The Old World marches again...

In the last thousand years there has been only 1 new idea regarding government: that government should NOT be left in the hands of a divinely-guided king, or pharaoh, or caliph, but that so far as possible it should be in the hands of unwashed slobs like us. Those nations that have adopted this approach have grown prosperous, dynamic and tolerant. Those that resisted it, or perverted it by creating "a state of the peasants and workers" that in fact was ruled by a tiny despotic clique, have slid into stagnation, or catastrophe.

Even Karl Marx noted this phenomena, though from an eccentric perspective, more than 150 years ago in The Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

But Marx never understood: the Old World has its strengths. THE OLD WORLD HAS ITS STRENGTHS. And the new, free, prosperous "enlightened" world has its weaknesses...ohhhh, MAN does it have its weaknesses. Since right around 1917, the Old World has been actively fighting to destroy the New World, though we had about a ten-year hiatus (1991-2001) when the War--World War IV, actually--was not so apparent.

Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism, Islamofascism...all are simply vehicles for the ancient passions and values of the Old World to re-channel themselves more effectively, so as to destroy the New. The people who developed these ideologies have studied and exploited the weaknesses of the New World, to the point that all of them have seriously threatened it.

This is really a remarkable achievement for ideas that by any reasonable judgment should have been discarded as flat-earth mythologies long ago. But their success derives from their self-conscious and clear enmity against the New World, and, in every case, the New World's mirror-image negative obliviousness and fecklessness. There is also the deadly snobbiness of the New World, where many people cannot imagine a "primitive" people ever seriously threatening them. As George Orwell put it in a superb 1941 essay about H.G. Wells:

The same misconception reappears in an inverted form in Wells's attitude to the Nazis. Hitler is all the war-lords and witch-doctors in history rolled into one. Therefore, argues Wells, he is an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately. But unfortunately the equation of science with common sense does not really hold good. The aeroplane, which was looked forward to as a civilising influence but in practice has hardly been used except for dropping bombs, is the symbol of that fact. Modern Germany is far more scientific than England, and far more barbarous. Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the aeroplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age. Science is fighting on the side of superstition. But obviously it is impossible for Wells to accept this. It would contradict the world-view on which his own works are based. The war-lords and the witch-doctors must fail, the common-sense World State, as seen by a nineteenth-century Liberal whose heart does not leap at the sound of bugles, must triumph. Treachery and defeatism apart, Hitler cannot be a danger. That he should finally win would be an impossible reversal of history, like a Jacobite restoration.

http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws

Ohhhh, those are some words of wisdom there. Orwell, who had been an imperial policeman in the boondocks of Burma as well as seeing front-line action during the Spanish Civil War, knew A LOT about the hidden strengths of the Old World.

Many Old World values are very admirable or respectable : loyalty, obedience, diligence, patience, caution, modesty, humility, self-control, respect for age. Looking at 20th century Western culture, it is stunning to realize that almost every one of those values has been effectively (if not openly) repudiated, to be replaced by their antitheses: self-promotion, rebellion, leisure, instant gratification, recklessness, immodesty, arrogance, licentiosness, and the cult of juvenilization. Actually, it is more precise to say these values shifted in the very late 20th century.

And how interesting to note: at the very time the West has abandoned those values, the latest irruption of the Old World, Islamofascism, has become increasingly bold and confident that it will destroy us. Would they be so confident if that shift had not occurred?

It is also interesting that Islamofascism is the only one of these throwbacks to boldly declare its allegiance to a model from the past. As much as the other three totalitarian ideologies actually lived out Old World values in practice, they claimed to be revolutionary, even futuristic in concept. Since Islam has continued an almost unbroken period of technological and material decline for 500 years, it is difficult to imagine that it can pose an existential threat to the West in the sense that the others did. HOWEVER, due to modern technologies like those you are using at this moment, combined with the ancient zeal of the brainwashed "shahid," Islamofascism is a live threat to massacre many thousands of innocents on any given day, irrespective of whether or not such an attack helps "Islam to rule over the whole earth."

"Islam" means "submission" (to the will of Allah/God), and it is therefore a very hard sell amongst the individualistic, rights-crazed citizens of the West. Mentally-unbalanced people and criminals like Adam Gadahn, John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla and Richard Reid may gravitate to Islamofascism, but given the societal worth of these people the only logical response is: good riddance. But they will continue to provide useful cover, even intelligence to the would-be new emirs who serenely plan the demise of the West. Just because they haven't a snowball's chance in hell of success, or even any coherent plan for achieving it, doesn't mean the victims of their efforts will be any less dead.

The Old World is coming for us, full of grudge, baleful confidence, animus, hate, and the patience of a vendetta as only a Middle Eastern vendetta can hold. It can't win, but it can do dreadful damage to us. Our top priority must be to smash and debilitate and cut the arms off this zombie, and return it to its grave, and be prepared for its next incarnation--for the Old World can never be truly destroyed, any more than the Earth's fossils can be erased from existence.

