Europe Thy Name Is Cowardice

It's fascinating that this should come out of Europe. Mathias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, has written a blistering attack in DIE WELT, Germany's largest daily paper, against the timid reaction of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat. This is a must read by all Americans. History will certify its correctness.

EUROPE - THY NAME IS COWARDICE (Commentary by Mathias Dapfner CEO, Axel Springer, AG)

A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true.

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as  England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too  long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to  toothless agreements.

Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern Europe where for decades, inhuman suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.

Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass-murder, we Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us.

Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European Appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word  "equidistance," now  countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.

Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany?

I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of our (German) Government, and if the polls are to be believed, the German people, actually believe that creating an Official State "Muslim Holiday" will somehow spare us from the wrath of the fanatical Islamists.

One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler, and declaring European "Peace in our time".

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.

It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century - a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness. Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for Anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush.

His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against Democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.

In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner, instead of defending liberal society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China.

On the contrary - we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those arrogant Americans", as the World Champions of "tolerance", which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes.

Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass.

For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy - because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake - literally everything.

While we criticize the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our Social Welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive! We'd rather discuss reducing our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage, or our 4 weeks of paid vacation... Or listen to TV pastors preach about the need to "reach out to terrorists. To understand and forgive".

These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house.

Appeasement?

Europe, thy name is Cowardice.

---God Bless America---"

My friend, the talented, Glenn Greenwald :

"It is moments like these when the European Left gets exposed for the unprincipled, hollow, nakedly hypocritical world-view which drives it. They recruit and cynically exploit precepts of human rights, individual liberty, and even the Holocaust, all to serve their cause of attacking the United States. And they do grave harm to the principles which they claim to believe in by distorting them in service of an entirely different agenda."

You must not miss reading the comment towards the end of the comments section in Glenn's post from an "Anonymous" reader, who lets it rip on the Europeans. Absolutely priceless. It starts with "You self-righteous Europeans who have committed horrifying atrocities throughout history, your Holocausts, your genocides, your murderous Crusades, your pogroms, your slavery of millions, your Hundred Years wars....."

Wow, I am glad he's not one of my readers......Good luck Glenn.

and Erik Svane @ No Pasaran one of the European blogs, who on his blog constantly gives us an isight of what expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions:

"First, we are told that Europeans are interested in reason, in solidarity, and in human rights. Now we are told that they are against the strongest nation, that they are focusing on the only nation where they can make a difference, that they are holding America up to higher standards."

and Erik Svane's letter to The International Herald Tribune which the newspaper published:

"Scot Lehigh claims that anti-Americanism is at best nonexistent and at worst exaggerated ("Anti-Americans? Not on my trip to Europe," Meanwhile, Dec. 10). He uses the tired canard that any anti-Americanism is targeted on U.S. leaders, not American citizens.

Really? Is that so?

How often do the Europeans comment on the disdain they have for, say, the leaders of Russia, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe and Iran, and that with the same vehemence they reserve for Uncle Sam?

How often did Europeans hold mass demonstrations against the fighting in Chechnya, the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the Iran-Iraq war?

How often have Europeans held vigils against the death penalty in China, Saudi Arabia or Sudan?

How did the French react when Paris lighted the Eiffel Tower in red for the visit of the Chinese leader, when the government banned Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian from attending the Paris book fair, or when President Jacques Chirac, along with fellow peace-lover Gerhard Schröder, tried to resume selling weapons to the saber-rattlers of Beijing?

There was not much of a reaction. There is one reason why Europeans have not cared for these issues: Uncle Sam was not directly involved.

Anti-Americanism is quite alive: It is the practice, on a regular basis, of double standards."

This is in response to the article by Scot Lehigh published in The International Herald Tribune earlier. Page two of the srticle is accessed by clicking into the lower right corner.

UPDATE: One of my readers Stefan, posted a brilliant link which is a highly recommended must read 'Europe's Problem and Ours' written by George Weigel. It's brilliant.

Siggy comments on it in the section below, calling it brilliant:

"In it, he reduces the relantionship of Europeans with God and/or morality to an simple, unspoken question of balance and priority.

Do we answer to God/moral truths, or does God/moral truths answer to us?"

UPDATE: The great blogger Judith Weiss @ Kesher Talk, points us to Britain looking the other way. Heh.

