In Search of the Origins of Postmodern Self-Loathing (II)

Part (I)

Part (II)

Auguste Comte completed his vast work in re of Positivism in 1842. Comte believed in no other source of human knowledge than the empirical method exclusively, and built a fuzzy agnostic pseudo-religion around it. Positivism is the opposite of relativism, it is materialistic and science as an idea gone haywire.

It is not a very great surprise that every French intellectual appears to be practically raised on it. De Lubac: "Every undergraduate in France knows "the law of the three states ... every branch of knowledge has necessarily to pass through three successive theoretical states: 1. the theological or fictitious state, 2. the metaphysical or abstract state, 3. and the scientific or positive state".

So in the earliest stages of man's development he began by conceiving phenomena as a result of continuous influence of supernatural agents, which Comte terms fetishism: found in animism - to which we seem to be reverting today, as Comte would have it, as we shall see - and for example in the Greek and Roman pantheons.

In a later stage, the metaphysical, man came "to regard such phenomena as produced by various abstract forces inherent in bodies but distinct and heterogeneous". This stage is found in the monotheistic religions 'of the Book', Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

And finally man considers phenomena as subject to a "certain number of invariable natural laws that are nothing but the general expression of the relations observed in their developments", in other words science: the third, or positive state. For this stage Comte later used the term 'sociology'; Auguste Comte is considered by some to be the father of sociology.

Comte seems to have had a total contempt for the contemporary dominant, secondary stage and would prefer to skip the phase altogether, which he deemed possible under certain circumstances. It reminds me of the remarks of Stuart Sim in his contribution to the polemics on Signandsight re The Multicultural Issue: "Personally, I'd like to see religion wither away as a force in human affairs ...". Sim means, secondary stage religion. Compare Comte: "Catholicism is rotten to the core, all theology is 'outmoded', and everything that comes from it is now in a state of hopeless decrepitude, etc. ...".

De Lubac: "When the generation of transmission had come to an end, a ceremony would 'finally inaugurate the new religious regime ...". In anticipation Comte had started his own calender (as we have seen in Mussolini a sign of megalomania): on 23rd Archimedes in the year 63 (22nd April 1851) Comte wrote: "I shall be preaching positivism at Notre Dame as the only real and complete religion".

Comte described the third state "as positive as any other science based on observation". Comte even came to perceive a fourth state, in which the mind frees itself even from science: the truly positive state. Perhaps predictably enough Comte's ideal fourth state results paradoxically in ... relativism! Comte saw those that reached this ideal state as "resolutely freeing themselves from the prejudice that leads us 'to place ourselves on a different footing from things' and 'to claim a special place in the universe". Sounds familiar?

Compare that with today's multicultural complaint based on relativism's tenets about Western ethnocentricity and the Christian view of our central place in the Cosmos. Auguste Comte saw it thus: Monotheism or the metaphysical state is opposed to both the first and the third stage, "so much so that the positive state can be considered as the reestablishment of the "normal state, interrupted during the Western transition ...". If that isn't true self-loathing, I don't know what is: Down With Us! It was with us, 160 years ago.

A measure of how just like relativism today, 'positive thought' pervaded Comte's contemporary intellectuals, De Lubac writes: "Right at the end of his life, he noted with satisfaction that his 'thirty years of work' had already secured the admission of this law by all thinkers really abreast of the times", much like today's relativist prophets are congratulating themselves with the pervasiveness of their own particular postmodern fallacy.

While much can be said about Comte's mistakes and the willful suppression of later discovered facts, De Lubac sums the main problems with positivism up as follows: "... his (Comte's) offence lies in ... wishing to reduce man to no more than the subject matter of sociology". The extraordinary things happening as a result of the fallacy when the mind is reduced to its object can be found here in two articles by my philosopher-hero Greg Koukl, "All Mind, no Brain" and "All Words in your Brain".

To wrap this up in the words of Henri De Lubac: "Having reached its final state of rational positivity ... the human mind abandons its quest of the absolute ... Comtean thought immured itself in the relative as a last resource after having found itself powerless to decide the question of the absolute. Separating 'positive knowledge' from 'belief', it took the terrestrial horizon as its boundary, without prejudice to what might lie beyond it ... Comte is said to have declared the problem of God unsolvable".

Quotes of the Day, History calling, and Yes to an Islamic State in the Balkans

"These people are so hard-line I think it doesn't even merit the word 'hard-line'. They're way beyond that."
Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, asked about Iran's Revolutionary Guard, currently having control over the 15 British hostages.
Question: Has anybody looked lately what else is going on, perhaps in the nuclear department?

is vying with another remarkable revelation:

"The Middle-East is going through a serious change, which has been sharpened since the Second Lebanon War. This process has brought about a change in the Arab frame of mind. Israel is no longer considered their biggest problem. This is a revolutionary thought."
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Question: Is it all Shia or just Iran's increasing power politics that's currently taking up all the attention? Or alternatively, could it be The Great Arab Unraveling? That would be good news towards the Eurabian Empire!

In more remarkable news:

- Bones of Missing Greek-Cypriots Unearthed
Bones believed to belong to more than 30 Greek-Cypriots, who have gone missing since the Turkish invasion in 1974, were found in Kyrenia, northern Cyprus, said a member of the Committee on Missing Persons, further claiming that more bones, possibly belonging to Greek-Cypriots, may also come to light.

- Euro-Parliament demands semi-autonomous Islamic state in its heartland
The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly backed U.N.'s Martti Ahtisaari plan for a 'supervised' autonomy for Kosovo. The E.U.’s foreign policy chief Xavier Solana called the bloc’s planned development project in the province "the most important E.U. mission in history." (!)

A brief check on EuOberserver's site learns that the E.P. also have adopted a related report demanding that the disputed province of Kosovo be granted "supervised sovereignty." Said report was drawn up by Dutch Green MEP Joost Lagendijk. He expressed satisfaction over the fact that the E.P. chose to send an unambiguous signal to E.U. capitals, while saying it is the "first step" to a "united Europe" over the Kosovo issue.

Meanwhile Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that the U.N.'s plan will fail, if pursued.

