Daniel Greenfield has posted a superb essay entitled “The Two Empires We Must Defeat” on the Sultan Knish blog . I always agree with what Mr. Greenfield has to say, but never more so than in this case. His lucidity of analysis is unmatched.
He opens his piece with an explanation of the two empires that are currently suffocating the remnants of Western Civilization:
There is a thread that connects many of our conflicts, whether it’s the one against terrorism or the one between the Republican establishment and its conservative insurgency. To win a war, we have to understand the nature of the conflict and how we got there. And that’s often the missing piece.
The left blames imperialism for our conflict with terrorists. And it’s right. Just not in the way that it thinks.
Empires may be expansionist, but they’re also tolerant and multicultural. They have to be, since out of their initial phase they have to enlist the cooperation and services of subjects from a variety of cultures and religions. An empire may initially be fueled by the talents and skills of a core nation, but as it reaches its next phase, it begins sacrificing their interests to the larger structure of empire.
The argument between the establishments of the right and the left is over two different kinds of empires. The Republican establishment in America and its various center-right counterparts abroad have attached themselves to the liberal vision of a transnational empire of international law so much that they have forgotten that this vision came from the left, rather than from the right.
This Empire of International Law proved to have some uses for global trade and security, particularly during the Cold War. These practical arrangements however are overshadowed by the fact that it, like every empire, sacrifices the interests of its peoples to its own structure. This is true of the structure at every level, from the EU to the Federal structure of the United States. The system has displaced the people. And the system runs on principles that require cheap labor leading to policies like amnesty.
The Empire of International Law needs Muslim immigrants even if its people don’t, because it envisions integrating them and their countries into this arrangement and rejects national interests as narrow-minded and nativist.
This formerly liberal vision now embraced largely by centrists is the left’s vision, which includes today’s liberals, is of a completely transnational ideological empire in which there are no borders, but there are countless activists, in which everything and everyone are controlled by the state.
Like the more conventional imperial vision, the left’s red Empire of Ideology depends on enlisting Muslims and Muslim countries into its ranks. This is the basis of the Red-Green alliance.
These two types of imperialists are incapable of representing native workers or communities because they are transnationalists. Their vision is cosmopolitan, rather than representative. They are entranced with a byzantine international arrangement and uninterested in the lives of the people they are ruining.
This Imperial blindness is why the West is falling so swiftly to Islam. It’s why the pockets of resistance are coming from nations outside the imperial sphere.
This is the heart of his argument:
An empire may begin by conquering other countries, but it invariably ends by conquering and consuming its own. The empire we are part of isn’t, despite the left’s rhetoric, a conquering empire. American territorial expansionism ended long before we became part of an empire. Instead we are part of an empire of systems, an empire of principles, an empire of internationalism, of trade and of pieces of papers, legal and financial, being moved through the bowels of our endless systems.
This is the thing that we call international law. And it has to die for us to live.
This is the empire that feeds armies of foreign immigrants through our countries. It’s also the empire that pays allegiance to Islam because empires have to diversify to expand. Diversity isn’t the source of our strength. It is the source of imperial expansionism which has to absorb many more peoples.
To empires, people are interchangeable. If the natives have a low birth rate and a long lifespan, then workers with high birth rates and lower lifespans are brought in to replace them. If the natives are reluctant to pay higher taxes, immigrants from countries that are fine with voting for high taxation are imported. That is how empires, not nations, do business.
This is what the political establishment in most countries believes. This is what tearing them apart.
And he concludes with this grim finale:
The rhetoric of empire is seductive. Our educational systems implant it at an early age. It is not the empire of explorers and conquerors, but of lawyers and social justice activists. Against it we must raise the flag of national interests.
The left and the right establishments pretend that they have two very different sets of ideas about the world. They have the same set of ideas, one is a more extreme version of the other. The left fights its own heresies much more fiercely than it does the right. Its rhetoric about imperialism is a rejection of its former ideas about empire for its more radical empire. And we do not want either empire.
What we must have is an end to empires and the rise of nations. Only nations that answer to the national interests of their people can stand against the savage barbarian migrating tide.
Read the whole thing.
Hat tip: Fjordman.
A very thoughtful analysis, with many good points an much truth. However, it falls into one of the traps of the left-right based ideological explanations. The left-right political axis is based on where different groups where seated during the French revolution, relative to the kings throne, and does not really explain anything about the realities of anything. That is exactly why it is defined and used.
In US politics, both left and right (Democrat/Republican) are collectivists, in Europe and the rest of the world, you will find the same. There is a (rhetorical) difference in how much centralization and big government the presented alternatives propose, but they all place it as a central principle of how the nation should be governed.
