Monday, September 03, 2007

How do we deal with the threat of liberalism?

Mike has put up a couple of nice posts the last few days concerning the nature of Islam, and how best for we Americans and the West to deal with the threat it poses us.

We've both been thinking along the same lines of late it seems. And we've both been searching for answers to the dilemma we face. Perhaps you've been assaulted by the same kinds of thoughts. How do we deal with Islam effectively?

Lawrence Auster of VFR asks the question this way: If we can't democratize Islam, and we can't destroy it, then what? But Auster goes further, he provides the answer. And with my friend, Mike, I strongly suggest that you read Auster's article. Mike has provided the link in his entry below.

Also, Mike's post on moderate Muslims has been a fruitful piece of work in itself. Mike and I had an exchange in the comments section that not only led to this post, but to the one preceding it. Like I said in my comments to Mike, I see some real similarities between Islam and Western liberalism. Both belief systems would destroy us. And the whole problem common to them both may be stated this way:

"There are moderate Muslims as well as moderate liberals, but there's no such thing as a moderate Islam, nor a moderate liberalism."

Both of these are extreme belief systems which are destructive fundamentally. The similarities between them, which I won't go into here except in the general sort of way that I have above, suggested to my mind that perhaps both of them could be dealt with effectively by use of the same separationist strategy Auster suggests concerning Islam, yet customized to and applied in a different way to the problem of liberalism. So I put the question to Mr. Auster, and here is his answer.

Now, I don't necessarily think Auster's reply to me is the end of it. I didn't go into much detail in the way that I posed the question to him because I was having a hard time articulating what I was thinking. But I think he's put this entry up for a reason. And I think part of that reason is to get responses from some of his readers who may have an idea of how to customize the separationist strategy to utilize it effectively against the threat of liberalism. So if any of you have any ideas on the matter, do send a comment to Auster concerning this entry.

I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that we isolate liberals in the way that we'd isolate Muslims according to Auster's separationist principles. I'm suggesting that the ideology of liberalism be somehow isolated so that it can pose a serious threat to us no more. Because as Auster has noted elsewhere, as long as Islam has an ascendancy into our counsels, it is a threat to us. The same can be said of liberalism, as long as liberalism is a dominant power in American politics, it works to destroy our tradition, our culture, our way of life; our very existence.

Ideas?...

12 comments:

Terry Morris said...

Note: Auster has replied negatively to another form of my inquiry, so it would appear that I've once again been shot down. Now, if it indeed turns out that he is right and the principles of separationism cannot be applied in the case of liberalism, then so be it. But I'm not that easily dissuaded.

I hope Mike will tackle this question shortly because he can probably articulate it better than I. But what I'm suggesting is basically that Balanced Government, as we've discussed it, implies the separationist principles Auster proposes concerning Islam, albeit in a different form or manner. What it would do is to isolate and break liberalism down into small and relatively insignificant local forces having little ability to organize into a larger and a national force.

Of course I acknowledge the resistance that extreme leftists would put up. But if we don't do something to halt its destructive and its corruptive progress, all I can see on the horizon is doom.

Michael Tams said...

While the word isolate doesn't seem quite right, I think balanced government has a unique ability to EXPOSE liberalism for the self-destructive ideology that it is, or in the alternative, starve it to death.

Imagine the most mind-numbing nanny-statism you can imagine. Now imagine it administered at the most local levels of government (city, township, county). What happens?

People will (hopefully softly) revolt. They'll want nothing to do with spheres of government (cities or counties) that assume the responsibilities that rightly belong to the spheres of government closest to the individual. If my town decided that it was going to provide universal social entitlements, I'd sell my house and move a few miles away to a town that didn't. I'd miss my neighbors, but there's no way I'd pay the kind of taxes one would have to pay if these decisions were made at the appropriate local level.

The effects of liberalism are in some respect diluted today in our imbalanced system. Maybe this is because the machinery of federal government has more means of easing the pain (by sheer numbers?) that entitlement programs create. I would suggest that in a balanced government, where the responsibilities of each sphere of government are properly distributed - as designed when our Compact was created - the People would directly bear the burden of how much external government they choose to have. And that this level of external government wouldn't be a large amount, at least not for very long.