Commentary: It may be noted that said Mr Lagendijk is a staunch federalist and supports the earliest possible membership of Turkey despite - or because of - its appalling human rights record. It goes without saying that all this has nothing to do with Mr Lagendijk's private life. He is married to a Turkish woman.
It is also not explained why we should be looking forward to a semi-autonomous Islamic state in the heart of Europe, in the Balkans no less. Those unfamiliar with the area could picture themselves a sort of Tora Bora, a former tribal no-go area like Pakistan's Waziristan, smaller but just as rugged, wild and with the same tendency towards anarchy and life in accordance with the prevailing code of honour.
It may also be noted that the U.N. does not have the authority to declare any country's independence. Reason why we see all the subterfuge and underhandedness.

In Search of the Origins of Postmodern Self-Loathing (I)

I'm sure Dr Pat of the Sanity Squad would have one or two astonishing things to say about the origins of self-loathing, so common today in the West. But I approach matters from another angle. I beg to disagree with those who attribute it to a lack of confidence - because if so - then, what triggered the lack of confidence: this isn't an answer, but posing the question in another way.

Those who have gone a little deeper into the illogics of the ideology of multiculturalism and the underlying 'philosophy' of relativism, will be familiar with its bizarre tenet that Western civilization in general and Christianity in particular, are uniquely and inherently bad. I adorn philosophy with inverted commas, because I fail to see that it is even deserving of the term sophistry (for relativists: this was not meant as a compliment)! I have written extensively about relativism in The Lighthouse Blog. It only makes sense if the laws of science are temporarily suspended, so that logic is no longer a measure of true or false.

For some imperial reason best known to our European leaders, this piece of ideological junk has been elevated to the status of official sociological policy within the E.U. member countries, that being a bit of mystery in itself unless Eurabia makes any sense to you.

Americans must slowly prepare themselves for being subjected to possibly the worst excesses of the phenomenon, once the Democrats get their hands on the U.S. administration. This is at present the only thing standing between myself and the acceptance of the Eurabia Theory. Yes, I have single handedly promoted its status from conspiracy theory, to real theory. I'll come back to all that in later posts.

Okay, when the ideology of multiculturalism forces its way into you life, you're having to deal with the extraordinary notion that white occidentals are inherently more bad than other humans: something vaguely reminiscent of original sin, but exclusively for the Western hemisphere and its satellites.

Once you realise that an important basis of the multiculti hogwash lives on the molecular level - genes being so remarkably similar of all people, that they do not even want to make race distinctions anymore (hence the term multicúltural, as opposed to multi-racial or multi-ethnic), the unique exclusion of the Caucasion race can't be but another one of the ideology's breathtaking amount of paradoxymora [2]. This phenomenon is common as muck in relativism. To date it has given the adherents no rise to re-examine its tenets or its truth-value (but then, they don't believe in truth, so this attitude only stands to reason ....pfffff!).

Well, having wrestled with the question why occidentals should be inherently worse than say, Huns or Turks, I may have located a possible source for this idea. Henri de Lubac in his book The Drama of Atheist Humanism has written extensively about an Enlightenment precursor thought up some time, half way through the nineteenth century in ... you've guessed it ... France, that wonderful source of heaps of pernicious intellectualism. I shall be short about it, as details can easily be found in (online) reference works (for some major ones, visit The Lighthouse Store Room.

To be continued in Part II: Auguste Comte completed his vast work in re of Positivism in 1842. Comte believed in empirical knowledge only, and built a vast atheist pseudo-religion around it.

Of the Return of The Bolk, Animal Sacrifices, and New Tricks of the Left

While I'm researching the next feature post in re of fun and goodies, and try to have a life on the side as well out of the bl...blegosphere, today a few newsworthy items - admittedly some more upbeat than others, depending on your point of view.

- Former E.U. Commissioner Frits Bolkestein c.s. is finally roaring again!

This is how I know my Frits. I think this commissar-ship was perhaps a prestigious way to top the career, it did keep the old goat from what he does best: exercise the brain cells and trample real hard on some politically correct toe nails. Hopefully this is the start of a suitably explosive post-career as is expected of someone of his caliber:
"Former European Mandarin Exposes Intrigue, Illusions and Dangers".
God knows the world needs every straight thinker we can get, in these relativist days. A Nova video maintains he single-handedly blew the French constitution referendum to smithereens by openly singing the free-market praises of Polish plumbers! So much for French multiculturalism: a welcome to Muslims only, not WASP libertarian neo-Atlanticists.


- Earth Mother demanding sacrificial evidence of true faith!

This is how the new pagan faith celebrates a culture of life. Every winter hundreds of deer and horses starve to death in a Dutch nature reserve (this year to date, seven hecatombs). The goddess would have it so.

- Earth Mother now demands even more proof from faithful.
German baby polar bear singled out as scape-goat.


- Mugabe has a few expected, and unexpected allies.

. Mugabe thugs out to cripple all opposition.
. The E.U. is moving over 18 million Euros this year to Zimbabwe 'to combat poverty'. This is the E.U.'s idea of supporting 'change from within'. The article doesn't say how the E.U. proposes to keep the money from going into Swiss Zanu-PF bank accounts. When you want to check it on EUObserver, you get this for transparency.
. While no troops were available for the A.U. force in Somalia, Angola is sending 2.500 troops (ninjas) to Mugabe to help him crush the opposition.

- The new Left modus operandi.

The Left has a new way of operating that is everywhere in evidence. It goes as follows:

1. Idenfy a minor point of right-wing policy (it doesn't need to have much significance or even be factual);

2. Get some exposure and be as outraged and scandalised about it as you possibly can;

3. The leftist voters are willing to believe anything, so you can be assured of a follow up, full of indignation, hysterics, and start to finish prime-time mainstream media coverage for days on end.

In the Netherlands the Leftist Red-Roman variety in a TV program with a history of constructed 'truths' - even to the point of freeze-drying human skulls in the studio fridge - have 'exposed' that the previous Government has failed to inform parliament (a major crime, carrying political death sentence) of earlier support of the U.S. government in the Iraq war than previously maintained. It involves the former Foreign Minister, presently Secretary-General of NATO, Jacob de Hoop Scheffer. The program acts as if they have uncovered proof of Nazi involvement, and even have issued a press release to lend more fire to their outrage. Also the old British canard is paraded in evidence: that the support was to uncover WMD, while the factual reason was that Saddam had been violating the terms for ending the 1st Gulf War for twelve long years, an offence the Security Council for economic reasons best known to themselves, failed to enforce. If you ask me, this scenario is a backwards carbon copy of the recent 'exposure' by Seymour Hersh of Pentagon Iran war planning.

