Why does Western Europe seem so determined to commit cultural suicide?
Here’s the link to my new article at the Weekly Standard. An excerpt:
Whenever I read about the European response to the current wave of “migrants” to Europe, one of the first questions that comes to mind is, “Why?”
Why do so many of the countries of Western Europe appear determined to hasten the end of their own national identity by refusing to draw any meaningful limits to the current influx of third-world “refugees”””a significant number of whom are probably not bona fide refugees, and a much smaller but still-worrisome number of whom are probably jihadis bent on the destruction of their new host countries?
Click on the link to find my answer.
“The restructuring militarization would initially mimic the mass culture of demilitarized civilization — with its ballot booths and its symbols of diversity, its social hypocrisies and political deceptions — as competently as it once simulated the aristocratic culture of old Russia. Then it would foment a Thirty Years War of a thousand local Vietnams, a pseudo-religious, pseudo-racial, pseudo-political, fragmentation to which a centralized power able to bring about global peace would be the progressive answer.”
-Andrei Navrozov, The Gingerbread Race [p. 339]
Actually, I think the answer is a lot simpler.
Having tried so hard—but so unsuccessfully—to prod, persuade, cajole, force the State of Israel to commit suicide, the progressive, sophisticated and uber-cultured states of Europe have—out of desperation—decided to SHOW Israel HOW to do it.
They have deicded that the only way to convince Israel to commit national suicide is to demonstrate how its done—to show Israel that if Europe can commit suicide, then Israel surely can do it.
And ought to.
In a similar fashion, Obama has simply had it with trying to get, in his view, Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians so as to achieve that elusive “peace”. At the end of his tether with Bibi and those uppity Jews, he decided—out of desperation—-to SHOW Bibi and those damned Israelis HOW to negotiate. And so (under the veil of a feigned “negotiations” with Tehran), Obama decided to—oh so painfully—give the Mad Mullahs everything they asked for. Everything. (And oh so reluctantly!)
The lesson is clear: Bibi OUGHT to negotiate like Obama does, call his enemies his friends and give them everything they want.
It’s called “committing suicide for the greater good. For the benefit of humanity”.
File under: Utiliiarianism “R Us
Glenn Reynolds got it right, I think.
It’s not the West, it’s the Left.
If I recall correctly, during WWII, Gandhi called upon Jews to voluntarily March into the ovens in order to shame the world into peace. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s the people who don’t read history who wind up making it.
“All I can wish civilization in 2015 is that it continue on the slippery slope to enslavement at roughly the same speed as last year and the year before, without accelerating the pace or tumbling down precipitously.” -Andrei Navrozov grandson of the playwright Andrei Navrozov
Neos question is not about recognizing a situation then pretending it wont happen, its about refusing to recognize a situation by selecting the alternatives given to them by the political class and others.
just as in the US, certain groups spend their time giving alternatives, some cogent, many not cogent, and some so enculcated in our thinking we dont even know or realize where out thinking came from or if there was even a from for it to come.
NO ONE, not even americans want to face this stuff, despite lots of sources and information. its pushed off to the side in much the same way the mythical ostrich puts its head in the sand in a peek a boo solution to make bad things seem to go away.
their reaction to the wars and things was to try to sign on to something that would be peace, but not discern if its war dressed up in peace clothes.
It goes back to the same question over and over and over again, why didnt people stop X, or make changes that would halt Z…
and its VERY simple.. indecision
they dont want to lose the life they worked so hard to have by having it derailed by some fact or notion that then would put them in the position of having to choose whether to act or not to act. the same force that has people stand aside when some conflict happens in the street and someone is getting beaten to a pulp, do you act or not act? you dont have all the information, so there is risk of being on the wrong side, with the risk of not being able to effectively do anything and then draw the pain onto themselves.
the better their lives are when the question is asked the less likely they will do anything in any meaningful way about it, and risk that life that in introspection is pretty good.
why didnt good germans oppose bad germans?
why didnt the soviets rise up against stalin?
why did the proletariat rise up while lenin waited inpatiently?
its all the same thing…
until some point is reached and declared and they have certainty, they wont do anything, and will try to navigate between the Symplegades that may crush them, but may also let them pass
the point of the people controlling the outcome from other states is, as i said before, to cloth everything in AMBIGUITY
http://neoneocon.com/2009/10/30/finally-obama-gets-a-foreign-policy-success-unfortunately-its-in-honduras-not-iran/#comment-132115
[edited for length by n-n]
It is more than European passivity.
“Annika Holm Nielsen, a 24-year-old Danish youth politician, sailed her yacht” 5 miles to transport one Muslim (male?) to Malmo.
A 24 year-old “politician” who has her own yacht!
But there is a five-mile bridge that connects Copenhagen to Malmo, and no border control.
Malmo is Sweden’s third-largest city, and is overrun by muslims.
The Wiki piece on Malmo is interesting, being clearly written by an apologist who obfuscates, but cannot altogether dodge the facts: the majority of its immigrants come from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.It is a “very young” city, which is code for lots of pigmented muslim babies coming. There is no comment on the rate of rape in Malmo, but “Malmé¶ remains a city of sharp social divides and high unemployment.”
It is mass delusion, a triumph of Gramscianism. And, like Neo says, Christian charity without Christianity.
Another thing i just realized is that the people of the west have been taught its superior and so modern to eject the thinking of the past that was their protection!! think how not wanting to think in terms of war and in terms of the negative side of some postitive they were sold on.
one major thing they really really have a supreme problem is the concept of “too much of a good thing”
women going to work, and being able to choose what labor they will have (and not be able to choose family), is not a bad thing in and of itself. but when done in mass, it is very harmful
drink a gallon of water a day, is not harmful, but if you do it at once, you get high then you die.
immigration not a bad thing, but when you do it in a large amount, its nature changes.
medicines are not bad, but taking a whole bottle instead of the right amount under the idea more is better, gets you killed or some bad something
this can be a humonugous list.
but in terms of immigration, the gatekeepers claim a game of all or nothing… you either have a flood of women entering work force, which depressed wages to the point it takes two and destroys family, or you hate women..
the idea of a slow change over time that denies the current movement socialists, is waiting too long for what to them should happen now
this is applied over and over given sociology of such… once they find this, then you cant even say anything against it. as its forced into black and white thinking.
“Everyone wants a quiet life”
Human nature, being what it is, will submit to delusion until the delusion is smashed.
Nice delusion you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it.
All the answers to ‘Why Does Western Europe Seem So Determined to Commit Cultural Suicide?’ are evident and cogent but they don’t go far enough. Why should all this manifest itself now? All of the above and the unexpressed reason #5. Generations had been inculcated to nihilism, not for its own sake but through subtraction. Dismiss of all that binds; dismiss first principles; dismiss judgment, dismiss all that was good that had survived WW II (and had persevered well after it) and what is left? Nothing. Who will defend nothingness? Nobody. What then? God is not dead, he is risen from the dead. I’d fight and defend that.
1) They bought their own propaganda and don’t believe in culture. People are people.
2) Or the more hard headed know this will just change 1-2% of the population and mostly it will all go to their side in elections.
