Christian Heritage

Chiesa: "How to Paint a Homily, with the Brush of Luke, Evangelist and Painter", by Sandro Magister

A book by Timothy Verdon comments on the readings for the Mass with the masterpieces of Christian art. It is a "preaching through images" that blossomed for centuries in the Church. And the current pontificate wants to revive it. (...)


From the sixth century on, the lectionaries that collected the Gospel and Epistle readings for the Mass did not need any separate commentaries. They were, in themselves, an illustration of the pages of the Sacred Scriptures, a visual guide to understanding them.

These lectionaries explained the Scriptures with images that were placed alongside the texts – for example, the splendid miniatures of the medieval codices. These images served as guides and commentaries for a clergy and a people already accustomed to seeing the events and personalities of the Sacred Scriptures depicted upon the walls of their churches.

And now, just before the first Sunday of Advent, a book has been published in Italy that gives new life to this tradition. It is a commentary on the lectionary of the Sunday and feast day Masses of year A – the volumes for years B and C will follow – made up of images from great Christian art. Images more eloquent than many words.

The author is Timothy Verdon, a priest and art historian, professor at Stanford University and the director of Florence's diocesan office for catechesis through art. He is also the author of important books on Christian art and on the role of art in the Church's life. >>>

The book is planned for translation into other languages: Timothy Verdon, "La bellezza nella parola. L'arte a commento delle letture festive. Anno A", Edizioni San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo, 2007, pp. 378, EUR 43,00.

English translation by Matthew Sherry, Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.

Islam: It's Your Day Today!

First today's reminder that the SIOE Petition to the Mayor of Brussels, Freddy "Champagne Charlie" Thielemans, to allow the 9/11 rally "Stop Islamization of Europe" can be signed HERE.

Another petition, addressed to Mad Red Ken in Londonistan for a SIOE activity in England, is available HERE.

Here's the latest update from SIOE HQ: "Brussels Mayor gags free speech because Muslims might be offended" >>>

... stressing that September is a particularly auspicious time of the year for visiting Brussels' cultural sites!

Bloggers weigh in:
- Atlas Shrugs: Peaceful 9/11 rally banned in Brussels!
- The Brussels Journal: Thank You Mr Mayor: Champagne for Everyone!
- Gallia Watch: Demonstration Banned!
...
and the Rest of the Press:
- Expatica: Dewinter insists on anti-Islam Protest
- 7 Sur 7: Manifestation anti Islam Interdite


- Chiesa has fascinating read for the historically inclined (counter-Jihadist): "How the Eight Hundred Men of Otranto Saved Rome"

They were martyred five centuries ago in the easternmost region of Italy, the spot most exposed to attack from the Muslims. The objective of the caliph Mohammed II was to conquer Rome, after having already taken Constantinople. But he was stopped by Christians who were ready to defend the faith with their blood >>>


- The Daily Mail in "No sex, please, you're a carnivore" illustrate wonderfully just how seriously out of control Postmodern, 'magical' thinking has got. I'm still struggling to make up my mind what's worse: the substance of the article, or the comments.


- Good news for (postmodern) Dutch, who desperately need an education on this point! Folks in the delta, not all subjects sharing a generic term - religion in this case - are "the same". Robert Spencer has a new book release: "Religion of Peace? Why Christianity is and Islam isn't". Atlas Shrugs weighs in. And by the way, moral neutrality is a myth: it doesn't exist! Likewise Atheism, isn't synonymous with religious neutrality: it is the belief (!) that God doesn't exist. In Dutch parlance: atheism isn't a neutral realm in which all the other "zuilen" exist, it is a "zuil" itself, capiche?

The Straight Red Line (5): Love of Islam, Loathing of Self

~ Continued from Part 4: the Founders ~

The touching words quoted yesterday (here in entirety) were uttered by the Subjectivist [1] champion of the Collectivist Counter-Enlightenment movement: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). I regret to say we have no winner of Hicks' groundbreaking tome "Explaining Postmodernism".

Rousseau set the tone of the premise of mankind basically being good but corrupted by his environment, that we have come to know so well in Leftist thinking. In Rousseau's vision the world's trouble is caused by civilization, Reason and its fruits, knowledge and science. He's often quoted as a philosopher of the Enlightenment, but it is quite clear he rebelled against all the tenets of individual Liberalism, Reason, secularism and limited government.

In Rousseau we find the very source of our trouble with Postmodernism, but also the answer to many a vexed question:

- "why does the Left ally itself with Radical Islam against the permissive Liberal society that is of their own making and of which they are the prime beneficiary?", and

- "why should Western civilization be considered so uniquely bad?" and related:

- "what's with the self-hatred", in these pages often termed "Down With Us", or Operation Western Auto-Destruct, so often confessed to by our Postmodern Multiculturalists and directed against white, rich, hetero-sexual, Christian men in particular and Western society in general.

Earlier I suggested to have discovered the source of self-loathing in the Positivism of Auguste Comte. But in Rousseau we have yet an earlier Ground Zero.

Disappointed Marxists often return to the grandfather of Collectivist Anti-Reason, but when the Leftist press recently sabled the film '300', about the three hundred Spartans that defeated the Persian Army in 480 Before Christ - driven by Pacifism and love of anything that doesn't answer to the white, male litany, in casu the Greeks - they forgot to check back on their Classics, the pure, emotional Rousseau.

As opposed to the degradation of Athenian decadent Civilization generated by Reason, Rousseau glorified the militaristic Spartans as pure, unspoiled, noble tribesmen - their callous practice of exposing babies to nature may have even inspired him to expose his own five children to the hardships of the Paris orphanage.

Because to Rousseau, the more advanced a civilization, the more corrupted and corrupting it is. As a paradigm of Rousseauian thought we can envisage the Noble Savage, or man's fall from Paradise: the snake of old was often used as a symbol of wisdom; read 'reason' for 'wisdom' (not to be confused!) and you have Rousseau in a nut-shell.

