The Unholy Alliance: Conflating Three Great isms

Witnessing the sad demise of democracy in front of the European Parliament building in Brussels yesterday, takes some digesting, even for one that was already aware of the realities. I will combine further comment on it with a piece I was already working on: the cooperation in the Unholy Alliance between Islam and the Left. People have often expressed their surprise over the apparent cooperation pact between two parties that - on the surface - seem to be each other's opposites. I hope to clear up that misunderstanding.

As a girl and later as a young grown-up I could never understand how - in the run up to World War II - Nazi Germany could arm itself to the teeth with no one doing anything to prevent it. Entire weapon systems were stockpiled in the Soviet Union as the arsenals and warehouses in Germany proper were stored to full capacity. Yet the furnaces and steel works were operating full steam 24/7 as unemployment rates dropped to zero percent, thanks to Hitler's National Socialist Party's 'employment policies' of everyone on the state's pay roll.

Yet Europe had influential pacifist movements (here's an brilliant take by Sanity on the subject). The U.K. had Richard "Peace in our Time" Chamberlain, and Mayoresses who promised to "not so much as darn a sock if it assisted the war effort", while 'bluestockings' and other enlightened academics conducted Peace Marches in Europe's streets.

I never understood how advanced, civil societies could let such disasters as World War II take place. That is, until yesterday. In fact, it's becoming blatantly obvious how last century's great wars, the holocaust and the enslavement of half the continent in its wake, could take place. Now, as then, we are closing our eyes to a reality that is too scary to contemplate, let alone deal with it. Yesterday in Brussels we saw the conflation of three great isms taking place before our eyes. It is very sad to see just how far indeed we have already sank into the black hole of dictatorship.

It's a bit of a pity that Stephen Hicks' explanation of Postmodernism (or cultural Marxism) doesn't get the attention it deserves. Hicks comes to another categorization of ideologies than is common. He explains that both Communism and National Socialism derive from the Counter-Enlightenment movement that started with the philosophies of Rousseau. This was a reaction to the primacy of reason that features so prominently in Enlightenment thought, of which Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism became the political offshoot (not to be confused with today's liberalism, which is Left Light).

Does the following Rousseau quotation on the ideal state strike anyone as compatible with Islam? "... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must ... >>>

After theocrat extraordinaire Rousseau, both Hegel and Kant expanded on anti reason philosophy, eventually even doing away with objective reality and epistemology: man is incapable of knowing anything, to each his own universe: reality is subjective. This has provided Communism and National Socialism with their subjectivist basis.

Experts in Islam never stop to point out there is not 'one Islam'. Every Muslim has his or her own subjective perception of it (apart from the five pillars that is, presumably). I have no reason to doubt it: after Rousseau's take on the ideal state, this makes the second, basic conflation of the three great isms.

As hinted at earlier, from 1939 to 1941 Communism and National Socialism shared a history of cooperation. The German army held manoeuvres in Russia and vice versa. Both totalitarian ideologies were Socialist and differed only on its implementation: the Nazis were nationally inclined (using the ethnic dialectic of the German Volk), while the Communists favoured global subjugation (hence the 'Internationale').

After World War II the Left portrayed Hitler as the great satan. Here the dichotomy of Nazism versus Communism was born: this was however a Communist PR ploy which has worked to this day. But far from being opposites both ideologies are in fact each other's mirror image, cousins if you will, while the real opposition, the actual enemy, is Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism, rooted in the Enlightenment and in the West, which by the way wasn't originally radically atheist at all, on the contrary.

Over time and through various twists of history the two totalitarian isms also got transplanted onto Middle Eastern soil, where they gave birth to Panarabism, Arab Nationalism and Ba'athism.

Today's political correctness emanates from a revived Marxism from which the baby boom generation of the 60s cannot seem to say goodbye: their hatred of a free West is burnt onto their souls and treason has become their second nature. Some one described it aptly as "they just cannot pop out of the Marxist dialectic". It is their mindset that is our ruin today, as they now inhabit the corridors of power.

If a recently unearthed 1985 interview with KGB agent and Soviet defector Bezmenov is anything to go by, the moral compass of the 60's generation has been totally and irrevocably removed by the KGB subversion program. What that left undone, was completed by the fifth columnists at the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism, as the undersigned can personally attest to. (For novices, here's a commentary on Gramsci, another luminary)

The influence these intellectuals had on that generation can simply not be overstated: they prescribed how 'thinking people' should act and what their opinions should be, from the books and the newspaper they read, the friends they kept, to the movies they saw, to the brand of tobacco they smoked and the coffee they drank.