4. If that approach won't fly, get on the record as follows: stand before a mike, flushed and slightly out of breath - think: you just came out of a meeting with a major opposition figure and you were an inch removed from having to call Security to fetch the men in white coats, brandishing straight jackets - then say very slowly and utterly composed: "The - opposition - must - calm - down and do their utmost to be reasonable about this. They must understand we are doing this for the good of the people", or words to that effect. Not only have you had your say, but the opposition will come across as if in a total panic, as hysterical beyond reason. I saw a prime example yesterday, but I regret YouTube doesn't have it on record.

Hey, nobody said it'd be one huge rose-garden!

The Totalitarian Pseudo-Religions (III)

Continued from Part II:

A much better job was made of it on the right hand side of the totalitarian divide. It is imprecise custom to describe all varieties, Germanic Nazism and its Italian and Spanish counterparts, as Fascism. There are however important and specific differences.

The Spanish branch endeavoured to put itself on a par with the Catholic Church and fitted itself out with a sacred mission, which gave it much more push than the pseudo-religion Soviet style.

In Italy - although the former journalist Benito Mussolini proved his megalomaniac tendencies by introducing his own calender, marking the Fascist March on Rome in 1922 - the Italian variety originally didn't do race and pseudo-religion. Mussolini even criticized Hitler's racism. It was not until in1938 the Italo-German Pact of Steel came into effect that the Italian race laws were passed.

By contrast German Nazism did race, cultural political correctness and religion, and how! The pagan variety. Getting back to our hapless commentator of part I "since the original Nazis were self declared Christians, perhaps we should refer to them as Christos-Nazis": the Nazis weren't self-confessed Christians, it was the other way around: the Nazis mimicked religion, but not the Christian one, which - as we have seen - "bound man's ferocious side that prevented him from usurping God's throne". That - on the contrary - would be the last thing the Nazis stood for as far as the supremacy of Aryan man - the Overman - the Ubermensch was concerned.

The essence of Nazism lies in the extent to which it played the religious card in manipulating the German people. Unlike its mirror ideology communism, it succeeded in touching heart and soul at once. This gave it dynamic, the energy from hell and the cruelty that far exceeded the Italian and Spanish totalitarian varieties.

The writers of The Messianic Legacy speak of "the first mystic theocracy since ancient Rome ... the Fuhrer - not a politician or even a demagogue, but a shaman". It provided the German people with a tribal cosmology, a philosophy and an ideology at once. By the nightly Nuremberg mass displays of uniforms, flags, lights, symbols and hypnotising rhythms that caused a form of trance, manipulating heart, soul and nerve centre (the so-called Cathedrals of Light: see photo).

Hitler's rhetorical gifts were non-existent as far as content was concerned: it was simplistic and infantile, renowned for its banality, but it had mantra quality. His intonation had a poisoned energy, like "a jungle war drum". Once combined with the contagiousness of the mass hysterics and the tension of the thousands of people closely packed in an enclosure, the result may well be called altered consciousness, practically: a mystical experience.

Hermann Rauschning, an early and intimate aide of Hitler's got cold feet in 1935 and fled to America where he wrote two books in warning the world for the impending menace. It soon became apparent that Hitler knew exactly what he was doing. He's quoted as saying: "During the mass event thought is suspended. As this is the consciousness I need as a sounding board for my speeches, I order people to attend ... intellectuals, the bourgeoisie and the workers. I mix people. I talk to them as a mass", a collective soul of Overmen.

This collective soul - the 'Volk', or Germanic tribal spirit, was said to lose power and energy through the presence on its soil of the Undermen. That prevented their greatness from rising to sheer cosmic levels, their rightful destiny as a people. In 'Mein Kampf' Hitler writes in detail how to play the will of people: "we need a hierachical Order of a secular priesthood."

Parts of the secular religion were provided by the composer Richard Wagner, who in the nineteenth century had "glorified the uniquely sacred quality of the Germanic blood, believing with all his heart in the theatre as a temple of the Germanic art, where mystical rites would set the German soul free".

Tom Reiss in The Orientalist describes how in a fact of extreme irony Theodor Herzl got the idea of a modern Jewish state (Zion, Israel) while listening to Wagner's opera Tannhaeuser. A story that is witness to the fact that the romantic, mystical way of thinking, linking race and culture (Blut, blood) to the ancestral soil (Boden) was not exclusively a German one, but was also typical of the time [1].

The philosopher Friedrich Nietsche we have already mentioned as provider of the required basic mind-set..

Occultism and secret societies were also rife in the Third Reich: new Templars, Germanic Orders, the Thule Society, and the Freicorps (proto SS), the latter inspired by the medieval Teutonic knights and essential to the National Socialist cause.

Christian calender occasions were replaced by pagan celebrations: Jule Tide, the semination of the flag (Blutfahne), harvest and fertility rites, solstices, and the Indo-Germanic celebration of the return of the sun god: the Sol Invictus cult (Hitler as Sol Invictus: see photo).

The Orientalist provides us with a hilarious anti climax to the carefully constructed pseudo-religious National Socialist building: a prankish claim by one Putzi Hanfstaengl - the ultimate American version of the public school tie. He was a member of the core group responsible for the early Nazi Party political campaign - Hitler's Flying Circus - and head of foreign press relations. Reiss: "Among his many creative contributions to the early Nazi movement was turning the Harvard football song - 'Fight Harvard! Fight! Fight! Fight!' - into the model for the chant 'Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!' of the Nazi mass meetings".

Reality may out-weird fiction many times over.

The Totalitarian Pseudo-Religions (II)

Continued from Part I

Enlightenment inspired, first communism and after it Nazism, sought to release man from the grip of Christianity that had kept the human spirit captive in the endeavour to save man from himself, to bind and tame human nature's creative, ferocious, chaotic, predatory side, to save his very soul. The Nietzschean ideal wanted it released, to lift man up and usurp the position of the Christian God that had kept it within bounds, denying man his own greatness, or so he thought.

