Carthago delenda est.

Some time ago I posted on Google+ a small item about ‘the groans of the Britons’. This was a request sent by Romano-British aristocrats to the Western Roman Emperor in the year 446. The Roman Army had been withdrawn from Britannia in 407, some 39 years before. The text we have is this:

“To Agitius, thrice consul: the groans of the Britons. [...] The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death, we are either killed or drowned.”

It was a plea for assistance. And the Romans had responded to such pleas twice already, with military aid. This time they did not come back. There is no record of a reply, but they had definitely abandoned Britannia by now.

I find that fragment deeply moving somehow. Even though current evidence suggests that the text was exaggerating the situation, and that immediate post-Roman Briton was more stable than was previously thought, it nevertheless speaks of a kind of desperation. A world that they had known was folding up underneath them.

In my darkest moments I sometimes feel like they must have felt. A world I have known is under great threat, serious threat. We in Europe have no Empire to call on. Once upon a time I would have placed the USA in that sort of a role. But America is not what she was. In fact America puts me in mind of the Western Roman Empire on its last legs. The lunatics are running the asylum.

Because make no mistake, we are at war. 

A bald statement that requires some explanation. When I say ‘we’ I am not referring to a particular country, I am referring to a whole culture, a whole way of life and a set of values that are worth defending, that are worth fighting for. With ‘we’ I mean those of us who stand by these values, who love these values and who are prepared to fight for these values. The values in question are the core values that define Western culture and Western civilization.

I will come to those in a moment.

If we are in a war, who are we fighting? Who is the enemy? As an initial generalisation I would argue that we are fighting an ideology, or two wings of a core ideological mode of thinking. The fighting is taking place on real battlefields in the Middle East, but also in Universities, colleges, public spaces, in the media. It is a sprawling war with many fragments. It is, mostly, a guerilla war. It is a war that those of us who appreciate Western values must fight.

The values that I label ‘Western’ are these:

“Rationalism, self-criticism, disinterested searching for truth,  separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, human rights, liberal democracy …”

http://www.westminster-institute.org/articles/the-superiority-of-western-values-in-eight-minutes/

These are precious things to believe in and to guide one’s actions and decisions. They have been very hard won over 2000 years, or more. They have been hammered out in conflict and battles and wars. They define, I believe, Western Culture and Western Civilization. They have produced some of the greatest works of art, literature and music. They have formed and shaped the lives of people, giving people more and more control over their own destinies. They have produced the wonder of modern science and the technology that arises from it. They have unleashed humanity’s productive potentials. They have assisted us in the great escape from poverty and short nasty lives. It is a superior cultural heritage and we must not throw it away.

I, personally, have a problem with the concept of democracy, which I may discuss another time. I agree, though, with Churchill’s remark:

“Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Speech in the House of Commons (11 November 1947)

The enemy who we face is a form of fascist ideology. I say that because they manifest several key elements of fascist ideologies – totalitarianism and anti democratic thinking; one-party statism; zero-sum, black-and-white, thinking, and, in its extreme form, militarism. There are other elements too, and some differences and variations. However, I hold that we are in a war over something really fundamental. Like all fundamental conflicts in essence it boils down to the question posed to Alice:

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)  Lewis Carroll 

This fascist ideology takes two main forms, I feel. On the one hand there is Islamism, or Islamo-fascism. Islam is, at heart, a fascistic political ideology. This wing is represented in its most extreme form by ISIS. But ISIS is only the most extreme manifestation of this ideology. The other wing of this ideology is social-fascism, as represented by the Social Justice Warriors, modern ‘third wave’ feminism, Black Lives Matter movements, and the various forms of identity based ideologies and ‘gender’ based ideologies.

The aim of all of these is very similar – to police the thinking of everyone who disagrees with them. To enforce their particular ideology by using the power of the state. And the power of a state always rests on force.

Other bloggers and vloggers cover all of these issues in more detail than I am doing here. I will recommend some at the end.

There is a slight glimmer of hope I think. ISIS does appear to be slowly losing ground and, as it does so, it is losing support. In the West our own fifth columnists are showing some signs of weakness. The claims of, for example, feminism are sounding more ludicrous by the day. And now that Black Lives Matter appears to be prepared to use extreme violence maybe this will turn people away from them.

However, we must never stop in defending our civilization and attacking the enemy wherever possible. Just to be clear, I am not advocating violence, but I am advocating that we should be prepared to stand up for our values, defend them and positively argue for them every day. Stand up and be counted, or else we stand to slide into the most nightmarish dystopia this world of ours has ever seen.

Si vis pacem, para bellum

¤

Carthago delenda est

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDmCBKaKOtOrEqgsL4-3C8Q

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-yewGHQbNFpDrGM0diZOLA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9D87j5W7PtE7NHOR5DUOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsjJvehvV00&list=PLrWS5lcEmbnvTFb6rgm9rM49t6HpSEzXE

http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/no-more-martyrs-now-civil-society

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Immanentizing the eschaton.

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4.