Linked with The Right Nation Open TrackBacks,  California Conservative Point Five, Adam’s Blog, Basil's Blog, Right Wing Nation, Robinik, Stop The ACLU,  The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The Real Ugly American, Third World County, Wizbang Mudville Gazette

Comments

[Brian Macker]

I read that article by George Weigel. Just great, blame all the worlds troubles on a lack of belief in an imaginary being.

How about this. The west advanced and as they advanced they obtained the power to kill with efficiency.

If Europe has this problem then so do we with our treatment of the Indians, and history of slavery. Are we going to blame that behavior on free thinking also?

Weigle ponders, "Why European Christianity was particularly vulnerable to the siren-song of atheistic humanism raises another, deeper set of questions that are beyond the scope of this article and that deserve extensive and serious study"

Didn't think very hard about that one did he? Perhaps if he weren't in abject denile he would recognize the reason. It was the absolutely bloody history of Christianity up to that point. Don't forget that the Catholic church had bloody hands even in the modern conflicts.

The fact that Islam has not learned this lesson and likes to roll in it's blood soaked and decaying past the way a dog rolls in a festering carcass, does not put a good face on religion either.

Perhaps turning away from all vicious ideologies, would be the best course, whether they be politico-religious like Islam, or econo-religious like communism and socialism.

I guess everyone has their blind spot.

[ejdun]

Original:
Appeasement prägt die Mentalität, wenn Europa im Irak über die 300 000 von Saddam ermordeten und gefolterten Opfer hinwegsieht und in friedensbewegter Selbstgerechtigkeit George Bush schlechte Noten erteilt. Und Appeasement in seiner groteskesten Form ist es schließlich auch, wenn man auf die eskalierende Gewalt islamistischer Fundamentalisten in Holland und anderswo mit dem Vorschlag reagiert, in Deutschland doch einen muslimischen Feiertag einzuführen.

Was muß noch passieren, bis die europäische Öffentlichkeit und das politische Führungspersonal realisieren: Es herrscht eine Art Kreuzzug, eine besonders perfide, auf Zivilisten konzentrierte, gegen unsere freien, offenen, westlichen Gesellschaften gerichtete System-Attacke fanatisierter Muslime.

Translation 1
Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany?"

One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler, and declaring European "Peace in our time".

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.

Translation 2
Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam’s torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush. A particularly grotesque form of appeasement is reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by suggesting that we should really have a Muslim holiday in Germany.

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians and directed against our free, open Western societies.

Not that there's anything wrong with anti-anti-Americanism - but, such language!

[Darrell]

You still don't get it. The Shah of Iran did more for his people than any other leader in recent history--he essentially advanced his country two hundred years(at least) forward into the 20th Century--kicking and screaming. He set up a system of compulsory education for boths sexes, unheard of in the area. He set up a system of higher education available to all the people, including expense-paid foreign study. He brought Western style medicine to the people and built hundreds of hospitals. He sent Iranians abroad to study Western medicine and paid their expenses. He modeled his courts after Western courts and brought in real legal counsel for the accused. Were they the equal of American or European courts as far as the rights of the accused? No. But they were light years ahead of anything in the Arab world. And anything that has existed since. The share of the country's oil wealth transferred to the people was unheard of, before or since. The Shah's mistake? Leaving religious leaders, mullahs, in charge of distributing some of government assistance: In the last years of the Shah, grain storage warehouses were often overflowing while people starved. Even when federal troops came in and forced the doors open and distributed the food, the locals did not turn on the mullahs as they should have. The Ayatollah Khomeini, the darling of the Left, was falsely presented as a religious leader in the mold of Gandhi, and financed largely through celebrity contributions from all the usual suspects. If you picked up a celebrity profile in the 70s, you were likely to see him listed as the person they most likely wanted to meet, especially after that Gandhi movie came out. But he was as much like Gandhi as Hitler(funny how the Left can never make valid comparisons), murdering as many as a million of his own people after he came to power. And at least a million more in the war with Saddam. Anyone with a brain in their head can now see that the Ayatollah was on par with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamo-fascists. Anyone but the Left, apparently. I have never seen anyone on the Left admit that they made a mistake in supporting the Ayatollah. Of course they have never admitted that they made a mistake in supporting Pol Pot, either. You might want to look up the Sorbonne and these characters association with it, by the way. Could that be the reason? I don't have time to write the ten thousand words that are necessary to give this subject justice. Let's just say that President Carter, acting against advice from all his experts, made the wrong decision. And we are still paying for it.

