Posted on 12/18/2014 5:01:21 AM PST by SJackson
Has the West Lost the Will to Live?
Posted By Mark Tapson On December 18, 2014 @ 12:38 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments
When it became too obvious to deny that the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia was an act of Islamic terrorism, Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked Aussie citizens for calm, saying, “The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society – nothing should ever change that. And that’s why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.” That’s what a politician is expected to say. But what he should have said is that the time for business-as-usual is over.
Recently my friend Doris Wise Montrose – founder of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and its related site for self-defense instruction, Jews Can Shoot – brought to my attention something she found disconcerting. It was a Facebook post by a very popular Israeli news blogger, a brief update on the knife attack perpetrated by a young Arab on shoppers in a Jerusalem supermarket. This update was accompanied by mention of the blogger’s own mundane shopping trip to a different supermarket, and a photo of the contents of his cart.
Doris commented to him that connecting the two experiences in the same breath, in the same tone, seemed oddly cavalier. The blogger replied that it was simply an acknowledgement that this is the way of life in Israel – her citizens refuse to be cowed; they proudly carry on even with terrorism in their midst. Business as usual.
Last month novelist Jack Engelhard, who writes a weekly column for Israel’s Arutz Sheva, wrote an op-ed questioning precisely this attitude of proudly taking terrorism in stride. He noted that in the wake of four rabbis being hacked to death in a Jerusalem synagogue, for example, Israeli life went on as before. Engelhard wrote: “Hurray for Jewish bravado,” but
are Israelis getting too used to this? Is this a case of Israelis proving that nothing can stop them, or is this a case of Israelis accepting their fate as sheep doomed to be slaughtered? When will it end… how can it end… when no matter what happens ‘everything is back to normal’?
You often hear the cliché that if we let the terrorists change our way of life, change who we are, then they win. But they have changed our way of life and who we are as a culture. Look at what has become of air travel in the wake of 9/11 and the bungling Shoe Bomber: passengers shuffling along like cattle in long security lines, removing our shoes and laptops, submitting to invasive scans by the useless TSA, etc. This is but one example of our “new normal,” and as incidents like the Boston Marathon bombing and the Jerusalem synagogue butchering and the Sydney hostage-taking become more and more common, they too will become our new normal.
The jihadists need not carry out another 9/11 or a nuclear strike in order to ultimately prevail. Terrorism is a war of attrition, a strategy of death by a thousand cuts. That means we live with the subtle but ever-present expectation that a so-called “lone wolf” like the Sydney gunman, or a suicide bomber, or a well-trained team of merciless slaughterers like the Mumbai or Nairobi terrorists could strike anywhere at any time: a mall, a café, a market, a school, a synagogue, a subway, anywhere.
For the victims of terrorism life doesn’t go on at all, and it is forever altered for the surviving family members and friends. The rest of us live with the knowledge that next time, it could be us or our loved ones. The psychic attrition is incalculable, and it sits in our consciousness like a cancer no matter how much we tell each other that we must not live in fear.
In an address to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust earlier this year, J.J. Goldberg of the Jewish Daily Forward praised those Jews during the Holocaust who “fought back by surviving another day in the face of the inhuman killing machine, and then another day and another. They fought back by maintaining their humanity and dignity in the face of utter depravity.”
But that is not fighting back; it certainly is not victory. It’s simply a dignified surrender. To accept living under the cloud of terrorism while declaring stubbornly that it won’t change us is a terrible self-delusion. It is a fatal misconception to believe that simply denying terrorists the satisfaction of terrorizing us is any kind of a victory at all. Our humanity and dignity mean nothing if depravity wins, if our civilization succumbs to a hungrier, more ruthless one, if the world enters a Dark Age under a totalitarian theocracy. The only victory worth having will come when we bring the terrorism to an end.
