Posted on 08/24/2008 3:25:26 PM PDT by UnklGene
Mark Steyn: Lights Out on Liberty -
Mark Steyns column appears in the New York Sun, the Washington Times, Philadelphias Evening Bulletin, and the Orange County Register. In addition, he writes for The New Criterion, Macleans in Canada, the Jerusalem Post, The Australian, and Hawkes Bay Today in New Zealand. The author of National Reviews Happy Warrior column, he also blogs on National Review Online and appears weekly on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show. He is the author of several books, most recently America Alone: The End of The World as We Know It. Born in Toronto, Mr. Steyn lives with his family in New Hampshire.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 13, 2008, while Mr. Steyn was in residence as a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellow in Journalism.
On August 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.
Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression, which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise "prudence" on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter "I." At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaciafter writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of libertywas being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other "anti-racist groups" who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.
In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called "flagrant Islamophobia"filed by the Canadian Islamic Congressattributes to me the following "assertions":
America will be an Islamic Republic by 2040. There will be a break for Muslim prayers during the Super Bowl. There will be a religious police enforcing Islamic norms. The USS Ronald Reagan will be renamed after Osama bin Laden. Females will not be allowed to be cheerleaders. Popular American radio and TV hosts will be replaced by Imams.
In fact, I didnt "assert" any of these things. They are plot twists I cited in my review of Robert Ferrignos novel, Prayers for the Assassin. Its customary in reviewing novels to cite aspects of the plot. For example, a review of Moby Dick will usually mention the whale. These days, apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the governments human rights investigators (who have taken up the case) believe that describing the plot of a novel should be illegal.
You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. Whats to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwoods book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldnt be a lot to write about.
These are small parts of a very big picture. After the London Tube bombings and the French riots a few years back, commentators lined up behind the idea that Western Muslims are insufficiently assimilated. But in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, theyre superbly assimilated. Since these are the principal means of discourse in multicultural societies, theyve mastered all they need to know. Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what Im facing in Canada. Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading "Behead the Enemies of Islam" and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected by a phalanx of London policemen.
Thus we see that todays multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance. Its been that way for 20 years now, ever since Valentines Day 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford wrote to me recalling asking a West Yorkshire policeman on the street that day why the various "Muslim community leaders" werent being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said theyd been told to "play it cool." The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to "Push off" (he expressed the sentiment rather more Anglo-Saxonly, but let that pass) "or Ill arrest you." Mr. Rushdie was infuriated when the then Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. "I well understand the devout Muslims reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for," said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: "There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying."
And thats the way its gone ever since. For all the talk about rampant "Islamophobia," its usually only the other party who is "in any danger of dying." War on the Homefront
I wrote my book America Alone because I wanted to reframe how we thought about the War on Terroran insufficient and evasive designation that has long since outlasted whatever usefulness it may once have had. It remains true that we are good at military campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our tanks and ships are better, and our bombs and soldiers are smarter. But these are not ultimately the most important battlefronts. We do indeed face what the strategists call asymmetric warfare, but it is not in the Sunni triangle or the Hindu Kush. We face it right here in the Western world.
Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. We now have Muslim "honor killings," for instance, not just in tribal Pakistan and Yemen, but in Germany and the Netherlands, in Toronto and Dallas. And even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York City or blowing up trains, buses, and nightclubs in Madrid, London, and Bali, we would still be in danger of losing this war without a shot being fired.
The British government recently announced that it would be issuing Sharia-compliant Islamic bondsthat is, bonds compliant with Islamic law and practice as prescribed in the Koran. This is another reason to be in favor of small government: The bigger government gets, the more it must look for funding in some pretty unusual placesin this case wealthy Saudis. As The Mail on Sunday put it, this innovation marks "one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world."
At about the same time, The Times of London reported that "Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank, after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims." Now, Im no Islamic scholar, but Mohammed expressed no view regarding Knorbert the piglet. Theres not a single sura about it. The Koran, an otherwise exhaustive text, is silent on the matter of anthropomorphic porcine representation.
I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Poohs sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin Niemoller might have said, "First they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character, and if I was, Id be more of an Eeyore. Then they came for the Three Little Pigs and Babe, and by the time I realized the Western world had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes, it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer, Th-th-th-thats all folks!, and bring the nightmare to an end."
What all these stories have in common is excessive deference toand in fact fear ofIslam. If the story of the Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europes population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent? In small but telling ways, non-Muslim communities are being persuaded that a kind of uber-Islamic law now applies to all. And if you dont remember the Three Little Pigs, by the way, one builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and both get blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Western Civilization is a mighty house of bricks, but you dont need a Big Bad Wolf when the pig is so eager to demolish the house himself.