[Ghost Dansing]

That's the problem with having values other than corporate arrangements. The United States has in the past, and still does support dictators, especially right-wing dictators, as long as we can do "business" with them, i.e. get oil or, in Carter's day, serve as an ally and hedge against the Soviet Union in the region.

The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose full title was "King of Kings and Light of the Aryans," had been considered a staunch ally of the United States ever since he was returned to the Peacock Throne in 1953 by a coup initially planned by the British Secret Intelligence Service (BSIS, or MI-6 as it’s more popularly known). Ultimately responding to the British government’s request for assistance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the CIA to provided financial and other support to Iranians, mostly military officers, opposed to the regime of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. After three days of political turbulence in mid-August, Mossadegh was placed under house arrest by the army and the shah, who had fled to Italy, was flown to Tehran to resumed control of the government and country. In the following years the shah moved closer and closer to the United States in a deepening relationship vital both to American and world interests.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, began his reign in 1941, succeeding his father, Reza Khan, to the throne. In a 1953 power struggle with his prime minister, the Shah gained American support to prevent nationalization of Iran's oil industry. In return for assuring the U.S. a steady supply of oil, the Shah received economic and military aid from eight American presidents.

Early in the 1960s, the Shah announced social and economic reforms but refused to grant broad political freedom. Iranian nationalists condemned his U.S. supported regime and his "westernizing" of Iran. During rioting in 1963, the Shah cracked down, suppressing his opposition. Among those arrested and exiled was a popular religious nationalist and bitter foe of the United States, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Particularly important in this alliance were the TACKSMAN signals intelligence listening posts in the Elbourz mountains north of Tehran that provided clear electronic line-of-sight coverage of the Soviet intercontinental missile test ranges. Intelligence from these sites not only allowed the United States and its Western allies to followed critical developments in the Soviet strategic missile forces, they later provided data essential to verify arms control agreements with Moscow. The shah also shared the West’s vision of a stable Middle East in which Iran would play the dominant role.

But serving as the policeman of the Middle East required a huge investment in modern military equipment and, more significantly, large numbers of American technicians and trainers to support the highly sophisticated equipment for a very unsophisticated and under-educated military.

A clash of cultures began appearing and grating on the general Iranian population, while resentment over the amount of Iranian oil revenues flowing to the United States and European countries concurrently generated building resentment against the West. Simultaneously, the shah’s regime was becoming increasingly and egregiously corrupt.

To counter rising discontent, the shah gave his security forces carte blanche to ferret out and halt the dissidents; serious human rights issues ensued, further alienating the Iranian regime from its own citizens.

Between 1963 and 1979, the Shah spent billions of oil dollars on military weapons. The real price of military strength was the loss of popular support. Unable to sustain economic progress and unwilling to expand democratic freedoms, the Shah's regime collapsed in revolution. On January 16, 1979, the Shah fled Iran, never to return.

When the shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, it was expected that he would quickly seek asylum in America, the nation that had been his strongest supporter and stalwart friend. Even Khomeini had "expressed no objections" to the shah’s exile in the United States at this time. To this end Sunnylands, the sprawling Palms Springs estate of Walter Annenberg, was offered and readied as a place of haven for his royal friend. But the shah "proved to be as indecisive in exile as he had been in power, and this presented a disagreeable problem for the United States government." Without consulting with the Americans, the shah first made a quick one-week stopover in Cairo at the invitation of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and then flew on to the household of another monarch, King Hassan II of Morocco, for an indefinite stay. To Brzezinski, this "pause" in his peregrinations "proved to be disastrous," and "generated an issue where none should have existed." As February rolled along the shah’s invitation remained valid, but the shah preferred to remain as Hassan’s guest.

The final blow for the former monarch landed when King Hassan decided he had had sufficient time with the depressed and dispirited shah; he asked his guest to leave. The shah now sent word to Washington that he was ready to accept the U.S. government’s invitation.

At a meeting of the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC -- the highest level policy and crisis management group in the Carter White House) on 23 February the decision was made to inform the shah that, while the invitation was still officially open, there were now serious complications.