1) It should not be “Western-Europe” but the West. The situation in the USA is slightly different only because of geographical reasons.
2) Guilt? I’m afraid I have to consider this nonsense. Of course the left will say this. The left also says there is a “War on Women” going on in the West. The left also talks about “reparations for slavery” (that should bring it home to the USA, no?). The only people whose conscience are troubled by accusations like that are sanctimonious people who like guilt-trips to fill their empty souls. It is at most an excuse, not a reason.
3) perhaps this points more to a reason “Denmark … demographic collapse”. A people doesn’t fail to beget children because they feel guilty but because they have lost the will to exist. Why? I would suggest that a society which throws it own culture overboard, especially the spiritual part, is a society in suicide mode. Today we live, tomorrow we die. Apré¨s nous le déluge. Or in other words, the Culture of Death.
It doesn’t have to be so. That German homeschooling family (evangelical protestants I believe) which was at last given permission to stay in 2014 has 5 children and is still a young family. The Catholic “mommy” blogs I follow (because I find them a balm) have no trouble having children. In other words, the Culture of Life.
George Pal Says: Why should all this manifest itself now?
because the politicans are couching things in term of what makes you good or evil, and since people dont want to be evil (the majority), they comply with the declarations of goodness.
the attacks on good people who choose a goodness for themselves outside the declaration, is like herding a cow with a cattle prod.
at some point they throw up their hooves and stop thinking what is good or bad and just do what is said, as that is easier than self choice, choosing wrong, and ending up as an example to the people
its a simple process…
most of these things abuse trust, abuse desire for goodness, abuse all manner of positive things to negative ends.
ergo its considered (by some) a satanic movement (with some going so far as to actually play satanist – see Bohemian Grove) as satan is not gods opposite, and as big as god. so satan must twist gods goodness to make evil
its teleological to understand that all things we consider evil come from goodness that is twisted.
Augustine had a lot to say on it, as church members get to eat and sit around and think a lot. see Enchiridion.
St. Augustine, Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope, and Love (1955)
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/augustine_enchiridion_02_trans.htm
[edited for length by n-n]
Many of the intelligentsia in Europe have expressed an affinity for Islam over Christianity for over a century. One of the prominent German philosophers, Nietzsche, stated the preference which many in the German intelligentsia cherished before any German guilt from WWII. Undoubtedly the left use guilt to nullify the normal tendency for people to protect themselves from harm. But the guilt is for the little people to control them. It is irrational to atone for antisemitic crimes by advancing the cause of other antisemites. The elite are not so stupid that they can be unaware of that fact. They know that one of the bonds which enabled the Nazis and Muslim to collaborate was their shared Jew hatred.
“”Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (–I do not say by what sort of feet–)…Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…… “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can’t make out how a German could ever feel Christian. . . .”
http://mahdinnm.blogspot.com/2010/12/friedrich-nietzsche-on-islam-and.html
Population replacement via rape. Europe and the Left thinks the population decline which hurts their welfare is due to lack of sex. That’s what they claim from gateway translations about Japan.
It is merely propaganda to justify population replacement. They don’t like the people in a democracy, so they will vote to replace it.
Many of the intelligentsia in Europe have expressed an affinity for Islam over Christianity for over a century. One of the prominent German philosophers, Nietzsche, stated the preference which many in the German intelligentsia cherished before any German guilt from WWII.
German vitality came from several different tribes, such as the Lombards, Saxons, etc. They had a tribal system, so were prone to raiding and taking concubines.
That makes them systematically more similar to Islam than Christianity. And Christianity, once it converted the pagans, actually took away a lot of their super aggressiveness. For example, compare the Irish who became Catholic relatively soon due to roaming disciples of Jesus Christ, vs the vikings from Norway and Scandinavia.
Phil D: I know the name is Romeike but cannot find a link. Can you post it? TY
‘MUSLIM MERKEL’ CAUSES OUTRAGE…
German TV network accused of Islamophobia
An image of Angela Merkel wearing a traditional Iranian Islamic headscarf has caused controversy in Germany.
And
CHINA DUMPING USA DEBT FASTEST PACE ON RECORD…
Isnt that what you would do BEFORE a war if you know?
And
right now my foreign friends have been taking me aside and sayind doesnt anyone here know what the heck is going on and get it? (paraphrased for space)
No, they dont is all i can say…
.
U.S. vs. Russia: What a war would look like between the world’s most fearsome militaries
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/10/05/us-russia-vladimir-putin-syria-ukraine-american-military-plans/73147344/
[edited for length by n-n]
BTW, today is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto.
Tonawanda, here are some links;
“Christian Post march 4 2014: Romeike family will not be deported says DHS”
“HSDLA: Romeike Family Can Stay in U.S”
…
Other links by googling “romeike family”
Amazing, but sadly so predictable that you miss the main reason. It does not even get a mention!!! It is at the very least at the root of all the other reasons, without exception. It is a testimony to the inanity of 20th-21st c. education and cultural that you either don’t know it, or don’t appreciate, or are afraid to say it. The “Weekly Standard”, after all, is big time. No one wants to blow that gig by telling the truth!
Christianity made Europe. Period. There is no “Europe” and there are not even any “nations” (which are also a product 100% of “Europe”) without Christianity.
Let’s see if we can follow the logic: 1) Christianity makes Europe. Fact. It took 15 centuries but it’s fact anyway. 2) Christianity dies in Europe…Bye Bye Europe! It takes a few centuries, sure. But compared to the 15 it took to make “Europe”, its a fast collapse.
Guilt, btw is one of the most powerful emotions there is. It was the number one tool the Commies used to enslave people. It takes tremendous, awesome spiritual resources to combat its use. No surprise at all it plays into two of your four reasons. But again, what spiritual resource to combat guilt is missing? Hmmmmm. What could it be!!!?
@Mike M
Neo does give a mention to Christianity, it’s on page 2 of the article which, on my computer at least, was available only a few moments ago so maybe you didn’t see it.
“One of the many curious elements of this phenomenon is that, in countries that have relinquished much of Christianity, one thing that seems to remain–like a vestigial organ–is the ideal of self-sacrificing charity minus the devotion to the faith that previously animated and inspired it.”
Many of the intelligentsia in Europe have expressed an affinity for Islam over Christianity for over a century. One of the prominent German philosophers, Nietzsche, stated the preference which many in the German intelligentsia cherished before any German guilt from WWII.
The Orientalist
Eventually to be marched off to the ovens ….
It is merely propaganda to justify population replacement. They don’t like the people in a democracy, so they will vote to replace it.
They will demand to replace it.
Large arms caches were allegedly hidden in many countries for the planned terrorism acts. They were booby-trapped with “Lightning” Molniya explosive devices. One of such cache, which was identified by Mitrokhin, exploded when Swiss authorities tried to remove it from woods near Bern. Several others caches (probably not equipped with the “Lightnings”) were removed successfully
Preparations for nuclear sabotage. Some of the allegedly hidden caches could contain portable tactical nuclear weapons known as RA-115 “suitcase bombs” prepared to assassinate US leaders in the event of war, according to GRU defector Stanislav Lunev. Lunev states that he had personally looked for hiding places for weapons caches in the Shenandoah Valley area and that “it is surprisingly easy to smuggle nuclear weapons into the US” ether across the Mexican border or using a small transport missile that can slip undetected when launched from a Russian airplane – Through the Eyes of the Enemy ISBN 0-89526-390-4 1998
“We didn’t plan for it because we didn’t think Russia would change the borders in Europe,” he says. Crimea, he says, was a “surprise.” – Ochmanek
Would NATO be able to defend those countries?