They were in no uncertain measure specifically 'present' in the bedroom, which - if they had any say in the matter, should preferably be shared by any number of people. The family a gonner as women dragged husbands through divorce courts whole-sale, Eros and Agapi were kept strictly separated as per Kinsey ukase. Children became a kind of common property, to be raised and cared for, by whoever happened to be present (if any).

Fast forward to the new millennium. The cooperation in the Unholy Alliance of the Western Left with Islamists, as the latter swap their secular subjectivism for a theological one, is simply a Feast of Recognition: egalitarian collectivism against individual liberty, totalitarian statism versus limited government at the people's pleasure, anti reason against science and technology, socialism vs. capitalism and free markets, state (which in Islam is synonymous with religion) against voluntary mutual benefit, state/divine intervention versus free will: in short, combined totalitarianism against the classical liberal values as embodied by the West: freedom and democracy.

And of course the collectivists share the dialectic of Oppressor versus the Oppressed and socially constructed victimhood. This mock epic battle is the basis of all collectivist ideologies, uniquely cultivated to keep the 'struggle' going. Communism had its classes; the Nazis the German Volk; Cultural Marxism its students, women, gays and blacks, as Islam has the true believers versus the infidel.

Multiculturalism is a later manifestation of Cultural Marxism and keeps true to the dialectic mechanism on a cultural level, while N.G.O.ism (U.N.) and transnational progressivism (E.U., N.A.U.) play the same trick on the global scale of nations and states. The same story is transposed and extrapolated on all levels. So much for defeating Marxism, fifty years overdue.

Last but certainly not least the totalitarian isms share a justification of violence to power: the Western versions' passe-partout is provided for by Messrs Rousseau and Marx; the Islamic variety is of course rooted in Koranic scripture, which in the early stages also served as a platform for the conquest of the Christian lands in the Middle East and beyond.

I have laid down the ideological histories and how the three isms relate, in Chart I: The Straight Red Line for easy reference.

But the uncovering of the close ties within the Unholy Alliance doesn't stop here. AEL's Abu Jahjah's vocabulary of choice doesn't come by accident straight out of the Marxist-Leninist handbook for Leftist dummies ... dhimmis.

Just in: Hodja has published "Postmodern Jihad - What Osama bin Laden learnt from the Left", insights into the more recent relations between Islamism and Cultural Marxism: have hardly read it myself, but I think I should share it.

Much is made of political correctness. Some interpret it as latter day Cultural Marxism itself. Personally I see it as soft social pressure, to coerce others into conforming with the Left's ideology: the 'redistribution' of freedoms and rights along the lines of the dialectic. The idea is to shift power, capital, rights, etc. from the Oppressor to the Oppressed minorities. The great trick is to treat gender and faith, on an equal footing with race. But what we have to keep in mind here, is that gender is subject to choice, while Muslims are born as such.

This can be taken very far indeed, as legislation is put in place in support of the same object. We have recently seen that played out with the SIOE demo and Brussels Mayor, Freddy 'The Toad' Thielemans. At that stage, we have de facto a totalitarian situation where dissenters are made common criminals, case need on trumped up charges of assaulting a bus driver. Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna is spot on in today's post "Democratic Europe R.I.P." Freddy and His Walloon Troopers made European history yesterday.

But for most, including the good people of the silent majority [1], if reality gets too scary to deal with, denial erects a impenetrable curtain of make-belief in the hope the bogey will go away. I just read this morning in a paper that the Dutch as a nation, have become happier than they were a few years back during an economic downturn. Happy totalitarian dreams every one! I hope your bank accounts grow at an even pace!

Others - like Council of Europe's Secretary General Terry Davis - have become completely deluded in their psychological pathology. To them it's simply beyond the realm of the possible - indeed, a crime! - that people might be genuinely worried about the fate of their culture and continent. This type of custodians of 'European values' have no qualm whatsoever of beating up and criminalizing civilians and politicians with whom they happen to disagree. Even manufactured charges do not seem to trigger a red-hot-moral-no-no meme with these Quislings. They have become amoral thugs, who have lost sight of their opponents humanity, and do not know it. That is what scares me to death.

Update: The New York Times is offering a fascinating view of a German officer's World War II photo album of Auschwitz. The commentary is wrong at one point, when exclaiming that this is what "antisemitism, racism and hatred" does to humans. This should actually be: "this is what happens if ideology is valued over human life".

Building the Case of the Left's Culpability

When posting "Of Political Entertainment and Slumber" a few days ago, on the ludicrous dithers and slithers taken by the U.S. Democrats, so as to convince the anti-war grassroots of the Democrat defeatist credentials, in an update I linked to the latest Works and Days article by Victor Davis Hanson "Defeat and Flight from Iraq". His comments and outline of the inevitable, long term, geopolitical consequences of white-flagging the Iraq war, are very ominous indeed.