The West is in decline for a number of reasons, one of which is its cultural capitulation in the face of an ascendant Islamic fundamentalism. It is as if we, or at least our leaders and elites, have lost the cultural will to live. We need to get in touch with a sort of cultural rage, a fierce determination to crush threats to our culture, our values, and our liberty. We need to demonstrate that our tolerance has reached an end, that there will be no more coexistence with an ideology openly dedicated to our destruction. “Never mind normal,” as Jack Engelhard put it. To paraphrase his wish for Israel, for once let our blood “be exceptional and cause for nausea and trembling” among our enemies. Show the jihadists that there will be no more business-as-usual capitulation, and that they can expect us to unleash hell in retaliation for a single drop of Western blood.
We have a President who actually announced to the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” At the rate we’re going, it won’t. One thing is certain: the future will belong to the culture that is not hamstrung by cultural self-doubt, that is not mired in apologetic self-abasement, that is not burdened by historical guilt induced through decades of politically correct indoctrination, and that burns with a will to win, no matter how long it takes or what it costs. The future will belong to the lions, not the lambs.
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Don’t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow Mark Tapson on the Glazov Gang discussing Fighting the Culture War:
The west has rejected the resurrection of Jesus, the sole source of society’s “will to live”. If we reject the source of all life, we choose death!
No it hasn’t rejected Jesus
It HAS accepted and adored birth control. The ramifications of that are clearly thought out, examined and predicted in the 1968 humane vitae. Church clergy continues to ignore it though it came from the pope
The west has rejected Jesus...the issue you describe is but one of many symptoms(or side effects) of that rejection!
It is time for all of to choose a side and fight. Enough of the weak-kneed “multi” this and “diversity” that. The world is a jungle. And to remain in the jungle, survive in the jungle, you must kill your enemy. In the face of this encroaching barbaric evil, it is time for the West to become ruthless once again. If it takes a crusade to extirpate the incubators of this evil, then so be it. We have the power. We just need the will.
Excellent article. Our Country is living under the same delusion except it’s not just living with day to day real or potential muslim terrorism, but terrorism/violence/suppression from another dozen or so entities.
Every Muslim in America should be viewed with suspicion. Our right as “infidels” to live overrides their duty to wage jihad.
Simple.
That's why Jesus made it a personal relationship - it doesn't matter what those around us do; we can still attain eternal life with Him despite what our governments do. If God were to decide to destroy our Nation (which I don't believe He will do under the New Covenant) it will not matter to my future in Eternity.
While we tend to get caught up in the "we as a Nation" deal, it is not really crucial in our relationship with God - carry the Word and try to be a faithful witness to His Love and Grace. The world will keep degenerating into a cesspool and we cannot stop it. Else, he would not have to come back to redeem us all from Evil.
God is good and faithful - always. He will prevail. He owns my soul and will not relinquish it!
Because “the West” is based on Christian values and God’s Law, it was the subject of direct attack by Satan and his deceived, mostly inadvertent followers on the left.
They convinced themselves and others that “the West” did not deserve to thrive as it did, and that success MUST have been at the expense of those who aren’t thriving, and that since those who aren’t thriving are of a different ethnicity, that it must be a case of racial oppression.
If people could see the truth of the matter, they’d be able to effectively fight this attack - but that’s the way of Satan and his followers on the Left - deception, obfuscation, operating in secret.
Those who are Christians are under the new covenant...those who aren’t remain condemned under the old covenant... read Hebrews...Mount Zion for the saved vs Mount Sinai for the wicked.
Name any other equal cause
Cut off the vine the branches wither!
The West is dissolving borders to bolster the global government Tower of Babel it is building
No argument there - those who reject the Grace of Jesus' death and Resurrection will not be saved. The Old Covenant gave men the rules they asked for - it was God's intent to demonstrate that none could follow them and become worthy of his own efforts.
The great stone falling from heaven shall demolish that Babel...and become the mountain that fills the whole Earth!
“And the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall fill the whole Earth as waters cover the sea!”
Every muslim in America should be deported.
I blame Western feminism.
Name a western country with a replacement birth rate.
What are you talking about?
You cannot name one cause of a rejection of Jesus in society equal to that of birth control?
I rest the case
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