Specifically, the short-lived takeover of the American embassy the previous St. Valentine’s Day had some senior officials in Washington reconsidering the wisdom of hosting the shah.

The shah’s entry into the United States was potentially an inflammatory act, and, with a deteriorating security situation in Tehran, there was still a very real threat to American interests and the remaining American officials and citizens. The risk to American lives at that time was serious, apparent, and exigent: U.S. intelligence personnel at one of the CIA’s TACKSMAN intelligence collection sites had been taken captive days before, and American Ambassador William Sullivan was at that moment in negotiations over their release (the TACKSMAN sites were a cooperative effort with the shah’s regime for monitoring the Soviet missile test ranges).

The shah’s evident desire to enter the United States threatened to unravel the little that had been achieved to date and would render impossible all that might be accomplished in the future. In April, as he grew increasingly discontent with life in the islands, the shah’s general state of unhappiness turned to bitterness as he began telling the world press that the Carter administration was responsible for his fall. When this became known in the United States, renewed pressures on President Carter to admit him were openly and unrelentingly applied by a handful of powerful people inside and outside of the government.

In a nutshell, Iran was a legacy problem for Carter that brought along with it the baggage of hypocritical foreign relations policies of the past.

The main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter's dealings with the Shah of Iran. The Shah had been a strong ally of America since World War II, and was one of the "twin pillars" upon which U.S. strategic policy in the Middle East was built. However, his rule was strongly autocratic. In short, he wasn't really as much of a "great guy" as one would imagine, and he would have never been returned to power in the first place without neo-colonial style interventions from Britain and the United States.

[Darrell]

Yup. Jimmy Carter knew what he was doing and still does...Wasn't he the President that relied on advice from the editor of "New Christian Century" magazine to make the decision not to support the Shah of Iran? As my Iranian friends said at the time, "What an idiot!" Maybe all "student protestors" aren't alike? The mullahs are honorable men, so are they all, all honorable men...

[Ghost Dansing]

From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

They identified five characteristics shared by virtually all fundamentalisms. The fundamentalists' agenda starts with insistence that their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God—and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right—must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini's Iran, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.

The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and it's vulgarly simple: Men are on top. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and homemakers.

A third item follows from the others. (Indeed each part of the fundamentalist agenda is necessarily interlocked, and needs every other part to survive.) Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women, and children, it is imperative that this picture and these rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, fundamentalists must control education by controlling textbooks and teaching styles, deciding what may and may not be taught.

Fourth, fundamentalists spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the state. One scholar suggested that it's helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. The phrase “overcoming the modern” is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.

The fifth point is the most abstract, though it's foundational. Fundamentalists deny history in a radical and idiosyncratic way. Fundamentalists know as well or better than anybody that culture shapes everything it touches: The times we live in color how we think, what we value, and the kind of people we become. Fundamentalists agree on the perverseness of modern American society: the air of permissiveness and narcissism, individual rights unbalanced by responsibilities, sex divorced from commitment, and so on. What they don't want to see is the way culture colored the era when their scriptures were created.

[Ghost Dansing]

Stop calling me ignorant :) you meany. "Islamic fundamentalists are psychologically no different than Christian fundamentalists" does not imply "psychosis", but habits, styles of thinking and engagement with the world that have certain characteristics, i.e. personality traits. I wasn't talking about all the people who happened to be a member of a theologically fundamentalist Church while they were growing up, or nominally call themselves "Christians...fundamentalist implied, because they are the only 'True Christians'", because they belong to a super-Church that has a good day care program or a motorcycle club, but people who have fully internalized the intellectual approach of fundamentalist theology, and probably engage in errors of the evangelical movement and even dominionism, and vibrate at the sound of Pat Robertson or Dobson's voice. Essentially, heretics and idolators.

I was suggesting something more like;

"Both Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists are the sort of narrow-minded bastards who think what their religion teaches is actually true and that people who disagree with them are wrong and that people who do not follow their religion's moral teachings are evil..."

And those who whole heartedly embrace fundamentalist approaches to Religion tend to admire that which is strident, assertive, threatening and bellicose in their politics.

That is, of course, unless they are enlightened Baptists, like our dear Jimmy Carter, who, by the way, has out a new book on this very issue.

