How Our Culture of Activism Opens the Door for Islam
I wrote previously about the Muslim Culture of Grievance but the reality is that what makes this culture an effective weapon against the West is the fact that the political and intellectual systems of most Western countries have become dominated by the Culture of Activism.
Democracy is based on individual rights and individual representation but that has been honored more in the breach than in the observance. In practice we have lost individual rights in favor of group rights and exchanged the democracy of the voting booth for the undemocratic representation by special organizations and lobbying groups.
Are you a senior, black, jewish, female, have cancer, catholic, liberal protestant, parent, child, rich, poor?
If so there are people who claim to represent you and speak for you. People you did not vote for and cannot get rid of. I never voted for Abe Foxman and yet he speaks for me. Whoever you are, there are people speaking for you whose voices are paradoxically louder than yours.
How did things get this way? Part of the answer is that democracy itself is flawed and in the late 19th and the 20th century there were group injustices that needed to be corrected because entire groups were being discriminated against. But often when you try to correct one evil, the result is another unintended evil. Fighting for justice for groups also created group activism and advocacy as agitation on behalf of oppressed groups became the means of correcting democracy's flaws.
As this went on activism became the moral call and protecting group rights became the core duty of government and the organizations thrown up to protect those rights. Activists became politicians and politics became activism as social activism merged with the Tammany Hall machine of the Democratic party, which went from oppressing the Irish, the Jews or Women to "protecting their rights" through group entitlements.
The Culture of Grievance Must Run
The culture of activism was and still often is run by Eastern liberal protestants, rather than by the groups they claim to be agitating on behalf of. And it runs on victimology, each civil rights measure has only fed the culture of activism but also driven it to find new groups to protect as the earlier groups "went dry". Animals remain a popular group because animals can't talk back. Jews and Asians have managed to succeed on their own and so get the cold shoulder. As Blacks and Hispanics move up the ladder, the way the Irish and Italians and Jews have-- the Culture of Grievance has embraced Muslims.
The result has been the marriage from hell. The Culture of Grievance thrives on grievances and victims and the Muslims of today thrive on grievances and imagine themselves as victims.
Muslims need someone to blame for their failures and the Culture of Grievance is premised on a sovereign faith in American Racism and the inequality of the social system. Muslims at home and in the West could not ask for better enablers for their inability to take responsibility.
The dialogue runs something like this.
Muslims: It's not our fault that we're dictatorship, America is behind all our dictatorships.
Liberals: It's not your fault you're ruled by dictators, America is behind all your dictatorships.
Muslims: Terrorism is not our fault, we're oppressed and terrorism is the last resort of the oppressed.
Liberals: You're depraved on account that you're deprived. How could we possibly judge you?
Muslims: We're only rioting because we're angry.
Liberals: You're only rioting because you face social and political inequities.
Muslims: Israel is the problem.
Liberals: Israel is the problem.
The Defective Maternalism of the West
The Culture of Grievance functions like some sort of defective maternal instinct coddling and smothering entire groups and speaking in their name and emitting a perpetual cry of, "Won't someone think of the children" while Muslims function as feral children, always angry and prone to violent tantrums. The Culture of Grievance insists on trying to nurture the feral Muslim child even as he claws at her breast.
The situation is worse in Europe where the process of reform was not nearly as gentle in America and the social and political oppression much worse, breeding socialism and a much more radical left flank. If America is the overcrowded foster family coping with an additional angry Muslim child-- Europe with its falling birth rates, static societies and angry left politics is the barren woman taking in the Muslim child off the street and determinedly ignoring his worst behavior, not in the name of love, but in the name of a kind of sterile determination to make things work.
As long as we are ruled by activism and the Culture of Grievance rather than by Democracy, fighting the Islamic invasion remains all but impossible. A system that prioritizes the rights of the oppressed over those who supposedly are not, the rights of the shrillest over the silent and the rights of the violent over the non-violent-- will always favor Islam and Muslims until the barbarians inside the gate finally overthrow it for good.