Not very long ago, Oslo was an icy Shangri-la of Scandinavian self-discipline, governability, and respect for the law. But in recent years, there have been grim changes, including a rise in gay-bashings. The summer of 2006 saw an unprecedented wave of them. The culprits, very disproportionately, are young Muslim men.
It’s not just Oslo, of course. The problem afflicts most of Western Europe. And anecdotal evidence suggests that such crimes are dramatically underreported. My own partner chose not to report his assault. I urged him to, but he protested that it wouldn’t make any difference. He was probably right.
The reason for the rise in gay bashings in Europe is clear – and it’s the same reason for the rise in rape. As the number of Muslims in Europe grows, and as the proportion of those Muslims who were born and bred in Europe also grows, many Muslim men are more inclined to see Europe as a part of the umma (or Muslim world), to believe that they have the right and duty to enforce sharia law in the cities where they live, and to recognize that any aggression on their part will likely go unpunished. Such men need not be actively religious in order to feel that they have carte blanche to assault openly gay men and non-submissive women, whose freedom to live their lives as they wish is among the most conspicuous symbols of the West’s defiance of holy law.
Multiculturalists can’t face all this. So it is that even when there are brutal gay-bashings, few journalists write about them; of those who do, few mention that the perpetrators are Muslims; and those who do mention it take the line that these perpetrators are lashing out in desperate response to their own oppression.
[…]
It’s very clear what’s going on here – and where it’s all headed. Europe is on its way down the road of Islamization, and it’s reached a point along that road at which gay people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is being directly challenged, both by knife-wielding bullies on the street and by taxpayer-funded thugs whose organizations already enjoy quasi-governmental authority. Sharia law may still be an alien concept to some Westerners, but it’s staring gay Europeans right in the face – and pointing toward a chilling future for all free people. Pim Fortuyn saw all this coming years ago; most of today’s European leaders still refuse to see it even though it’s right before their eyes.
h/t.
This can’t br right. Didn’t I see pictures gays, Liberals and women’s group marchging with kafias and yellow hezbollah signs not too long ago?
If you’re into trying to really persuade (rather than bash or ignore) lib-left friends that we face an existential challenge from Islam, there’s no better book to give or lend them than Bawer’s While Europe Slept.
Bawer is a gay uber-liberal New Yorker who decamped to a allegedly more enlightened Europe only to awake to the developing disaster in the sleeping Europe. In short — if you’ll excuse the vernacular — as his ass was in the sling, he got it.
But alas, a few weeks ago, along the same lines, I loaned Hirsi Ali’s Infidel to a very intelligent but liberal young woman. So far, however, after several conversations on other matters, all I’ve heard is “I’m almost finished that book you loaned me”. So, maybe another theory bites the dust.
When our liberal let friends know that women in the countries where the “special religion” rules women are sentenced to lashing for the crime of being gang raped, when they know death is the remedy for homosexuality do you really think reading a book will change their minds? I thought the stark footage of the senseless barbaric “show murder” of Van Gogh would wake up our lefty friends but they too have learned how to punish the victims.
It makes me wonder how many uber-liberal, euro-chic bashers of western society already have their bags packed and tickets to N. America purchased.
Its been before, but it bears repeating: An armed society is a -polite- society.
Good point, eyeswideshut, except: in Canada, they really don’t know what’s going on if their information comes mostly from public “education” and MSM, which for most liberals is the case.
I think the left has found something that trumps the frisson of twitting the right on matters of mere sexuality: the dark thrill of playing Russian Roulette with an ideology whose most fanatic members seek to destroy the very society that produced these jaded daredevils. That’s why they will not stand up for the ideals that they have long claimed as their own – women’s rights and acceptance of homosexuality. They pull the trigger every time they pretend that an assault on a gay man happened because those who beat him were suffering under ‘oppression’, or a rape because an uncovered woman should have known better than to walk in a neighbourhood of ‘oppressed men. And they get the thrill of not being dead…yet.
The really sad part to this is the number of gay men here in denial. They cling like barnacles to the belief against all empirical evidence that their safety is threatened by the Christian right. Another folly of our times. Of course, when 24/7 the media feeds you that meme and you never venture from your self-reinforcing coterie of like minded liberal friends who feel they same way, then, you stay uninformed and stupid.
The Europeans really are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the watching lefties being systematically cannibalized by a force far tougher than them.
Here’s hoping that Geert Wilders gets his incendiary video out in front of the public European soon. The Euroweenies need to have their cars torched in the tens of thousands in city after city to maybe wake up and smell the smoke.
“Pim Fortuyn saw all this coming years ago”
Yes but every lefty who has read about Pim already “Knows” that he was was just a dangerous neo-nazi!
And in fact he was murdered by a lefty loon who was described first and foremost as an “animal rights activist”! whatever the hell that is supposed to do with assassinating him.
