Dr. Dawg is more than a little exercised at the rise of what he sees as a resurgent fascism in Italy. And he means old skool fascism as opposed to the simple trope much enjoyed by the left of calling anyone who disagrees with them “fascist”. He has a point and one which he and his lefty pals (not to mention Liberals) should be taking to heart.
Italians had decades of Center-Right and Center-Left governments. None were very effectual but, then again, there were no existential issues facing Italy. Business got along just fine in a culture of officially winked at corruption and tax evasion. Politics, to a large degree, consisted of doling out public jobs and funds. That began to change in the 1990s when illegal immigrants and rather phony “refugees” began to arrive in Italy to supplement growing communities of other, documented, immigrants. Dawg cites the issues surrounding the Roma in a number of Italian cities, but Muslim migrants have also piled in.
Like most European countries Italy took a relatively liberal line with these new migrants extending welfare, social services, education and medical services. So long as the immigrant communities were relatively small Italians seemed able to adjust. However, as the immigration continued and as Italian birthrates declined, the non-elite mass of Italians began to seriously question the value of that immigration.
What Dawg sees as fascism - and there are certainly more than a few reasons to describe it that way - is also what I would describe as a cultural nationalism. And it is a cultural nationalism which I suspect will become increasingly prevalent in European countries with relatively large Muslim communities.
One of the great conceits of the left and center-left post-war politicians is that culture does not matter and that we are moving towards a multi-cultural, post national, world. The implication of this belief is that the very idea of “Italianness” is little more than a historical relic which will, with in the embrace of the EU, gradually become a quaint folk custom. Which might well have happened had the EU kept its borders shut to non-European immigration. But, of course, the EU positively encouraged Muslim immigration and the bien-pensant are now reaping the whirlwind.
Now, for the political elites, the essential differences between Western/Christian culture and Eastern/Islamic culture were matters to be ignored or studied or accommodated. Those elites rarely had much to do with the day to day reality of the cultural conflicts which arose. However those conflicts were and are real despite the arm waving and denial of the political elites.
Democratic politics has a generally conservative tendency - most politics takes place without there being much chance for actual change because the elite practitioners of such politics generally agree on all but the most trivial points. To a degree, this elite agreement is one of the main reasons why voter turnout has precipitously declined throughout the West in the last few decades.
However, at a certain point, the politics of elite accommodation effectively collapse in the face of focussed public anger. This can happen very quickly - as it has in Italy - and reflects a sea change in an electorate. Elite politicians ride along happy in the belief that their position, secured by effective media collusion, is secure. After all, when was the last time the voters in a democratic nation voted for real change?
The answer to that question is another question: When was the last time that voters in a democratic nation were confronted with an existential challenge to their culture? Mass, non-assimilated, immigration is just such a challenge and the voters of Italy met it by tossing the old coalition politicians out of office and replacing them with politicians who promised to address the real concerns of ordinary Italians.
I would not be at all surprised to see more of this happen in Europe. And in Canada too if dimwits like Dion really think they can do Green Rape with impunity.
I believe in a pluralist society where I can be Jewish, he can be Christian, she can be Muslim, and we all get along peacefully – we can agree to disagree about political or religious matters. ezra levant before a US Congress Committee
Syed Soharwardy, he of the initial Human Rights Complaint against Ezra Levant that got the whole outraged ball of wax rolling, has changed his mind about all sorts of things to do with faith, tolerance and the Canadian way.
Apparently this ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion actually took place on a road, the Road to Sault St. Marie to be precise. No offence to the good people of The Soo, but I’ve also wanted to change my mind when I’ve arrived there, although it has more to do with location that loquaciousness.
Here is an excerpt from what Soharwardy said:
“In listening to the experiences of Bishop Henry and Pastor Boissoin, I realized how precious religious freedom is to our country and how easily freedom is lost.” daily bayonet
Go read the rest. Personally I am more than a little skeptical. Religious tolerance and respect for differing opinions are essentially cultural and nothing save this article suggests that Soharwardy really has a clue about either. But a journey always begins with the first step. There can be no other way.
France has denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes, a legal ruling showed on Friday.
The case will reignite debate about how to reconcile freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the French constitution, and other fundamental rights, which many in France feel are being challenged by the way of life of some Muslims.
Le Monde newspaper said it was the first time a Muslim applicant had been rejected for reasons to do with personal religious practice.
“She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes,” said a ruling by the Council of State handed down last month and sent to Reuters on Friday to confirm a report in Le Monde. reuters via Kathy
While there is much to be said for tolerance and reasonable accomodation, there is also a great deal to be said for essential principles. Basically the woman in question was kept in close confinement and had nothing to do with France and knew nothing of France. Not unreasonably she was denied French citizenship.
Now the language of the decision suggests that the woman “adopted a radical practice of her religion”. Did she? Or was this forced upon her by her husband and male relatives force this practice upon her with the full approval of their particular segment of the Muslim community?
The poor woman was ignorant of the essential principles upon which France is governed; but that is unlikely to have been her fault. Rather it is more likely to have been the fault of the males in her life who, to a degree, would have been aware of those principles and chose to directly reject them.