More of his ideas inspired by the image of noble savagery is the divorce of Eros and Agapi, so highly prized by contemporary man and woman; and a distaste for compassion with others which would only generate more decadent civilization: this is reminiscent of the view that drove the Russian Revolution: one cannot create a workers' Paradise with sentimentality, at which point usually the village headmaster was made an example of.

Rousseau also inspired in Marx the use of the Leftist dichotomy of the Oppressor versus the Oppressed; and seems to have been the source of Postmodern Fallacy Number One: the world as a pie, the view of the zero-sum game, where it is inappropriate and fatal.

Rousseau as the source of Western self-loathing can be found in the vision of the noble, primordial world that is destroyed by man's civilizing force: Reason, knowledge, science, technology, art, aesthetics, property, and economy; man not only destroyed this pristine environment (!), he also became soft, fat and lazy, and created a social conflict: a few winners on top and a whole lot of losers at the base of the pyramid of power.

It's this inequality that is so damning in Rousseau's erroneous total-sum game! Far from considering contemporary Western society an engine of equality and a creator of wealth, it is seen by the Rousseau followers as doomed, the epitome of social pathologies! Down With It ... à la Lanterne! Presently the problem is our destruction of the environment by technology: it doesn't save it, it despoils it.

The West prides itself for what it considers progress. But for anyone who has invested completely in a world view seen as evil, amoral and utterly failed, this gloating is unbearable. So the fight isn't over for the KGB's ideologically demoralised remnants. The capitalist world's moral values are attacked as utterly sexist, racist, dogmatic, authoritarian, cruel, uniquely civilized - uniquely bad!

If Reason makes no sense to what you're saying as Reality clearly shows otherwise, attack Reason as pernicious and superfluous, and persuade the world that Reality doesn't exist!

Rousseau as the source of the revulsion for civilization unmasks Fjordman's correspondent at the University of Helsinki for the Postmodern vile hypocrites that Multiculturalists at heart are: sending the message that retaining culture should be a human right, when in fact they mean to destroy anything that can remotely be considered a 'civilization', favouring instead the long-lost ideal: Marx' pseudo religious red paradise, or by default, Rousseau's wild tabula rasa of the tribal society, so pure and self-sacrificial, possibly Islamic (apparently not considered civil enough to be damned).

But then again, Postmoderns have a relation to language, that Muslims also have when lying to infidels: language, not as a means to transfer information, but as a means to a usually bloody end: it is about effectiveness. This is part of the confusion: to Postmoderns language is not about objective Truth, which to them doesn't exist any way. Therefore language isn't used as an instrument of precision, but as a propaganda tool. A word of advice: never, ever, take a Postmodern's words literally: what is being said habitually requires a good deal of deconstructing before its meaning can be discerned - which they will then go on to reject as non-existent.

To Rousseau religion was a imperative, as we have seen in yesterday's puzzle contest. He had the intention of cutting a few individual heads in the interest of society's stability as a whole. In Hicks' words: "... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must, therefore, reject dangerous notions of toleration and the separation of church and state. Further: so fundamentally important is religion that the ultimate penalty is appropriate for disbelievers ..."

At which point we see the source of our Unholy Alliance of the Left and assertive Islam emerging on the horizon. As the cursed Western civilization was practically built by Christianity, this obviously rules it out. Now Islam on the other hand - due to the precise parallel characteristics of Collectivism, Anti-reason and Oppressor versus Oppressed - is the ideal candidate. The use of irrational terrorism is just an added attraction, as we shall see!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ayatolla Extraordinair, far from being the Left's Mister Nice Guy, also has the honour of being the source of political justification to irrational violence, committed by Jacobin thugs during the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror; of the horrors that Marxist dictators inflicted upon their own peoples; and of various Leftist terrorist groups who - from the 1960's onwards, when it began to dawn on them that with the passing of the 100 million victim mark - the Totalitarian game was up.

Most people, myself included, with the fall of the wall in 1989, made the mistake in taking for granted that Communism had conceded defeat. But the KGB's ideologically de-moral-ized, brainwashed crowd never gave up: they weren't programmed to pack it in. On the contrary! After their contributions to the permissive society to corrupt it even further, the West is currently witness to their collusion with the forces of Radical Islam.

I think we need to carefully consider the ominous words of one of the Four Horsemen of the Communist Apocalypse, Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfort School in 1974, after the 'failed revolutions' of 1967 and 1968: "It will be resurrected in the universities".

~ To be continued in Part 6, the Collective: ... we have seen that Syria/Lebanon and Iraq found themselves - as French colonies during World War II - on the side of Vichy and Nazi Germany ... ~

Transnational Progressivism: an Inexplicable Presumption

The Transnational Progressivism Alerts for today are for the Central European areas and the Balkan peninsula, as well as for the whole of Northern America and parts of Meso-America, and - oh .... what thee eck ... make that for the whole of planet Earth and the surrounding areas!

Foehammer's Anvil, in "Bush dismembers Serbia" is on to the consequences of the impending Kosovo precedent. In instalment number 5 on the transnational state in the series "Neo-Totalitarianism" we have already seen that " ... it is certain that diplomatically and politically something is afoot. The U.N. does not have the legal power to declare countries independent; nevertheless, if Security Council member and Serb ally Russia doesn't veto ... the U.N. will have done exactly that. It will provide for any other area in the world with separatist aspirations or with an axe to grind, to go the same route".

But, if the whole exercise isn't an adexterous attempt at appeasing Radical Islamism, betting heavily on Russia indeed voting the hazardous plan to Neverland, "perhaps this is the very thing the Transnational Progressive community have in mind ... the gradual end to the mono-cultural remnants of the era of "sectarian war after war, and wave after wave of ethic cleansing", as the latest postmodern propaganda slogan goes."