Let us draw from the wisdom of the ancients who actually CREATED civilization and its concepts, and use that Old World wisdom to go forth and win this war.

The fangs and claws of The Old World

I'm still working on a long post about the revenge of the Old World, but in the meantime, here is a little taste of some of the nastier Old World values, from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgsZYA1mPY&eurl=

HI-OCTANE WISDOM FROM AN ARAB

I had to pick out this absolute gem from Mr. Haddad's essay: very seldom has so much wisdom been expressed so inarguably and so memorably in so few words:
---------------------------
"What was forgotten was that Islamism - this theocratic, fundamentally totalitarian, and clearly antisemitic ideology - ... is doctrinally inalterable. Following the most unexpected geopolitical paths, giving in to the demands of realpolitik, Islamism can demonstrate a great degree of pragmatism in its relations with Western powers. Nonetheless, it will not renounce its strategic objectives: in domestic policy, an obsolete shari'a on all of its subjects; and in foreign policy, hegemonic expansion, international proselytizing, and the eradication of 'the Zionist tumor.' Semantic changes within ideological continuity - that is the essence of Islamist Machiavellianism..."
----------------------------

Wow. WOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW.

I used to be the Coldest of The Cold Warriors. In those days we were educated as to the Soviets' concept of "expansion and co-existence." Basically, it meant: when the West was weak/inattentive, the USSR expanded; when the West was strong and alert, the USSR strove to "co-exist" with the West, which simpy meant CONSOLIDATING THAT EXPANSION.

We're seeing the same thing today with Islamism.

I recently read this article by an Arab philosophe, Mr. Mezri Haddad. My God, he's got more insight and self-honesty in his little finger than all our "Arabist experts" in the State Department put together. This analysis seems more and more brilliant every time I read it:

Special Dispatch-North African Reform Project
November 21, 2006
No. 1362

Tunisian Philosopher Mezri Haddad:
Islamists "Have Reduced the Koran to a Nauseating Antisemitic Lampoon"
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD136206 .

In a blog entry, Tunisian philosopher Mezri Haddad attacked the Muslim world's tolerant attitude toward the antisemitism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; stated that there was no such thing as a moderate Islamist; and suggested that Muslims reinterpret potentially anti-Jewish Koranic passages, as the Vatican had done with similar passages in the New Testament.

The following are excerpts from Haddad's blog entry:(1)


"Arab Public Opinion... Has Found, in Antisemitism, the Perfect Catalyst For All Its Narcissistic Wounds and Social, Economic, and Political Frustrations"

"The young Iranian president's deliberately outrageous, mortifying, and extremist [statements] aiming at Holocaust denial have provoked stupor and indignation everywhere in the world, with the quite symptomatic exception of the Islamic countries... This deafening silence cannot be explained solely by the fear of suffering from terrorist attacks, as in the heyday of Khomeinist obscurantism. It is also explained by the necessity of getting along with Arab public opinion, which, after years of galvanization by the most reactionary forms of nationalist casuistry and Islamist dogmatism, has found in antisemitism the perfect catalyst for all its narcissistic wounds and social, economic, and political frustrations.

"It must be admitted that some Koranic verses, intentionally isolated from their historical context, have contributed even more to the anchoring of antisemitic stereotypes in Arab-Muslim mentalities. Incidentally, one could say the same about the New Testament, certain passages of which served, in the distant past and the not-so-distant past, to give a theological patina to the most abominable of anti-Jewish persecutions. The Church had to carry out its own 'aggiornamento'... in order to deprive Christian extremists of any evangelical legitimacy.

"All this is to say that the petrifaction of Arab-Muslim mentalities is not at all irremediable - provided that Islamic thinkers show intellectual audacity. Since they cannot purge the Koran of its potentially antisemitic dross, they must closely examine this corpus with hermeneutical reasoning...

"If the West's indignation [at Ahmadinejad's statements] is perfectly understandable and justified, their stupor shows, on the other hand, a certain credulity in their very conception of the Iranian regime. Those who were surprised by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's heinous stigmatizations are the very same people who - distinguishing between the regime and the people who comprise it, and swallowing the fable that there are 'moderate' Islamists and 'extremist' Islamists - have long believed in the normalization of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] and in its ineluctable democratization. As Jesus said [John 20:29], 'Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed'...

"It is true that this rehabilitation of the fundamentalist Iranian regime was possible only following the irruption, on September 11, 2001, of a new, mutant form of the most extreme kind of Islamism: Al-Qaeda and its macabre cortege of candidates for martyrdom... Bin Laden's triumph, his true miracle, consists in not only having given a civilized appearance to hideous theocracies, but also in having given a human, or even humanist, face to neo-fascist movements who aspire to power: Hamas in Palestine... Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and their alter egos everywhere in the Arab world...