The essence of this ideal is captured by Henri de Lubac in his great work "The Drama of Atheist Humanism", quoting the reflections of Rainer Maria Rilke, recorded after enthusiastically reading the work of the new prophet, Friedrich Nietzsche:

""He whom men worship as the Messiah turns the whole world into an infirmary. He calls the weak, the unfortunate, the disabled his children and his loved ones. What about the strong? How are we ourselves to climb if we lend our strength to the unfortunate and the oppressed, to idle rogues with no wits and no energy? Let them fall, let them die, alone and wretched. Be hard, be terrible, be pitiless! You must thrust yourselves forward, forward! A few men, but great ones, will build a world with their strong, muscular, masterful arms on the corpses of the weak, the sick and the infirm!"
Others have repeated the cry: "The gods are dead, long live the Overman (Ubermensch)!", celebrate the new Nietzschean ideal in terms that none can afford to ignore as a clue to some of the dominant facts of contemporary history: Nietzsche predicts an early return to the ideal, but to an entirely different and new ideal. To understand this ideal there will be a category of free minds, fortified by war, solitude and danger. They will know the wind, the glaciers, the Alpine snows; they will be able to plumb the deepest gulfs without wavering. Endowed with a kind of sublime perversity, they will deliver us from loving our neighbours and from the desire of nothingness, that the earth may recover its purpose and men their hopes".

And so, instead of the ever transcending greatness in humility, as man measures himself against the demanding directions issued by God through Revelation, man became the measure of himself, of which we oversee the result today.

Over the years a few books have been written that sought to posit something quite different, but that in passing provide us with some wonderful insights into the origins and workings of the two totalitarian pseudo-religions: communism and Nazism. One of the works, we have already introduced elsewhere: Tom Reiss' The Orientalist, gives us pages of minute details of the times and the people involved, and who - in some cases - lived through both versions of the man induced hell.

Another work - perhaps remarkably so - is The Messianic Legacy, the second 1982 tome of the Holy Blood and Holy Grail trilogy, written by former BBC journalists, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. They set out to make the case of the original story that was later plagiarised, vulgarised, simplified and commercialised by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. Of course much later, the whole hoax of the Priory of Sion and the goings-on in Rennes-Le-Château were exposed as an elaborate fabrication by Pierre Plantard c.s. But that was after a whole industry of gullible esoterics had set up shop.

But that aside, the BBC authors must be recommended for making an excellent job of their homework. This fortunately leaves us, in the second tome of the trilogy, with an erudite description how religion and myth subconsciously influence heart and mind, and how the other New Prophets of the Enlightenment, Bakunin and Adolf Hitler for communism and Nazism respectively, willfully used religious trappings and paraphernalia to get the masses on their side. The authors term these constructs surrogate secular religions.

Bakunin for over twenty years, belonged to the rank and file of Free Masonry and - as we have seen - Joseph Stalin (alias the pockmarked one: see foto) for some obscure reason best known to himself, finished his education in a Tiblisi seminary. Not only did he rub shoulders with The Orientalist protagonist's revolutionary mother, he was also a regular house guest of the well known esoterist G.I. Gurdjieff. From both these sources he got to know humanity's religious impulse up close, and learned how to harness and manipulate it.

The Messianic Legacy describes the pseudo-religious oath sworn on the occasion of Lenin's death and how the body was preserved, displayed and adored in later years, reminiscent of Christian saints.

The value attached to the membership of the Communist Party - particularly during the thirties of the last century, was specifically religious in nature.

Membership of the Pioneers from the age of nine had all the hallmarks of a rite of passage and was on par with the Catholic's first communion. The red handkerchief - symbolizing the blood of the revolutionary martyrs - was perceived as a relic, crucifix or charm. Nobody was allowed to touch it.

The book posits however, that ultimately the Marxist-Leninist ideology was never very much more than just that. It flopped because a religion must appeal to the heart as well as the soul at the same time, give succor in times of distress and provide answers to life's cosmic questions. Communism as a pseudo-religion always remained materialist, abstract and ultimately emotionally sterile.

To be continued, Part III: A much better job was made of it on the right side of the totalitarian divide. It is customary to describe all varieties, Germanic Nazism and its Italian and Spanish counterparts, as ...

The Totalitarian Pseudo-Religions (I)

I'm firmly resisting the urge to list a number of particularly noteworthy headlines, but this little gem I cannot possibly pass up:

Glowball warming hysterics reaching new heights - the end of the universe as we know it:
"We are facing a planetary emergency".

Having got that out of my system we can get down to the business of analysing a few other pseudo-religions.

Last night I happened to enjoy an instalment of one of my favourite British police series. Set in the south in England in World War II this particular piece centered on a nest of Fifth Columnists, grouping together in a rural hotel for a private function: instructions how to demoralise the local population, primarily by cutting telephone wires and psi-opsing the natives with defeatist messages, like "why bother, next week when the German army will be here it'll be all over any way".

These fiends were portrayed in the usual manner in which the Nazi spirit is conveyed: women faintly hysterical over-painted trollops, jackbooted men in leathery coats, looking sly and muttering words like "bloody Jids" while brandishing a copy of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This may be doing well on stage, it is in fact far from capturing the Nazi essence.

A further, but far more nasty misrepresentation was recently provided by a hapless commentator - with a pseudonym that was in itself telling - on the Townhall version of my article "Post postmodernism: what are the options?. Her achievement is nothing short of the miraculous, committing one fallacy, one mistake in grammar, plus two outright lies in the short declaration: "since the original Nazis were self declared Christians, perhaps we should refer to them as Christos-Nazis".

This remark is exemplary of the invective, the toxic, and under and mis-informed character of the discourse today. In the first place there's the excruciating irrationality of the postmoderns: maintaining every opinion to be equally valid, equating with a strait face totally incommensurable entities with one another. Feast your eyes on this example which is taking place on professorial level: X writes polemics, Y throws bombs, X is equal toY, they are both 'warriors'. Correspondingly above hapless commentator - presumably writing from the American context - makes following cerebral acrobatics:

Evangelicals are right-wing Christian fundamentalists;
Nazis were right-wing and fundamentalist (by the same token: fundamentalist = fanatical);
Nazis are Christians = Christos-Nazis.

The first lie is the self-serving repetition of what is now well-known to be Soviet disinformation about the war time Pope being in cahoots with the Germans - the so-called "black legend". It has continued all the way down to the present day and originated at Radio Moscow, accusing Pope Pius XII of coming forward too late with his opposition to Nazism "because he had been silent when the German death machines were running, when the chimneys of the cremating ovens were smoking". But it went unnoticed that five months after that broadcast on 29 November 1945, he had the opportunity to feel the full horror of the Nazi atrocities when he received a delegation of Jewish refugees, thanking him for the work the Catholic Church had done for them. It is also all but forgotten by outsiders that (Polish) priests were an easy and early target of Nazi suppression.