Foehammer is quoting from a 'Accuracy in Media' (AIM) article by Cliff Kincaid dated June 8, 2007 as follows: "What Bush is doing is laying the groundwork for more conflict and upheaval in the world ... Never before in history has the U.N. presided over the deliberate destruction of a sovereign state. Kosovo represents the religious heritage of Serbia's Christians and many Christian churches have already been destroyed by Muslim extremists there. Taking Kosovo from Serbia is comparable to taking Jerusalem from Israel." Amen!

There is that last aspect too, yes. But in today's 'post-Christian' world who cares for a few antiquated churches and monasteries: old bricks and mortar, and a reminder of the terrible world we inhabited before the advent of postmodernity! We are all interdependent now ...!

Yet the relentless diplomatic push towards an independent Muslim state in Kosovo is indeed "ominous ... If ethnic Albanians can take Kosovo from Serbia, then Mexico can take the Southwest from the U.S., making it part of Mexico or making it into a state or region of its own, separate from the U.S. Indeed, there is a plan to do just that. Bush apparently doesn't fear this possibility because he sees Mexico joining Canada and the U.S. in some kind of ultimate trilateral entity. In this kind of world, there would be a common identity card and people would be free to travel anywhere." Hey, let's rock with this transnational progressivism! Burn your passport, delete the border!

That multicultural and multi-ethnic world of empires people lived in before the doctrine of self-determination, autonomy and the national identity was fully developed, and which since has gone out of diplomatic fashion, is described in the book "Not even my name" by Thea Halo whose mother was a Pontian Greek, father an Assyrian, Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire that - along with Armenians - felt the brunt of the Young Turk and Ataturk's policies of 'Turkey for the Turks'. Armenian Aztag Daily had an interview with the American author; it can be read in "Companians in Suffering".

Which begs the question: can Turkey ever become a worthy E.U. member while in denial over its own history of conquest, submission (dhimmitude) and suppression? Germany and South Africa were brave enough, having completed their psychological processes to come to terms with the past and are the better for it; due to their cultures of shame Japan and Turkey are still struggling with the events, the latter being in a state of denial altogether.

The tone for example in which Turkish Daily News recently reported on the matter of a Greek history text book didn't exactly betray awareness of any sensitivities on the Greek side towards past events that happened on their imperial watch, to say the least.
And neither did Turkish P.M. Erdogan betray any empathy when he told Greek P.M. Karamanlis during a meeting in Vienna last Friday, that "there is a lot of sensitivity (on the part of Turkey) to this sort of issue"; this sort of issue being the unveiling of a monument in Thessaloniki, commemorating the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks during World War I and in the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 at the hands of Turkish forces: it "cast a shadow over friendly relations between the two countries", rang the ultimate chutzpah.

The American author has a good point where she stresses that "... by recognizing the genocides they (Turkey) would resolve some of the other important issues as well. For instance ... you don't have to keep jailing your teachers, publishers, and journalists on this issue ... It's a shame that they can't speak freely and learn what happened in their own country without fear."

"The sad thing is that they lost so much, because the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians had so much culture there ... vibrancy ... wonderful artisans, intellectuals, teachers, musicians. At the time, there were Europeans who were saying "What in the world will Turkey do without the Christians?" After all, it was the Christians who were the intellectuals and business people, who had the education to help Turkey progress into the 20th century."

"When Turkey got rid of the Christian populations, they set themselves back, way-way back. The general Turkish population was not well educated at that time, because the Turkish government didn't bother to educate them the way the Christian missionaries educated the Christian populations. For the most part, the government wouldn't allow Muslims to attend the Christian schools, for fear of conversion, so most Turks of the time remained peasants and farmers" ... whose grandchildren are currently finding their way to permissive, postmodern, liberal societies and don't seem to be able to get over the culture shock.


As history lessons are gradually erased from school curricula, it is not unusual to find Westerners going through their lives with the false idea that Greek temples, Armenian monasteries and Assyrian churches were built by Turks, unaware as they are of the fact that pre-Islamic Turkish tribes only came on the Indo-European scene out of the Mongolian planes, from the thirteenth century onwards, conquering the indigenous Christianized peoples in the process. It is an illusion the Turks do nothing to dispel, claiming the cultural loot as their own.

A similar development occurred from the eighth century onwards with the Islamic conquests of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa: it may come as a shock to some victims of the postmodern interpretation of history education, but (Islamic) Turks and Arabs don't build churches, or Greek ruins, or Roman aquaducts - never have, never will! Nor are they indigenous to Turkey (Asia Minor, or the Near East) or the Middle East, the Arabs hailing from the Arabian peninsula, roughly present day Saudi Arabia.

The postmodern elite is so much in a hurry towards the progression of the transnational, borderless, multicultural and multi-ethnic empire building, that they rather opt for silence and suppression of unwelcome historical events rather than deal with them, non-offensive policies being the number one on the politically correct order of the day.

U-turning politicians are never a pleasant sight, but nothing is more repulsive and nauseating than the European party big wigs slithering hither and thither in their exculpation of the Turkish atrocities in the face of that country's impending E.U. membership (Belgium's Messrs Johan Vande Lanotte and Yves Leterme and, on behalf of The Netherlands, Wouter Bos).

The most perplexing of the transnational progressive wisdom is, that - apart from the fact that the old empires were neither easy manageable entities from a governmental point of view, nor democratic champions of civil rights - the idea also counters, what not a century ago, was seen as the solution to "sectarian war after war, and wave after wave of ethic cleansing", namely borders, passports, sovereignty, the nation-state.

The Mill Paradigm

The secret that the West is a Liberal dictatorship still isn't out. For the penny to drop it needs some distance, like it needs an outsider to make you aware you've developed a nasty habit. I have long been reluctant to make this statement: to Classical Liberals/Libertarians it is an oxymoron, an impossibility given the mutual exclusivity; today even the ultra Left Dutch Greens appreciate that Liberalism stands for freedom, so how can it possibly constitute a dictatorship?

