Dark Days Ahead

It is my view that world events are bad and are going to get worse. Not that there will be a war -- there is already a world war. If you are informed about world events, you recognize this.

The blogger Fjordman has two good essays here and here. Excerpts are in the "extended entry."

Multiculturalism is part of America's and Europe's problem, but more fundamentally the problem is bad epistemology: the theory of human cognition. You are seeing people unable to recognize evil and fight it, because they are unable to define the nature of evil -- as well as the good -- and integrate that idea into the whole of their knowledge.

They cannot define evil because they don't take ideas seriously (they say "we must be practical" or if they are in government, 'we must not upset the balance of power'), they don't recognize intellectually that things have identity (they say "everyone sees things different" or "how do you know" or "it's all relative" or 'what's good for you isn't necessarily good for me'), they don't know the rules of definition, they generally don't relate ideas together, they generally can't see an idea in a larger context.

In short, we will loose this war because people in general are too stupid to think. Not that it's their fault -- they are products of the modern educational system, which is a system designed to destroy the capacity of reason in every individual. (And of egoism.)

Not sure about that? Check out the "intellectual" products of the educational system, such as the news -- reporting is horrible. Their writing is poor. They have trouble gathering relevant facts and checking validity, and they have trouble putting things in context (especially of reality!!!). Reporting is concrete-bound -- it deals mostly in the here-and-now, and has little cause-effect relationships in it.

Modern politicians, another "intellectual" product of the educational system, produces people who don't even know what our government represents or what its history is. I wonder how many have read Locke's "Two Treatises of Government?"

How, after all, can you reconcile the facts about Islam, the history of Islam over the past 50 years -- hell, the history of Islam over the past 1300 years -- and current events, with Bush's taking no action toward Iran or Palestine? You can't reconcile it, because it is irreconcilable: it is irrational. He is out of touch with the facts. (And I am NO Bush-basher, I am NO damned lefty.)

Or read Dewey and Kant and investigate our educational system for yourself.

Multiculturalism is, by comparison, just window dressing. It's just a device of power-lusting, wanna-be intellectuals to rule over people -- until the real pros, that is, come along: the barbarians. But it does have an important, moral element to it: altruism, giving up your own ideas and values for those of another culture. Reason in contrast is egoistic.

It is not until people can use reason (a conceptual faculty, which integrates knowledge) and logic (man's means of conceptually knowing reality; the methods by which reason functions properly) -- not until people can say and understand that "a thing is what it is" -- that they will be able to say "Iran and Islamism is evil, therefore we must destroy them." That's the world we live in: a world of cause and effect.

Thank goodness volition is in the equation; thank goodness our destruction is not deterministic. There is the element of choice to consider.

But looking at all the facts, I say we are doomed.

(I thank Ayn Rand for these insights: 1) the importance of epistemology, and (2) the relationship between corrupt intellectuals and barbarians.)

From: http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/04/fall-of-france-and-multicultural-world.html

In my essay about the retreat of the Western world order, I mentioned the possibility of civil strife in the West caused by runaway immigration. This is no longer just a theoretical possibility. It is pretty clear to anybody following the developments in Europe that the situation in France is starting to become rather serious. President Jacques Chirac threw out part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions. The unemployment rate for youths under 26 is a staggering 22 percent nationwide, but soars to nearly 50 percent in some of those troubled areas with many Muslim immigrants. French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. Nidra Poller, American ex-pat writer and translator in Paris, has written some appalling stories about aggressive anti-Semitism, such as the murder and brutal torture of French Jew Ilan Halimi early in 2006.

