To: Cinnamon Girl
Gimli raises axe for Western civilization
Perhaps the most passionate observations came from John Rhys-Davies, who plays the dwarf Gimli and voices Treebeard the Ent. Focusing on the necessity of defending civilization in times of crisis, Rhys-Davies took the media to task for failing to appreciate the preciousness of Western civilization, and warned of the potential consequences of rising Muslim extremism and the increasingly Islamic face of Europe.
I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged, said Rhys-Davies, and if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.
Pointing a finger at the media, Rhys-Davies went on, What is unconscionable is that too many of your fellow journalists do not understand how precarious Western civilization is, and what a jewel it is
The abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy. True democracy comes from our Greco-Judeo-Christian Western experience. If we lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world.
Rhys-Davies revealed that as far back as 1955 his father had predicted that the next World War will be between Islam and the West. The actor recalled his response: I said to him, Dad, youre nuts! The Crusades have been over for hundreds of years! And he said, Well, I know, but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see it in your lifetime. Hes been dead some years now. But theres not a day that goes by that I dont think of him and think, God, I wish you were here, just so I could tell you that you were right.
Looking at the lone female journalist at the table, Rhys-Davies said pointedly, You should not be in this room [according to Muslim custom]. Because your husband or your father or your husband is not here to guide you. You could only be here in this room with these strange men for immoral purposes.
Rhys-Davies went on to contemplate the significance of demographic shifts among Western Europeans and Muslims in Europe. There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we darent bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well
By 2020, fifty percent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent
And dont forget, coupled with this there is this collapse of numbers. Western Europeans are not having any babies. The population of Germany at the end of the century is going to be 56% of what it is now. The populations of France, 52% of what it is now. The population of Italy is going to be down 7 million people.
There is a change happening in the very complexion of Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and argue about. If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with another genetic stock, that doesnt matter too much. But if it involves the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to discuss because, [hang it all], I am for dead-white-male culture!
His fellow filmmakers might not all agree, but Tolkien would have applauded.
http://www.decentfilms.com/commentary/lotr_junket.html
38 posted on
01/16/2004 3:29:43 PM PST by
JerseyHighlander
(quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.)
To: JerseyHighlander
I was just about to go off and find that interview to post a link. Thanks for posting it.
43 posted on
01/16/2004 3:39:21 PM PST by
Redcloak
(Beer: It's not just for breakfast anymore.)
To: JerseyHighlander
Rhys-Davies revealed that as far back as 1955 his father had predicted that the next World War will be between Islam and the West. The actor recalled his response: I said to him, Dad, youre nuts! The Crusades have been over for hundreds of years! And he said, Well, I know, but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see it in your lifetime. Hes been dead some years now. But theres not a day that goes by that I dont think of him and think, God, I wish you were here, just so I could tell you that you were right.
(Major Snippage) What he said was beautiful! Well done and I applaud him. Looks like i'll have to bump John Rhys-Davies to the head of the class and put him in my 5 top actor's list. I know myself, I've felt that we were headed into a war with militant Moslems as early as 1979 when our hostages were seized in Iran. I have the august 13th, 1951 issue of Time Magazine with an article written about the Moslem world also.
113 posted on
01/17/2004 10:41:10 AM PST by
Nowhere Man
("Laws are the spider webs through which the big bugs fly past and the little ones get caught.")
To: JerseyHighlander
Rhys Davis' comments about the west vs islam sound very much like a Hilaire Belloc influence.
"...Whatever the cause be, Mohammedanism has survived, and vigorously survived. Missionary effort has had no appreciable effect upon it. It still converts pagan savages wholesale. It even attracts from time to time some European eccentric, who joins its body. . No fragment of Islam ever abandons its sacred book, its code of morals, its organized system of prayer, its simple doctrine.
In view of this, anyone with a knowledge of history is bound to ask himself whether we shall not see in the future a revival of Mohammedan political power, and the renewal of the old pressure of Islam upon Christendom..."
"... These things being so, the recrudescence of Islam, the possibility of that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing, and of our civilization again fighting for its life against what was its chief enemy for a thousand years, seems fantastic. Who in the Mohammedan world today can manufacture and maintain the complicated instruments of modern war? Where is the political machinery whereby the religion of Islam can play an equal part in the modern world?
I say the suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic_but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past:_one might say that they are blinded by it..."
"...Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it_we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today. The bad work begun at the Reformation is bearing its final fruit in the dissolution of our ancestral doctrines_the very structure of our society is dissolving.
In the place of the old Christian enthusiasms of Europe there came, for a time, the enthusiasm for nationality, the religion of patriotism. But self-worship is not enough, and the forces which are making for the destruction of our culture, notably the Jewish Communist propaganda from Moscow, have a likelier future before them than our old-fashioned patriotism.
In Islam there has been no such dissolution of ancestral doctrine_or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe. The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian mountains, of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa.
The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed:_but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed..."
Belloc said all this in his book "The Great Heresies" some time in the 1920's.
123 posted on
01/18/2004 10:45:35 AM PST by
Smocker
To: JerseyHighlander
Sounds like he has read The Death of the West.
129 posted on
01/18/2004 5:34:49 PM PST by
nonliberal
(Graduate: Curtis E. LeMay School of International Relations)
To: JerseyHighlander; All
144 posted on
01/21/2004 8:15:29 PM PST by
risk
(Let them come! There is one dwarf yet in Moria who still draws breath.)
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