If anyone is at fault it is the anti-assimilationist males who kept this woman isolated. If anyone should get the boot it is the people who created the environment where this poor woman was denied the basic human dignity - or even the knowledge of such dignity.
It might well be a good idea to kick the husband and male relatives as well as the other husbands and male relatives and any religious leaders involved right back to Morocco where they would not have to deal with the interfering French state.
The poor women might be better off being allowed to stay in France in a shelter where she can be deprogrammed from the beliefs of this nasty cult.
A goodly number of pixels have been spilt on the allegedly political removal of two children from their white supremacist mother after the elder was sent to school with a swasika drawn on her arm. Dawg went to the wall in his comments:
“Teaching kids to hate is harmful per se. It seems to me, based upon the precautionary principle, that it’s up to you to prove otherwise.” dr dawg
I think this is an exceptionally dangerous view of the nature of the role of parents, the state and the culture. First off it opens parents to losing their children as the result of thought crime. While these poor kids’ mother is hardly a brilliant parent, if, as Dawg conjectures, the rule is “teach hate, lose kids” then her capacity as a parent is not in issue one way or another. So on that basis the Khadr’s would have lost their kids the instant the authorities became aware of the jihadi views of the parents. I certainly hope Mohamed Elmasry doesn’t have kids because his political/religious views might count as hatred. Anti-Zionist? Lose your kids. Black mother in the Jane Finch corridor blaming whitey for black peoples’ problems - better watch her step. Catholics and fundamentalist who teach their children that abortion is murder and abortionists murderers…no kids for you! Environmentalists who tell their children that the people who run big corporations are killing the Earth and should go to jail…kidless.
But, and one cannot help but notice what this lame brained mum did, maybe we should set the standard higher. Perhaps the test should be that you have to actually do something like draw on your kids. (Frankly I’d start with the parents of the cringing little moppets who are stuck having their faces painted for National holidays.) For example telling your female children that they have to wear a head scarf (or a sack) or Uncle Ali will be over to behead them? Perhaps it would make sense for teachers, as soon as they see a little Muslim girl wearing the hajib to ask if Fatima really wants to wear it and to keep pushing until they are absolutely certain Fatima is not being coerced at home.
Hang on: he got a grave? The UK actually shipped his body back to Pakistan for a “proper burial” and didn’t wrap it in bacon first? kathy
Garlic for vampires, dogs and pigs for Islamists: works like the wonderfully ancient charm it is. If you are fighting the 7th century you need to use 7th century tactics.
Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, more or less on a dare from Editor Graydon Carter, agreed to be waterboarded. You can watch the video here and read Hitchens’ account here.
Hitchens’ second go, which is what I think the video is of, lasts, perhaps 15 seconds and half a cup of water. No question, the Hitchens gag reflex and fear of drowning leave him wide open to the fear which waterboarding creates.
And, equally no question, this is a horribly effective means of scaring the living daylights out of someone.
Which is, of course, the point.
Hitchens’ conclusion is that this is torture and that “I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.” And, of course, he’s right. We all wish that waterboarding, leave aside the nastier, leaves marks - visible and invisible - end of of torture, need never be associated with our names. But have we that luxury?
At the moment I think we do which is why Graydon Carter was happy to dare Hitch to go mano mano with a damp towel. It is a luxury hard won by 4000 dead in Iraq, dead Canadians in Afghanistan, a series of successes against a strategically inept al Qaeda, the beclowing of radical Islam and, frankly, a great deal of very good luck.
Will that luck hold; Lord I hope so.
But here, via Andrew Sullivan, is the case for the other side:
But at yesterday’s Aspen panel on nuclear non-proliferation, the general consensus was that there’s a reasonably high likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city, New York or Washington most likely, at some point in the next ten years. And the experts on the panel, John Holdren and Joe Cirincione among them, are not exactly attached to the Bush Administration worldview. After such an attack, we’ll look back — those of us still around, obviously — on our efforts to combat al Qaeda and judge them inadequate to the task, just as we look back now on the Clinton Administration’s pre-9/11 preparations (and the Bush Administration’s, as well) as thoroughly inadequate. So I suppose I’m convinced of two things simultaneously: Al Qaeda is fairly weak, and not very popular at all, and that this might not matter as much as people think. jeffrey goldberg, the atlantic
Instead, when I heard about it, I immediately said, great, let’s have a debate. No point me being in the same studio as the Sock Puppets and being kept in a hermetically sealed compartment. Yet even with a three-to-one advantage the Socks pussied out.
This is Islam as represented by the likes of the Canadian Islamic Congress. They don’t want any kind of honest open debate, because they can’t handle it. That’s why they prefer to use government agencies to shut down debate on the specious grounds of invented crimes like “Islamophobia”. And apparently TV producers, having been complicit in the fraud that the Sock Puppets are “the complainants”, are willing to protect the wee sensitive souls from any exposure of the charade. mark steyn
Has anyone told the Socks that in law the other side has a lawyer too?
These kids are priceless. They have galvanized the right and made the CHRC a laughingstock. Now they have demonstrated pure cowardice as wannabe bullies usually do.
I finally have the comments back to working....sort of. Basically I have to wade through the spam to find the nuggets. I do this a couple of times a day. Sometimes comments are lost. I am working on this. What I need is a Capcha like the coolkids have.