I would argue that these incremental concessions to Islam are ultimately a bigger threat than terrorism. What matters is not what the lads in the Afghan cavethe "extremists"believe, but what the non-extremists believe, what people who are for the most part law-abiding taxpayers of functioning democracies believe. For example, a recent poll found that 36 percent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 believe that those who convert to another religion should be punished by death. Thats not 36 percent of young Muslims in Waziristan or Yemen or Sudan, but 36 percent of young Muslims in the United Kingdom. Forty percent of British Muslims would like to live under Shariain Britain. Twenty percent have sympathy for the July 7 Tube bombers. And, given that Islam is the principal source of population growth in every city down the spine of England from Manchester to Sheffield to Birmingham to London, and in every major Western European city, these statistics are not without significance for the future.
Because I discussed these facts in print, my publisher is now being sued before three Canadian human rights commissions. The plaintiff in my case is Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a man who announced on Canadian TV that he approves of the murder of all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. He is thus an objective supporter of terrorism. I dont begrudge him the right to his opinions, but I wish he felt the same about mine. Far from that, posing as a leader of the "anti-hate" movement in Canada, he is using the squeamishness of a politically correct society to squash freedom.
As the famous saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What the Canadian Islamic Congress and similar groups in the West are trying to do is criminalize vigilance. They want to use the legal system to circumscribe debate on one of the great questions of the age: the relationship between Islam and the West and the increasing Islamization of much of the Western world, in what the United Nations itself calls the fastest population transformation in history. Slippery Slope
Our democratic governments today preside over multicultural societies that have less and less glue holding them together. Theyve grown comfortable with the idea of the state as the mediator between interest groups. And confronted by growing and restive Muslim populations, theyre increasingly at ease with the idea of regulating freedom in the interests of social harmony.
Its a different situation in America, which has the First Amendment and a social consensus that increasingly does not exist in Europe. Europes consensus seems to be that Danish cartoonists should be able to draw what they like, but not if it sparks Islamic violence. It is certainly odd that the requirement of self-restraint should only apply to one party.
Last month, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of Sharia to the United Kingdom was "inevitable." Within days of His Graces remarks, the British and Ontario governments both confirmed that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions are receiving welfare payments for each of their wives. Kipling wrote that East is East and West is West, and neer the twain shall meet. But when the twain do meet, you often wind up with the worst of both worlds. Say what you like about a polygamist in Waziristan or Somalia, but he has to do it on his own dime. To collect a welfare check for each spouse, he has to move to London or Toronto. Government-subsidized polygamy is an innovation of the Western world.
If you need another reason to be opposed to socialized health care, one reason is because it fosters the insouciant attitude to basic hygiene procedures that has led to the rise of deadly "superbugs." I see British Muslim nurses in public hospitals riddled with C. difficile are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Which is a thought to ponder just before you go under the anaesthetic. I mentioned to some of Hillsdales students in class that gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously "tolerant" cities in Europe. As Der Spiegel reported, "With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the citys gays."
Gee, whiz. Thats a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But dont worry, the brain trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things: "Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity."
Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men theyre closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While youre at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, dont you think? Our Suicidal Urge
So dont worry, nothings happening. Just a few gay Muslims frustrated at the lack of gay Muslim nightclubs. Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if youd suggested such things on September 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesnt seem such a big deal, nor will the next concession, or the one after that.
The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to "hold the line"? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canadas Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and whove just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvards Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what theyre conceding now and then try to figure out what theyll be conceding in five years time. The idea that the Wests multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.
My book, supposedly Islamaphobic, isnt even really about Islam. The single most important line in it is the profound observation, by historian Arnold Toynbee, that "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder." One manifestation of that suicidal urge is illiberal notions harnessed in the cause of liberalism. In calling for the introduction of Sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a long list of Western appeasers, including a Dutch cabinet minister who said if the country were to vote to introduce Islamic law that would be fine by him, and the Swedish cabinet minister who said we should be nice to Muslims now so that Muslims will be nice to us when theyre in the majority.
Ultimately, our crisis is not about Islam. Its not about fire-breathing Imams or polygamists whooping it up on welfare. Its not about them. Its about us. And by us I mean the culture that shaped the modern world, and established the global networks, legal systems, and trading relationships on which the planet depends.
To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle.
I think the word is “theocracy”. Islam is a religion, and Islamic countries do not distinguish between government and religion. We do.
SteynOnline is on hiatus for a while as I catch up with some long-term and far-flung projects. But don't worry, we will return.Mark Steyn posted that July 20th.
Excellent post on laotze. That is one of the things I find extremely unnerving: the edge of menace behind Obama’s statements. The thing that puzzles me is how anyone could miss it and possibly think this guy is “nice” and “fair.” He means to threaten, it’s not just a slip of the tongue.
Thank you.
But of course, reading is not enough; - we, someone. . .'we' - have got to start shaking the tree here; albeit, it does all seem almost a futile exercise, given what we are witnessing with the Barrack Hussein Obama 'rising'; and the very act of criticizing him; questioning his 'Muslim roots' or anyuthing about him for that matter; if only his name. . . Add to that the success of Islam's protector'pit bulls' as Mark gives name to (CAIR; radical Imams et al of Liberal protectors) and yes, the tide of Muslims we are about to face. It ALL feels more than grim. . .
