Anti-Western Values, in the West

UPDATED

I came across two three excellent posts today. There's "Oncoming" at davidwarrenonline, which includes this:

It is only in retrospect that we understand what happened as the 1930s progressed -- when a spineless political class, eager at any price to preserve a peace that was no longer available, performed endless demeaning acts of appeasement to the Nazis; while the Nazis created additional grievances to extract more.

This is precisely what is happening now, as we are confronted by the Islamist fanatics, whose views and demands are already being parroted by fearful “mainstream” Muslim politicians. We will do anything to preserve a peace that ceased to exist on 9/11. Not one of our prominent politicians dares even to name the enemy.

And there's "The Suicidal Left: Civilizations and their Death Drives" at The American Thinker, in which Vasko Kohlmayer observes:

Deeply averse to the West’s moral code, the Left contemptuously refers to it as bourgeois morality. It denigrates the West’s cultural triumphs, contending they are no more unique than those of other societies. It disparages the West’s past by painting it as nothing more than an amalgamation of oppression, exploitation and all-around ignominy.

Scoffing at the notion of the limited State, the Left rejects the climax of western political tradition. And the Left, of course, despises free market capitalism – the West’s economic foundation – which it claims to be inherently exploitative, unfair or worse.

The Left, however, does not confine itself to mere criticism, but aggressively seeks to transform its anti-Western attitude into reality. Even a cursory glance at some of its successes should give us an idea of just how effective its efforts have been.

Virtually demolishing the West’s traditional morality, the Left has managed to legitimize promiscuity, illegitimacy, abortion and homosexuality. This transformation has reached a point where in many quarters these behaviors are not only considered acceptable but outright commendable.

Through its aggressive atheism, the Left has succeeded in virtually eliminating Christianity from our public arena, and to a large degree from the private sphere as well. This trend has been especially pronounced in Europe where only some seven percent of the population engage in some form of regular religious observance. . . .

The West’s moral decline, the collapse of its religion, economic sluggishness, and the indifference to its own historical and cultural achievements – all this is the Left’s doing. Ominously, it has succeeded in inculcating large segments of the western population with contempt for their own culture and heritage. This is a dire state indeed, for no society that is despised by its own people can go on for very long.

Regardless of its rhetoric or avowed objective, the driving force behind the Left’s every movement is to strike against some aspect of Western society. Environmentalism, for instance, hits at the West’s economic foundation of free-market capitalism. Multiculturalism seeks to unravel its cultural coherence. The gay rights movement strikes at its moral underpinnings, and so on. The Left, of course, will deny the real reason for its actions. But to evaluate the true value of any act we need to look at its effect not the rhetoric behind it. And the effects of the Left’s actions are invariably – in one way or another – destructive to the West.

The Left’s gains have been greatly facilitated by its ingenious modus operandi, which is to cloak its destructive intent in the language of good causes. Civil rights, gender equality, ecological preservation are among some of its favorite ploys. The ostensible caring is not real, for these are not at all what the Left’s efforts are ultimately about.

The West’s greatest threat is neither Islam nor any other external foe. It is its own political Left. All the great ills and woes under which our civilization so agonizingly belabors – and under the weight of which it is slowly sinking – have been either brought on or inflamed by it.

To which I add: The Left's weakening of the West makes the West more vulnerable to militant Islam.

UPDATE: I have just come across a column by Dennis Prager at townhall.com, where Prager has this to say:

For a decade or more, it has been a given on the Left that Israel is to blame for terror committed against Israelis by Palestinian Muslims (Palestinian Christians don't engage in suicide terror). What else are the Palestinians supposed to do? If they had Apache helicopters, the argument goes, they would use them. But they don't, so they use the poor man's nuclear weapon -- suicide terror.

The same argument is given to explain 9-11. Three thousand innocent Americans were incinerated by Islamic terrorists because America has been meddling in the Middle East so long. This was bound to happen. And, anyway, don't we support Israel?

And when Muslim terrorists blew up Madrid trains, killing 191 people and injuring 1,500 others, the Left in Spain and elsewhere blamed Spanish foreign policy. After all, the Spanish government had sent troops into Iraq.

When largely Muslim rioters burned and looted for a month in France, who was blamed? France, of course -- France doesn't know how to assimilate immigrants, and, as the BBC reported on Nov. 5, 2005, "[Interior Minister Nicolas] Sarkozy's much-quoted description of urban vandals as 'rabble' a few days before the riots began is said by many to have already created tension." Calling rabble "rabble" causes them to act like to rabble. . . .

[O]ne way to describe the moral divide between conservatives and liberals is whom they blame for acts of evil committed against innocent people, especially when committed by non-whites and non-Westerners. Conservatives blame the perpetrators, and liberals blame either the victims' group or the circumstances. . . .

We don't know who will be the next target of Islamic or other murderers from poor or non-Western or non-white groups. All we can know is that liberal and leftist thought will find reasons to hold the targeted group largely responsible.

Related posts:

Lefty Profs
Apropos Academic Freedom and Western Values
Riots, Culture, and the Final Showdown
Government's Role in Social Decline
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity