Posted on 05/02/2006 5:18:02 PM PDT by NZerFromHK
Two days before Christmas, I was in a store in Vermont buying a last-minute gift when the owner’s twentysomething daughter walked in. “Thanks for the sweater, mom,” she said. “Kevin really liked his present, too.”
“But it’s only the 23rd,” said the bewildered lady.
“Mom,” sighed the kid, wearily. “How many times do I have to tell you? We always open our presents on the solstice.”
A couple of weeks later, a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire got married. He’s a biker and a tattooist, and he’s deeply spiritual. So he and his bride were married in the middle of a field in a service filled with imprecations to Odin, Thor and sundry other Norse gods. The congregation of bikers rolled their eyes, which may or may not be a traditional Norse mark of respect.
G K Chesterton made a famous observation that when men cease to believe in God they’ll believe in anything. But the anything they’ll believe in is at least in part environmentally determined. Alice Thomson of The Daily Telegraph in London was recently granted an interview with the Dalai Lama at Dharmsala, the old British hill station in northern India where he lives in exile. En route to his pad, she encountered both a native Tibetan bearing the brutal marks of Chinese torture and, at one of the luxury hotels that have sprung up for moneyed pilgrims, a “rotund Austrian biscuit heiress” who turned to Buddhism after her stomach staple failed to take.
My North Country neighbors can’t afford air tickets and a suite in Dharmsala. So, given those constraints, solstice worship and Norse deities seem a reasonable fit with the landscape of northern New England. But they’d be a tougher sell in, say, Glasgow or Rotterdam. So what would work in the densely populated parts of western Europe? I’ve been a demography bore for years now – pointing out how aging childless French, Belgian and Dutch populations are surrendering their turf to young fecund Muslims – but, at the risk of piling too many doomsday scenarios atop one another, it’s worth noting that Islam is advancing not just by outbreeding but also by conversion.
Herbert Asquith is not the most famous British Prime Minister to American ears, but he’s the one who took his country into the Great War, which is the one that ended the Caliphate and delivered the Arab world into British hands. His great-granddaughter, Emma Clark, is now a Muslim. She’s a landscape artist, and has designed an “Islamic garden” at the home of the Prince of Wales. The Honorable Jonathan Birt, son of Lord Birt, the former Director-General of the BBC, is also a Muslim and is known as Yahya Birt. The Earl of Yarborough is a Muslim, and goes by the name Abdul Mateen, though whether he can get served in the House of Lords’ tea room under that moniker is unclear.
The above “reverts” – as Islam calls converts - are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority: Not all but many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the vapid nullity of multiculturalism disdains to offer. As for the gals, I was startled in successive weeks to hear from both Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered”. The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts”, but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim in public.
Where’s Christianity in all this? Judging from the name he took, Pope Benedict foresees dark days ahead and his job as being to save European Catholicism. But who will save Protestantism in Europe? The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, declared during the Afghan campaign that the USAF pilot and the suicide bomber are morally equivalent - both “can only see from a distance: the sort of distance from which you can’t see a face, meet the eyes of someone, hear who they are, imagine who and what they love. All violence works with that sort of distance.” He’d go into it all in more detail, I’m sure, but his Potemkin church is too busy selling off its buildings. On the BBC the other day, in a desperate attempt to cut himself a slice of the Gaia-worship self-flagellation action, he demanded government “coercion” on everything from road speed, cheap air travel, etc, “if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions of people to die.”
Environmentalism doesn’t need the support of the church, it’s a church in itself. But Britain and Europe could use a vigorous, confident, believing Protestantism right now, and Dr Williams is earthbound in every sense. Faith abhors a vacuum.
Regardless of the 'Left Behind' [...and why does Hillary always come to mind when I see those two words together?]
Okay, so, venturing out onto the skinny branches, here... I'm not saying that this eschatological view or that one is THE one; I'm pointing up the fact that, biblically speaking, there will play out some kind of eschatological scenario, and that scenario will include virulent anti-Christian elements, and those elements will not just suddenly descend from outer space, they will arise from the panoply of social structures already present on the Earth. Currently, the most anti-Christian structures on Earth are, in no particular order: radicalized Islam and communism (think North Korea and China). Of interest should be the extant linkages between those two systems. Both of those systems command an allegiance from their subservients that allows no other devotion. Does China allow Christianity? No. They allow "christianity", but not Christianity. Does Islam? Why even ask, right? We all saw that Afghani man come to the brink of execution for becoming a Christian; and that was AFTER we had liberated that country from the Taliban. We free them from the oppression of religious zealotry and they turn right around and choose a system of law drawn wholly from the very veins of that selfsame religious zealotry! Oh, but they have a Constitution, now, and a more democratic form of government. woo-hoo. Why am I unimpressed?
But I digress...