“We just don’t have those forces in Europe,” Ochmanek explains. Then there’s the fact that the Russians have the world’s best surface-to-air missiles and are not afraid to use heavy artillery.
“The conclusion,” Ochmanek says, “was that we are unable to defend the Baltics.”
the Pentagon does not envision a scenario in which Russia doesn’t manage to grab some Baltic territory first.
[edited for length by n-n]
Excellent post, Neo!
How much of this is the citizens wanting this vs. their politicians *forcing* it on them?
I recall the scandal when some of the UK’s Labour party memos were found, stating they were increasing immigration specifically to dilute conservative voters and to “rub their noses” in diversity.
Mike M. Says: Christianity made Europe. Period.
sorry, but that is not true.. ROME made europe
Almost all British cities with names ending in “-c(h)ester” have Roman origins.
given that the list contains hundreds of cities created by rome and in existence today, i am selecting a few for you
england
Aquae Sulis => Bath
Dubris => Dover
Durolipons => Cambridge
Durovernon => Canterbury
Eboracum => York
Glevum => Gloucester
Londinium => London
Venta Belgarum => Winchester
Netherlands
Oppidum Batavorum (or Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum) => Nijmegen
Germany
Aquae Mattiacae => Wiesbaden
Mattium => Marburg, Hesse
Oppidum Ubiorum (then Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) => Cologne/Ké¶ln
Rigomagus => Remagen, Rhineland-Palatinate
Sorviodurum => Straubing, Bavaria
France
Argentoratum (then Stratoeburgus) => Strasbourg
Augustoritum => Limoges
Avenio => Avignon
Burdigala => Bordeaux
Durocortorum Remorum => Reims
Verodunum => Verdun
Switzerland
Genava => Gené¨ve/Geneva
Lousanna => Lausanne
Turicum => Zé¼rich
Austria
Juvavum (or Salisburgium or Iuvavia) => Salzburg
Oenipons => Innsbruck
huge number of Italian cities.
no, what gave birth to western civilization was not christianity, but Romulus and Remus (ok, only one of them since the other was killed)
And if you DO want to credit christianity, better to credit Constantine…
Mike M:
Well, you’re wrong on two counts, and rather big ones at that.
First of all, I didn’t write that article with the Weekly Standard in mind. I wrote it—as I write virtually all my articles—for the blog. Later I realized it was long enough and topical enough to perhaps place it somewhere other than the blog, so I shopped it around to various venues, and it ended up in the WS.
Your contempt for me is gratuitous and misplaced, as well as offensive. One look at this blog—what I write, what my traffic is, how long I’ve been doing it, and how little money I make from it—and it should have disabused you of the notion that I censor myself from truth as you’ve accused me of doing. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, but for some reason you’re not—and that’s the truth.
Your second huge error has already been pointed out to you—I mention Christianity as a previously animating force that has been largely abandoned in that part of Europe:
Christianity used to be extremely strong in those parts of Europe that have abandoned it. It not only animated many of Europe’s accomplishments, but it animated Europe’s own faith in its culture and those accomplishments. It’s abandonment is part of the reason that culture, and faith in that culture, has been abandoned.
Do you actually read the articles you are critiquing, or do you just read the first few paragraphs and make assumptions, or what?
It is you who have become, all too sadly, all too predictable.
Lizzy:
I don’t know about all the countries of Western Europe, but even now, although their popularity has fallen slightly, Merkel’s party and the leading Swedish party (and/or the coalition of pro-immigrant parties that are allied with them) are still supported by majorities in terms of polls. The anti-immigration parties are growing, but they are still minorities.
See this and this.
So Art, between the fall of the Western Empire and today nothing significant happened which made “Western Europe” (the original “West”) and “Europe”. Our civilization is pure “Roman”? It were “roman” legionaires who stopped and converted the vikings, the magyars? It was the Roman Empire which defeated the muslim invaders at Poitiers? It was the “Roman Empire” who waged the Hundred Years War between, I suppose, itself?
We are the heirs of Rome, certainly, but so what? We are, like Rome itself, also the heirs of Greece, of Egypt, of Mesopotamia. But not to forget we are also the heirs of Israel through Christianity. So if you wish, thank you Rome even if your civilization was originally build on slavery, human misery, conquest, mass killings and rape …
But once again, so what? You build on what has gone before and try to retain what was best (*). And what remained of “Rome” was mostly what was preserved through Christianity.
Really, what a strange point for you to make. I thought you were better than that.
Btw, “credit Constantine”, what exactly is the relevance of that? What’s the point? Constantine issued an “Edict of Toleration”. Does that means that Constantine owns Christianity (or only the CC, but only a Chicker would think that).
(*) except Islam which seems to retain only the worst
PHil D:
I hear people expressing that guilt all the time, however. I believe it is very much in operation, both in this country and in Europe. The guilt has been taught in the school systems for decades now.
I was talking about Western Europe as opposed to Eastern Europe in that essay, by the way—meaning that Eastern Europe isn’t quite so willing to commit suicide.That is in part because of its Soviet history, and in part because religion (Christianity) is stronger in the East now than in the West.
The essay doesn’t even deal with the US, which probably occupies some middle ground on this topic between Western and Eastern Europe.
The essay is only meant to be about 1,000 words. It would be far longer if I had to explain every last thing I was saying, or include everything I would like to say.
Artfldgr,
“because the politicans are couching things in term of what makes you good or evil, and since people dont want to be evil (the majority), they comply with the declarations of goodness.”
And why just now do the majority of the people comply with the Gnostic declarations of goodness? To what may it be ascribed – their having lost their inate notions of goodness, the traditional notions of goodness passed down to them generation after generation, the biblical notions of good in the Ten Commandments or the Sermon On The Mount. Might it be that the Gnostics had staked the moral high ground that the people, uprooted from their traditions, their past, had ceded to them.
You make mention of St. Augustine, and the Enchiridion:
“All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all.”
This is a man, Augustine, who had a nearly decade long dalliance (it was actually more than a dalliance, more a commitment to the desire to believe) with Manichean Gnosticism but had not succumbed.
“Augustine, a driven religious seeker, sojourned among the Manichaeans as an auditor during the decade from 374 to 384; but he later rejected Manichaeism on the basis of Platonic argument and eventually, Platonic logic being his way station, he converted to Roman Catholicism”
It, reasonably, cannot be expected that the people be steeped in the Platonic School of philosophy to rescue them, as it had Augustine, from the clutches of those who would turn nature on its head. It is reasonable to expect tradition, and family, and being schooled in God and Christianity would spare them from falling to those clutches. It had done so for two or three millennia, depending where you would put the commencement of Western civilization. But tradition, family, God, and Christianity had been dismissed. For generations now the young had been denied sword and shield. To whom is it a surprise that they are defenseless to all things hostile, malevolent, evil?