When the collectivist view that much of the authority to make decisions over individual lives is placed centrally in a nation, rather than locally, or even better with each individual, it is only a small step onward to apply the same view globally. If local powers has the right to overrule the peaceful individual, why not national over local? If national power overrules local powers and all individuals, why should not the same principle apply globally? There is a chain of “logic” there that is unavoidable.
By defining the completely collectivist political axis, extreme left to extreme right, the individuals and their well being are taken out of the political equation. When was the last time anyone heard a politician defend the general individual in a political debate, except as part of a recognized group? Exceptions exists, but in the big picture the pattern holds.
The fight against Islam is meaningful, the fight against all forms of Marxism is meaningful, the fight against Nazism is meaningful, the fight against Fascism is meaningful. But all these ideologies are based on the same concept, the collectives “right” to make decisions on behalf of individuals and other minorities, and enforce these decisions by force if necessary.
The basic struggle is for the rights of each and every peaceful individual, the smallest and only coherent minority in existence. When these rights are secured against all aggressive collectives and violent individuals, when their subjective views can not be forced into the lives of others, their proposed ideology or religion of any ilk, is threatening to none.
The only way to stop building any type of empires and other forms of oppression, is to recognize equal individual negative rights for all. National collectivist interests will not do.
Your analysis too is thoughtful, Beach Bum. However some collectivists would argue that your system allows people to fall through the cracks, not necessarily through their own fault, especially in large and complex societies.
Shielding oneself behind the failures of the system one defends is a very weak strategy. Their system is far from perfect, as most of us know, but they require absolute perfection in all things up front from any alternative. Through legislation and force they make it impossible to prove them wrong.
The American Constitution should be adopted by ALL Western countries. This is a charter of inalienable human rights as compared to the U.N. Charter of Human Rights that was dreamt up for the third world and not the first. But many of the West’s political/educational institutions adopted the U.N. charter to use against their own people. For instance; Human Rights Commissions etc.
Our systems of governance has let us down and has been letting us down every since the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s. It doesn’t matter which system one may look at, they have all failed us utterly!
The political/educational systems are beyond repair and a better and more accountable system must be found if we are to survive as a Western Civilization. It is no good trying to rebuild on the systems we once had in place because we have lost them forever!
I simply cannot agree with this analysis. I have studied imperiums for 42 years as a University academic. Empires only survive through a strong national ethic but tolerance towards the subdued whom it hopes to assimilate. Rome was highly successful because of this. Britain failed precisely because she failed to assimilate its colonial subjects properly. The EU is a joke, as is the US “Imperium”….
The EU and so called American “democracy” are but pipe dreams built on quick sand.
The reasons the Moslems will win, is simply because they have a religious “national ethic” called the Ummah. The only solution to Europe’s problem is the destruction of the EU and resurgence of national sovereign states.
Sorry Bishop but you are wrong in this statement, “The reasons the Moslems will win, is simply because they have a religious “national ethic” called the Ummah.”.
The Muslims cannot win:
1) They number 1.6 billion vs 5.4 of everyone else. That’s odds of 1 : 3.4. It is just not going to happen.
2) The 1.6 billion Muslims are poorly educated (that’s part of the problem).
3) Out of the entire Islamic world only Turkey would be a challenge for the non-Muslim world.
4) China, India, USA and Brazil are not Muslim. You need a couple of these to have a chance.
5) Russia’s demographics mean it may become a Muslim majority state within a few decades. However, given the resurgence of the Orthodox Church as a propaganda tool, and the hostility to Chechens and other Muslims, it is more likely that Russia will cede some land (of which it has vast, unused amounts) rather than be dominated by Muslims.
6) The advent of fracking means that the only financial asset the Muslims have, oil, will be come less significant in the future. We are already seeing that with the halving of oil prices and no real end in sight. The “peak oil” meme is disinformation designed to drive the price of oil up (mostly for the benefit of Russia, who desperately needs the revenue).
7) You have to control the seas to control the World. The best the Muslim world has is Somali pirates – who have been crushed by a small fraction of the World’s navies.
8) The Muslim world does have a higher birthrate than the non-Muslim world. However, BOTH are declining, and the Muslim world’s rate of decline is MUCH higher than that of the non-Muslim World. Just take a look at Iran. If you have not read the book “How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam is Dying Too), by David P Goldman” then I suggest you get yourself a late Christmas gift on Kindle :).
9) Islam is only getting away with what it is because the West still has its gloves on. That is because the West does not yet see Islam as an existential threat. If Islam ever becomes a sufficient threat, then the gloves come off and Islam will be crushed like the bothersome bug it is.