The problem is that Liberal morality is cast into laws - to the point of even becoming 'human rights' - and foisted onto the world at large, thereby criminalizing rejectionists; whether they're hapless grannies objecting to being mooned by gays for homophobia, or gays protesting against imams who call for them be cast from minarets for Islamophobia, or priests criminalized on both counts.

This happens in reaction to Islamic modernophobia, and under pressure from activists and their advocates in the European Parliament and elsewhere, at the expense of the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. It cannot go on like this. Practising U.K. barrister Neil Addison in "Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law" provides the first comprehensive survey of legislation concerning religion in diverse areas such as criminal law, discrimination, employment and harassment, and charts the growing role of courts.

In "The Impossible made Possible: the Dictatorship of Liberalism" and "EU Phobia: more Crimes against the Ideology!" I posited that Christianity was the basic source of morality at the time Liberal thought developed and it is consequently built into the philosophy. By no means were Liberalism and Christian values ever mutually exclusive, until - not that long ago, Leftist Liberals swapped the Classical values for Socialist ones (here's Dr Sanity's invaluable chart once more). Among the proponents is a brand of fanatical atheists who have adopted selections of John Stuart Mill's Liberalism, minus the wisdom, conditions and restrictions, plus the virulent Marxist zeal. Classical Liberalism's founding philosophers are turning in their graves.

The disrobed Mill paradigm has also been adopted as the life-style of choice by the Liberal populace in general, whether they are aware of it, or not. The basic principle seems to be just tailored for current epoch: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of the community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant".

This licence for radical individualism is popularly the sole and sancrosanct moral rule governing Western society today: do as you please, as long as you don't hurt others. It seems simple and sound, but it is selective shopping, as Mill added the restriction ".... accepting the consequences of your actions". But these are usually left for others to deal with.

It is hard enough for sages to foresee the lengths and breadths of their actions; the consequences for ourselves, and moreover the consequences for others are often near impossible to fathom. Therefore, what Mill would have us add, are the Victorian virtues of a sense of responsibility and prudence. Mill: "It was better to be Socrates discontented than a fool satisfied." Well, we all know what happened to those graces: given the psychological effect of the nanny state - acting as a perpetual baby-sit to pick up the pieces - preventing people from maturing into fully fledged human beings, attaining their full potential.

Mill's popularly practiced, disrobed principle - to which added the sole modern restriction of consent by the persons involved - implies no one has the right to interfere, or to pass moral judgment. Analyzing the latter, British doctor and writer Theodore Dalrymple came to the conclusion that this actually means that "the highest form of morality is amorality". Isn't it fun how selective shopping in philosophy can turn wisdom into vulgar popular social dross: 'mind your own d#*% business!', 'who the f#*% is the Pope?'

The same doctor Dalrymple in "Our Culture, What's Left of It" sketches us the postmodern life in Britain's slums. It doesn't take much imagination to turn that reality - of which the real victims are the children - to be generally true for the whole of north-western Europe. The postmodern society isn't yet willing to accept their moral bankruptcy, to be reminded of life, before Christianity made its civilizing influence felt.
Here's a picture of Mill and his wife: oozing approval of so much permissiveness, don't they?

But back to our Liberal Dictatorship and the values it has proclaimed universal human rights: on whose 'Authority' have they done so [1], if I might reciprocate that pregnant question?

Paul Belien, editor of Brussels Journal and an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute in a column in the Washington Post on 23rd May, "Europe's Culture War" describes the interface between the Left Liberal values - now 'moral law' across the European Union and guarded by the European Court of Human Rights - and classical Christian values: abortion rights and gay rights.

Let me state on a personal note that the times homosexuals were rather fun, are long gone. What is left is blind activism, hysteria, fallacy, and beyond hedonism: decadence and degeneration, pure and simple. These gay rights centre on the allowance of annual street parties in each and every given capital city, displaying all that Roman orgies also had to offer, minus the style.

More seriously, gay activism fights for legal rights to adopt children and same sex marriage, which is already accomplished in many Western countries. The argument against, that they constitute an infringement on family values, are not accepted by gay activists on the grounds that these are Christian values, which don't apply to them.

Would the argument that children have no say in the matter - their inability, given their age, to express consent - cut any ice with them in the matter? The argument that a child needs role models, two parents, one of each gender, I won't even mention in the light of the Liberal dogma. Would the argument that marriage is originally a religious institution perhaps destroy their appetite for state-sanctified same-sex nuptials? Or could it be, that this is exactly the reason they want these rights in the first place: usurp, pervert and destroy?

Liberals have long denied the existence of the slippery slope. Given the developments in the matter of abortion and partial birth, it can be safely said - as suspected - that this is dog food. Where is the line that must not be crossed, if not life itself? As per Ann Coulter's elemental query, if you don't believe in God, what keeps you from committing mass murder?

The next item on the moral erosion program will be the sanctity of children: pederast activists are already working to swap consent - which presently stands between them and the legalised act - to read "understood to consent, unless otherwise is indicated"! Governed by the perverted Mill paradigm that everybody simply must answer to his or her personal urge, they now try to convince themselves and others that their heinous attentions are a matter of 'nature', society's revulsion caused by 'nurture'. Just when you think it cannot possibly get any worse, it just did!

There is no good reason at all why we shouldn't find the European Parliament's agit prop bus in the streets of Moscow and Latvia in a few years time, delivering that message in the name of just the next unequal group requiring emancipation at the expense of the powerless.

I am resting totally assured that some Left Liberals are presently in danger of bursting a brain capillary from sheer indignation at so much reactionary moralising! They should realize that the most common failure of Roman pagan society was their inability to make the protection of the innocent and vulnerable a matter of morality. We are reverting to those violent times, but that wouldn't be a problem, would it - any culture being the same as any other ...

Neo Totalitarianism (3): Indoctrination

"…through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government - one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people."