Muslim blogs are calling for violence against the Jews, the whites and the well-to-do. They say, “We must burn France, as Hamas will burn Israel.” The growth of the Islamic population is explosive. According to some, one out of three babies born in France is now a Muslim. Around 70% of French prisoners are Muslims. Hundreds of Muslim ghettos are already de facto following sharia, not French law. Some have pointed out that the French military are not always squeamish, but there are estimates that 15% of the armed forces are already made up of Muslims, and rising. How effective can the army then be in upholding the French republic? At the same time, opinion polls show that the French are now officially the most anti-capitalist nation on earth. France has chosen Socialism and Islam. It will get both, and sink into a quagmire of its own making. Some believe France will quietly become a Muslim country, others believe in civil war in the near future:

I’m not sure which of these scenarios [slow Islamization of France over a generation, or a civil war in the next few years] is scarier. People keep talking about the nukes that the Iranians may get, but what about the hundreds of nuclear warheads the French have? Will they be used to intimidate the rest of the West? How do we handle an Islamic France, still the heartland of the European continent, with Muslim control of hundreds of nukes? And how do we handle a Bosnia or Lebanon with a population much larger than either of these countries, and with hundreds of nuclear warheads at stake?

…

The population movements we are witnessing now are the largest and fastest in human history. In Europe, they can only be compared to the period often referred to as the Migration Period, following the disintegration of the Roman Empire. However, during the 4th and 5th centuries, the total human population of the world was in the order of 200 million. Today, it is 30 times larger than that, and still growing fast. We also have communications that can transport people anywhere on earth within hours, and media that show ordinary people how much better life is in other countries. On top of that, the Romans didn’t have human rights lawyers advocating that millions of barbarians be let into their lands. Is it a coincidence that the last time we had migrations like this was when large parts of the European continent suffered a complete civilizational breakdown? Is that what we are witnessing now? The second fall of Rome?

…

The Islamic world is now at war with most of the major powers on the planet at the same time, from the USA to India and from Russia to Western Europe. It is a real possibility that we will get a full-blown world war because of these events. If so, I don’t think this will happen 50 years from now, but within the coming generation.

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From: http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/04/retreat-of-western-world-order.html

Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” thesis has generated a lot of debate, and some justified criticism. He has been accused of simplification, but also for underestimating the case of Islam. Huntington does talk about “the bloody borders” of the Islamic world. However, he has also stated that there is nothing implicit in Islamic teachings that has created the current turmoil among Muslims, but rather the huge number of young men, the primary instigators of violence in any culture. This is obviously not the case. If Huntington had read books such as “The Legacy of Jihad” by Andrew Bostom or “Onward Muslim Soldiers” by Robert Spencer, he would have understood that Jihad and aggressive violence have been intimately related to Islam on three continents for 1300 years. Yes, an abundance of young men as “cannon fodder” for war or demographic Jihad certainly helps, but this situation was created by the contents of Islamic core texts.

…

Maybe future historians will label this age “the retreat of the Western world order.” I say “retreat of” because it is not yet certain that this is the end of the Western world order, although that is a possibility. These massive changes and the real or perceived weakness of the Western civilization that has been dominant globally for centuries could very well create a new world war. Multiculturalism and the inability or unwillingness of Western nations to uphold their borders from massive immigration is viewed by Muslims as an invitation for attack and a signal that their ancient Western rival is weak and ripe for conquest. This is no doubt the background for the ongoing aggressive posture by the Iranian president, among others. We should take this dead seriously, because it is meant that way.

Muslims really do believe that the time has now come for overthrowing the West and putting Islam into the global, dominant position it should have according to their scriptures. They will spare no efforts, including nuclear war, in achieving this goal. The Iranian president has quite openly stated that “Islam will soon rule the world,” which implies that they will have to destroy or subdue the West. Al-Qaeda strategists have earlier outlined a schedule for awakening the Islamic world and crushing the West, with a timeline stretching over the coming fifteen to twenty years. They still stick to this plan, which means that tensions are bound to escalate even further in the near future. Westerners need to understand that a world war of sorts with the Islamic world is already inevitable by now, no matter what we do.

Current Events Posted by Cyrano at April 22, 2006 1:43 AM