The Progressive/Islamic Coalition

           

“Progressives” have frequently been criticized for being “soft on Communism.” Communism claims to be a secular and scientific program to liberate the poor. It shares many of the progressives’ ideals if not their methods. Islam on the other hand has many major characteristics that are contrary to progressive beliefs. It is not Islamophobic to point out that women have a lower status in Islam or that homosexuality is officially frowned upon within Islam.  Islam is by definition theistic. What can possibly account for the apparent sympathy many progressives have for a rigidly theistic political movement?  What could Communism and Islam possibly have in common?

There is an understandable explanation for this affinity. Progressives, Communists and radical Muslims share similar enemies.  Perhaps Peter Hitchens explained it best.  “The Left can sympathize with it (Islam) as the enemy of the Christian monoculture and as an anti-colonial and therefore ‘progressive’ force.”  Hitchens contends that Islam shares an important goal of progressivism: it is anti-Western and therefore progressive.  Hitchens may be dismissed as a conservative critic of the progressive agenda.  However, the same conclusion was reached by George Galloway, a “progressive” member of the British Parliament.  When asked to explain his call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces, he replied,  “Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries, mainly Muslim countries. They have the same interest in opposing savage capitalist globalization which is intent upon homogenizing the entire world … So it's necessary to unite these two great forces."

Certainly not all progressives are motivated by hostility toward Western culture.  However, a significant number of the left’s opinion shapers are.   This would not be a problem if progressive intellectuals did not play such a significant role in policy decisions.  Once confined to small enclaves like Greenwich Village they were a curiosity.  Now that they control the “commanding heights” of our society, their influence is highly significant.

Opposition to a society’s culture appears to be a significant component of the progressive intellectual’s makeup.  It is not confined to the United States.  George Orwell claimed, “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.  In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.”  M.V. Tugan-Baranovsky, the Russian socialist intelligentsia's theoretician described the typical Russian intellectual at the beginning of the 20^th Century: "he was permeated with revolutionary spirit and had the greatest disgust for Russian historical traditions, regarding himself in this respect as an out and out renegade. . . . As for traditional Russian culture . . . hostility to it is the most typical mark of the intellectual. . . . The Russian intellectual is uprooted from his historical soil and consequently selects the social ideal which seems best from the rationalist point of view.  This is the socialist ideal - cosmopolitan, supranational and suprahistorical.”

Here in the United States Eric Hoffer stated, “Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.” Thomas Sowell claimed, “There is simply a whole class of people who hate what this country stands for, who have contempt for its people and who exploit every opportunity to undermine its institutions and ideals.”

This hostility is best revealed by Susan Sontag: "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. It is the white race and it alone - its ideologies and inventions - which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."

Sontag is not an isolated case.  There are literally thousands of university professors like Nicholas De Genova who stated, “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus,” during an anti-war rally.  He was referring to the 18 servicemen killed during a battle in Somalia in 1993.   Professor Ward Churchill referred to the “techncrats” working at the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns."  This somehow justified their murder.  Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict, described this hostility to the West as, “a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological.”

Academics are not the only individuals who have a rather benign attitude toward Islamic radicals. Washington State Senator Patty Murray described Osama bin Laden in these terms, “He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building healthcare facilities, and the people are extremely grateful.”  She added, "We have not done that. We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure.” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D. Ohio) compared Islamic terrorists to American revolutionaries. “One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown.”

When politicians and policy makers have a tenuous allegiance to their culture and country there are obvious problems.  Our policies in the Middle East have led to a chaotic situation.  This can be attributed to an extent on a distorted view of America’s role in the world and a misunderstanding of radical Islam.

Rev Canon Patrick Sookhdeo: The condemnation of Western culture, especially its Judeo-Christian basis and its liberal tradition, has driven post-modern leftists into an unexpected alliance with radical Islamists, although on other issues leftists and Islamists take opposite positions.  Hatred of their common enemies has forged a bond between them.  Islam in Britain: The British Muslim Community in February 2005, The Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, 2005, p. 73. 

Eulogy For The West

  I met a traveller from an antique land,

  Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert....Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 

  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

  And on the pedestal, these words appear:

 My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, 

  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away." 

Ozymandias

By Percy Shelley

            We are witnessing the death of a civilization.  Journalist Mark Styen has predicted that,  “Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”1 Charles Krauthammer came to an similar conclusion in a Time Magazine article in 2005 where he stated, “France . . . is an aged and exhausted civilization, the hollowed-out core of European Christendom, static, aging, contented, coddled, passive and literally without faith.  The old French, like the rest of Europe, are literally disappearing.”2 Patrick J. Buchanan has claimed, “A civilization, a culture, a faith, and a moral order rooted in that faith are passing away . . .”3     Many people might find this proposition absurd. The “death of the West” has been predicted for generations.  Yet the power, influence and even vitality of the West appear to be at their zenith. What are the factors that lead Styen and other to conclude that we are rapidly nearing the end of Western civilization?