"President Carter has written importantly about his spiritual life and faith. In Living Faith, a huge bestseller, he recounted the values and experiences that shaped his personal and political life. In his companion book Sources of Strength, also a bestseller, he meditated on fifty-two of the favorite Bible lessons he has taught.

In Our Endangered Values, Carter offers a personal consideration of "moral values" as they relate to the important issues of the day. He puts forward a passionate defense of separation of church and state, and a strong warning of where the country is heading as the lines between politics and rigid religious fundamentalism are blurred."

http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?sid=33&pid=515114

[Kenny Pierce]

Ghost, if conservativism is in error, then it can be overcome without pointlessly bellicose rhetorical flourishes like "corporatist clown."

In saying that "Islamic fundamentalists are psychologically no different than Christian fundamentalists," you might annoy my friend Jim R. very much, as it goes to support my own idea (discussed in various places over at Redneck Peril, including by guest-bloggers who disagree with me) that the most fundamental disagreement about religion is the disagreement over whether religion is properly thought of in terms of Fact, of Family, or of Results; and also that fundamentalist has ceased to be a term of description and has become a term of abuse, employed chiefly by the indolently malicious. Having grown up among Christian "fundamentalists," I can testify that there is extremely wide psychological variation within that population; your statement, taken as an assertion of psychology, is manifestly ignorant and absurd. If, on the other hand, what you mean is, "Both Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists are the sort of narrow-minded bastards who think what their religion teaches is actually true and that people who disagree with them are wrong and that people who do not follow their religion's moral teachings are evil..." Well, okay, that much is true, but it has nothing to do with psychosis. How do you know they aren't right?

[Alexandra]

"American rightest corporatists have a system of values that is extremely reminiscent of the early-mid 19th Century fascists, and have a lineage that includes sympathizers of the era.
Islamofascism can be overcome without bellicose nonsense like this corporatist clown writing about "cowardice"

Honestly Ghost, you just discredit yourself with ignorant and perversely arrogant statements like that.

[Ghost Dansing]

Well, any success in victory over our opponents lies in not becoming like them in the process. Americans, especially Republican Americans love the sound of fascist sound-bytes. They love the tough talk, the strident rhetoric and self-righteous symbology. Why are these people not psychologically akin to those in the Thirties who huddled around the radio listening to der fuerer, or el duche, or franco?

Islamic fundamentalists are psychologically no different than Christian fundamentalists.

American rightest corporatists have a system of values that is extremely reminiscent of the early-mid 19th Century fascists, and have a lineage that includes sympathizers of the era.

Islamofascism can be overcome without bellicose nonsense like this corporatist clown writing about "cowardice".

[Assistant Village Idiot]

Christendom has not had a religious war since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

[Stefan]

Mr. Assistant,
Very well stated!! As an American of Polish decent (whose father and brothers all teach Slavic history) I am acutely aware of Eastern Europe’s role in history which is grossly overlooked in the west. Also, statements like 2k’s make me nutty.

“Islamofascism is no different than the past: an elitist religion claiming superiority over any other religion or secular thought, which end is death.”(Sic)

How about some specific example? Crusades? Yawn. These sweeping generalities are never backed up with examples. While there were “religious” wars in Europe it always is about territory and power underneath it all. The separation of church and state was not to keep the church out of politics but to keep politics from co-opting the church.

[Assistant Village Idiot]

So very much here. Thank you.

The Weigel piece is based on his book which is also excellent.

Ghost Dansing's argument has been logically refuted so often, I wonder why we bother. Yet that is our lot, I suppose, and others have had worse battles to fight.

Hitler lied. Is that so suprising? Early on, he used the manipulative invocations he thought would work, and many were indeed deceived, thinking that he shared their concerns and worshipped their God. As his power solidified he revealed his true thought. Why is this fairly simple premise hard to understand? Wolves do not hide in wolves' clothing -- they hide in sheeps' clothing.

That Europe was fooled once should perhaps make it cautious about following someone who invokes the name of God in his own cause; yes, to be suspicious of Americans or anyone else is entirely proper. But the right to be suspicious is not equal to the right to reject out of hand. Anything which smacks of nationalism seems to be rejected in Europe these days, and Naziism pointed to as the reason why. But nationalism was also part of the solution to that problem.