10) Although around 50% of Muslims agree with Sharia (according to a 2012 Pew Survey, and explained nicely by Truth Revolt’s Ben Shapiro on YouTube) the other 50% are only nominally Muslim. The only reason these 50% of Muslims remain Muslim is because they believe Islam is something it is not. With the recent excellent scholarship of Tom Holland, and presentations like Jay Smith (“An Historical Critique of Islam’s Beginnings – Jay Smith “, 72 mins, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd9lIuUjPs0) the truth will eventually emerge that Islam is a man-made fabrication that was concocted by Caliph Abd al-Malik for political reasons. The historical evidence shows that the claims of orthodox Islam and its beginnings are all false, eg. from 630-725 all the qibla of the mosques all point to Petra, not to Mecca – this shows that the narrative that Mecca was the ‘settlement’ of Mohammed is false. Then when you factor in verses like Qur’an 53:19-20 you see that “Allah” (a title) has daughters from the Nabatean pantheon, which means Allah actually is “Dushara”. Why does this matter? because it means it cannot be the same as YHWH, the God of Abraham, who the Muslims claim to worship (plus, there are other reasons showing why Allah cannot be YHWH either: http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/god.htm).
11) Islam is inherently politically unstable. These fractures have caused numerous infighting withing the Muslim world in the past, and can be exploited in the future (Russia, Saudi, USA and Iran are all doing exactly this right now).
12) As people become more educated they cling less and less to superstition. This is well advanced in the West, and it is already happening in the Middle East (eg. why is TV coverage of Friday prayers in Iran from university mosques? because the other mosques are mostly empty because the general population in Iran is quite smart and can see through the BS).
13) The only reason Islam gets anywhere is because the political Left needs fresh bodies it to defer the collapse of the Ponzi scheme of the social welfare state (which is completely unsustainable, look at the economies of Greece, the USA debt mountain and unfunded liabilities, the EU mired in debt, etc). But recent elections all around the World all show that the Left is losing credibility (eg. elections in Norway, Australia, new Zealand, USA, and UKIPs rise in Britain, the NF in France, PVV in Holland, PEIGA in Germany, etc). The Left is intellectually dead and has been for a long time, with no new ideas, and all its old ideas have been thoroughly discredited (especially economically), and modern demographics mean that Leftist policies are unsustainable even in the short term. The fight is over, the political Right won, and all the Left have now are direct power-grabs through mass immigration – but this is making the native populations HATE the Left like never before (this is what turned me from a typical brain-dead leftie into a Conservative who now groks what the Tea Party, PVV and UKIP are on about – and there are more and more like me that I meet all the time).
14) Africa used to be majority Muslim, but Christianity has streaked ahead there. if they can’t hold Africa and are seen as the death cult for losers in Europe and the Americas, how can Islam convince people to convert? by the sword? their so incompetent they can’t even convince Israel to do this despite the numerical odds being massively in the Islamists favor.
Your following statement is completely true:
“The only solution to Europe’s problem is the destruction of the EU and resurgence of national sovereign states.”.
Federalism is the solution for long term stability, local sovereignty and CHOICE (aka “Freedom”). This will happen and the anti-democratic, authoritarian and financially unsustainable EU will fall. The only questions are “how soon?” and “how many will suffer?” before the Collectivist-EU and their Islamic allies are crushed. It will come to pass that one day people will understand that there is no difference between the terms “Progressive”, “Socialist”, “Soviet Socialist” and “National Socialist” and people will be ashamed to have assumed those titles. Similarly, once the fraudulent political ideology of Islam has been exposed enough so that the masses understand its real origins then people will be as ashamed of once being a Muslim as they are of being Scientologists (after all, L Ron Hubbard did say, “If you want to make real money, invent a religion” a decade before Scientology).
Islam has zero chance of winning at this stage. In half a century it might, but the Islamists are going for broke now because they realise Islam cannot withstand modernity and people are drifting away to a vastly more secular outlook (eg. look at al Sisi in Egypt).
While I would agree with most of your statements Moa, there are one or two contentious issues.
The Philippine Govt. ceded land to muslims, and look how that worked out; about as sensible as Obama’s ridiculous statement about ‘containing’ isis.
The west does not yet see islam as a threat? With all the chaos taking place in Europe and the politically correct, brainwashed Swedes crumbling more every day, they had better start soon, very soon.
Your view of the eternal welfare continent of Africa appears diametrically opposed to mine; Africa was mainly Christian and native religions, but is now crumbling and converting to islam at record speed, or haven’t you noticed?
We all agree the E.U. is a massive problem, and together with the muslim dominated, failed U.N. is responsible for the massive invasion of third world rabble into Europe.