            The symptoms of decline have been diagnosed by many historians.  The most important of these are, a loss of religious faith, a decline in demographics, a coarsening of morality and an influx of outsiders.  Perhaps the most important of these symptoms is the loss of religious faith.  Orientalist Franz Cumont, writing in 1906 at the apex of Western civilization, wrote:

Let us suppose that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits would be preaching fatalism and predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation - a confusion in which all those priests would erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein.  Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine. 4

Civilizations are organized around an idea.  As T. S. Eliot has asserted, “no culture has appeared or developed except together with a religion.”5 When that organizing idea loses its vitality the society based upon it is in jeopardy.

            There has been an effort, beginning with the Enlightenment, to organize Western societies along another set of ideas.  The proponents of these “enlightenment” ideas claim that they are rational and based upon scientific proofs.  In their zeal to promote these enlightenment ideas they have frequently been overcome with a desire to destroy traditional institutions, seeing in them the obstacle to fulfillment of their dream.  Many of them have come to identify all western traditions and customs as the enemy.

1.The New Criterion THE CENTURY AHEAD It's the Demography, Stupid The real reason the West is in danger of extinction. BY MARK STEYN, January 4, 2006

2.  Time Magazine, November 21, 2005, p. 162

3.  The Death of the West, Patrick J. Buchanan, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2002, p.  9

4.  Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 197

5.  Christianity and Culture, T.S. Eliot, Harcourt Brace & company, San Diego, 1948, p. 87

The Obamas: Conspicuous Sacrifice vs. Conspicuous Consumption

A recurring theme of the Obama White House is "sacrifice." The president has repeatedly stressed the need for us to tighten our belts. He has informed us, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ..." During the campaign, his wife told us that we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. Shortly after the election, the president said that "[e]verybody's going to have to give. Everybody's going to have to have some skin in the game." 

This emphasis on "sacrifice" is presented as a simple matter of justice. We are told that we live in a nation that comprises a small fraction of the earth's population, yet we consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources.

The Obamas do not expect us to sacrifice alone. They believe that they have established a long pattern of self-sacrifice. According to Michelle Obama, one of the Obamas' first major decisions after graduating from college was, "Do I go to Wall Street and make money, or do I work for the people?" As we all know Barack, decided to "work for the people." During the campaign, Michelle informed six women in the playroom of the Zanesville Ohio Day Nursery, "We left corporate America." She advised these working-class women to do the same: "Don't go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers." According to Michelle, these are "the careers we need." She discouraged them from going into "corporate law or hedge-fund management." She warned these women, however, that their salaries would respond negatively if they made that choice. 

After attaining the White House, the Obamas have continued to sacrifice, with a notable example being their trip to Denmark in order to secure the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. Michelle explained, "As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days, so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home." The Obamas appear to be bearing up, however. They are tough. As Michelle told her Zanesville audience, "So I tell people, 'Don't cry for me.'" In spite of their apparently sincere belief that they are sacrificing "for the people," Michelle's behavior occasionally seems to belie this idea. This is most obvious in her thirst for fashion.

Michelle attended a luncheon for the homeless wearing a pair of $540 Lanvin sneakers. On a trip to Russia, she was seen sporting what was thought to be a $5,950 VBH alligator manila clutch. The White House protested that she was actually carrying the $875 VBH patent leather clutch. This is perhaps another example of self-sacrifice. She has ordered a pair of thigh-high leather boots from Robert Clergerie, a famous French designer. On her trip to China she stayed in an $8,400 per night hotel suite.  Had Governor Sarah Palin made any of these purchases, she would have been criticized on the front pages of the major newspapers. Their treatment of Michelle Obama is considerably kinder. She is seen as a fashion icon.

For a couple with a preference for $100-a-pound Wagyu beef, it is inconsistent to claim that "we can't eat as much as we want." Apparently the president's admonition that we can't "keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times" does not apply to him. If his senior adviser David Axelrod is to be believed, the president prefers a warm environment. Axelrod is reported by the New York Times as describing the temperature in the Oval Office as rather temperate: "He's from Hawaii," Axelrod said. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there." The president's years in Chicago apparently were not sufficient to acclimatize him to the cold.

The Obamas have every right to dress as they please. The have every right to spend their money as they choose. However, they cannot spend lavishly while contending that they are sacrificing for "the people." The majority of "the people" know about sacrifice. A Zogby poll reported that 70 percent of households are forgoing movies and restaurants. Are the Obamas? Perhaps the pièce de résistance was a statement by Michelle after a party for the "first dog," Bo: "We had a really sweet celebration -- [Bo] got a doghouse cake made out of veal stuff and he had his brother Cappy come over and we had party hats." Poor Bo. I am certain that he would have preferred Wagyu steak.

This elite behavior is described by Victor Kravchenko in his book, I Chose Freedom.  He states, “I found myself among men who could eat ample and dainty food in full view of starving people not only with a clear conscience but with a feeling of righteousness.”  To describe the Obamas as nouveau riche would be an insult to the nouveau riche.