The November 20 Radio Derb has a couple of interesting reflections on the demise of Western Civilization. Derb contrasts the anger he felt over the attacks of 9/11 with his relatively emotionless response to the Paris attacks and suggests that, in Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross's stages of grief, he has moved from anger to acceptance with regard to the end of our civilization.
If we couldn't muster the clarity of mind to comprehend properly the menace that Muslims pose to our society after 9/11 and the attacks that have followed, we never will. All we can come up with are idiotic invade the world/invite the world solutions that are based on false universalism: if the Muslim world just had good democratic governments, if we just would quit offending them by supporting Israel/imposing Christianity/supporting tyrants/stealing their oil/etc./etc., then they would be stop hating us and become good modern, western citizens, separating Church and state, contributing to the GDP, etc.
Liberal universalism is like a kind of mental illness that has anosognosia as a symptom--it frames our experience in a way that we are unable to see it. We think the only solution can be more universalism, more multiculturalism, putting our perspective in perspective, understanding the other, etc. We can't see that this universalism is false. And, as long as it isn't shared by the other, it doesn't matter how much we think we understand him. We never will, unless we see that our universalism is as inescapably peculiar as his fundamentalism: that it is not truly universal, but is the peculiar characteristic of our people. It can only exist among those who share in its premises, and not everyone does. Those outside it are threats to it. And if we fail to recognize that, we open ourselves to be destroyed by them.
This is why universalism is a heresy. Christianity is universalistic in the limited sense that anyone can join the club. You don't have to belong to a certain tribe, speak a particular language. To some extent, it is even culturally pluralistic. But, to belong, you have to join the club and there are certain, minimal rules, that are not culturally dependent.
The heresy of universalism says that everyone is already a member of the club, whether they want to belong or not, whether they follow the rules or not. Liberal modernity is essentially an extension this Christian heresy. It started out by reducing the minimum to eliminate the specifics of Christian creed, then it moved to eliminate the specifics of Christian morality, now it eliminates all requirements. It literally thinks that it encompasses everyone. But this is a delusion.
This heresy is being disproven by events. Universalism is, in fact, a weird peculiarity of Europeans--especially northwestern Europeans (cf. JayMan). No one else believes it--they probably don't even think that we believe it, and so they are quite happy to exploit our blinding insanity to destroy our civilization. While we try to understand them--i.e. figure out how, despite their protestations, they are actually just the same as us--they are hard at work figuring out how to exploit and even destroy us.
If we say that victims deserve help and laws to protect them, they will claim to be victims. If we say that the non-Christians suffer from bias, they will yell "discrimination." If we say we must atone for our historical wrongs, they amp up their complaints about them. If we say that equality demands it, they will call for equality. But they are just exploiting our language--a peculiar feature of our culture--to grab what they want. They have no interest in preserving our universalistic culture. They are interested in preservation of themselves and their people. They are not interested in equality--not for us, anyway. If they were in power, they would not reciprocate.
What has become apparent over the last 15 years is that our disease is terminal. We are incapable of doing what is necessary to fight off the foe. We are not even capable of recognizing our foe. We are fat. We are effeminate. We are weak. We are old. (Derb brought up the "mouse utopia" experiment of John B. Calhoun.)
This doesn't just apply to the Muslims. It applies just as well to the racial grievance mongers within higher education. Like the Muslims, they have little or no interest in sharing in our supposedly universalistic culture. They have no interest in the cultural basis of the institutions we've built--they want the wealth and power that those institutions possess and produce.
They see our "reason" and "free speech" as white male constructs that exist for the benefit of white males. And, they're actually right, to a degree. The open culture of liberal modernity is, in fact, even more of a white male thing than Christianity. But its universalism has degenerated together with liberal Christianity. It has put aside the necessity of conversion. And so it has opened itself to exploitation and destruction by the barbarian who enters the gates and claims the benefits of citizenship, but rejects the duties that once went with it.
I don't know what the solution is. It doesn't seem like it has to necessarily be perpetual war, but surely some realism about whom we let into our countries--who is and who is not likely to assimilate (and have children who will assimilate)--would be the starting point. In any case, a realistic assessment of the real and perhaps irreducible differences between peoples seems like a better basis for peace than the illusion of universalism.
Muslims can have their own countries and live as they please within them--even if this necessitates excluding outsiders who interfere with their way of life. But certainly we ought to enjoy the same rights.