It is Gnosticism that needs to be defeated. Islam, the Left, the Progressives, the Liberals are all merely subsets of the previous iteration of wickedness. And Gnosticism cannot be fought by reason, enlightenment, and humanism. It fears none of that and can corrupt each in its turn to do its bidding. It fears God only. God is Man’s answer, God is Europe’s salvation.
Capn Rusty:
Gandhi and the Jews.
formwiz:
Right now, Western Europe is largely leftist. Even the so-called center-right is largely leftist.
I’m a Western European, Flemish that is.
I just cannot believe in this “guilt” as anything but an excuse, a sophism. Now if you put it like “they have learned to hate their own civilization (while fully profiting by it)”, well I could agree with that.
How can I put it, “guilt” may be very important because its use as an excuse (bit like AGW, or “War on Women” …), it is completely unreasonable and silly in itself. I simply cannot believe people having it, and are serious about it, are anything but complete morons. Perhaps the West is dying from protected moronity. Well, the protections are falling away. Perhaps a reason to hope.
Western Europe; I was talking in the sense of the nations in the West before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Of course Poland, Hungary, The Baltic Republics, … are Western nations so the terminology doesn’t fit any more. Sorry about that.
Including the USA; a bit of a hobby horse for me. Like Melanie sang “We all have the same disease”. Perhaps I have been a bit too much exposed to “those Europeans” on American blogs.
Phil D:
Well, whether the people espousing that guilt are stupid or not, it’s a feeling of guilt and it’s what’s been hammered home with them, over and over and over.
So they feel it.
Personally, I see them as often intelligent, definitely well-meaning, but fundamentally too uncurious to challenge what they’ve learned or to go beyond it. Maybe they’re not all that interested in history, and what they learned in school is enough for them. Maybe they’re busy with family and work. Maybe everyone they know says the same thing and nods, and to think otherwise doesn’t occur to them because all the “smart” people think what they think.
The idea is completely foreign to me.
If you are right then we are in even deeper … than I thought we were. And one of the reasons I follow USA blogs is because I think the USA has more the ability, more the chance, to turn the situation to the better than Europe.
Time to learn to pray, it seems.
Thanks for the answers.
N-n:
Your explanation is logical, but the logic is still baffling. Is there any politician anywhere who doesn’t see that inviting thousands of immigrants into their country changes it permanently? Even the UK politicians who wanted to “rub their nose in it” must have realized that after a time the nose would not be the same and the rubbing would be self-defeating.
It seems rather like what is going on is a self-hatred, like teenagers who cut or starve themselves. And that self-hatred strikes me as a juvenile attitude, leading me to ask “when are these politicians going to grow out of their stupidity?”
I understand (or at ease firmly believe) that Obama hates America as it was when it elected him (irony, that!) But does that apply to all Europe’s leaders too? Will the pendulum swing the other way for America and Europe? I certainly hope so. Of course that does not fix the problem of the immigrants who are already here, but it might eventually slow down the dilution of national character that is now increasingly taking place in the west.
Irene: I missed that. But it’s given as a reason why Europe might be dying. The full reason is that Christianity is dying or near dead in Europe and that is why Europe is dying.
But the vestigial concerns for charity and the victim make perfect sense. Out of their proper context, out of the properly “Catholic” (i.e. universal) ethos, the separated, orphaned virtues work to harm instead of giving life.
Europe is a sick, spiritually dead psychopath.
So is every national Dem politician there is.
They will love you to death, and I mean that literally.
F:
It is self-hatred—but the “self” is Western culture, nationalism, and Christianity.
So if you hate those things, letting in tons of unassimilated outsiders is a form of acting out that self-hatred.
I also think they think it won’t really really threaten them. That’s because they are also very arrogant about their own ability to handle anything.
So they are both knaves and fools. And they are acting out somewhat contradictory impulses. It is a form of play-acting. They want to demonstrate how magnanimous and non-chauvinistic they are. They play with fire, but at the same time don’t think they’ll actually be burned.
Mike M:
Interesting that so far you have addressed Irene but not me.
Not only did you “miss” that, you based a quite nasty accusation toward me on what you mistakenly thought was missing, and you added some nasty and unfounded assumptions/accusations of mercenary truth-hiding on my part as well.
Nice.
Phil D:
I agree that the US is not as far gone as Western Europe. Not yet. The 2016 election will be a very very pivotal one.
And I just express my opinions as best I see it. I don’t have The Answer or The Truth. But I’ve been observing these things and thinking about them for at least ten years, actually more. And this is what I see.
Phil D Says:
October 7th, 2015 at 2:48 pm
between the fall of the Western Empire and today nothing significant happened which made “Western Europe” (the original “West”) and “Europe”. Our civilization is pure “Roman”?
no… i never said that. but remember, the romans had running hot and cold water, toilets, assembly line production, and many many things.
then we lost most of all that during what became erronously called the Dark Ages
but one has to realize that without constantine, christianity would probably have died there and then what tiny part remained would have been run over by islam.
the key here is that without the large cities that rome made, the roads, the forts and all that stuff, there would never have been centers of learning, religion and such accross europe like we have today.
while its a foolish game to play what if (like the comic books), its something we do.
prior to constantine, christians numbered in the hundreds, to maybe a few thousand of marginal actors on the stage. with constantine, it became the empires religion and that was passed around all over in every nook and cranny of the empire.
you have to put the things in the right order and relize that without constantine and his holy orders making christianity the state religion, much of what you are (i am assuming) referring to would never have happened.
you do know of the Nicene Creed, eh?
christianity would not have existed as you know it today without that event in history…
it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent local and regional councils of Bishops (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy–the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom
if you read that part of church history and what was before, you would find that each christian church or sect had very different ideas of the religion,and even fought each other.
without that solidary and unity of thought, the continent would never have survived events like islam reaching the gates of vienna in the 1600s on 9/11 and the consequent fights to not only preserve the land from takeover, but to preserve the religion of these various states who came from that event in Nicene
there is no indication that without rome, its empire, and the adoption of christiantiy as a state religion then its factions homogenized so that it was the same across the continent and in england… that it would have turned out anything near the same.
what would have happened if constantine converted to islam instead? or kept the pagan traditions?
what you call christianity woudl have died, there would ahve been no solidarty that lead up to near the modern age and still exists and is a thorn in china.