The Nazis, far from adhering to the Christian beatitudes - as in "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land" - were rather persuaded by Nietzsche's pagan lust for power. John Allen's recent article "Papal preacher exalts non-violence, connect Nietzsche to Holocaust" describes how it has been fashionable in the last half century to divorce Nietzsche from anti-theist ideas. "Wrong", says the Pope Benedict's Preacher to the Household. Nietzsche "scorned the vision of humility and non-violence" ... styling Christianity "a morality of slavery". He juxtapositioned Christ against Dionysus, his pagan deity of choice, associated with the Bacchanalia that at some point in time became so extreme, that the celebrations were prohibited by the Roman Senate in 186 B.C. It involved the pleasantry of ripping to threads smallish animals whilst under deep intoxication.

To be continued with part II ... Enlightenment inspired, first Communism and after it Nazism, sought to release man from the grip of Christianity that had kept the human spirit captive ...

Treason (IV): a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?

Earlier instalments: Part I, Part II, and Part III

Criticism of the E.U. isn't encouraged by liberal politicians: such would only place the organization in an unfavourable light and create an atmosphere against it. If we do, we mustn't be surprised about the return of a majority of No votes against the adoption of the E.U. Constitution - as was the case in The Netherlands and France. The German chairman is at present looking for Clintonian options around this problem, to get it ratified nevertheless - such is the worth of E.U. legality. Invasive, E.U.-wide policies can hence become a reality by a simple majority vote: no more Maggies about "I want my money back!".

Gradually it becomes apparent how the clever saboteur operates. A clue is provided by Pim Fortuyn's green animal rights assassin. This activist (no doubt government sponsored on the grounds of something or other beneficial to society) made an entire region of Holland a living hell for poultry farmers: law book in the one hand - note book in the other, checking every single piece of fine print against the reality on the ground, and prosecuting any discrepancy, however minor, upto the European Court of Law, if necessary.
It is therefore very important to keep a close eye on the legislators. The more they produce, the more there is to prosecute. Big, bureaucracy producing government is the enemy!

A further example of judicial terrorism is found in the following quote from an American commentator on The Brussels Journal: "It seems we share this trend of the breakdown in trust, especially as some of our own institutions are cleverly used against us; for example, six imams are suing an airline after they started praying and acting like they were going to hijack the plane, and so were thrown off the flight. Not only is the airline being sued, but so are the passengers that reported the suspicious behavior. The meaning of this couldn't be more clear: if you report a Muslim who's acting suspiciously on an airplane, you face a lawsuit. This is leading to an increasing feeling of powerlessness (but, at least we can still own guns)."

The Swedes cloaked their multicultural aspirations in an official Act of Parliament: a horror story of culture assassination of the first order. See here how the state has turned into an enemy of the very population it is supposed to protect. One wonders how we ever got ourselves into such a mess? On the other hand, it's not as if nobody was ever forewarned. It's what you get when you cut yourself off, by the root.

Then why do we accept this treason of the people, by our own elected governments? I think, because we are still prosperous nations. Also we are comparatively free within the constraints of the law: after all, I can still write this, whereas bloggers in Egypt go to jail for insulting Islam, and the head of state. Others have suggested it is, because we are at heart such law abiding citizens? In that case we'd be advised to refer ourselves back to Karl's early work on the revolution, in re of victory, sentimentality, the bourgeoisie, and all that.

And, strange as it may seem: anything becomes normality at some point. Just as Londoners during World War II got used to being bombarded night after night, and Iraqis adjust to IEDs and exploding chlorine trucks, so our minds are set to accept big government, their intrusion into our lives and the 'normality' of political correctness: to express ourselves and act in accordance with the prevailing ideology that is fed by the Unholy Alliance of urban jihadies and the Left, their shared glorification of victim-hood and constructed social identities, their shared love of the collective and 'irrational logic'.

All of the above may make us liable to accept the treason cloaked as political correctness, but circumstances change. Something dramatic may happen. Tensions are rising, so much is apparent. And it looks like the Left is doing some fundamentalism of their own, harking back to the early works of socialism, as it was supposed to be before it was hijacked by Uncle Joe c.s., who are blamed for the Soviet mess - not the ideology, not the inspirators, nor the earlier apostles. Heaven knows what that may produce!

Or can we just not imagine there's a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy happening in this place and time - against us and by our own representatives? The generations born in the free world after World War II have known only democracy and steadily increasing prosperity. It's next to impossible to imagine other circumstances. That mind-set, combined with the lack of proper history education, and the postmodern arrogance with regard to all that came before us, makes it hard to see the signs and patterns that Wladimir Bukovsky does recognize, and that sometimes emerge when we read books like The Orientalist, about which I hope to write more soon.

Let me deny the reverse of Hildebeast's product of sleepless, paranoid night sweats: no, I don't think there's a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, no Protocols of KGB Elders, but I do believe there is a Vast Totalitarian Pattern becoming apparent!

Note: Just had the afterthought that since treason as a crime seems to have been abolished, or suspended, or whatever it is they've done to it, these heathens currently in charge of our parliaments and governments in all likelyhood haven't the foggiest idea they're committing it, or what the concept is in the first place. Conversely, they'll also have no inkling of the meaning of loyalty.

Update: In this post I answered the question - if we're experiencing today a renewed onslaught of Marxism, or Neo Communism, or whatever you want to call it, negatively. I've changed my mind ... I've discovered the trick ... Eurika! How do I know? Because it's logical but above all, it's dead Boring! The peoples of the West are today living in a crypto, semi totalitarian situation in which taxation, and >>>

Treason (III): Cultural versus National Borders

Earlier instalments: Part I, and Part II

Although thought up in Canada, multiculturalism makes the perfect ideology for the E.U., as it already deals with the various (nation) states and ethnicities. If the ideology hadn't already existed, Brussels would have invented it. The artificial witch' brew that is produced in the melting pot makes the E.U. highly allergic to patriotic expressions; it breaks out in a rash each time something occurs that so much as smells like nationalism. But not to worry: such outbreaks are usually swiftly dealt with - preferably by blackmail, nebulous promises, bribes (commonly called financial aid) or a combination of all of the above.

It may not be said overtly, but it is the nature of all, corporations or bureaucracies alike: grow or die. The continent of Europe has few geographical boundaries. Technically it can expand up to the eastern and western shores of both America and Canada. The number one export product of the E.U., is the E.U.: its formation is a trick worthy of repetition elsewhere: after all, what is comes down to, is not just a simple free trade zone like any other, but one huge social contract: the voluntary abolishion of the state in lieu for 'peaceful coexistence' (another anachronistic Soviet remnant) within the Pax Europea.