“There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance”

Recently I have found myself experiencing a range of largely unpleasant emotions. I have felt anger, bordering on rage, and I am not an angry person at all. I have felt profound disappointment. I have fluctuated between apathy and deep depression at times. I have felt, and I do feel, a deep dread, apprehension, for the future. Where have all these emotions sprung from? They are my gut emotional reaction to two current phenomena in our global society that, I fear, have the potential to tear down and utterly destroy everything that is good and true about our Western civilization and its culture.

First, a small comment on my own political position. These days I regard my political and social views as largely Classical Liberal. I think it is a shame that the word 'Liberal' has become distorted, particularly in the USA, into a grotesque mirror image of itself. When I say Classical Liberal I am thinking about philosophers like John Stuart Mill, for example. Essentially, I would regard the rights and status of the individual as an independent actor to be paramount, and to trump all other concerns. The state exists only to ensure that a framework of laws exist that allow individuals to act and interact in pursuit of their own interests in a way that is compatible with social order. I do have a conservative streak in my world-view also. I see little point in change for the sake of change, for example. I also agree with Kant when he commented that:

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Immanuel Kant, Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6.

This means, for me, that human nature is real and we have to work with the essentially flawed and imperfect reality of that as it is, not as we would wish it to be. And our most important tools here are reason, logic, sound evidence and sound arguments. Discussion, based on these things, is essential.

Basically, I have a 'live and let live' viewpoint and as long as you don't bother me, I wont bother you. I gave up voting some time ago, as I have come to regard politicians as rather wicked human beings in general, and the political process as deeply flawed. I may talk about that another time.

The two phenomena I referred to above are:

1. 'Islamism' – the primitive and brutal fascist ideology that grows out of the religion of Islam. It appears to grow rather easily too. I am aware of the many nuances in this argument. I am also aware that 'It is not all of them.' But it doesn’t have to be all of them surely? If only 5% of professing Muslims are Islamist, that is still a lot of people. And yes, there are genuinely moderate Muslims out there that are trying to make a real change, that are trying to begin a much needed reformation of Islam. But they don’t get much public exposure and when they do get some they are condemned as 'racists'.
   
   The fact that every survey that I have seen of ordinary Muslims reveals a majority that are consistently in favour of Sharia Law, are consistently in favour of a range of barbaric practices, that are in favour of gender and gay discrimination indicates to me that a rather large number of these individuals are more 'Islamist' that we would like to believe.
   
   On the issue of so-called 'Islamophobia' and Islamophobic racism I have this opinion. First, Islam is not a race. Many different ethnic groups and cultures are present in the global demographic of Islam. They are not all Arabic. In fact, the single biggest ethnic group present in Islam are Indians, with over 160 million followers in that country. (http://www.pewforum.org/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population/) Islam is an idea, and ideas are not immune to criticism.
   
   Secondly, a phobia is an irrational fear, and I do not think that it is irrational to be afraid of Islamicism. In it's worst form, that taken by ISIS, it represents the most brutal and crude version of George Orwell's terrifying vision of the future:
   
   “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
   George Orwell, 1984 Part Three, Chapter 3.
   
   
   
2. What I choose to call 'Social Justice Warrior-ism' … if I may be allowed that ugly phrase here. I am well aware that this is an even broader concept and I may well over-generalise a bit. Under this heading come movements such as Third Wave Feminism, particularly the campus and academic variants. Black Lives Matter also come under this heading. Then there are the various other 'identity' movements, like LGCTI and so on.
   
   These movements, in general, ignore rational argument and empirical data in favour of emotional gut responses. In doing so they are rejecting the hard won victories of the Enlightenment and progress made over the last 2 – 3 centuries. We already have a plethora of 'Committees of Public Safety' and 'Re-education camps,' just by other names, springing up all over to ensure that everyone is 'in line' with the ideology. The very recent example of a student at the University of Houston is a case in point -http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7920
   
   As regards the details of these various movements, there is a great deal of news and information available on the Internet and elsewhere, so I will not go on at boring length about them.
   
   SJW-ism represents a trend that was always present in the more totalitarian left-wing ideologies, whether of the communist variety or of the fascist variety, as I learned 40 years ago as a student who was, at that time, very much a Marxist. The continuous desire to abolish the human as s/he actually is and build a new, improved, one. In the process many, many people suffered and died, in Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag, or the Cambodian killing fields. And many other places too, just not so well known. While Islamism represents the brutal and primitive method, SJWism represents a less violent and more insidious method. But they have a similar goal, all shall submit to our ideology by fair means or foul.

And that, I suppose, is my final point. Islamism and SJWism are both ideologies with a primitive religious character. They both have their saints and sinners, blessed and damned, and so on. They both have a goal of building their version of heaven on earth. They both require blind, unthinking submission to the religion they are peddling and damned be individual rights, empirical evidence, due process, reason and logic. They both seek to shut down completely all opposition or disagreement. They are not a new phenomena I know, this 'Millennialism' has long been a part of ideological movements, but any attempt to create paradise with the crooked timber we have will fail, and it may well take our civilization down with it this time.

"Don't immanentize the eschaton !" If you try, you will get hell on earth instead.

I think we should be worried. There are signs of resistance, and I see the recent Brexit in my homeland as such a sign. But there is still a long way to go.