What if Constantine lost the Battle of the Milvian Bridge?
christianty would have died as a baby..
then all the dervatives of such would not have happened as they come from the ideas that became common. the knitting of the cultures of different states would not have had that reason to work together to defeat islam (several times given their incursions), and on and on.
you might as well ask what would have happened had jesus never been born…
here are some questions from a relgious site asking similar
Would he have been willing to adopt a Jewish form of Christianity, which would have required him and his fellow converts to become Jewish, undergo circumcision, keep kosher food laws, and observe other traditions of the Jewish Law? Or would he have been inclined to accept a Marcionite form of Christianity, which could claim no “ancient” roots, since it abandoned the ancient traditions of Judaism? Would he have been likely to adopt any of the Gnostic forms of Christianity, which maintained that only a spiritual elite could truly understand the revelation of God, that the majority of believers misunderstood the true teachings of Jesus?
after constantine those forms became fringe and one form dominated…
George Pal Says: And why just now do the majority of the people comply with the Gnostic declarations of goodness?
they dont, the gnostic declarations followed their natures… not the other way around.
in case you havent noticed there has never really been any society that in itself set its ideas up on the basis of evil… even the evil think they are good, or doing something good, or have a leader claim that what will happen is good.
they took the idea from people and themselves, not that people are blank slates like the socialists claim and you can program them.
the dominant religions follow majority human nature and focus on different things that their adherents find suit them for one reason or another.
islam was suitable for the people of the time of its origination in that the prophet gave them a way to be sinful, without being sinful. ie. you can be bad, but if in the service of islam your good.
as one jihadi recently said in an interview
if i did not become a jihadi, my evil would not allow me into heaven (paraphrased)
hitler didnt sell his ideas to the public by openly saying we are going to kill jews, elect me. he had to first couch the whole thing in terms of economics, in terms of the evil of equals having more by cheating (what we call disparate impact today), and that this evil was going to be cleaned up…
the soviets and marx describe their thing as utopian, thats not evil, that idea is a place of infinite good, the execution of it impossible and so nasty eveil people can use the good of others to do their dirty work (as hitler also did)
look at mao, he promised goodness if you folloed his plans, not starvation and deprivation. he did not say, join me, be deprived of life and everything and set me up, and you will live under an evil thumb?
no one does that except for maybe the satanists, but if you talk to them, they even twist that into the idea that satanism is not about evil and hurting, its about self determination and owing no one and so on.. (dont get me started on gardnerians, satanists, and so on)
as far as augustine, the logic works with or without god based on whether you think reality is goodness… even if it has bad in it..
do you think existence the universe and all that is good sans god? if not, then you become what? a nihilist? a buddist who has to transcend reality? a confucian who has to regulate it all and keep it from changing to meet the evil with customary solutions that dont change?
i dont get into the whole mishmosh that is mostly philosopy, most of it quite idiotic.
to me most of philosophy is like cotton candy, looks large, its very sweet, and when you bite into it, there is not much substance there.
you may be a person who sees it as coherent whole, i see it as mostly a faddish mishmosh of often silly ideas that people like and tend to gravitate too for various reasons (like a religion)..
but i am not above trying to use it and its concepts as a basis for understanding.
most people see living as good
they dont have to be taught that
in fact they have to be taught in lies and contortions to believe at all that its bad!!!
evil as a concept or a being or as a thing in itself is a hard boat to row. as one mans evil is anotehr mans good, and not so easy to tease out. but augustine is right in that what we call evil usually twists good.
the germans thought they were doing good
obama thinks that his bad is good, and might not even think its bad…
the millions that died in the gulag had to first be turned into matter and material before the idea was palatable. ie. how can a rock care of morals or that its evil to break it? it cant, and a person is no more spiritual and all that than a rock. so killing people is not an issue to such a believer.
but think of what you have to abandon and limit yourself to to hold that..
under such, good and bad have no meaning, which is why communists and socialists say there is no such thign as good or evil (other than for using other people it suffices to make claims that way as it allows you to direct the material to your ends which as a leader is superior by just you having that station)
i have to go. sorry
besides, this would get to long anyway
Phil D Says: I just cannot believe in this “guilt” as anything but an excuse, a sophism. Now if you put it like “they have learned to hate their own civilization (while fully profiting by it)”, well I could agree with that.
what you write sounds like the writings of sociopaths i have read, and no they dont know they are sociopaths. one of the most famous doctors in the area of that medical issue discovered he was that way, and argues that its not ncessarily “bad”
but they dont understand guilt any more than the color blind can understand what is missing in what they see or a deaf person who never hear a sound can understand a frisson from music
you do know what frisson is?
without that part of their make up existing, they cant understand what the brouhaha is all about.
The idea is completely foreign to me.
If you are right then we are in even deeper … than I thought we were. And one of the reasons I follow USA blogs is because I think the USA has more the ability, more the chance, to turn the situation to the better than Europe.
Time to learn to pray, it seems.
I think it is a real emotion, guilt, and I covered it a little bit back when people were arguing about Muslim vs Christianity sometime around 2012. Religions exist to moderate or deal with guilt in a population. If it is un regulated, then bad stuff starts happening.
The Left feels a lot of emotions, but some of it is fabricated and installed in them. Ever hear of the Left’s experiments in 1980s America implanting false memories of child rape into subjects? It got real popular and profitable too, as with Sybill the multiple personality incident. Amongst interrogators and human body language readers, the instigation, control, and/or implantation of emotions into a subject human is already a proven technique or set of them. People already use it on the small scale. The Left is merely applying it to a larger scale.
When the Left orders them in the US to turn in their conservative neighbors to the rape and death squads, will the Leftists feel guilt? Maybe. Will they obey the orders? Yes, they will, nothing inside them can stand up to the Power of the World. They may feel hesitation and guilt for turning conservatives in, but they will still do it, because powerful emotions will punish them if they disobey. They in fact, may feel more guilt for disobeying a God King like Hussein, than they would feel for turning in an evil Republican, for example.
Why does Western Europe seem so determined to commit cultural suicide?
Why are the womyn so willing to be a part of it?
After all them womyn will be the ones graded based on boobs size, bagged and sold into slavery.
Yet, crickets.
The Vagina organizations are usually easily inflamed.
Yet, crickets.
Crickets:MUSLIM WOMAN BEATEN IN PUBLIC EXPERIMENT
No female reaction to speak of.
Them womyn sing along.
Coo!
I’m not sure this all has very much to do with Guilt, rather, I think it is an assertion of superiority on the part of individuals and groups. There is a very close resemblance, psychologically-speaking, to something that was called the National Repentance Movement in Britain in the late 1930s and even through 1940. C S Lewis wrote about this eloquently, and I excerpted his remarks here:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html#113025601131128915
the National Repentance Movement
Amazing!
Nowadays, compassion has been weaponized.
I’m not sure this all has very much to do with Guilt, rather, I think it is an assertion of superiority on the part of individuals and groups.
Superiority is merely one way to cover up the guilt.
For example, why do people attack Sarah Palin so often back in 2008? Because the fact that she refused to abort her child made the feminists guilty. The fact that she didn’t sacrifice her birth years to a career, made the feminists guilty. So the feminist US traitors had to make her inferior to them, otherwise the guilt and resultant hesitation would eat into their Faith, their Fanaticism, and that alone could not be allowed.
the National Repentance Movement
There was an article about some people who came back from WWI, at the funeral speech of one of their lost comrades. Can’t remember the source.
So the speaker was the leader of the university or school, and the youth sent to war and many who died, were students of the school. So the speaker was saying things like the soldiers had successfully performed their duties, glory of war, and how their sacrifice will be remembered.