The E.U. ideally cast the net wide for potential new membership: all Balkan countries, if not already a member - starting with an independent Kosovo (which is a scandal of major proportions and worth a post in itself, currently under production); Turkey; parts of Northern Africa: certainly Morocco and Tunisia; all of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and at some point in time Belarus ("the last European dictatorship"), and dare I say the Caucasus nations: Georgia, Armenia and oil-rich Azerbaijan and who knows Russia, duly 'reformed' and no longer an economical pauper: we now know the E.U. after all was fine-tuned to converge with the Soviet Union; Israel has obviously been dropped to facilitate dealings with Muslim states, also a story in itself.

There is a breed of E.U. supporter who - like communism before it (and also a formidable success) - seeks to obliterate the existing nation-states and create an artificial, new, historic, and borderless entity with an artificial ethnicity, the Europeans, just as politically and socially engineered as that other non-existing race, the Macedonians. All ingredients for a phony European statehood are in place: flag, anthem, capitol, passport, driving licence, currency, mint, manufacturer's labels: "Made in the E.U.", administration, raising taxes and the redistribution of funds.

On a micro level populations have been made state-dependent, if at least they want to enjoy the benefits and pension plans they have paid for. On a macro level we see a similar mechanism in place: the member states are dependent on Brussels to reap the benefits of what the respective citizens already paid for: commonly in the form of farm subsidies (CAP), export grants, subsidies for underdeveloped regions (cohesion funds), etc. If you'd like to enjoy the freedom of falling off the European administrative radar screen, you'll have to forfeit pensions, medical cover, etc. But as long as people have a reasonable amount of freedom within such limits, and prosperity is high, this isn't experienced as a problem (the social contract).

On the longer term the present isn't a practical state of affairs. Most borders being artificially and rather arbitrarily drawn in the first place - the last great re-arrangements having taken place after World Wars I and II - aberrations came into existence like ethnic and linguistic entities ending up on two sides of the artificial boundery.
So instead we'll strive for a Europe of the regions, for now limited to cultural, civic and economic cooperation between border areas.

But in time, new administrative units will be formed, possibly called Provinces or Departments, that are more culturally and linguistically driven: for example the Department of Limburg will comprise Dutch speaking parts of what is presently Belgium and The Netherlands. The Treaty of Schengen already foresees in free roaming, free trade, etc. This is why asylum seekers entering one Schengen signatory country have in principle free access to all other Schengen member countries. So much for general amnesties of illegal immigrants.

What fills me with suspicion is that the French Gaullists, while their staggering national chauvinism often surpasses that the Sun King - yet are staunch E.U. supporters: former French President Giscard d’Estaing plays a prominent role in the draughting of the infamous Constitution. As we have seen in Bukovsky's speech he was also the one who tipped off former Soviet president Gorbachov of the impending European Federal State.

This gives weight to the argument that Europe - far from being a United States partner - will rather become a U.S. counter-weight, the creation of yet a new bi or tri polar world of super powers. While I'm sure there are at present lots of misguided Europeans that would celebrate such a development, it would nevertheless be a historical drama and a grave mistake: a super-power cannot afford Utopian world views, reflected in almost non-existent defence spending, if surrounded by old-fashioned political power brokers.

In the meantime we forget that flexible international treaties concerning asylum and migration came into existence to facilitate those former Eastern Europeans who were lucky enough to make it over the Iron Curtain: the concrete, barbed wired wall that separated the Communist from the free world. These lenient conditions survive till this day, presently facilitating Europe tragically being overrun by immigrants, some of whom have no intention of integrating themselves, but on the contrary demand that Europeans conform to their specific cultural and religious persuasions, turning would-be member status into one of a unwelcome occupier.

In this they are aided and abetted by Europe's left-leaning multiculturalists who cannot bear the thought of having to live in a homogeneous culture and thus advocate we all follow their arrogant examples in enjoying the barbarian melting pot. In this way an entire continent changes its ethnic, cultural, and religious character, a phenomenon the likes of which not seen since Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.

It is a historical gamble for no good reason other than to realise their ideology of multiculturalism, which - as we have demonstrated in these pages - is based on irrationalities and lies. Considering what's at stake it isn't an exaggeration to state it constitutes treason against Europe's indigenous peoples, who feel left in the lurch by their own governing elites. What to think of the inner cities where the state isn't performing the very first duty: the protection of its citizens. It was to be expected: there are now people seriously calling for private militias, which brings Western Europe at least in entirely new territory, and one step closer to civil war.

To be continued: Part IV

Treason II: Crimes against Europe's Indigenous People

Earlier instalments: Part I

First of all I owe an apology for providing the wrong link in the previous instalment of Treason. Here's the correct link to the article in The Brussels Journal that prompted all that outrage: "The Native Revolt: A European Declaration of Independence". But I haven't escaped my righteous punishment: while Athens is bathing in the first spring rays of sunshine, I've been at home doing research into the early works of Karl Marx.

How the treason against the native populations perpetrated by the Unholy Alliance of multiculturalists and the urban jihadis works on the level of city politics, is pointed out by sacked social worker Marij Uit Den Bogaard. It's a Belgian/Flemish example, but I'm sure the same mechanism is at work in identical ways in other European cities.

One specific trick to shut up anyone uttering any legitimate complaint, is the projection of World War II associations against such plaintiffs. This weekend I had the doubtful honour to defend the right-wing anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang, as well as Geert Wilders' Partij voor de Vrijheid, against such attacks from none other than the Obama Campaign (or at least somebody who said to speak on their behalf). However inappropriate and contemptible, it generally touches a weak spot and the majority of opponents is usually silenced temporarily. It is nevertheless a very common, low form of manipulation and emotional blackmail, a stopper that can only be termed abuse for cheap political gain of what should be untouchable, a measure of the lengths the totalitarian tendencies take them.

Unlike The Netherlands where the proclamation of the multicultural society was a mere unofficial one, the Swedes thorough as they are - and here we are in the most dangerous territory possible - had the shameless audacity to lay it down in an Act of Parliament. I can recommend anyone interested in the subject matter to read The Brussels Journal article in its entirety, but considering its weight I'll quote some here to stress the point:

Jonathan Friedman, living in Sweden mentions that "the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that "Sweden is a Multicultural society". The Act implicitly states that Sweden doesn't have a history, only the various ethnic groups that live there. Native Swedes have been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. As Friedman puts it: "In Sweden, it's almost as if the state has sided with the immigrants against the Swedish working class."

