HunterByrd

The Story of this Century

It's here. More and more people are paying attention to it. It has only just begun. A generation will be weaned on it.

The great Muslim migration to Europe ripens and comes of age. Sorry, but there are no melting pot analogies in this story. Why, then, don't we try 'good and evil' on for size? Too complex -- far too many loose (politically correct) ends for coherent minds? Well, then, let's accept an 'us versus them' approach. That will work, no matter which level the reader ascends -- or descends -- to.

The other day, Politickal Animal spoke of how well suited Tolkien's trilogy was to the day. Prescient man, Politickal! No less an internet presence than Victor Davis Hanson has chosen to elaborate upon your thoughts (mine, too, but you captured your keystrokes first!).

True, for a variety of reasons, Amsterdam may be a case study of how wrong Rousseau was about natural man, but for a Muslim immigrant the country was about as hospitable a foreign host as one can imagine. Thus, it was far safer for radical Islamic fascists to damn the West openly from a mosque in Rotterdam than for a moderate Christian to quietly worship in a church in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Algeria. And yet we learn not just that the Netherlands has fostered a radical sect of Muslims who will kill and bomb, but, far more importantly, that they will do so after years of residency among, and indeed in utter contempt of, their Western hosts.

VDH is a deep thinker and meticulous observer; I heed his words. Like when he puts the pox of Judas upon the entire of Kerry-supporting Frankreich:

Things are no less humiliating — or dangerous — in France. Thousands of unassimilated Muslims mock French society. Yet their fury shapes its foreign policy to the degree that Jacques Chirac sent a government plane to sweep up a dying Arafat. But then what do we expect from a country that enriched Hamas, let Mrs. Arafat spend her husband's embezzled millions under its nose, gave Khomeini the sanctuary needed to destroy Iran, sold a nuclear reactor to Saddam, is at the heart of the Oil-for-Food scandal, and revs up the Muslim world against the United States?

These islamists...what a deck of cards they are. What IS this picture we are staring at and into? I am confused to the depths. All of these people (obviously) ran away from something...we can only surmise that it was misery incarnate. They ran away to the west...to that great Satan and enemy of Allah. From cultural misery to license and liberty...but these people couldn't let go of the dark side.

It is almost as if the killers in Amsterdam said, "I want your cell phones, unfettered Internet access, and free-spirited girls, but hate the very system that alone can create them all. So please let me stay here to destroy what I want."

. . . .

Europe is also trapped in its own utopian race/class/gender rhetoric. It cannot openly question the wisdom of making the "other" coequal to itself, since one does not by any abstract standard judge, much less censure, customs, religions, or values.

I can't write --unfettered-- with curse words, but I want to insert them here for response, in the very same way these people strike at Western civilization. I am not the most eclectic of individuals, nor the most erudite, but I have been around long enough to draw a very firm conclusion with regards to western civ. It's the best that's ever been...its very weakness is its greatest intellectual strength...but when it gets down to the nut-cutting...rhetoric is a limp weapon indeed. Europe is awash in rhetoric, as is blue America.

We have three distinct traditions here in the West, according to James Kurth: (1) the classical culture of Greece and Rome (i.e., liberty and law); (2) the Christian religion (separation of powers); and (3) the Enlightenment of the modern era (liberal democracy, free market, reason and science). Which of these three (or any combination thereof) have you heard the Mullahs espouse recently?

But gut-check time is coming for Europe, with its own rising unassimilated immigrant populations, rogue mosques entirely bent on destroying the West, declining birth rate and rising entitlements, the Turkish question, and a foreign policy whose appeasement of Arab regimes won it only a brief lull and plenty of humiliation. The radical Muslim world of the madrassas hates the United States because it is liberal and powerful; but it utterly despises Europe because it is even more liberal and far weaker, earning the continent not fear, but contempt.

The real question is whether there is any Demosthenes left in Europe, who will soberly but firmly demand assimilation and integration of all immigrants, an end to mosque radicalism, even-handedness in the Middle East, no more subsidies to terrorists like Hamas, a toughness rather than opportunist profiteering with the likes of Assad and the Iranian theocracy — and make it clear that states that aid and abet terrorists in Europe due so to their great peril.

So will the old Ents awaken, or will they slumber on, muttering nonsense to themselves, lost in past grandeur and utterly clueless about the dangers on their borders?

Stay tuned — it is one of the most fascinating sagas of our time.

As my new-found friend, Politickal Animal, said the other day: "Even so, in the larger world the shadow is lengthening, just as it did in Middle Earth (one of my fav metaphors for the challenge of evil before us)."

Radical Islam must be tempered. If we are to see an end to this madness within our lifetimes, the force from without this sickness (i.e., the West's) will not be enough. Islamists adhering to the highest tenants of their belief must force positive change from within.