through migration to the West, which would mean that Denmark, with a present population of 5.4 million inhabitants, would have to accept perhaps 9.5 million predominantly Muslim immigrants within the coming two generations. The man who suggested this, accompanied by segments of the audience, laughed when Mr. Ringsmose suggested that this simply wasn't doable.
Following the release of the UN population report discussed by Mr. Ringsmose, Marie Simonsen, political editor of the Norwegian left-wing newspaper Dagbladet, wrote that it should be considered a universal human right for people everywhere to migrate wherever they want to. She thus endorsed the eradication of her own people, no doubt congratulating herself for her own tolerance.
In 2000, the then president of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the country was going to feed, clothe, house and employ the expected doubling of its population by 2050. She replied: "We'll send them to America. Globalisation will take that problem away, as you free up all factors of production, also labour. There'll be free movement, country to country. Globalisation in its purest form should not have any boundaries, so small countries with big populations should be able to send population to countries with big boundaries and small populations."
Westerners are the suckers of the 21st century. We don't have interests or cultures of our own. We exist solely as a vehicle for funding other nations, and as the obedient dumping ground for their excess population growth. If we assert the right to defend our borders, the representatives of NGOistan, frequently aided by our so-called leaders, will come down upon us like a ton of bricks. Westerners are fueling the unsustainable growth rates in the Islamic world through material aid and medical advances. Later we are told to let them into our countries, where we will continue feeding them and fund our own colonization through welfare payments. We are thus paying hostile nations to multiply and take over our nations. This is a betrayal of the legacy of our ancestors, and an even greater betrayal of our children and grandchildren. This policy is insane and evil, and it has to stop. Now!
We live in a world demographically — and perhaps soon economically — dominated by Asia. Russians look after Russian interests, Chinese after Chinese interests, Indians after Indian interests, etc. Only Westerners are still supposed to worry about global interests. We should stop trying to save others and start saving ourselves, while we still can. Only by letting go of illusions of hegemony can we regain our sanity. The sooner we realize that, the better are our chances. We should use this situation as an opportunity to regenerate and define a new civilizational mission dedicated to our own survival. If cultural confusion and a lack of hope for the future is a primary cause of our low birth rates, it is likely that a new sense of cultural confidence will lead to a significant rise in the same birth rates. The battle for Western hegemony is already over. The battle for Western survival is about to begin.
21 thoughts on "Resisting 21st Century Communism"
Ypp on June 7, 2007 at 12:21 am said:
Excellent analysis as usual. Multiculturalism is not about culture, socialism is not about society and materialism is not about the matter. Same way as respect to personality means the respect to personal whims but not to the personal opinion. Only superficial differences are permitted, whereas deep differences are supressed. You can wear any strange clothings but you cannot have any legacy. You can posess an expensive car but you cannot posess the means of production. You can have opinion about who is the best singer but no polytical or philosophical opinions. Generally speaking, it is all about depriving us of any real meaning.
USpace on June 7, 2007 at 12:41 am said:
This is a scary trend that must be fought with logic and debate. As a recent post at One Cosmos pointed out, Progressivism was the earliest form of economic thought. The intellectual and emotional reaction to the natural free market activity that was prevalent but not yet explained.
property rights –
people's rights to own it
and control it
not the state's to steal it
and give to someone else
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
take more taxes from people
feed to non-government groups
Sorry, a clarification:
Materialism is not about matter but about suppressing ideas. Communism is not about common wealth but about depriving of any personal posessions. Socialism is not about society but about depriving of the means of production. Multiculturalsm is not about cultures but about depriving of nationhood. Tolerance is not about mutual respect but about the prohibition of opinions. Human rights are not about personal rights but rather about collective obligations. Family planning is not about family but about abortions. Health care is not about health but about control of our consumption. Policy on energy is not about distribution of energy but about cutting energy supplies. Whatever they start improving, they finish depriving people of.
And self-loathing is not about repentance but about depriving others of their moral grounds
whiskey_199 on June 7, 2007 at 2:33 am said:
Fjordman —
I agree with much of what you say, but I don't see (and want to make this clear) a grand conspiracy among Europeans and Americans to bring about Transnational Communist or Communist-lite rule.
Instead I see the age-old longing for an aristocracy, composed of well, the elites. And closed to everyone else. The Norwegian Labor Party directive on female directors sounds like one giant scheme to spread the nepotistic graft and corruption around to women too. Further entrenching the elite. Since I imagine the wives, daughters, and other female relations of existing elites will get those slots.