The above is of such indescribable proportions that after three days of reading this my head is still spinning! It is an act of treason on the part of a elected elite of an indigenous population, against the same indigenous population: it is almost unparalleled in human history!

It is also a measure of the state of affairs, that the Swedes didn't revolt against it, that it isn't recognized for what it is - a crime against humanity (if it isn't, it should be), and that the atrocity has largely gone unnoticed by the mainstream media of the time (1997!). I don't think we have any idea anymore, what it is exactly we are doing at this juncture in time!

Also shockingly noteworthy is a speech delivered almost a year ago by Soviet dissident Wladimir Bukovsky. He referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of what is today termed a "Social Democrat" conspiracy to turn the European Union into a socialist organization. The Brussels Journal attended the meeting and taped the speech. Here's a link to the article "Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship".

If this sounds all too much cloak and dagger stuff to be true, you are reminded of the recent posts in present pages regarding my own independent conclusions of the postmodern undemocratic reflexes, the totalitarian tendencies, the statism, and the collectivist ideology; to which we can now add the recent re-occurrence of the telling term "intelligentsia" and brand new invented crimes against the prevailing ideology.

To be continued: Part III

The New Left: the World's Naturalist Zoo Keepers

There was a time when the Left on occasion took the moral high-ground and spoke up on behalf of the world's poor and downtrodden. Or against the inequities of Apartheid, demanding sanctions against South Africa. But that was in another world, another era. Today - with Zimbabwe at long last on the brink of collapse - an opposition spokesman again badly beaten up when he tried to leave the country on Sunday - its people starved and made homeless by an tyrannical regime, led by an octogenarian who feeds on the grain and the blood of his people - the Left tells them that change must come from within: the Prime Directive [2] in action.

Before the irrationality of postmodernism took its toll and obliterated the dualism of good and bad, right and wrong, the Left sometimes was on the side of moral courage in support of the right thing. Now 'bringing democracy at gunpoint' only leads to disaster, we are told (and as we have seen in Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Germany) and that sanctions only cause the people more hardship, (as we have seen in South Africa).

Dutch author Leon de Winter today in Elsevier writes a polemic against a fellow writer, Geert Mak, the latter a prime specimen of today's Politically Correct and Fundamentalist Multicultural Left. Mak was invited to produce a free gift book on the occasion of the annual Book Week, a promotional effort on the part of the publishing industry.

According to de Winter, in the book Mak rants away about goings-on on an Istanbul bridge and confuses human dignity with the Turkish sense of honour that is still very dominant in modern Turkish society, as many Turkish women can attest to. According to Mak this highly developed sense of honour is a beautiful thing, a trait to cherish, an ethnic treasure, which we in the West should respect and consider in our dealings with the Turk.

Mak's attitude is one of the new Left, which takes some getting used to. It is not the posture of a Leftist idealist who is out to improve the lot of his fellow comrades, to who this variety of honour can only be an "anachronistic remnant of tribal social survival reflexes" that is keeping them from improving their economic and social situation, a shackle to the feudal, pastoral past

Instead the Fundamental Multiculturalist takes the position, already pointed out to us by Pascal Brucker in his polemic against Mak's fellow naturalists Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash: it is that of the neo-colonialist, dedicated to the preservation of the natives in their natural habitat; albeit in the present case an ultra right Islamic Nationalist one that abhorred the Danish Mohammed cartoons, but in which Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has been the number one bestseller for weeks.

In the meantime there are a few dozen writers, critical of the Islamist government, that can only survive under police protection. In the wake of the recent assassination of Turko-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Orhan Pamuk, currently a refugee in the U.S., was driven to Ankara airport by heavy police escort. When I was in Istanbul for a brief moment fifteen years ago, the general atmosphere was one of fear - with kalashnikoved police officers at every street corner; apparently little has changed.

But the Left - presently in the process of reinventing themselves as the world's naturalist zoo keepers - have no problem with the Islamo-Nazist developments in Turkey and insist the country should be admitted to the E.U. at the earliest possible opportunity. That should be no problem, considering that we now know that:

- the E.U., as an organisation and as a bureaucracy, is modelled on the Soviet Union so as to facilitate easy convergence, and that

- it is a common mistake to think that the ultra Left and the ultra Right - the Communists and the National Socialists, the latter commonly known as the Nazis - were each other's totalitarian opposites - while on the contrary they mirror each other, and have a history of close cooperation.

STOP PRESS - Theo van Gogh Memorial inaugurated

In Amsterdam a Memorial has today been inaugurated in the memory of assassinated film director Theo van Gogh. The work was made by artist Jeroen Henneman and is called 'The Shout'. The work is a multi layered profile of van Gogh, the innermost layer mouth closed, the outer layer as he shouts out. The artist wanted to express the complexity of the freedom of speech. I think he's succeeded admirably.
And while we are on the subject of the psychological workings of the Left, I don't want to come across as petty but it is beyond me why a man Theo held in utmost contempt - Amsterdam City Mayor Job Cohen (Labour) - would want to play a prominent role in the proceedings, speech and all.

In the next post we continue with the serial "Treason".

Treason (I): The Natives are getting Restive

Actually, I'm shocked and mad, angry and enraged ... and although not surprised, powerless to do anything about it!

Somewhere in these pages I declared multiculturalism to be a crypto-totalitarian, irrational and collectivist ideology, a philosophical and logical mess beyond description: a form of neo-communism. And knowing how it was denounced in Holland, I gathered that since after all, governments are made up of people and they cannot be all totally daft, multicultural policies would, over time, have to be dropped also elsewhere as simply unworkable. Yes, dropped perhaps - in The Netherlands still going strong - and look a bit closer - because meanwhile it's business as usual for the multicultis in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the U.K. and also elsewhere in the Soviet Union of European States.

Yesterday I happened to stumble on a shocking piece of blogging in The Brussels Journal that nevertheless confirms all I have concluded in these pages over the last few months. If must say that if I hadn't independently come to a similar conclusion, I wouldn't have believed my eyes. So sit down for this one.