"Like amnesiacs, no one wanted anymore to remember on what ideological substratum this Shiite theocracy rested... What was forgotten was that Islamism - this theocratic, fundamentally totalitarian, and clearly antisemitic ideology - ... is doctrinally inalterable. Following the most unexpected geopolitical paths, giving in to the demands of realpolitik, Islamism can demonstrate a great degree of pragmatism in its relations with Western powers. Nonetheless, it will not renounce its strategic objectives: in domestic policy, an obsolete shari'a on all of its subjects; and in foreign policy, hegemonic expansion, international proselytizing, and the eradication of 'the Zionist tumor.' Semantic changes within ideological continuity - that is the essence of Islamist Machiavellianism..."


"One Cannot Reform A Theocracy; One Must Throw It Back Into The Wastebasket Of History"

"It is because people for so long believed in the illusion of an Islamism one can live with... that they had recourse to every possible and imaginable ratiocination in order to make sense of the Iranian president's fundamentally antisemitic diatribes. In this anatomy of anathema, every analytical tool was employed... [but] one has to go back to the original purity of the Khomeini's doctrine in order to understand the congenital antisemitism of the current Iranian president...

"On August 30, 1979, Khomeini declared at Qom: 'Those who demand democracy want to drag the country into corruption and ruin. They are worse than the Jews. They should be hanged. They are not men...' In his pamphlet 'Political, Philosophical, Social, and Religious Principles,' he reproduced all of the stereotypes propounded by Islamist rhetoric ...: 'The Jews, may God lay them low, have manipulated the editions of the Koran... These Jews and their supporters have a project to destroy Islam and to establish a Jewish world government.' Whence this categorical imperative: 'Israel, this cancerous tumor, must disappear, and the Jews must be damned and fought until the end of time.'

"But in the meantime, Ayatollah Khomeini could beg Israel for arms and military assistance in order to resist the Iraqi invasion. We can thus easily guess from whom Rafsanjani, Khatami, and the other emblematic figures of 'enlightened Islamism' derived their cynical pragmatism!

"Therefore one should stop viewing the Iranian regime with naive eyes, as some people perpetuate the myth of an opposition between 'reformists' and 'conservatives,' which, while it expresses a real - but utilitarian -political nuance, does not, however, imply a doctrinal antagonism. One cannot reform a theocracy; one must throw it back into the wastebasket of history, from which it never should have cropped up [in the first place].

"In Iran, and in general in the Muslim world, the line of demarcation does not pass between 'moderate' Islamists and 'extremist' Islamists, but rather between theocrats and democrats, between fundamentalists and secularists, between those who have reduced the Koran to a case of nauseating antisemitism and those who, having seized the spirit and put the letter in perspective, know that Jews, like Christians, are Muslims' brothers in monotheism and in humanity, and that the Muslims' God is much more tolerant than the Islamists' divinity..."

Endnote:
(1) http://rencontrejfm.blogspot.com/2006/01/l...-cancreuse.html, January 31, 2006.
The site on which the article appeared is the webpage of the Parisian radio broadcast "Encounters with the Muslim World.">>

Mr. Haddad's last paragraph sheds some light on a potential strategic error by the Bush administration: the effort to strengthen and support "moderate" Islamists, though, to be fair, the numbers of clear-thinking democrats and secularists like Mr. Haddad in the Muslim world my just be too small to be viable.

ARE JEWS SMART, OR STUPID?

Are Jews smart, or stupid?

Let's ask the question differently: How many Jews need to be slaughtered before we learn that murderous, heavily armed enemies need to be relentlessly smashed unless and until they give up their will to kill us?

The obvious answer, as of today is: "Not sure, BUT SIX MILLION WASN'T ENOUGH." Think of it: SIX MILLION WASN'T ENOUGH!!

The most recognized corporate representative of the Jewish people is the State of Israel. It is currently lead by a government that has lurched from one self-inflicted debacle to another, and a Prime Minister (Ehud the Manchurian Candidate Olmert) who was elected mere months after telling his people: Israelis are "TIRED OF WINNING."

NOT tired of getting rocketed every day and going to funerals for children shot under their beds by Arab terrorists and getting maligned and defamed by the European children of parents who built the death camps...No, "TIRED OF WINNING."

And he won IN A LANDSLIDE.

OK, now go back and read the first sentence of this post. Does it still sound silly?

Homer's Odysseus never tired of winning. But, of course: in the ancient world, what was the alternative? But is the modern world really any different, especially for the Jews? Didn't the wisest Jewish King of them all tell us: "There is nothing new under the sun."

The Jews really have a problem. Charles Darwin would have spotted it in a second. But it is nothing a little study and learning from the lessons of one great pagan cannot cure.

My Mission

I am Mordechai, son of Hirsh. I am a soldier in the Lord's Army, fighting the forces of Satan that are rampaging across the earth and frightening people in my family, and my countrymen. As anyone who recalls December 24, 1991, when the hammer and sickle flag was pulled down from over the Kremlin, can attest, this is NOT a "Mission Impossible."

If I can contribute 1/1000th as much to The Cause as The Belmont Club has, I will be more than satisfied.