I have two sons from Romania, and much contact with Romanians and Hungarians. Those nations (plus several others in the Balkans) repeatedly absorbed the previous incarnation of aggressive Islam for nearly a thousand years, at enormous cost to their peoples. Crusades, hmpf. The Crusades were the 5% of the time that Western Europe roused itself to fight back.

More recently, Eastern Europe -- including many of those same nations -- absorbed communist aggression, again acting as a buffer for the protected Western Europeans who now look down on them as poor and benighted.

I have wondered why Western Europe can be so quick to reject the testimony of Eastern Europe. Over the last decade, I have concluded the reason is guilt. They are ashamed that others suffered on their behalf while they did nothing. Finding the guilt intolerable, they blame the victims and congratulate themselves for their great courage in insulting a people who will not hurt them, the Americans.

Sweet Belgium and Gentle Holland -- Proud Germany and Prouder France -- it is not America who accuses you. It is Poland, and Estonia, and Slovakia, and Macedonia.

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

The Weigel piece is excellent.

In it, he reduces the relantionship of Europeans with God and/or morality to an simple, unspoken question of balance and priority.

Do we answer to God/moral truths, or does God/moral truths answer to us?

[Alexandra]

Kitty,

“It's somewhat ironic to think that these days we Eastern Europeans are celebrating our freedom (and in some cases commemorating our dead) while doing our best to "integrate" in another socialist pyramid scheme based in Bruxelles.”

A further irony might well lie in the hope that the new member states from Eastern Europe inject urgently needed energy and innovation into the otherwise sclerotic EU member-states of old; and, it may well transpire, much to their chagrin, that the new member states soon contribute with net surplus to EU funding contrary to loudly voiced fears of them constituting a further drain...

[Imperialist Kitty]

Thank you for a great post, Alexandra!

Ah, the EUSSR! The only silver lining for me is that socialism manages to shoot itself in the foot every single time. My only hope is that once the EU slides further and further on the slope of welfare-state irrelevance, the UK will put it out of its misery and pull out to join EFTA.

It's somewhat ironic to think that these days we Eastern Europeans are celebrating our freedom (and in some cases commemorating our dead) while doing our best to "integrate" in another socialist pyramid scheme based in Bruxelles.

[RC]

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of
Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child."
Adolph Hitler

leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/docs/questions.html

eeinternational.org/dykfs/

greatcom.org/laws/english/flash/

[Darrell]

A few quotes omitted from the previous comment by our friend, GD--
By accident, I'm sure! If we want to play this little game, I have lots more!

"Christianity is an invention of sick brains,"
Adolf Hitler, 13 December 1941.

"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death," Adolf Hitler, 14 October 1941.

"The German people has(sic) the solemn intention of living in peace and friendship with all civilized nations and powers.... .And I regard the maintenance of peace in Europe as especially desirable and at the same time secured, if France and Germany, on the basis of equal sharing of natural human rights, arrive at a real inner understanding....The young Germany, that is led by me and that finds its expression in the National Socialist Movement, has only the most heartfelt desire for an understanding with other European nations.
Adolf Hitler, 26 October, 1930

When National Socialism has ruled long enough, it will no longer be possible to conceive of a form of life different from ours. In the long run, National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together. … No, it does not mean a war. The ideal solution would be to leave the religions to devour themselves, without persecutions. But in that case we must not replace the Church with something equivalent…The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. [Hitler's Table Talk, p. 6-7]Hitler's Secret Conversations, New York, Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953.

[Darrell]

Ah, we have attracted the Socialists(Communists?) like Ghost Dansing--a man(?) banned by many a blog! And always ready to play games when he is banned.
Keep one thing in mind--Hitler was a Socialist, too. The Marxists just deny him for obvious reasons, and also because he did not go far enough for their taste--he didn't accept class warfare from their little agenda and he didn't accept centrally-planned economies. He was not, in any way, shape, or form a Christian. He just said what he needed to say when he needed to say it. Like the Democrat leadership of today. Or people that conjur references to Native Americans, when they have no such claim. Didn't the Ward Churchill scandal teach you anything?