The bottom line, here, is the rise, establishment and adoption of some system that gains popular support in much the same way the women in Steyn's piece describe dressing up as Muslims; there's some tangible benefit to be had for playing along, and the idea becomes, "After all, what's the harm in it?" So, the popular view, then, is transformed into one of, "Don't rock the boat", but the parameters under which one must live in order to not rock the boat do not align with bilbical Christianity. In such a case, the system and the Christian are inescapably set at odds. However that may become manifest, in will, nonetheless become so, and when it does you, and I, and everyone else will be standing there with just TWO options: A) go with the flow, submit to the system, whatever it may be, or B) stand firmly rooted in the Christian faith.
We have always seen this in Islamic countries and in strictly communist regimes, but we have not seen such a system expand to a global scope. My contention is that we will; because of the mechanisms Steyn describes, because of what Shelby Steele calls "White Guilt" -- these are merely seeds that have germinated and will grow to facilitate the ascendancy of that which we now neither see, nor yet fear enough to adequately oppose.
The question is: will we see, fear, and oppose it soon enough to escape it?
This is a disturbing Steyn-ism. I thought the UK, the channel, would be the demarcation line as the Mud Slime marched into the continent. I thought we'd revisit WWII and together with the British and the Russky's drive the invaders back into their sand castles. Hopefully, Steyn is wrong and the Brits wake up, smell the roses and get their dander up regarding the invasion forces which are arriving daily, intrusively.
The Frenchies, the sausage eaters and the wusses in Brussels will all surrender of course.
Already has. In my day we had "Charlie's Angels" and "Wonder Woman" and all kinds of feasts for the male eye on television. They wouldn't put shows like that on now.
Have you seen all the articles telling women to dress more frowsily and less provocatively in the workplace? Or that hillarious article about Muslim swimwear for women? They lok like they are wearing baggy plastic spacesuits. We are heading there rapidly.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
This is a disturbing Steyn-ism. I thought the UK, the channel, would be the demarcation line as the Mud Slime marched into the continent.
The problem is the enemy this time round is Islam. And traditionally British elites and even many people have an attitude towards Muslims and in particular Arabs akin to China's attitude to North Korea:
North Korea's Kim Jong-il embracing China's Jiang Zemin
"His great-granddaughter, Emma Clark, is now a Muslim. She’s a landscape artist, and has designed an “Islamic garden” at the home of the Prince of Wales."
What is with this guy and the Islamics?
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If it is the Wahhabism form of Islam that is attracting the converts then the world is in for very very big trouble.
I really think that the Prince of Wales and his horse faced bride are closet converts.
That's right, powerhouse countries like the Phillipines, African nations and South America might make a tactical difference. Be serious. There are no large countries that will stand up to Islam.
Is oil money funding this?
That's right, powerhouse countries like the Phillipines, African nations and South America might make a tactical difference. Be serious. There are no large countries that will stand up to Islam.
Is oil money funding this?
"Name one place in the world where people will stand up to these Islamic people and win."
If you do, they kill you.
AND INSTEED OF KILLING BACK PEOPLE APPEASE THESE BRUTAL MURDERERS.
Well whoever said that we get the government we deserve was right.
Which planet do these Muslimopacifists hail from? Are they more technologically advanced than the homegrown sort? Have they developed warp drive? Or perhaps more importantly, photon torpedos?
No. They will kill, and kill at any cost for little reason. That makes them top dog in our world right now because others will not kill.
bttt
Complete and utter bollox as usual, but I only live over here so it don't count.
Complete and utter bollox as usual, but I only live over here so it don't count.
Mark Steyn is wrong, he is a just selling snake water to his customers, he knows what those who read his articles want and he delivers it, and it doesn't have to be the truth as long as it sounds good to his readership.
Despite the fact that we are winning the war on terror there are many like you who may feel that is not the case.
Maybe because they have been brought up on a diet thats says we are weaker than the other side, they are ruthless we are soft (to PC), they are prepared to kill anyone to gain there goal we are not and that makes them the eventual winner.
Well if we take the Second World war we find that is not the case.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they took over two million soviet prisoners, including many officers some quite senior who were anti Stalin.
The local population in the Ukraine, White Russia the caucuses the Baltic states welcomed them as liberators.
If the Germans not been brought up on a hatred and fear of the Slav and had initiated less repressive measures, they could of organized a Russian Army to fight the Soviets. They could of won the war in 1941 or 42.
It was not until late 1943 when it was too late that the Germans started to recruit Russians for the National Russian Liberation Army.
They could of harnessed the occupied areas to feed there War Machine more efficiently.
And they would not of had to tie down too may troops in anti partisan operations.
The Harsher the repression the more efficient the resistance.
Poland suffered the harshest measures and they had the most efficient resistance.
In France it was not until they started drafting french workers to work in Germany that the French started to resist.
As for this pile of horse manure, I find Mark Steyn says the same thing over and over again long on rhetoric short on facts and I mean real facts.
This article is a pile of bull, come on what is the name of this lady who wears Islamic garb because she is afraid to go out.
Of course as a UK and London Freeper I am used to the odd thread telling me what is going on in my country, usually written by someone who does not live here, never visited hear.
Mark Steyn is long on rhetoric short on facts.
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