Going through the entire article again I stumbled upon two 'angry' letters he received - otherwise known as hate mail - that are quite revealing. One is from a 23 year old postmodern who in a quite unreasonable tone, based on his exploits in Chinese, claims to be more capable of reasoning than the accomplished writer himself: it is of course typical of people in certain stage of development to make such miscalculations.

Both letters are from recent arrivals in the United States. In the one case his parents probably took considerable risk to illegally move from Mexico, so that their children would have better opportunities in the U.S. He's now a orthopedic who cannot spell, so that was probably the right career move on his part.

The 23 year old postmodern with Bush Derangement Syndrome, apart from the mastery of Chinese and his obvious accomplishments in Marxist Critical Theory, suffers from a whole lot besides, but that is not the point I'd like to make.

Both letters simply ooze envious hatred, for the author, towards white culture, for America in general, and by extension towards - what I would like to term by now, The White Patriarch paradigm: the archetypal Counter-Enlightenment Oppressor, the litany well known by regular readers of present pages: white, rich, powerful, Christian males and all they stand for.

That's when it hit me that - while these two crass examples are probably new Americans of Hispanic descent, and Europe has similar experiences with Muslims of any part of the Dar-al-Islam - these immigrants don't come to their adoptive country out of admiration for customs, people or culture, but out of sheer hatred with a view of milking it for what it is worth.

Their objective isn't integration into these societies as proud new citizens, taking thankful advantage of all the opportunities that free, liberal, Western societies have to offer, they come as conquerors who hate the people that made the West what it is today. If they didn't set out as such, I'm sure there are quite a few indigenous, postmodern adherents to Marx' and Rousseau's narratives of Oppressed versus Oppressor, to brief them on the subject.

If all this sounds like stating the politically incorrect obvious, then why - for crying out loud - are we pretending it isn't the case, convincing ourselves instead that immigrants come with all the good intentions? This, with the usual caveats and disclaimers about obvious heaps of well intentioned, sincere ...... etc.

Frontpage relays an article by Ed West in The Catholic Herald of 18th July, "Jihad Will Destroy Us If We Don't Act Now". It is an interview West had with Robert Spencer, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)" and blogger on the recently censored Jihad Watch.

Contrary to the predictable prejudice from the multicultural Left, the author has a broad and thorough background studying Christian heritage, as well as Islamic scripture. He too noticed the reasons why the cooperation of broadly The Left and Radical Islamism in the Unholy Alliance isn't strange or even a coincidence!

While I call my argument of the Straight Red Line, based on the brilliant analysis of Stephen Hicks into recollection (here's the chart and here's a link to the first part of the series), in Spencer's words:

"There is a deep ideological affinity between the Left and the jihadists. Whenever the hard Left gained power they instituted a reign of terror in order to create what they envisage as a just society, brought about by force. Islamic law works in much the same way: utopia created by force."

What they share is of course - for starters - the subjectivist, primacy of consciousness base [1] of the Counter-Enlightenment, which basks in the cruel sun of Rousseau's and Marx' political justification of violence to bring about social change.

Spencer too mentions the numbers game - the disastrous demographics which the Left has reframed into the tired 'advancing geriatrics' excuse instead of facing the truth, viz. the exceedingly low birthrates, the result of problems created by Socialist policies: the gradual and deliberate destruction of the family as the operative unit, and other advancing forms of social engineering (see also Neo Totalitarianism (6): Liberty for Social Security and Chart II: The Subversion Program).

Spencer is spot on in his perception of the widening gap between on the one hand the persistent push of the postmodern multicultural elite for Western society's integration into an "Eurabian" culture (see recent remarks by a Dutch senior government minister to that avail), a goal shared and propagated by both the mainstream national political parties and the boys in Brussels, and on the other hand the actual situation in the streets of cities and towns all over the West, the growing discontent of the voters.

Any attempt of as much as naming the taboo, causes the mainstream to break out in knee-jerk apoplectic shock, recalling visions of Nazi Germany and pictures of the holocaust - which by the way doesn't keep the Left from currently developing nasty cases of unadulterated antisemitism, a reminder of the Collectivist common necessity of a scapegoat, to blame the negative effects of otherwise picture perfect policies on.

Psychologist Dr Sanity is also at work on above article by Victor Davis Hanson, but leaves the hate mail for what it is and moves on to a similar case of the Left's responsibility for Spenser's cataclysmic vista of civil war: in "Without a Blink" she observes correctly:

"Interesting to note that what 'gives the pre-modern fascist killers a pass' is the post-modern rhetoric and dogma of the left. It is precisely this inherently psychologically dysfunctional cognitive strategy that is able to shift, 'without a blink' from one subjective conviction to its exact opposite without a shred of self-awareness or mental dissonance."