This is the European elites seeing the kleptocracy of the Third World and wanting that too. Because it blocks upward mobility of others that could threaten the sinecure. This explains the European desire for stasis at all costs.
The elites see themselves as allied with each other, against their own peoples, the way the Church and it's priests fought the authority of the kings in the Middle Ages. So the Transnationalism which I agree exists would flow from the greed of the new priesthood rather than a conspiracy.
I agree with your prescriptions of NGOistans, however I think we will see very soon a populist revolt in wide swaths of the West. Some of it will be neo-Nazi. Der Spiegel reports that young women are leaving East Germany in droves, leaving the men there with a missing 25% of the ages 18-34 female population. Which in turn has led to joining neo-Nazi groups. Joe Average in all countries is told he is being replaced. By someone cheaper from the third world, and guess what, his country is being turned into the third world.
This leads to a populist revolt, where the populace turns on the elite and installs a new one that promises to adhere to the wishes of the people. It is essential to understanding the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, and Lenin.
Over at the Corner at NRO there is a link to a fairly detailed discussion of how falling nuclear family rates led to secularization instead of the other way around, with special emphasis on the US, Ireland, and France. If that is correct many trends in our society including the disassociation of the elites from the people could be tied to the loss of the nuclear family.
So, what caused the nuclear family to decline, first in France in the late 1700's, then in England in the late 1800's, and then in Ireland in 1970? On that I have currently no clue. But changes in the fundamental aspect of families would explain a lot.
ln on June 7, 2007 at 4:01 am said:
@ Ypp
What the hell do you mean:
"You can have opinion about who is the best singer but no *polytical* or philosophical opinions."
The word *polytical* does not exist in "The CONCISE Oxford Dictionary" (no bloody POCKET
Oxford Dictionary!) and seems to be a word à la mode without any clear content — a dummy word (…the emperor's new cloths?).
a biased media or polytical agenda …
polytical background of the new constitution…
a leader of revolution or any specific polytical movement…
expanded geo-polytical and scientific timeline…
Dishonest Diplomatical Criminal Polytical-Power-Greediness…
Polytical psychological studies…
Contemporary Polytical Systems in East Asia…
It is a polytical entity…
ask for a polytical asylum…
the polytical changes in Eastern Europe…
full polytical dependence…
Ukrainian polytical weekly…
I don't want to be polytical…
within the limits of polytical correctness…
Please do not be polytical even within the limits of polytical correctness. Try to express yourself comprehensibly.
R. Hartman on June 7, 2007 at 5:32 am said:
Whiskey_199
I'm afraid Fjordman is all too accurate on the conspiracy. Read this short article on how this came about.
Another excellent read and my thanks to Fjordman!
I have been trying to address this, especially with regards to the reciprocity between Nations to have Treaties that are they system of adherence that *is* international law. By putting forth that a Treaty then should diminish the system of Nation States that is the very basis for *having* said Treaties is not a step forward nor progress in human affairs. Under the Nation State system and the utilization of Treaties between Nations to keep each other accountable, Citizens of each Nation must adhere to them or be found to have broken the Treaty for their own gains. Those that put forth anything other than self-government within Nations by the People who have joined together to have Nation and National Sovereignty in common are a threat to the Nation State system.
The 'classical liberal values' are only upheld when there is a system of common legality that gives them structure. Without reciprocity between individuals and common agreement upon the law within a Nation State system, the ability to have rights and freedom are put at risk. There is no higher power to administer to these constructs of the works of the hand of man. The Treaty of Westphalia put forth that Sovereignty rested within Nations and not upon a higher organization and that individuals had the right to freedom of worship within a Nation. As a container type system for peoples, Nation States, internally, have a wide spectrum of types: from purely authoritarian to absolute democracy. The adherence *between* Nations, however, is only what they have signed up for and their accountability to each other is the sole and only basis for 'international law'. Common agreement amongst many Nations does *not* create something more widely enforceable upon mankind as a whole nor gives rise to any structure that upholds the rights of individuals to be free. That freedom includes the ability to have preference and discrimination in association and to use that as the basis for forming Nation States. That is a foundational right within mankind: governments are instituted amongst men to secure these rights. To have that gathering together, individuals must have the right to do the gathering and the formation of community. Any individual who wishes to put Nation States at risk for some nebulous goal or utilize some undefined and broad transnational conception of 'rights' and diminish Nations and attack the laws within Nations is directly attacking the right of individuals to HAVE a Nation in common.