Harold Rugg, student of psychology and
a disciple of John Dewey, considered to be
a founding father of multiculturalism

Dr Sanity provides us with a wonderful if shocking piece on the history of totalitarian education. Needless to say that indoctrination is the appropriate description. The collection of historical quotes on the site of her colleagues, psychologists Sigmund, Carl and Alfred's is exemplary of what we are dealing with in respect of the totalitarian indoctrination of entire generations of students. What stands out is the shameless arrogance and the heartless brutality which at times, borders the pathological.

Noteworthy is how the source of this educational and pedagogical disaster, who is identified as Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) "was instrumental in creating the 'climate of collectivism' in philosophy (as (philosopher) Stephen Hicks has referred to it) that prevailed in Germany during the late 18th and throughout the 19th century. In this counter-enlightenment climate, the state was worshipped as the source of all reality ... Hegel, building on Kant, Rousseau and Fichte, would go on to write, "It must be further understood that all the worth which the human being possesses - all the spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." Some Europeans find it bizarre that Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms - well, here's their answer!

"Hegel's heirs went on to divide into left- and right-wing camps. The charge of the left was led by leftists like Karl Marx ... the right-wing Hegelians tended to stress the omnipotence of the state ... Both Hegelian offshoots summarily dispensed with free will and human freedom; and between them, they brought forth the philosophical abomination that we now call 'postmodernism'."

"The 20th century was the battleground where the two totalitarian branches of the collectivist philosophers vied for spiritual and physical control over humanity. The amount of death, destruction and misery they ushered in is perhaps unprecedented in human history."

"The goal for the last several decades has been nothing less than to undermine mankind's perception of reality itself. They have been most successful in this goal at all levels of education - elementary, high school and college."

"If you can convince children that objective reality is an illusion; that A does not equal A; that black is white; and that good is bad; if you can make them accept that everything is subjective and relative; then you have successfully breathed new life into doctrines that by all objective measures and standards led to the death and misery of millions of people. Through the careful manipulation of language, everything can be distorted, without the messy need to resort to facts, logic, or reason."

"For the children of postmodernism, what matters is not truth or falsity - only the effectiveness of the language used. Lies, distortions, ad hominem attacks; attempts to silence opposing views - all are strategies that are perfectly satisfactory if they achieve the desired effect - i.e., furthering the collectivist agenda. Ideas and reason make way for reification of feelings; and freedom is replaced by thought control and preservation of 'self-esteem' at all costs."

Is the phenomenon of dumbing down, the psychological immaturity and the distorted view of reality any wonder? A number of these distortions and errors in the processes of thought I've compiled in, which is at present, a list of 14 instances of postmodern fallacies (or the PMF, in short).

Those of you who think that English Departments still teach the finer points of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream had better think again. They are the unofficial faculties and laboratories of Postmodern Thought, i.e. Subjectivism (Relativism) [1], Positivism, Multiculturalism and Deconstructionism (Post-Structuralism). The founding father of the latter was Jacques Derrida, later a political aide to French Socialist leader Lionel Jospin.

Another case in point is Stuart Sim, Professor of Critical Theory - a strain of Marxist thought which can mean either this or that - at the University of Sunderland and author of "Empires of Belief" and "Fundamentalist World: The New Dark Age of Dogma".

Sim is a theorist who shudders at the mere thought of having to live in a mono culture (something which he has probably done most of his life ... and survived!) and who simply hates beliefs and dogmas, unless they happen to be his own. Recently I had the misfortune to try and fail 'fisking' an article of his hand, published on Signandsight, the description of which can be read in the post "Intellectual Flatulence!".

What postmodern thought is promoting and disseminating - in the Universities and into the world at large - is a species of sophistry which requires the suspension of the laws of nature, as described in the post "Post Postmodernism: What are the Options".

Hard to do? Not at all! Hoards of intelligent people have gone before. But a word of caution to those of robust physique, intrigued by the subject: don't go deeper into it than subsurface level if future cerebral activities of any significance are foreseen.

Dr Sanity's further produces some interesting thoughts on the ethics of capitalism (no, this isn't an oxymoron!). Very insightful is the idea, that since the essence of totalitarianism is the crushing of human free will - a requirement for making correct moral decisions - totalitarianism is fatal for morality. "The truth is that neither socialism nor communism nor any kind of religious fundamentalism is compatible with morality at all. Conduct may only be thought of as moral or immoral when it is freely chosen by the individual. It is only then that the moral significance of the action can be assessed." That one's for framing and hanging over the bed. By the way, this also proves the carelessness of equating Christianity with any form of totalitarianism: human free will is its core teaching.

"Conversely, how responsible for our moral choices are we, if living in a (semi) totalitarian world? In Western Europe since the 1960s the state has taken over the responsibilities, from parents and of physically mature individuals alike. In fact, this may be the reason people refuse to grow up into responsible citizens: attitudes and opinions on multiculturalism that are presently displayed, at times are nothing short of an irresponsible and immature intellectual game with people's lives!

But reverting to our educationers, it is of course the fact that these intellectual crimes are perpetrated on children which makes them so abhorrent. "Their total worth is only equivalent to their willingness to be fodder for the good the 'cause'." Yes, it is a totalitarian characteristic that all is subservient to The Cause and the end justifies the means, as we have seen.

And think about the havoc that in turn has brought on generations of people and on society in general! "Only those whose brains have been damaged by a defective educational system to begin with could adhere on the one hand to a philosophy advocating moral relativism and subjectivism, with (on the other) unapologetic dogmatic absolutism. What is outrageous is that anyone - anyone who is capable of thinking anyway - could take these postmodern, brain-damaged collectivists seriously." Now, there's a thought ....!

"The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection."