She draws a comparison of Radical Islam with a malicious physical condition: likewise it "has manifested itself today and is spreading rapidly for pretty much the same reason, having been given an ideological carte blanche by the political Left ... with its political correctness and relativistic multicultural fantasies have managed to suppress and otherwise short-circuit the natural defense mechanisms of Western civilization."

"Radical Islamic ideology is itself an unexpected combination of several toxic memes ... which has been carefully synchronized with the failed totalitarian ideologies of the last century ... the remaining outposts of communism and socialism in the world are thriving in academic and "intellectual" circles in the West; together with the Islamic fanatics of the world, they have created a postmodern symphony whose cacophonous music only facilitates the descent into emotionalism, hysteria and murderous suicidality. Without a blink, the left switched from their lip-service championing human life and liberty to championing those whose main desire is to suppress it and bring all of humanity into submission."

A truly ugly picture is gradually emerging of how the role of Bezmenev's de-moral-ized generations that are currently in power, is costing the West its future, its culture and its freedom. The totalitarian Left to date has got away with 110 million victims. I - for one - have no intention of letting them add to that - Liberal moral hatred laws or not.

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 ...

EU Phobia: more Crimes against the Ideology!

There's no ducking it. The new EU Council Framework Decision on Combating Racism and Xenophobia adopted last week is another step towards Liberal totalitarianism and is already dubbed 'an appalling piece of legislation' by The Brussels Journal.

The EU Justice Ministers have been haggling and compromising over curtailing nothing less than our basic freedom of speech. The legal framework deals with the harmonisation and the E.U. proper's legal ability to combat "forms of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law", "against publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising the crimes directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred against such a group or a member of such a group."

Trust the E.U. not to see the ethical problem of what they're doing, and to come up with a subtle text that outlaws bad jokes and the Jewish Shoa, but doesn't cover the Armenian holocaust, or Stalin era communist crimes against the civilian populations.

Since the member states' existing legislation differs wildly, full harmonisation of criminal laws isn't yet possible.
But more stringent laws, such as in Germany and Austria, remain applicable in the member states.

Especially noteworthy is the EU's ability under the framework to prosecute cases of their own accord, and without the victim's consent. Crimes can carry sentences of upto three years in prison and forfeiture of employment as well as benefits. The latter is simply unheard of in post World War II Europe and a measure of the wrong way it's going.

The following may sound like linguistic nitpicking, but is indicative of the gross imprecision in these Liberal morality laws. Phobia means fear, not hatred, and fear isn't a matter of free choice. Depending on the underlying cause of the phobia - and I don't know that hatred is always of free choice either - but you can rest assured I have an almighty phobia for Islam ... what with terrorist attacks and Al Qa'ida's media manipulation that is specifically tuned to disseminating as much fear as possible. That is the whole point of it, and the reason it's called terrorism, which derives from the Latin word terrorem meaning great fear or dread.

While they should be prosecuting intolerant organizations the EU is potentially punishing the victims. But far from it, under the Four Freedoms they have a positive duty to keep their citizens from Fear! For terrorism is worse than war: it is an act of war against unarmed civilians.

In "You Can't Make an Omelet Without Breaking Eggs" we have already seen the tendency in the West to elevate Left Liberal ideology to moral standards across the board. These tenets don't foster equality, but on the contrary, victimhood and inequality so as to "compensate groups for their inequality in proportion to their difference."

In a post "Victim obsession leading to more oppression, not less in modern Britain" former University teacher John Ray from Brisbane, Australian gives a review on a book called, "Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law", in which practising barrister Neil Addison 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 regulating this messy dimension of society.

Addison is concerned about the legal expansion into a complicated moral aspect of human life, and fears that a new generation of laws will remove people's powers to criticise, challenge or defend their religious (or non-religious) views.

He "sees the expansion of law into the terrain of religion as part of 'a new type of philosophy': 'We used to have laws because we considered them necessary, but now it seems we have laws because they are desirable. If something is regarded as good or bad, we use the law to direct it. In effect, we're trying to legislate morality.' For Addison, the law has now become a tool for some groups to impose their moral positions on others, whether it is the ban on smoking or the ban on foxhunting or restrictions on what we can say about minority groups.