It is interesting that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is based solely upon the Nation State system and that anyone who does anything to put that in danger is precluded from espousing or acting on those things in Paragraphs 29 and 30. When one does not adhere to a Treaty, which is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it only exists in Nations that agree to it and then only so far as their National Sovereignty allows, in that doing to attack the Nation State sytem or put 'higher ideals' above that system, one no longer has the benefits of the Treaty due to their own activity. Step away into the area of rights precluded and, like any other Treaty, you have broken with it and are no longer able to appeal to the positive benefits of it. That is how these things work: by abrogating a Treaty an individual places themselves into context of a Sovereign only for themselves and, thusly, outside of the Nation State sytem of Treaty adherence.
There is a word for those that break with the laws in common amongst men and seek to impose their personal views upon Peoples and the world: barbarian.
There is a form of government described in which governments hand out rights based on rule by elites or singular individuals, that do not see any boundary of Nations as applying to them, and then enforce that via the power of the State which they control: Empire.
That doesn't look to 'classically liberal' to me. To espouse Imperial rule and have rights apportioned by government as it sees fit. But then I am biased as the Nation State system it the only sort of system in which reciprocity of agreements are upheld from the individual to the Nation State, and that liberal democracy has been found workable within such Nations as one government type and can be upheld and supported by this commonality of agreement and respect for differences amongst Nations. Only this system has been found to do this. We can have this ideal in common and get the great and good joy of decrying inhumanity to man in other Nations, but only step in when such governments pose wider threat to other Nations. Or when they break their agreements and become untrustworthy on any count and are a threat to the order between Nations by their actions.
It is, indeed, an imperfect system, but it has one over-riding benefit.
If we dare to stick to it. Otherwise it will be turned and assuredly we will become those being stuck without liberty to benefit by our own labor and hands… and without freedom to use the fruits of that labor to make a better life for ourselves and use that to the benefit of individuals and the furtherance of freedom.
Purple Avenger on June 7, 2007 at 8:29 am said:
…but I don't see…a grand conspiracy…
Lemmings don't "conspire" in any meaningful way either.
joanmarie43 on June 7, 2007 at 9:03 am said:
Whisky, can you post the NRO link you mentioned? Thanks.
David M on June 7, 2007 at 10:14 am said:
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run – Web Reconnaissance for 06/07/2007
A short recon of what's out there that might draw your attention.
Gringo_Malo on June 7, 2007 at 11:14 am said:
I'm intrigued by Fjordman's question, "So why are they doing it?" Regrettably, I don't have any more definite answers than his. I think, however, that we must recognize socialism and multiculturalism as mental disorders. Socialists and multiculturalists are quite unable to recognize the inherent contradictions in their philosophies.
Fjordman mentions the contradiction to which the right of free migration leads. The right of everyone to a good living ultimately leads to economic collapse as more and more people quit working and join the free riders. Clearly, people who can't see the obvious fallacies in their programs should not be allowed to vote, hold office, drive automobiles, or own firearms. Depriving them of these undeserved privileges will probably be impossible by peaceful, democratic means.
I hope that Fjordman is right in saying that, "The battle for Western survival is about to begin." I hope that the West doesn't lie down and give up without a battle. The signs are not encouraging.
Cosmo on June 7, 2007 at 7:28 pm said:
The alleged 'need' to move people from impoverished nations to prosperous ones is a red herring.
Population density and natural resource availability have no absolute correlation to wealth creation (see Japan, Singapore, UK).
There would be no need for massive population migrations were places like Mexico and the Middle East run competently — perhaps applying what has worked so well in the West, if I might be so boldly chauvinist.
Once again, the West's elites have been snookered — largely by their own ideological and moral vanity — into subsidizing the regimes of charlatans, con artists and gangsters who run the developing world.
Those in control of the organized crime concession presently masquerading as the sovereign nation of Bangladesh needn't change a thing as long as naive Western do-gooders and their self-loathing fellow travellers always volunteer to pick up the tab.
Paul on June 7, 2007 at 7:52 pm said:
From your post, "ln said…
"You can have opinion about who is the best singer but no *polytical* or philosophical opinions." "
Give ypp some slack. He had interesting things to contribute. His patterns of speech and spellings only add color to his comments.
Of course, there is much for him to absorb through reading of New and Old testament with a reverent attitude. We shall allow him space, and enjoy his contributions.
Jack Lacton on June 7, 2007 at 9:02 pm said:
Excellent article. Thanks for continuing to do a great public service by highlighting what's going on.
Oxfam really is the pits, as I highlight in my post http://tinyurl.com/yq3nch
Ypp on June 7, 2007 at 9:33 pm said:
Is it all about one spelling mistake? Deep thinker you are.