Paul Popenoe, Behavioral Eugenist and co-author:
"Sterilization for Human Betterment"

~ To be continued: "The Ideological War Within the West", in which Fonte foresees the emergence in a few decades hence of an ideology described as transnational progressivism ... ~

Neo Totalitarianism (2): Multiculturalism and Beyond

Let us first turn to Fjordman and his buzz provoking article "Communism for the 21st Century", the University of Helsinki's critiques and Fjordman's subsequent rebuttal in "A Great Conversation", and various other commentators thereto.

It would appear from the text of the article that the University has remarked, that communism is neither synonymous with multiculturalism, nor with unlimited migration. Fjordman obviously recognises this and underlines that by 'neo-Communism' [sic] he means the 'whole package deal': they aren't identical, but they frequently coincide.

The reviewers further pose the astonishing remark that the opponents of multiculturalism labour under the false impression that multiculturalists do not consider culture to be important: "On the contrary, they find culture so important for each and every person, that it is considered a human right to be able to maintain at least some of it, regardless of where one happens to live."

At which point I am seriously in danger of bursting a blood vessel! This confirms my opinion that multiculturalists are either liars and hypocrites, or that they've had their brain cells relativised out of existence ("having lobotomized themselves, having already forgotten their lobotomies", as the present metaphor goes).

They know full well you cannot preserve anything of value by exposing it to the raw forces of (cultural) Darwinism. Unless you want the contenders to fight it out and let the best one win of course, and never mind the bloody mess which presumably they'll clean up afterward! (Note also the hapless attempt to separate identity from the place of birth, or any other accidental place where one happens to find oneself by the forces of nature!)

Fjordman's rebuttal to this piece of hypocrisy is important: in the heat of the arguments it is easily forgotten that:

"... by settling in another country, you have indirectly admitted that this country has a superior culture and should thus be required to adjust yourself to this culture, i.e. to assimilate."

I heartily agree with Fjordman, and would add that postmodernism's lack of wisdom and philosophical insight is probably to blame for not understanding, that if you value all equally and love none in particular, in fact you love none. Especially if you don't declare your own dogmatic belief in Darwinism applicable when it comes to cultures: when none is superior and predatory ones are taken not to exist, except of course Western culture which is inherently and uniquely evil. Once removed, they take for granted no other will fight its way to the top of the cultural food chain! This is Marxism's grave error! As with individuals, now with cultures.

When chasing the philosophical tenets of multiculturalism, Fjordman hits the relativist totalitarian jackpot when coming to the unavoidable conclusion as I did, as described in the post "Conned by the Left, Again", that ...

"... There are those who claim that it was never supposed to be logically consistent and that we shouldn't look for any cohesive, rational arguments behind it because there are none. What little can be discerned from its ideas is sometimes quite disturbing, with elements of anti-Western hatred [sic], totalitarian impulses and Utopian ideas involving large-scale social engineering."

He poses the great rhetorical question: "But isn't this alarming? Multiculturalism is now official state policy in many countries ... millions of people are subject to a radical ideology that is almost impossible to comprehend, and thus to criticize? Many ... know that it cannot be rationally defended, which is why they simply shut critics down with charges of racism and shame them into silence whenever they sense some opposition. In fact, it is now more or less illegal in some countries to criticize it, although it could mean the most massive transformation of our countries in modern history."

I can go further than that: if multiculturalism gets its way we will see a feat of social engineering in the coming decades, the likes of which have not been seen in human history. I also want to stress again and I keep on repeating it, because it is key to understanding multiculturalism:

multiculturalism is based on the pseudo philosophy of relativism, because that is the only way one can maintain that all personal opinions, cultures, religions, countries are equally valid and of equal value, and there is no such thing as good or bad. This in turn depends on the obvious lie and oxymoron that objective truth doesn't exist, when they do claim the validity of the eternal truth of human rights!

Because it is a lie, this fallacy is riddled with unanswered contradictions and oxymora [2], but the proponents couldn't care less. To them, the end justifies the means. All is subservient to The Cause. The principles of the scientific method (a theory must be falsifiable, which btw also Darwinism fails to do), and the basic law of natural philosophy (to be), don't apply to them! But in an effort to make the nonsense marketable to rational society, they presently propose to drop the multicultural cuckoo's egg in the Liberal nest, that they reason "is all about freedom anyway" (see the Easter Egg cycle, starting here).

According to Fjordman's Finnish correspondent, the multicultural 'solution' to migrant problems is to declare a number of human rights valid across the board and for the rest we simply " ... allow immigrants the right to keep their culture provided that they adhere to the central core of our values and follow the rules in our legal system."

Brilliant! Why didn't anyone think of that before now?! As if there weren't the teachings of Judeo-Christianity, and there never was a U.N. Declaration of inalienable Universal Human Rights! Which makes one wonder if the source of the problems with multiculturalists doesn't simply lie in their arrogance, a basic lack of knowledge and a very poor education ... (we'll come to that in a later part of the series).

Apart from the obvious fact that Islam - which is basically the law of a jealous, intolerant God - is inconsistent and incompatible with any laws ever thought up by humans, we also have the minor matter of deciding which human rights should be adopted as universal: largely due to the Left's inability to curtail their urge of engineering, Positive Human Rights have proliferated over the years to the point of farce.

That mushrooming of positive rights alone has greatly undermined and devalued them, whereas they should be untouchable and cast in granite, out of reach of the fickleness and illusions of the day. Human Rights are at the core of Judeo-Christian beliefs and values: they are the beating heart of Western culture.

Leftist secularism has hijacked and perverted them to the point they have become virtually unworkable. For those unfamiliar with the concept of Positive and Negative Human Rights and the hierarchy of Rights, this would be a good place to start reading about them. Or enter the key word into the search box above - we have written frequently on the subject and there are texts with very interesting links to the subject matter.

Fjordman also sees the problems and has no other solution than giving the indigenous culture precedence over immigrating ones. I agree. Migrants come voluntarily (if they aren't refugees) and they do so because they think to have better lives in the Western world. Also it is illogical and unpractical to ask the host to conform to all the adjusting tastes of his guests. But here we touch reason - which, as we know - isn't a postmodern strong point.