(And speaking of 'tides'; Radical, Muslim Keith Ellison rode the wave with a host of other Demrats as they took the majority in Congress, last Election. Thank you Minnesota! How DO we start the war against PC; against Liberalism; and the 'Left'; and against radical Islam. . .what can WE do?
Our culture; our Liberal Education system; our Liberal Judicial system; our Leftest MSM is setting the parameters here; and PC mindset already firmly embedded.
What will happen should Pelosi rule. . .and/or if Obama wins; and those who are 'free thinking' become oxygen starved as a consequence?
If we send home illegal 'felon' Mexicans; can we not send 'honor killers' home. . .like just move them out of here and immediately? Instead, we read the same pap in our newspapers that Mark warns us about.
We hear the 'roar' for Change; and the change is really, a swtich to darkness; to ignorance; and too many light already out - because we put them out.
Perhaps our 'call to consciousness' should be 'For truths sake, America; KEEP YOUR LIGHTS ON!' Or 'for Democracy's sake. . .(Good grief; we have soldiers giving there lives, for what we are allowing to be extinguished here at home; while they fight.)
Anyone have ANY ideas here?
'Big Tent Republicans' notwithstanding; the ID still is 'Liberal Elite' or now, more prominently, Leftist Elite. (In truth an oxymoron; but of course, their perception, is our reality.)
Look long enough into every major problem our Country faces today. . .including our cultural and educational decline; and you will find a Liberal 'chicken and egg'.
Well, that part of Canada was never the United States...unlike Georgia, which has been under Russian hegemony for a few hundred years off and on.
Actually it would be straight forward conquest and aggression on our part.
But no apologies. There are a lot of people in Alberta and B.C. who would welcome the opportunity to break away from the Bolsheviks in Ottawa; Western Canada, outside the cities of Vancouver and maybe Edmonton, is far more like the American West than eastern Canada.
It would be a war of Liberation! Think of it as adding another few Montana's to the U.S.
Don't be sad. It would be good for real Canadians, bad for the Third Worlders in Toronto and Montreal.
Just remember....only the dead have seen the end of war. The age old struggle against statist tyranny will never end.
A shocking suggestion I know, but there it is....
A good time was had by all
I suspect then that you’d be in favor of Mexico reclaiming large parts of Texas, California and other south western states.. It won’t be long before those areas are majority hispanic and politically and culturally they’re more in tune with Mexico..
Why no, I'm vehemently against it.
We should use massive military firepower, routine and mass deportations if necessary, and ruthless assertion of American political and cultural institutions on those who are admitted legally.
If we are weak enough to let them take over, then...they will.
If the Canadian Communists are strong enough to resist us, then...they will.
It's the way the West Was Won.
Incorrect. The American Revolution was a direct outgrowth of Enlightenment thinking (Natural Law and Social Compact). The French Revolution was a product of Romanticsm (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood).
I disagree. The Enlightenment was the notion that rational thinking was sufficient to explain everything and this drove the French. The fact that they were more romantic should not be confused with the romantic movement, which (IIRC) proposed that some things were beyond reason and had to be understood by some other method.
The Americans recognized God as the source of unalienable rights. They also recognized the depravity of man, which caused them to build constraints into government because they knew fallen man could not be trusted. This was a specifically reformed notion. I have just finished "How Shall We Then Live" by Francis Shaeffer which has a pretty good chronicle of the changes in Western philosophical underpinnings. I'd recommend the read.
In less than 100 years, Hispanics will be the majority population segment and will probably be running the country and the military. So you better hope that there's NOT going to be mass deportations and use of "military firepower" and "ruthless assertion" of dominant cultural values, or your great, great grandkids will either be playing in a mariachi band or deported back to Muslim Euroland. :D
You live in Texas. My my, could there be a connection?
Here's the message you can enlighten your friends with, Reconquistador: no, you're not going take over. No, you won't be running either the government or the military, because the U.S. is not going to surrender to a bunch of Mexicans who want to subjugate the evil Anglos.
If it takes another "civil war", bud, that's what we'll do. And the descendants of the Conquista-thugs can head on back to the Third World hellholes they created.
Or we'll push them there.
I don teenk so, Gringo...
They used to call him Millie....snicker
It's funny that you picked Zapata's picture. His argument was with the Hacendados whose descendants run things to this day in Mexico. Unlike Villa, who actually went after the U.S. because of support for Carranza, and in so doing caused himself more trouble than he needed.
Neither one of those guys could be called a "Reconquista"; if anything, Villa pointedly said that he wanted Mexico to be more like the United States, and was on good terms with American military until he was basically screwed by Wilson who threw his support to Carranza.
It points out the ongoing truth: no one wants to live under the kind of hell that the Spaniard ruling class imposed on Mexico. They rebel or leave. If the Mestizo underclass were to ultimately control their own lives in Mexico, the problem of mass Mexican "meegration" to the U.S. would probably end.
But like I said, Guero...us Anglos aren't like them. We don't plan to let the self-important Spaniard Caudillo class take over here on the backs of Mestizo anchor baby voters.
You can count on it.
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