Joshua on June 8, 2007 at 1:43 am said:
Perhaps Winter is prophesying more than he is dictating here. As I've mentioned here in the past, globalization, and particularly the pervasive global media revolution that came with it (i.e. the Internet and other media with global reach), is unwittingly doing a huge chunk of the Left's work for them in terms of slowly undermining the nation-state.
Globalization undermines the state by making it virtually impossible to effectively do its job of enforcing its laws and borders, not so much by enabling cross-border interactions, transactions and collaboration, but by enabling it in such great volume and variety as to make effective "virtual customs" enforcement a pipe dream.
Meanwhile it also undermines the nation by fragmenting national culture while simultaneously inundating it with any manner and number of foreign elements previously unavailable pre-media-revolution. That is, not only are there far more options for news, entertainment, etc. available than ever before, those choices now run the gamut from English-language Al-Jazeera to live foreign soccer coverage. In this environment, traditional, unifying national cultures become but drops commingled with other drops in the global ocean, eventually to the point where national cultures can no longer be recognized as such. Perhaps this is partly what Winter was getting at.
Perhaps most perniciously, the same cultural and technological globalization that is eating away at the nation-state is now so much a part of our everyday lives that we take it for granted and find it ever harder to conceive of a life without it. None of this, mind you, can be blamed on the Left or on Islamic supremacism; they are just along for the ride here. Still, they couldn't have asked for a more conducive environment in which to operate.
Ypp on June 8, 2007 at 9:38 am said:
You blame "globalization". A similar situation was discussed in Bulgakov's novel "Dog's Heart". It described Russia after the revolution, and everybody used to blame all problems on "devastation". The hero, professor Preobrazhenski, argue:
-Who is that devastation? Is it an old witch with a broomstick? If I don't do my job, if instead of doing surgery I will sing in the chorus and pee in the corridor, it will be the devastation.
Here is the NRO link:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2EzMTg2NWQ3ZWM4ZDg1OGMwN2VhODA2YmNmNTgyMmY=
It's Stanley Kurz linking to:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/7827212.html
Mary Eberstadt "How the West Really Lost God"
I don't see evidence of a conspiracy, which in any case would require far too much coordination among too many people to be even effective. If you've ever managed large groups of people you quickly realize how difficult it is to get them to do things that they want to do, even when they are motivated to do it and everyone agrees to do it.
I rather see a confluence of self-interest in a very dangerous, and very insecure elites.
I do see a confluence between feminism, multiculturalism, PC, leftism, NGO-ism, in that they seem to be different aspects of the same fundamental changes in society.
If I may, I would offer consumerism through status-seeking as part of the driver of "Leftism" and it's various facets. Belmont Club details how Joel Klein (Primary Colors) got into a shouting match with someone who outed him, and his insult "You're not even worth inviting to an elite dinner party." Or somesuch. That pretty much says it all.
Joshua — it's not just globalization, as these problems: decline of the nuclear family, patriotism, unified culture, pride in culture, all date back at least to the early seventies. Though it's gotten worse and worse quicker in recent years.
Middle class life is now seen to be hell, in popular culture, and it's better to be a loathesome serial killer than a "corporate drone."
If you look at the emptiness of consumerism which would explain why France's family fell apart first (they got consumerism first), it is quite suggestive. Traditionally people have found meaning in family. Consumerism offers a substitute. I'd offer that the for a variety of reasons it seems to win out over family.
Profitsbeard on June 9, 2007 at 11:29 pm said:
"How to eviscerate your own country while inviting in your rapacious replacements" is a curious gambit.
What, other than the sadistic satisfaction of a righteously-deserved and mortifying Gotterdammerung, is there in this suicidal pursuit?
Don't any of these multiculti types like their own native land?
Are they so empty that they have to import fulfillment?
Even if it kills them?
Sound more like a fatal addiction that a plan.
geoffgo on August 3, 2007 at 1:13 am said:
Don't mean to be pessimistic, but let us not forget that taxation is the main cause of the destruction of the family unit.
When both parents have to work in order to survive in a consumer-centric world, well then it opens up more opportunities for gov'ts to help in every possible way; for which more taxes will be collected.
Downturns in economic conditions notwithstanding, gov't workers get paid (with COLA). When was the last time we had a 1% cost-cut gov't wide? Is gov't really 100% efficient?
WE approach a point in time soon, whereby more than 50% of the US population will be totally supported by the local, county, city, state, regional and federal gov'ts, either as an employee, or on the dole. They all get to vote. And, they all get to dictate their raises in benefits, without our vote. Seems like a train wreck.