Regulars may know I don't often touch the subject of the expansion of Islam for the sheer fruitlessness of the debate: it hasn't moved an inch in years. But now there are important developments as the European natives are getting a bit restive. In the article "Native Revolt: A European Declaration of Independence" tells of the building resentment against immigrant Muslim youths that terrorise entire city neighbourhoods unimpaired by any police control, often also protected as 'minorities' by city councils and other officials (elected or otherwise).

Apparently, in a borrow of the Dutch city of Utrecht they've had enough. It won't help them one iota, of course. At present the area seems to be cordoned off from the rest of the outside world - such, that only particularly audacious mice can venture in and out. Of course every village over a hundred inhabitants long has the scenarios ready at hand for such eventualities.

In more than one respect I'm no longer a lone blogger. Let me quote this entirely: "It is insulting that two thirds of the Dutch, one of the founding members of the European community, voted against the proposed EU Constitution, and yet EU leaders will apparently just ignore this and force their massively undemocratic Constitution down people's throats anyway. The German Presidency wants EU leaders to agree on a text for a new treaty by February 2008. The label 'Constitution' is to be dropped, in order to avoid further referendums." Amen.

The article further describes in detail how the Jihad in Europe is waged against infidels in their own lands. It quotes a Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen as follows: "The Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given "hunting licence," granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims." Of course, lying, cheating, stealing and murder is Haram, unless done onto an infidel, when hypocritically it becomes Halal.

We have the tendency to look at Muslims overstepping the boundaries of the law and call it crime, but that is regarding it through Christian eyes [1]. It is a grave mistake! It's a bore, but if we want to deal with the situation seriously we'd better start reading Muslim scripture, and fast. Then we'd also know we had better heed their caveats re Jihad and Eurabia double fast: it is an Islamic point of order to pass prior warning. We ignore it at our peril.

To be continued: Part II

Bloggers turn up heat on Zimbabwe

The Lighthouse supports all those filling the streets in protest against the continued and willful destruction of Zimbabwe by the Mugabe regime.

BBC

Kubatanablogs

The Bearded Man

Postmodern Fallacy #14: relativism leads to historical barbarism!

In "Why the Left hates 300" Townhall.com columnist Ben Shapiro today gives us a review on Hollywood's latest adaptation of somebody's national history being abused, misinterpreted and re-arranged according to whatever is the day's dominant idea of the politically correct. Shapiro's commentary, and how the flick is savaged by the Left, are also not beyond reproach.

For those who haven't yet had the pleasure, Shapiro quotes some of the narrative: "Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans ...We do what we've been trained to do. We do what we've been bred to do. We do what we were born to do." There are no descriptors for this kind of purposeful anti-subtlety, opines Shapiro.

This narrative may come across as theatrical, as purposeful anti-subtlety, but it is exactly in accordance with the spirit of the myths surrounding the Spartans. They were a highly disciplined, military nation about whose toughness several stories circulate. I don't recall this prime example verbatim, but the gist of it is that a soldier stood prolonged to attention even though a fox cub was nibbling away at his ribs - a measure of the Spartan toughness and discipline.

Shapiro's not exactly civilized valley of the skulls and the father and baby overlooking it, is the stuff of the same legends: it is said that babies were exposed so that only the toughest would survive to make up the legendary Spartan army. The producer so far, is on topic.

The Persian tyrant (Greek: as opposed to democratically elected) Xerxes I - by the way, do we have a moral duty to inform ourselves? - was under orders of his father to take revenge on the Greeks for the defeat at Marathon. Seeking world-wide domination may be a Hollywood way of describing it, but Xerxes subdued Egypt and Babylon and sought to enslave the Greeks, which in 480 B.C. was together just about what made up the entire known world (Europe and Asia). The Persian army may well have consisted of degenerates: there must have been some reason this vast army lost the battle from a handful of Spartans (300?).

On the same note, Herodotos wrote in 485 B.C.: "The Persians consider Asia part of their property". An American army officer declared not so long ago rather proudly that "they (Iran) haven't invaded another country in two hundred years!"

Shocking as it may be, promiscuous bi-sexual conduct and the exposure of babies was considered quite the done thing before Jesus Christ taught humanity that it is actually unethical. If anything is the point of Christianity in favor of paganism, this is it. That today we're purposefully doing the exact opposite, is here off topic.

I regret this article is full of shocks for the uninformed Utopian, but before we recently (almost) all agreed to some form of military code of conduct, "mass murder of its male citizens, rape of female citizens, and use of women and children as slaves" contituted normal warfare. In fact, in some parts of the world it still is.

The Left's panning of the film and the comment that "Spartans in the film are a bunch of jackbooted thugs (probably their projection of a sort of ancient soup Nazis) and that "the tyranny they fight is less tyrannical than Sparta" is entirely knee-jerk predictable and wholly conform politically correct multiculturalism that possesses the Left today: caucasion, freedom-loving Greeks are identified as the 'Bad Us', while the antagonists, the Persians are the swarthy misunderstood noble savages and - of course - unsurprisingly, inherently better than we are.

The Greeks took their freedom very seriously indeed (as is the case today), and were willing to fight to the last man, woman or child to preserve it: they preferred death over a life in bondage (this also was the national motto in the fight against the Turks: freedom or death) ... a matter of principle ...

Comparing the Persians with "Al Qa'ida in adult diapers" may be considered a hilarious depiction, it is actually a sin in more ways than one:

1. it's projecting the current political situation on the one of 480 B.C., and
2. it is passing moral judgement on values and ethics of 2.500 years ago.

Doing so is common bad practice in the current relativised West and a measure of our barbarity and profound lack of wisdom and historical insight. Considering all cultures and views equally valid and beyond moral judgment may be a relativist principle, it doesn't stretch to the West, the Right, the Past and Christianity, upon which constant moral judgment is pored with relish. But we already knew that reason and logic isn't a forte of the Marxist dialectic.

The flick, as well as the commentary left, right and centre illustrates how political correctness and relativism sadly has perverted our way of thinking. Please take careful note of the following:

It is no surprise that we in the West value freedom above anything else! It is because we have inherited this Greek ideal! This is one of the points Pope Benedict XVI was trying to make in his (in)famous Regensburg speech! Through its fusion with Rome it has come to us, in Christianity! And this is the reason why we should cherish both: the ideal of freedom as well as the heritage that gave us this ideal.

And this is why - and let me phrase this carefully - it is so reprehensible that the Left is selling out a 2500 year old cultural heritage - of which they are a part - to a 2500 year old sworn enemy - the tyrants who hate liberty.