When up and stands the veterans who couldn’t take it and say “that is not what they died for”, stopping the speech in its tracks. The veterans themselves were emotionally distraught, but logically they had no arguments to make in that context. It’s because the guilt they felt for their comrades, could not be resolved by the speech of a person who was not on the battlefield.
It’s easier on people if they can justify the sacrifices as winning the war, but for Germany they didn’t even have that.
That kind of bundle of negative emotion, never being purged or purified, tends to do bad things to a culture, especially if they are the younger generation who will take over.
Historically, there were a number of cultural methods to resolve guilt, on top of the religious. Farmers make their living on killing life to sustain their own and their family’s. Mercenaries or warriors make their life based on their skill, and resolve guilt by taking an equal chance at dying as their enemies. Plus survival makes it easier to cut and kill.
But how many people in the modern Western country is a mercenary, warrior, or farmer?
What methods, if any, do they have in their culture or religion to deal with guilt? With living at the expense of others?
Artfldgr.
“in case you havent noticed there has never really been any society that in itself set its ideas up on the basis of evil… even the evil think they are good, or doing something good, or have a leader claim that what will happen is good.”
You make a good point of societies not forming on the basis of evil, the examples of Islam and Hitler’s Germany, and the Soviets and Marx, but draw the wrong conclusion in regards the Gnostics.
Islam had formulated ‘good’ out of pretense. The pretense of religion, the pretense of Allah as God, the pretense of Allah as the Abrahamic God, all to promote the appetites of Mahomet, all exceedingly deviant/evil, all exceedingly temporal.
And indeed Hitler and Soviet utopianism formulated their ideas as good. But these formulations were acceptable in that they were conventional. Not a one of them had abrogated the very nature of nature. Gnosticism also couches its notions as ‘good’ but who, in the course of three thousand years of civilization, would have given consideration to their dogma? In three millennia, who had considered marriage between sodomites good — or marriage? Who had recognized three sexes let alone fifty plus? Who would have concurred that “The White Majority is the Problem” – Social Democrat Party Leader (Sweden and not a few American University professors))?
To what precisely would you attribute the fact that evil had always to be presented, and absorbed, in terms, notions, designs, language the targeted community could understand and find acceptable? To what would you attribute the fact that the Gnostics are not obliged to do as much — indeed, haven’t the need to do as much? Could it be… “you can fool most of the people most of the time if they had been raised to be fools for nothing?”
Why does Western Europe seem so determined to commit cultural suicide?
Maybe could be added to that title:
The Silence of the Chicks
Womyn bagged into submission seen by the hundreds in the western streets … not a pip.
Here in Milwaukee, in the over polite midwest, as geographically excentered as can be, I see several everyday.
Then there is this excrutiating POS.
We don’t have a moooslime problem, we have a womyn problem.
A few observations from Germany: Yes, the guilt is real, but lots of average people are starting to see that they don’t want to sacrifice their culture. There is also the class thing. Working and middle class people are far less likely to challenge the intellectual and artsy classes who propagate the do gooder mentality.
Merkel was on TV tonight. She still seems to believe that the refugees will adapt to German laws and traditions of free speech etc. Like lots of Germans, she doesn’t seem to realize that the newcomers are not the Turks of yesteryear, who had lived with Attaturk’s secular society. Even among these, those who lived in large enclaves were less likely to integrate completely. Attitudes toward education and childrearing did not change for many of these.
As for Merkel’s continued, though diminished, popularity, that has something to do with the lack of alternatives. She has some more sensible people within her party. The social democrats would have to form a coaltion with the greens to form a new government, and the greens are all for more immigration. Some of the newer alternative parties unfortunately have some real neo-Nazi elements, so they aren’t trustworthy for many people.
While Germans like to show empathy for the poor and downtrodden of the world, many seem to have little empathy for what the Eastern European countries went through under communism. This is why they came down so hard on Hungary. Even among former East Germans, there are certain classes who haven’t made out so well since reunification. These people are not so happy about providing welfare to hordes of newcomers.
Finally, there is a tent city not far from where I live (maybe 12 blocks), and we see the migrants walking around at night. I just don’t know how long these young men will be happy to sit around all day or when they might start causing trouble. There are some efforts in Germany to get them job training, but I can’t believe this will go far enough.
Here we sit, on this side of the Pond, scratching our heads about what’s going on in our own country, and we should have the luxury of trying to figure out the Euros?
Why doesn’t someone just ask them? In a challenging way, pushing past the Merkel platitudes? Why are there not more in the Pegida crowd? Or in France, part of the Marine Le Pen faction? Please don’t tell me it was because the Pegida head honcho painted on a Hitler mustache as a joke, either.
Put the Euros under the scope. Really. Put. Them. Under. The. Scope.
Is it simply because all the bad, really bad political ideas have been hatched in Europe for the past 150 years, and the present is just a continuation?
expat Says:Merkel was on TV tonight. She still seems to believe that the refugees will adapt to German laws and traditions of free speech etc. Like lots of Germans, she doesn’t seem to realize that the newcomers are not the Turks of yesteryear, who had lived with Attaturk’s secular society. Even among these, those who lived in large enclaves were less likely to integrate completely. Attitudes toward education and childrearing did not change for many of these.
You gotta laugh:
In Strasburg,Erdogan urges Turks to reject French values
The silence of the Chicks ….
Neo , your comment on the “vestigial organ” reminded me of this Christian Prophecy about the latter days ” …Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:…” 2 Timothy 3:5a.KJV
The greater Context is this : “3:1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5 KJV
Neo
Today in Council Bluffs, Iowa Hillary said this election will set the tone for rest of the century. I agreed with her.
Check Power Line later for my full take.
Europe could be fixed with 30,000 conservative Jesuits. But the numbers aren’t even close.
“GOLDEN CUP IN HER HAND” (Rev 17:4), “making all nations DRUNK with the wine of her fornication” (Rev 17:2; 18:3), is divinely called “MYSTERY, Babylon the Great” (Rev 17:5).
“Babylon hath been a GOLDEN CUP in the Lord’s hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad” (Jer 51:7).
“Mystery, Babylon the Great, the MOTHER of harlots and abominations of the earth.”
“But of this stone [Parian marble] Phidias,” says he, “made a statue of Nemesis; and on the head of the goddess there is a crown adorned with stags, and images of victory of no great magnitude. In her left hand, too, she holds a branch of an ash tree, and in her right A CUP, in which Ethiopians are carved.” (PAUSANIAS, Attica) Pausanias declares himself unable to assign any reason why “the Ethiopians” were carved on the cup; but the meaning of the Ethiopians and the stags too will be apparent to all who read further.
On the internets, there was an interesting theory or claim made. Namely that Ishtar, the old Sumerian goddess of fertility, was the image which formed the basis for the Statue of Liberty. Liberty=Roman goddess Libertas=Venus=Aphrodite=Ishtar, that kind of progression in the divine hierarchy.
Mystery Babylon. Were the people back then interpreting things incorrectly, assuming they were shown a divine vision? What if they saw America as it exists now, what would they interpret that as, the Statue of Liberty overlooking New York and the depravities of Democrats?