On a slightly different note, I’m constantly amazed at the inability of people to see islam for what it is–the demented ravings of an illiterate, murderous paedophile. It is the ultimate ‘Old Boys’ Club’, all about sex, slavery, violence and penis-worship.
Very thoughtful and well put together Moa (NZ?)
moa,
To clarify your otherwise-accurate statement:
“The best the Muslim world has is Somali pirates – who have been crushed by a small fraction of the World’s navies without really even trying”
Great Ghu, if the West really put its efforts behind eliminating Somali piracy….
You would think that is too obvious.
Moa, I hope you are correct. I also think we will come through this in the long term. It’s the “short term” which is the problem, because that is our lifetimes and possibly the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Alhough I know things can change quickly. I just hope that there will be minimal suffering during those changes.
As I see it, we have a major problem with many of the fuzzy-headed, well-meaning liberals of which there are so many. There is a basic confusion in their thinking. Because we are all connected spiritually, on a higher level, they think that this means that we should all be connected politically, i.e., governed by one world-wide state. As if this conclusion naturally follows. As if one size fits all.
This appears to be consistent with their thinking that heaven can be created on this earth.
But I’m sure there are distinctions between people and groups even in heaven.
I’m reminded of that phrase that came out of the 60s or 70s counter culture (maybe the best thing that the counter culture gave us): Small is Beautiful.
Apart from the post, which is very good, there are also some other very thoughtful comments on this thread. I think the post dwells too much on ideology as a right versus left contest because being identified as left or right is really only an indicator of the various ideologies, that we know of, of the political spectrum which begins at the extreme Right with Anarchy while moving left along the imaginary line to the extreme Left that is Totalitarianism.
In other words, from no rule of law to complete domination by law.
Only people with extreme political/moral views or suffering some kind of mental illness should be considered as candidates for being labelled as Left or Right. The majority of people I wager, would exist somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum which is why neither the Right nor the Left will ever completely dominate the political scene and why a minority within the majority will forever remain vigilant and are first to act against political extremism when pushed to do so provided they have the means to act.
The American Constitution is an important event in our recorded human history. It gives the minority within the silent majority the legal means to counter what is a natural human progression toward tyranny.
Many Humans would like to be the top monkey. That totalitarian streak within all of us is adequately reflected throughout our recorded history and it is only from a decent and moral education and religious instruction that the darker side of our souls can be submerged to the point that it remains dormant throughout most of our lives.
It is from those who are lacking in proper religious and educational instruction (in a Western sense) that we should fear the most and while many individuals not attuned to a cultures requirements of the individual will never go beyond what is acceptable aspirations within a culture, many will do, and it is those who will allow the imaginings and desires of their thoughts to be acted out in a position of authority that has no boundary to extreme actions against their fellow Man.
And that is what we are now wary of.
There are many top Monkeys involved in ruining Western civilization, although only a few are completely aware and have full knowledge of that agenda. One only need to observe that it is just the West that has embraced fully the United Nations agenda of first, destroying their manufacturing bases, and then second, flood their countries with immigrants who will strive to conquer the lands they have been invited to enter.
Whether this can be looked upon as another ‘imperial Empire’ or simply a ‘progression’ into One World Government is at this time completely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is to reverse the effect that Islam is having on all our countries and to then bring to trial those who have actively pursued this genocide of the White race as a lesson to other ‘leaders’ in future who may have yearnings to let loose the totalitarian side of their life without thought for the consequences.
I agree, Nemesis. Mostly. It is axiomatic that in the end times both the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ – whatever those rather amorphous terms may mean – will meet behind the ideological midden, smeared in their own foul excrement, each with one foot in the same pair of Jackboots and tearing at each other’s throats with gay abandon. With any luck, that is.
S III.
I am sure that you have covered this idea elsewhere.
There is no way to get rid of an international governing body. It is sticky and adheres to all systems. The key reason not to permit its inception is as follows: Such a government must fail, simply because all systems fail due to multifarious causes not apparent at the outset of the adventure. Failure is fine as long as the streets can be swept clean of the failure’s remnants, but international governments are trickier than burying a bank or corporation. We can and should oppose “world government” because ridding ourselves of it would yield the same results as seen in Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan – only ten times worse.
Until Islam is debunked and defunct, the civilized world will be crushing its probing tentacles.
Meanwhile, a simple reading of its texts by reasonable people will make Islam more and more repellent.
And will make Mohammadism’s imperialistic efforts clear, whether its colonizing attempts are disguised as “refugees” or “migrants” or “students” or “workers”.
“What are people intent on overthrowing the West doing in the West?” might actually be asked.