In this way - advocating and instituting properly balanced government - we're almost backing people into rediscovering their sense of self-preservation.

But first we have to educate people on the principles; then we have to be willing to stick our necks out for them. I remain confident that this can be done.

-MT

Terry Morris said...

I don't know, Mike, I think the term "isolate" describes it pretty well. As liberalism becomes more and more exposed for what it is as the method of balanced government is applied, it would in turn become more isolated and relegated to smaller and smaller spheres, having less and less influence by this very exposure.

-Terry

Call Me Mom said...

I have been reading the posts on this developing subject with great interest.
It seems to me that a return to the teaching of civic duty may be a required first step in any attempt to combat liberalism as it is being discussed here.

Terry Morris said...

Mom,

The only way I know to answer you is to say that what I imagine you mean by "civic duty" liberals would strongly object to, thus they'd strongly object to the teaching of it as well. To a liberal the only civic duty is an adherence to the liberal social agenda. That's the reason our educational institutions are so infected with liberalism.

-Terry

Call Me Mom said...

Pardon my vagueness, Mr. Morris. By civic duty, in this instance, I was referring to a citizen's duty to report crime and testify in court when they are called to do so. The duty to recognize the greater cost to the individual and society of allowing certain behaviors (drug abuse, shoplifting,vandalism, etc.) to go unchallenged.

Although I do not deny the patriotic elements of civic duty, I am specifically concerned by the lack of willingness on the part of citizens (particularly liberals who are not content merely to neglect their own duty, but encourage others to do the same) to take on this portion of that duty.

I grow weary of hearing that someone's friend, neighbor or relative uses drugs, but we can't report him, he's only harming himself right? And he only uses them "recreationally". It's as though they think this person has their own private drug fairy who only sells to that one person and then leaves town having had no contact with anyone else. Or that they believe there is no downside societal cost to this person's drug abuse. It's o.k. to vilify someone who smokes ordinary tobacco, but hands off the recreational drug user. What's the logic here? It's that objecting means you have to stand up and do your civic duty and that might be unpleasant or inconvenient and requires you to pass judgment on someone else's behavior.

The same logic is obviously at work when I hear about a person who is assaulted, refuses to press charges and then complains that the police didn't do anything. Here's a news flash, they're not allowed to do anything if you won't stand up and do your civic duty by pressing charges and testifying.

I was wondering if the problem was that we simply didn't understand the connection between our willingness to do our civic duty and the quality of our communities, or if it was that we had simply become a nation of cowards. This discussion, however, has increased my understanding of this problem.

I don't see any reason why we can't use the same tactics to get such education back into our schools as were used for it's removal. This could also be the beginning of isolating that portion of our population who are infected by liberalism, as well as reasserting the proper place of the individual citizen in this grand experiment we call The United States of America.

Sorry to bring the discussion out of the intellectual stratosphere there, but I tend to think better with concrete examples.

Terry Morris said...

Mom, if this discussion degenerates to that of an "intellectual" one, I'm out. ;)

-Terry

Tanstaafl said...

How about we criminalize their thoughts and throw them in gulags? That is after all what they'd like to do to us. And they will eventually.

Michael Tams said...

T,

They've already created a means of "criminalizing" thoughts - speech codes, political correctness, victimization as an industry, blacklisting - so I guess it's just a matter of time before "hate speech" is punished by actual imprisonment.

Thanks for the comments. Everybody go check out T's blog, it's refreshingly candid.

-MT

Tanstaafl said...

That's correct. They've got a big head start. And still we delude ourselves that our logic, our words, our crying foul over their contradictions and hypocrisy, will somehow counter their very real dismantling of our civilization. Soon they will not only outlaw our most feeble forms of rebellion, they'll being pulling us from our homes for even having the temerity to think of rebelling.

You can delete this blog. I could delete mine. It's too late. Copies already exist in several places. Years from now they will comb through these records and track us down.

Thanks for recognizing my candor michael. I'm far more accustomed to being called a racist hater.

Michael Tams said...

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, right? At least I've always thought so.

-MT

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