[Theway2k]

This was like reading Coulter writing something seething to American liberals, but it was Corporate Germanica alerting Germany and Europe. Wow! Appeasement only leads to defeatism and huge amounts of death. Islamofascism is no different than the past: an elitist religion claiming superiority over any other religion or secular thought, which end is death.

[North by Northwest]

Hey Stefan, It's yet another example of a dutifully crafted opposition effort merely for the sake, erm..., well of opposing. As I said, it's devoid of reasonable thought and genuine merit. It's all just posturing. No substance. Unfortunate for those who buy into it all and wake up one day with a headache.

[Stefan]

Ah Ghost,
What a dull rhetorical trick you have attempted to play. I see it clearly now! If Europeans stand up to those who have publicly vowed and acted to destroy them then they are akin to Adolf Hitler!! That is really clearheaded!! “Peace in our time” eh? Hey, I’ll bet you could find quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, F.D.R., J.F.K., Ronald Reagan, and any other wartime leader that might sound similar to something Hitler may have said too huh? I am glad you posted because it shows exactly why people in this country (even those who don’t love Bush) never trust anyone on the Left when it comes to National Security. The plan of the Left is to feed the crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last. It reminds me of that scene from the movie “Independence Day” where all the “enlightened” alien worshippers go to the top of the building with welcome signs to greet the new “visitors” and are then immediately annihilated. Although Hitler often “put on the clothes” of religiously inspired righteousness to serve his purposes, make no mistake, Nazism was brutally atheistic. If you are implying a moral equivalency between Hitler and Mathias Dapfner then you have clearly driven off the cliff of moral relativism. In addition you obviously have not read Dapfner’s piece very carefully. Nor have you read Hitler’s statements (which you posted) very carefully. If you had you would have seen the glorifying of the State above all, the references to Nietzsche’s will-driven super-man, Darwin’s theory of the “survival of the fittest” extrapolated to the level of the State which calls for the pure “superman’s” willful and brutal domination of his “weaker” fellow man, and the total worship of violence and warfare. This is all at extreme odds with the Christian-inspired liberties which are and will continue to be in need of defense. When these same ideas are synthesized with Islam (which they have been) we find the face of al-Qaeda and their army of “martyrs” who are (by their own admission) waging a global Jihad against every one of us…including YOU. I am sorry to say it but, your statement betrays a complete and total misunderstanding of history in general, Nazism, Islamic Fascism, and the current cultural, philosophical, and political state of events in Europe in particular. No one here is foolish enough to fall for this rhetoric so…nice try.

[North by Northwest]

European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular. That conviction has had crucial, indeed lethal, consequences for European public life and European culture; indeed, that conviction and its public consequences are at the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale. That crisis of civilizational morale, in turn, helps explain why European man is deliberately forgetting his history. That crisis of civilizational morale helps us understand why European man is abandoning the hard work and high adventure of democratic politics, seeming to prefer the false domestic security of bureaucracy and the false international security of the UN system. That crisis of civilizational morale is why European man is failing to create the human future of Europe. -- [excerpt from "Europe’s Problem—and Ours" by George Weigel]

Thank you Stefan!

Coupled with the blunt statement from Dapfner (CEO, Axel Springer AG), this has been more illuminating than I am able to put in words here. I love the Blogosphere!!!

Both Dapfner and Weigel need re-reading and re-re-reading, and its message applied in frequent debate and discussion to be kept alive and to germinate. These are complex and sensitive observations, all too easy to be dismissed by critics of all political persuasion and varying degrees of intellectual diligence. Only if continuously discussed and debated, will one be able to reduce elements into digestible 'sound-bites', which are then easier to disseminate. And that is assuming a certain good-will being present.

This truth, despite its clarity and persuasiveness to the diligent and reasoned thinker, will not withstand the very first partisan attack. It is wide open for abuse not only by those who shrewdly sense an opportunity to assign 'quack' stigma to its early proponents, so as to further their own political agenda; even though they themselves may very well privately recognize the bi-partisan importance emanating from its proper understanding.