Furthermore, even multiculturalists see that for a balanced society the separation of church and state (secularism, laity) is required (by which I do not mean a religiously sterile state). The source of this principle [1], is Christianity, which should be a reason to honour and maintain its existence. Postmoderns have the simplistic conviction that it doesn't matter which culture is leading! A trip to the Dar al-Islam should suffice to prove otherwise.

Fjordman goes on to bring up the chilling 2001 article written by Hudson Institute Fellow John Fonte, "The Ideological War Within the West", which warrants its own post.

~ To be continued: Dr Sanity provides us with a wonderful if shocking piece on the history of totalitarian education. Needless to say that indoctrination is the appropriate description. ~

An Existential Answer!

The question posed yesterday, i.e. is any majority ever justified in abolishing the state of democracy, was not only given in by the constitutional problems presently playing out in Turkey - by which the E.U. blindly sides with fundamentalism over preserving democracy - but also by the remarks made by a Dutch Government Minister that - if such would be the wish of a constitutional majority - it should be possible to impose Sharia Law in The Netherlands. That remark was made some months ago, but frankly - after a storm of protest - I haven't seen him retract the statement!

The consequences of wars and revolutions excepted, it might so come to pass that even a minority government stands before the question. I take that to be insufficient in any case for such existential decisions. Frankly, I think all the world's nations would be well advised to set a few constitutional rules in stone about this matter.

The question might be excused if Dutch Minister Piet Hein Donner is perhaps intellectually challenged or morally impaired. Or is he simply criminally naive? Is he a psychiatric patient on the loose, or is he suicidal to the point that he even wants to take the Dutch welfare state with him to his grave? Alternatively, perhaps he's just a relativist? Or a multiculturalist who ran out of patience to see Islamic rule replace Western ethnocentric hegemony at its natural demographic pace?

Truth is Mr Piet Hein Donner's pedigree is simply above any suspicion: decency is his middle name and he has an above average intellect, at least officially so. He comes from good, solid Calvinist stock, born in a patrician family with a long history in government and the judiciary. Actually, his remarks may have been 'quoted out of context' by the MSM. Mr Donner himself says he meant issuing a warning. Indeed.

I think however that's not the whole story. Black and white Calvinist as he is, I believe he may have been coldly extrapolating future demographics and taking the state of democracy to that ultimate result: a two thirds majority that is required to change the Constitution and vote the rule of law out of existance and with it - de facto - democracy. Mr Donner's no fool, he's a democratic fundamentalist!

As we have concluded in the 'Easter Egg' series of posts, that contrary to multiculturalist tenets that "all faiths are the same", the religion of Islam isn't your any home and garden, bread and butter faith at all. Far from it. We shouldn't confuse our Buddhist ammonium nitrate collectors with our Evangelist disenfranchised bombists, as it were. By Muslim admission, and as the founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk well knew, the religion of Islam isn't compatible with democracy: the people would be usurping the power of Allah, it's that simple.

From my part here I'd like to argue that by allowing a government by the people, the rule of law, and the separation of Church and State to be replaced by a theocracy to which either three don't owe one iota, such would be an unnatural and irreversible step backwards that cannot be man's destiny.

By which I mean this: the people can decide to impose an Islamic theocracy, an Islamic theocracy would never freely choose to impose a rule by the people. By the same token - and contrary to any ordinary European Christian Democrat party - a Koran based political party is an anomaly: it's like giving the fox the ballot about raiding the hen house!

Another way yet: while democracy has Greek classical roots, the rule of law is founded on Jewish biblical tradition and Roman law, the separation of Church and State (secularism, laity) is a Christian principle, Islam is bent on replacing all that by the law of 7th century desert raiding.

The ultimate goal of democracy can never be the irreversible end of its own existence. No wonder Ataturk gave it a formidable watch dog to prevent it from committing suicide, boys of Brussels!

Egg on our Face!

New Left Liberal, subjective, morality laws are in the making: people have already been sentenced to fines and it is just a matter of time before the first priest or vicar will be jailed for inciting hatred under the relativist reasoning: race discrimination is bad, gender discrimination is bad, 'phobias' for Islam, homosexual behavior and abortion are bad and must be banned for violating the subjective rights of unequal minorities (is hatred). In the meantime denial of Jewish and Armenian holocausts are quite the done thing, resulting in more laws against an objective, basic Classical right: free speech!

Islamic fanaticism and its incompatibility with other religions and ideologies, are leading atheist and anti-theist movements - to whom all faiths, as per above reasoning, are in essence 'the same' - to increasingly view religion as a threat to the Liberal society, rather than as any section of humanity worthy of representation, like anyone else ... (not an subjective, unequal minority ... evidently).

This is leading to what could paradoxically be termed, signs of a Liberal dictatorship in the making. To mind come two recent affairs. One is the matter of the Italian candidate for the European Commission, Professor Buttiglione, who was rejected by the Euro Parliament for being 'too Catholic'. Everyone is welcome to join the democratically elected, freedom loving, European institutions, as long as you underwrite the Liberal ideology which says that gender is race and does not exist, the usurpation of ecclesiastical institutions by secularism is perfectly natural, human rights are fine but feticide is a women's right alone, and ventilation of opinions to the contrary are an incitement to hatred.

At present in The Netherlands there's a question over an M.P. who also happens to be a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, apparently a criminal organization by Liberal standards. Although it is not altogether clear what the problem exactly is, it is safe to assume that the fear is that she holds politically incorrect views, as per the above, or - worse - that she may be a rejectionist of the Liberal epistemology, called Darwin's Theory of Evolution: journalistic commentators make kindergarten comments - quite normal these days - to the effect that "she's in a creepy sect", and that they wouldn't be surprised if this entails "denying the Theory of Evolution".