We have to ask ourselves if any group's activism and victimhood outweighs the loss of a society that respects the freedom of speech! Instead of overcompensating for the Left Liberal lack of universal equality, in treating all religions as 'identical', it would be right, fairer and wiser to convince those minorities that hold excessive views, that living in a free world means furthering tolerance and respect for the freedom of others, and that there's no place for violent forms of self-assertion.

What the E.U. is in the process of doing, is making our societies less free, so as to accommodate intolerant minorities. By adopting their standards, we are getting it backwards.

As for gays and women's libbers, they need to develop a sense of responsibility: Oh, grow up!

The Impossible made Possible: the Dictatorship of Liberalism

To the list of subjectivist sins we can now add a reverse of Greg Koukl's Tolerance Trick: The Tolerance of Intolerance. A (regretfully anonymous) commentator on Thursday 12th, to a post on the plight of Christians in the Middle East on the blog Setting the World to Rights wrote as follows:

Relativistic thinking leads to a peculiar problem. If one person cannot judge an other's behavior because he does not live in his skin and cannot see through his eyes, then how should disagreements be settled? If each antagonist's conflicting idea about what each will do is determined by equally valid but differing perspectives, then a philosophy that starts out sounding tolerant to each, devolves into a philosophy that supports conflicting patterns of behavior, otherwise known as violence. By uncritically accepting the Islamists perspective that Westerners are "Christian Crusaders", no doubt in the name of being tolerant, the Archbishop (ed. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams) unwittingly accepts the legitimacy of the consequences of that worldview, namely the massacre of Christians -- surely the height of intolerance. The Archbishop, like relativists who argue similarly, adopts a morally inconsistent and therefore morally wrong position: the tolerance of intolerance.

... for which we are no end grateful!

In the world of paradoxes and oxymora created by the relativist world view I yesterday even had to conclude that the impossible has now become possible. What keeps bothering me no end is the case of Rocco Buttiglione. Let me not repeat the whole sordid matter: a biography and links to media articles on the case can be found on the site of the Acton Institute.

It was of course the politically correct E.U. at its worst, having elevated subjectivism to the officially prescribed policy for all member countries. I'm just wondering what my old hero, philosopher and former E.U.commissioner Frits Bolkestein would make of it. We cannot know, as he doesn't seem to blog.

It is of course a case that would make any follower of genuine Liberalism, in the classical sense of De Tocqueville and John Locke, shudder at the mere thought, the latter two probably turning in their graves as well. I know my mother does.

I was a member of the Dutch (classical) Liberal party VVD (not to be confused with the left wing Liberal D66) when Frits Bolkestein was leading it with great moral courage. Mr Bolkestein at his inauguration stressed the need to come to a discussion in the party on ethics and morality. It never got off the ground, there being a wing that subscribes to "unlimited liberty as long as nobody else gets hurt" and the banning of "preaching moral values", a hint at the fully fledged relativism of current date. The subject at some point even became a real taboo. It was - in the end - also the core reason for me leaving the party.

Since there's an element, described by some journalists with a turn for the caricature, as "beer tap liberalism" - a branch of Liberals not particularly interested in the inner thoughts and workings of the doctrine itself - they know little of De Montesquieu who remarked on the American Constitution that it worked as it was embedded in a Christian society, and John Adams who said that the American Constitution was made "only for a moral and religious people". Alexis de Tocqueville has commented that "despotism may govern without faith, liberty cannot" and Liberal theorist John Locke noted on civil society that it was Christianity that gave his doctrine foundations and strength.

Contrary to how it is seen at present, I think that for at least a number of the great Liberal philosophers from the age of the Enlightenment, it never was the idea for society to become "radically enlightened" (secularized, science and reason only considered possible outside the faith), in the sense that Christianity, as the original source of reason, science and natural philosophy, was seen by them as an obstacle to the Liberal ideal. Above quotations are proof to the contrary.

Pope Benedict XVI in his book "Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures" proposes that we adopt the reverse of an axiom from the age of the Enlightenment, when an attempt was made to understand and define the essential norms and morality by saying, these would be valid etsi Deus non daretur, even if God did exist. The reverse advising the atheist to direct his life veluti si Deus daretur, as if God did indeed exist.

It is valuable advice from men who in wisdom and knowledge are light-years removed from today's pseudo scepticism and sophistry that in fact has led to a form of politically correct crypto- totalitarianism, that hasn't the foggiest notion or even awareness of a nasty by-product of democracy, the dictatorship by the majority.

But in line with the paradox of The Intolerance of Tolerance, it is the Dictatorship of Liberalism that is at the core of "The Case Buttiglione", a case with more victims than Mr Buttiglione and the E.P. alone: it marks the death of classical Liberalism as we knew it. (It stands to reason, when basically totalitarian parties start calling themselves liberal.)