[Ghost Dansing]

"These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house." Somebody Today

And a guy from yesteryear:

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."
- Adolf Hitler

"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism."
- Adolf Hitler

"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards."
- Adolf Hitler

"The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others."
- Adolf Hitler

"Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless"
- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

"Become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices"
- Adolf Hitler

"We are all proud that through God's powerful aid, we have become once more true Germans"
- Adolf Hitler

"Whatever goal, man has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality"
- Adolf Hitler

Always before God and the world, the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills"
- Adolf Hitler

"What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator"
- Adolf Hitler

"The world will not help, the people must help themselves. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it, we may wage the battle of our life The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty - of Him who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward"
- Adolf Hitler

[Darrell]

Stephan,
I have read the article, and do agree. This is a cause of concern for America because it's happening here as well. European history is filled with mistakes(as is all history). The problem stems from blaming those mistakes on God and religion, rather than the men who caused the pain and suffering in an attempt to secure more power. The Left took full advantange of a people tired of past mistakes. And a people unwilling to look for hard answers. The Left tells us that "religion is the opiate of the people" while omitting it is a drug they covet above all else. The media, both news and entertainment, is now the Ruhypnol(the 'date rape drug') they use to make us compliant and forget. Forget the past and not fully realize what is happening to us in the here and now. The Left is a religion, make no mistake. They have core beliefs with little or no substantiation that require total acceptance. Don't believe me? Just come out opposed to the antroprogenic global warming. Or any of their other core beliefs. Isn't it time to get the Left out of our classrooms in the US?

Religion with God at its core is not an opiate, it is a stimulant. When Europe comes to its senses and starts believing in itself, and its future, they will start bringing new life into this world. They must not feel that life dominated by the Left is worth bringing children into: pyramid schemes always cause that sort of thinking. We know that life is not a zero-sum game. The possibilities are endless as long as we never lose sight of the Origin.

[Alexandra]

Stefan,
Just finished reading it, it's brilliant. I posted it as an update in the main text. Thanks, you always have the most incredible links!

[Stefan]

Darrell,
I agree with you completely when you say that the substituting of “man for God” is at the root of Europe’s problems, that remains my main point. As to the Left holding the “bloody knife” I agree, seeing as the two points are directly related. I do, however, think the problem is more multi-faceted and “deeper” in regards to the real world implications of this substitution. I don’t wish to beat a dead horse but I hope you read the article I suggested above; I think you would find it time well spent and that you would find yourself in agreement with Weigel’s thesis.

[Huan]

Good post about Europe. Perhaps if enough speak out, Europe won't appease into Eurabia afterall. I remain pessimistic.

[Darrell]

The "Death of Christianity" in Europe was not by natural causes, I assure you. The Left is holding the bloody knife in their hand. When you substitute "man" for "God", all manner of bad things are possible. Maybe in fifty years, Europe will question if it was really better to be "Red than Dead." Assuming they still can, of course...

[Stefan]

Mathias Dapfner’s comments are absolutely right on. This is a great post Alexandria!! At the risk of being redundant (as I feel very strongly about the need to rescue Europe and have commented on this elsewhere) I again stress the dire importance of the death of Christianity in Europe’s current moral quagmire. Many people just look at this problem as one of leftist politics but that is just the symptom and not the cause. A people’s world view comes from their religious and philosophical views on what animates or defines reality. It is from this basis (or lack thereof) that they decide what is important, what is right or wrong, what is just or unjust, and ultimately what is worth fighting and dying for. Politics is simply the acting out of these premises. Europe doesn’t fight for itself because it simply doesn’t believe in itself. It is filled with great disdain for those who speak of good and evil especially on the world stage. Since America professes to believe in itself and what it represents and has the “gall” to be a leader in the world Europeans have special disdain for us. They are angered because they remember when they were leaders in the world and they are acutely and cripplingly aware of their 20th century failures. It is like the man who, being bitter about his own failures, secretly wishes for the failure of his old friends because he is so self-centered and angry he cannot enjoy their success. I must, again, recommend, in the strongest manner, reading George Weilgel’s (official biographer of JPII) book “The Cube and the Cathedral” (Basic Books). It is a quick read and Weilgel is incredibly perceptive and a top notch writer. This is the link to Weigel’s article, “Europe’s Problem – and Ours”, (from First Things) which is a summary of his argument and I highly, highly recommend it.
I am sure that most people here are familiar with First Things but if not you should subscribe (or check your newsstand) right away because it a Journal on religion, politics, and the “Public Square” whose contributors are scholars and thinkers of the highest caliber. I think everyone here would find something of great interest in every issue. Commercial over.