Instead of which it would have been more in line with serious Liberal thought, to point out that "yes, we have freedom of conscience in this country" and "yes, the Theory of Evolution is indeed just that, a theory, that after 150 years still hasn't been proved - that the chances of basic enzymes of life arising by random processes are 1 to 1 followed by forty thousand zeroes". If they'd done so, they should have acted as genuinely open minded, truth-seeking journalists would have done. Instead they explain to the nation in baby-talk that the M.P. has to go as she might be committing crimes against the politically correct. For those not old enough to experience a déjà vue at this point: this happens before political correctness is elevated to law: such was part and parcel of the Soviet Union and perpetrators spent lengthy sentences in Siberian work camps for their dissent.

These are serious and ominous signs. Dissent from the prevailing Liberal thought is sliding from the politically correct suspicious, into full fledged crimes against the ideology. Very slowly but surely we are descending into a society which is tuned to totalitarianism and dictatorship, instead of one that is free, based on Judeo-Christian values and Greco-Roman principles. We are in danger of losing ourselves.

If we have a cold, hard, objective look at the remedies that have been put to work for better results, it is plain these haven't worked. Often even worked to the contrary. Due to its subjectivism [1] and the departure from Classical Liberal values (see Dr Pat's chart), Left Liberalism is defenseless and self-defeating in the face of upholding basic freedoms against radical Islamism. The multicultural approach is worse than the problem it sets itself to solve: Resistance is Futile, Prepare to be Assimilated! French secularism, laïcité, has failed as well.

International laws, so often invoked in explaining why tougher measures simply aren't on the cards, are not acts of God, but human-made legal edifices, often raised on Utopian grounds. There were reasons for putting them there, there are even more vital reasons for evaluating them. It is of existential importance that the Western world regains the ability to defend its proper values, before there won't be any left to defend.
I think it is high time we take a step back and examine what it is exactly we are forging here.

~ To be continued: Delorme and great number of other Liberals make the mistake to think that Islam is as any other subjective unequal minority group they are dealing with, not taking into consideration its perceived superiority, its exclusivity and its intolerance of other faiths and schools of thought ~

After Easter: Islamic Tyrannosaur Eggs (II)

That said, on other vital areas Islamic principles and Liberal values collide irreconcilably; the problem areas are numerous and fundamental. A recent report published by the Middle East Forum "Can there be an Islamic democracy?" explained it like this: "Ironically, while Western scholars perform intellectual somersaults to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam and democracy, prominent Muslim scholars argue democracy to be incompatible with their religion ... Islamic law regulates the believer's activities in every area of life, and ... some Muslim scholars further reject anything that does not have its origins in the Qur'an."

In consideration of my personal health I go out of my way in avoiding the calls to dhimmitude issued by The Kings of The Borg, Messrs Garton Ash, Sim and Buruma as per their cold, robotic mantra: "Resistance is Futile - Prepare to be Assimilated ... !" Regretfully I had the misfortune to stumble upon an article that the Dutch-American product of multiculturalism, in the person of Ian Buruma, recently published in Pakistan's Daily Times, entitled rather counter-intuitively "The strange death of multiculturalism". Well, not due to wishful thinking on his part, I should think.

Anyway, apart of the usual nut-cracking that kept me sleepless till six this morning - and the habitual whispers of Resistance is Futile: "... like it or not, Muslims are part of Europe ... so ... learn to live with them", he singles out Indonesia as the crowning evidence that "Liberal democracy and Islam are reconcilable." That is, conveniently passing over acts of terrorism - which, according to The Borg are to be taken in our stride, in the life in the new nationless Empire: just ask the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs; beheadings of young Christian girls are but a small price to pay for so much celebration of diversity!

It so happens that the Middle East Forum report also mentions Indonesia, but as an example that Islam is the antithesis of any secular Western democracy: "Outlining his plans to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir, a Muslim cleric and the leader of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, attacked democracy and the West and called on Muslims to wage jihad against the ruling regimes in the Muslim world. "It is not democracy that we want, but Allah-cracy," he explained". The Borg's sense of reality has been totally relativised, I'm afraid! But that doesn't keep them from serving in governmental advisory committees. Want to bet?

Western society as a whole is in serious trouble due to Liberalism's relativist view on religion as a result of the erroneously reasoning that is typical for the pseudo philosophy, of which Buruma is a master. For instance: "Christianity equals religion, Islam equals religion, all religions are equally valid, Christianity is Islam". This infantile fallacy causes radical atheists and agnostics to seek refuge in the Christophobic French secular system, by which religion is pushed to the very margins of society. There, in the fringes it may play a silent role within the confines of the private home.

As is in evidence in the French suburbs with the violent rioting of Islamic - no, strike that last word - unemployed youths, this approach of the religiously neutral state - as warmly recommended by author Pascal Bruckner - apparently doesn't work either. It doesn't produce a better integration, or a more peaceful society, while it does create a religiously sterile public space in which even the wearing of a small crucifix on a necklace amounts to a crime. And, by Bruckner's own emphasis, this state of affairs is built on the blood of priests and nuns. No, thanks!

The bane of subjectivism within the judiciary was recently in evidence when in a German case, a Muslim mother of two petitioned for an expedited divorce from her violence prone husband. Judge Christa Datz-Winter didn't apply German law, but instead saw fit to single handedly declare Sharia law in Germany, denying the woman's request on the grounds that the couple hail from a "Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife." We may not notice it any more, but this is pretty serious Eurabian stuff! Justitia blind? Objective? This isn't class justice, it's sheer racism!

Western society and the Liberalistic philosophies underpinning the legal system, are tuned to a free, responsible people that respect other person's freedoms. Adjustment of legislature to the intolerant dentencies is threatening to undermine these civic freedoms, the foundation of Western societies.

~ To be continued: New morality laws are in the making: it is just a matter of time before the first priest or vicar will be jailed for homophobia or abortionphobia ... In the meantime, denial of Jewish and Armenian holocausts are entirely the done thing ~