“Can our democratic system survive the 21st century?”
by Fjordman
There are two different camps among those concerned with the problems of the modern West: Those who ascribe them to a powerful and influential minority who champion certain ideologies, and those who ascribe them to a lack of cultural confidence and structural, religious and metaphysical problems in the West in general. I personally see some evidence to support both these explanations.
An alliance of left-wingers and right-wingers, or transnational progressives and transnational capitalists as John Fonte would have said, is undermining the nation state. It is more than a little ironic that Socialists are squarely on the side of the super-rich in desiring open borders. There is plenty of evidence that mass immigration has been promoted by cultural and political elites, and that opposition to this has been silenced with sometimes quite repressive means.
The Netherlands was much less thrilled about Multiculturalism than was generally assumed in elitist circles well before 2002. The media and the politicians drew a picture that simply didn’t correspond to reality. Maverick politician Pim Fortuyn only brought popular discontent to the surface, three sociologists at the Radboud University in Nijmegen concluded. “The positive image that almost all the Dutch had the same tolerant attitude to minorities as the ‘well-thinking’ section of the nation” (as the political and media elite are often described) was kept alive for a long time,” the sociologists maintain.I do not dispute the fact that there has been a general breakdown of cultural confidence in the West and in Europe, but I do dispute the claim that this has translated into a generally shared death wish where the masses happily embrace their own eradication. The prevalence of hate speech laws and censorship is a strong indication of the contrary. Still, let us have a look at some structural flaws in the West.
As Euripides said: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” Well, the West is currently stark, raving mad, and sometimes actively hates itself. I’m scratching my head trying to find out where this self-loathing comes from. Maybe we feel guilty because we are so successful and rich and accomplished that we just can’t take it anymore. But where do such ideas about guilt originate from? I suspect they are somehow related to the Judeo-Christian strand of the West. They do not stem from the Greco-Roman or Germanic ones. Bad things could be said about Julius Caesar, but suicidal guilt definitely wasn’t his major problem. Maybe we need a touch of Roman ruthlessness as well as Christian compassion. But Western self-loathing is frequently directed against Christianity, and that is somewhat puzzling if we assume that it emanates from Christianity.
What is Multiculturalism? There is probably a new Great Idea for every generation. It changes just enough for people to be duped again, but it always entails some form of large-scale change for millions of people. The less it corresponds to reality, the better. The point is to outbid others in Utopian ideas. What is behind it? Well, the joy of destroying the Established Order to bring purpose into otherwise purposeless lives and the desire to immerse oneself into grandiose ideas. The desire for personal power and the joy of being able to harass opponents shouldn’t be underestimated, either. If you claim that your Utopian ideas are about justice and equality, you can also claim that those who disagree with you are proponents of injustice and inequality, in other words evil, and outside the boundaries of civilized debate.
One should always be mindful of people who profess an ideology that entails sweeping changes to society, claim that this represents the unstoppable tide of history, and yet for some reason need to shut down critics through intimidation. If their ideology is so great, how come they are so reluctant to accept criticism? Good ideas can be rationally defended. If people resist critical scrutiny of their ideas, this is usually a powerful indication of the fact that these ideas are neither truthful nor desirable.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=2981&cid=1&sid=104