Mystery Babylon, was something they didn’t know the exact name of or the place of, if they had merely seen it.
Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)
Revelation 17:1, “…the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.”
Revelation 17:15, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.”
Revelation 17:18, “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”
Revelation 18:7, “In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.'”
Revelation 18:3, “…and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”
Revelation 18:11, “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more…”
Revelation 18:15, “The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment…”
Revelation 18:23, “…Your merchants were the world’s great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.”
Jeremiah 50:23, “How broken and shattered is the hammer of the whole earth!”
Jeremiah 51:20, “You are my war club, my weapon for battle- with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms,”
Isaiah 14:4-6, “…How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended! The Lord has broken the rod of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers, which in anger struck down peoples with unceasing blows, and in fury subdued nations with relentless aggression.”
Revelation 18:17-19, “…all who travel by ship… and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off… and with weeping and mourning cry out: ‘Woe! Woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth!’ “
That’s not Baghdad or Ancient Summer. Many of those cities were land locked. Rome, another big contender for Mystery Babylon, is also land locked.
These aren’t the full quotes in the Bible and they have been condensed. I myself do not technically believe in the Revealed Truth of the Bible, Old or New Testament, but that’s besides the point of historical research.
If people were given revelations, divine or otherwise, and accurately predicted future events, that in and of itself, doesn’t need divine power to explain it. Although Divine Power would be pretty convenient for that.
An ancient people, an individual with his cultural and religious indoctrination limiting his ability to reason or think, a writing system that may be prone to inaccuracies, if they were shown the modern world or a divine inspiration, how much of it would they understand? That was my singular issue with Divinely revealed truth in the Bible, about how much a single human could hold in their head and accurately describe in ancient words.
If Mystery Babylon is the United States of America and the city with a port with a woman holding up a cup (what the torch used to be) is the statue next to New York City, what does that mean?
Perhaps it is all the final apotheosis of a desiccated and utterly depraved final step in Romanticism. Many weak souls now half in love with easeful death….
“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain–
To thy high requiem become a sod.”
Farage Makes Merkel and Hollande Squirm at European Parliament
Merkel should wear a bag on her head, Hollande grow a beard ….
Silence of the Chicks ….
Ymarsakar…”So the speaker was the leader of the university or school, and the youth sent to war and many who died, were students of the school. So the speaker was saying things like the soldiers had successfully performed their duties, glory of war, and how their sacrifice will be remembered.” This sounds like a passage from Remarque’s “The Road Back,” a moving and important book that has sadly been pretty much forgotten. I reviewed it here:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/21350.html
expat @7:49 pm:
I appreciate your post. Your observation the German working class is intimidated by the artsy/intellectual crowd is helpful.
It may take a resurrection of German nationalism (if a spark survives), the idea of die Deutsche Volk to begin to fix things, but apparently being anti-PC is illegal there, and the Volk is no more.
Have just finished reading “Suicide of the West,” written in 1962 I believe, and I was astonished at how much if it could have been written about today… The chapter on foreign policy especially. He got some things wrong, or half-wrong, but overall it’s a great summation of liberalism, what it is, what it does, and what it means. He identified guilt as one of the main drivers in the liberal ideology. As a former liberal, I used to feel it… but I cant’ tell you why. I just did. I think ideologies are like that.
Liberals are guilty that htey’re alive. They have no desire to give up any of the comforts (at least most of them don’t) or position, but they are very happy to assuage their guilt by taking away YOURS. Liberals believe that we do not deserve the things we have, and that other people should have them. They just do.
Why? I don’t know. I don’t remember if this is the book I read it in or not, but someone I read recently said that Europe did not survive WWII — it won the battles, but with fatal wounds it is still dying from. I think that might be true.
When we are thinking about all this, we also need to consider the power of shame. Even undeserved Guilt may be hidden away, eating the soul in silence; PC-Shame is public, and a potent weapon in the hands of the Left.
A merited, earned shame can be faced with the strength of atonement and the possibility of blessed redemption; undeserved, PC-shame especially bites and tears.
PC-shame has to be appeased in public, with bared feet and naked back to bear the whips and scorn of widely publicized communal humiliation and contrition.
Public absolution, if it ever comes, must be too dearly fought for, and will never have the sweet, wild touch of mercy.
I wrote about “Including the USA; a bit of a hobby horse for me. Like Melanie sang “We all have the same disease”. Perhaps I have been a bit too much exposed to “those Europeans” on American blogs.”
Now this why I have that hobbyhorse;
“Is it simply because all the bad, really bad political ideas have been hatched in Europe for the past 150 years, and the present is just a continuation?”
Art; “what you write sounds like the writings of sociopaths i have read ….” I sincerely hope I’m not the subject of it, the “sociopath” in question. Its probably a question of writing style but could you please clarify.
Ymarsaker
“Ever hear of the Left’s experiments in 1980s America implanting false memories of child rape into subjects?”
I don’t know about “experiments” but I do know about the Amiraults. It’s one of those things that makes me think that in some aspects the USA is even more crazy than Europe.
Mark Steyn is on the right track, European culture is dying because Europeans are not having enough children. Filling the void with muslims is cultural suicide. Few European politicians are willing to face these facts. Some of the smaller EU countries are resisting – Finland, Hungary stand out – but the rest go with the flow. Actually. it is a flood; young Muslim males, from Pakistan to Nigeria, are entering Europe illegally en masse.
If a culture wants to commit cultural suicide by admitting millions of its enemies into its ranks, then so be it. Ancient Rome did it and died.
I might add that the leftist ideology that allowed this to happen was created, nurtured and sustained by the Soviet Union and its agents. The Soviet Union may have shrunk, but its poisonous ideology persists, even into the heart of the USA.
Just for your information, the Jesuits are no longer ‘conservative’. The Jesuits were in the vanguard of Liberation Theology which basically pushed communism. The current Pope is a Jesuit, and couldn’t be more left wing/commie.
Cornhead: “Europe could be fixed with 30,000 conservative Jesuits”
That made me chuckle (in a good non-cynical way).
Give me 30,000 “true” Jesuits devoted to the cause and I bet even this country could be fixed.
Post and entire thread were wonderful to read.
French Train Attack Hero Spencer Stone Stabbed
First Oregon then this …hmmm
George Pal, good points… but the question you ask is that evil is just good twisted…
(and i am talking true evil, not i hate mosquitos they are evil. but the kind in which in which a few million die for the point of an experiment they didnt sign on for… )
I should point out that the examples you gave are people who replaced gnosticism with materialism in which they deny any metaphysical plane or any such thing, reducing us all to the same material we are made from. a case of the whole is not greater thanthe parts its made up of.
in many ways, too much of something can explain things well… too much gnostic thinking and you get a zeal that then warps the good, and if you abandon the mystical, you get a zeal in which you want to stamp it out in others, and that to you may be a good thing..
its really hard to discuss these things, and made harder in which the terms we use and ideas we banter arent just somewhat vague, but are also contextual and experiential. that is, what you grew up in and what each of us learns in our private path through reality before we fade away and are no more.
so excuse me if i was not classical in this, but am trying to discuss this. if we had a mathematics of the metaphysical and the materialist and gnostic views we could maybe pin things down better.
but i am doing a lot worse than the priests and thinkers who had independent wealth and could sit down and work thruogh things over and over in some deep thinking. havent been able to do that seriously since i became an adult and even less now that i am married.
but you make great points and i wish we met in a place where we could discuss them and you can point out some stuff and i could as well…
i am not claiming to be the expert in this by no means and often the things i say are either quotes or can be very derivative from a huge library in my head.. mostly cause few want to hear what i think and many get better milage from using retreads from classical thinking they had not learned or been exposed to
given your conversation on this, i am quite sure you have ploughed through a large amount of complicated stuff that is as imprecise as it is complicated and hard to hold.
thanks… i appreciate it, though i dont really have the space to answer well in this. you have brought the conversation to the point of needing a library and more to get deeper and we just dont have that space or time as the next subject is up on the board and the crowd has left the theater for the next entertainmen.
i cant even be sure you will read this!
but if you do, thanks…
Phil D Says: Art; “what you write sounds like the writings of sociopaths i have read ….” I sincerely hope I’m not the subject of it, the “sociopath” in question. Its probably a question of writing style but could you please clarify.
no there is an ocean between sounding like in some few sentences and being like..
after all, if you look at most mental issues they tend to be extremes of somewhat normal behavior, not truly alien behavior, so we all share the seeds of the points in that.
you dont have to be a sociopath to not have sympathy, but it helps.. 🙂
you dont have to be paranoid, to understand how to be cautious, or to ingnore all warning signs.
so no… i was not calling you a sociopath, and i am sorry if i did not put the words right to make that clear (And am glad you asked).
sometimes we all can sound a bit like those things and because that is not permanent or constant, we do not suffer having those things.
Artfldgr,
I have read your response, and accept your insight on the matter as problematic, i.e., imprecise, complicated, and therefore greatly given to subjectivity – whether from afar or close and personal. And you’re welcome.
“Barry Meislin Says:
October 7th, 2015 at 11:36 am
Actually, I think the answer is a lot simpler.
Having tried so hard–but so unsuccessfully–to prod, persuade, cajole, force the State of Israel to commit suicide, the progressive, sophisticated and uber-cultured states of Europe have–out of desperation–decided to SHOW Israel HOW to do it.”
I don’t think what you pretend to say seriously, is true, but it is a bulls-eye all the same.
David Foster
That’s the one I remember, and I probably read it at your blog as well.
Without victory, people have to justify their comrade’s deaths in another fashion, and they cannot easily erase the guilt of allowing their comrades to die, merely by saying that they were fighting for a lost cause.
So Germany would have been hit harder in WWI than Britain or France, but everyone in Europe was hit with a ‘mortal wound’. Then they got the coup de grace in WWII.
In WWII, there was the hidden under story to Iwo Jima’s flag raising. The people who were volunteered to return home and go on fund raising campaigns and parades, weren’t the actual people who first raised the flag. Those individuals suffered fatal casualties. So Clint Eastwood made a story depicting how guilt eats up the survivors when the nation praises them for doing something they know that they weren’t the first to do there. Under FDR the Democrat, expedient methods were often utilized over military discipline or efficiency.
So even if people win a battle or war, there can be some pretty toxic guilt at having survived and been rewarded, in the place of the honorable dead. And if religion and culture doesn’t provide a way to atone for that sin or guilt, people tend to break over time.
That is why the Leftist alliance is mostly made out of broken cultists. It’s easy to break them, but most people just try to reason with them, that’s why it doesn’t work.
PhilD, the lawyers obtained a lot of power via prosecutions like that. When they became wedded to the Leftist alliance, that empowered both factions and every faction in the alliance.
It is also tied to the massacre of children at Waco, because the clinton prosecutors like Reno wanted to capture the children and put them in 24/7 interrogation to break them and make them “confess” to child molestation by the Branch Davidians.
The experiments I’m referring to are Leftist psychologists using deep regressive hypnosis to implant false memories. Which is an order, at least, more effective than merely 24/7 interrogation to break a subject and make them say what you want them to say (the reason why the Left thought GitMo was doing this is because the Left specialized in doing that to their prisoners.)
Frog wrote:
Merkel has made a second huge mistake. The first was after Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, rejecting modernism
At Fukushima, Japan, a first generation reactor near a geological fault line half the world away was hit by a tsunami – NONE of which applies to Germany, at ALL! – resulting in the herding the eco-worshipping Germans (cf, Wagner and Norse mythology), into rejecting improving modern technology and to go pagan instead! Worshipping the sun and wind, etc.
Why? Well, aren’t we all going top fry from global warming if we don’t?
Instead of rejecting that ridiculously false move, which has doubled electricity cost in Germany, Mad Mutti Merkel has decided to double down!
If german chemical and manufacturing is going to follow low-cost energy from US fracking to the old rust belt of Ohio, then the Germany facing higher cost labor from 5% unemployment can remedy the plunging rate of reproduction AND get labor costs lower by increasing the numbers of low-wage laborers by importing a couple million of them!
At least this is only line of thinking that makes sense to me. Importing those least able to assimilate, and in the nation doing the worst to achieve assimilation, seems wreckless to us in the extreme!
Merely doing it out of their hearts seems too much to accept. Thus, I think it has to do with the synergy of making the German industrial machine more labor market flexible.
Without this consideration, it all makes no sense – now, including this fact, makes some net-net positive sense
From the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (Anglican):
“Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.
“We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.
“Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Forgive us all that is past; and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, io the honour and glory of thy name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Contrast that majestic, rolling Elizabethan thunder with the 1960s milquetoast revision (see the felt applique banners? hear the amateur guitars?):
“Officiant and People together, all kneeling
“Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.”
The dry rot in mainline Protestant churches is deep, and most are no longer Christian. The minister in the NYC church I sometimes attend gave a perfectly Unitarian sermon last Easter — EASTER! — saying “It doesn’t matter what you believe, because God will redeem all creation in the end.” I was sorely tempted to stand up and say, “So what the hell are we all doing HERE? Let’s go play GOLF.”
He was pandering to the twice-a-year crowd, hoping to draw some of them in by not making any Demands. In contrast, the evangelical churches, which are Very strong in basic Christianity, are thriving. People know weak tea when they drink it, and they spew it out of their mouths.
My three cents.
Beverly : interesting difference. I’ve analyzed text tones in writing for some years now, and the first version seems obviously sincere whereas the second is rather dry and un emotional.
The dry rot in mainline Protestant churches is deep, and most are no longer Christian.
That’s one reason why the pro Papal or pro Catholic church forces fought against the Protestant reformers, to maintain the purity of the main line and prevent heresies from being born.
However, the Catholic Church wasn’t helping with their corrupt practices, paid indulgences, and other political issues.
Beverly; Ymarsakar:
See this.
Minta Marie Morze
Certainly, the Left’s methods of “atoning” by burning and drowning witches doesn’t produce good people. But it is not designed to. It is designed to create Perfect Humans that Obey Absolutely, Perfect Obedient Stormtroopers, is what they wish for. And what they have gotten.