Pim Fortuyn a socialist and homosexual was the antithesis of the entire lefty movement on one matter … that of multiculturalism and recognizing the threat of Islam’s hostile barbarianism.
The most telling thing about his demise is that it was at the hands of one of his own herd.
What got him killed was nothing more than the fact that he deviated from the accepted rituals of the hive.
Another example of the addicted personality disorder of the left.
“Its been SAID before…” Duh.
Anyway, Me No Dhimmi its been my experience that the views of young Liberal women are entirely unaffected by argument, evidence or pretty much anything at all. Cast in stone is what they are, and nothing short of the kind of life-altering experience that caused Mr. Bawer to write his book can make any impression on their invincible ignorance.
Liberals generally are the most intolerant, dogmatic and unpleasant cultists I’ve seen, anything that discomfits them can’t be all bad. Perhaps this invasion of barbarians will have a salutary effect on the West after all. Its an ill wind that blows no good, eh?
Just musing but it seems to me that progressives are unable to spot future trends. Instead they prefer to explain them as culturally unnconnected incidents. For example, the rise of intolerance and misogyny and homophobia in both Muslim countries or from Muslim immigrants in multicultural Europe/NA are explained by attacking the host society’s bigoted attitudes towards these misunderstood cultures.
What I find odd is that they have no problem seeing trends of the past and the ills they caused: colonialism, Christian extremism, homophobia and gender inequality. Yet they seem unable to spot the similar actions of these past cultures to the actions of their modern day equivalents (Islam).
So while they continue to vilify the players of past wrongs they miss the real threat posed by todays aggressors.
It is rather amusing (in a way) to watch this unfold before our eyes.
The political left, certainly personified by Western Europe, decided long ago that it never again wanted the stain of the reputation of racism that Germany received after the experience of the Nazis. It therefore decided that any decision or judgement that could be perceived as racist must never be allowed to be part of its public policy – and this became the foundation for what is today termed political correctness.
It did not matter that sometimes the adherents to this philosophy had to sometimes close their eyes to the truth to maintain the ideology; it only mattered that they could hold their heads high because no one could ever call them racist – at least by their definition of racist. Race was extended to include things foreign to Western Civilization which included but was not specific to Islam. What should have been properly termed discrimination is now termed racism because of the extra psychological lift the term racism has upon the hearts of those in Western countries who are still repulsed by the actions of the Nazis.
However, history reveals for us that the left by closing its eyes and minds to the truth has in fact demonstrated that is equally as racist (their own definition) as the Nazis. Truth does not matter – what matters is: was a particular group involved. It does seem to me to be just a little peculiar that in trying to never again repeat the horrors of the Nazis, the left has somehow now aligned itself with those who were one of Hitler’s strongest and most faithful allies.
If this were only make believe it would be surely amusing. I am sure we will get to see the next Act in this play before we are ready.
Has Scott or Svend made any comments on this gay bashing, by muslims. Will gays come forward to report such attacks. People will be surprised it is not being done by Christians.
And, with an Iman trying for a liberal nomination in Toronto, and liberals marching with these terrorists, does that mean liberals support this and are really against ssm and the gay lifestyle.
Maybe they should look in the mirror and discover that their enemy is really their supporters.
My daughters gave me Steyn’s “America Alone” as a Christmas gift. A great read on this subject.
You can try and point out to a liberal all the insanities of the radicals, the murders, the tortures, beatings, gay bashing, insane beliefs. It just doesn’t matter to them.
There are two standard responses.
One: The will pull up a couple of news stories and say “see we are just as bad.” (You could post thousands about Islam BTW)
Two: They will simply say “you know I can’t help but feel that this is partly our fault. If we hadn’t… (place appropriate anti American rhetoric here)
Perhaps it’s me who is becoming overly paranoid about the radical Islam issues. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong however.
I would’nt simply just blame leftist scocialist type governments as to what is currently happening to western civ. Corperations are also hugely responsable trying to turn Europe and North America into third world type countries. They lobby very hard for massive immigration. Corperate facism is alive and doing quite well in the west.
Nothing will change until some big-wig politician or Hollywood type has their gay son or daughter group raped and then cut up and dumped.
Then they’ll get riled up only after they open their eyes.
T. Robert Wolfram: I like your “Russian Roulette” metaphor! Breath of the Beast has a piece up with a similar theme: smirking left, taunting the tiger, etc.
penny: LOL. “Wake up and smell the smoke”. BTW, are you aware that the Mufti of Paris is pushing for the cancellation of the 1905 law re:separation of church and state. Sarkozy seems to going along with it, and the Christian churches too, sadly.
KevinB: Your daughters’ gift of America Alone. For their nutty red-neck dad, or … are they right-wingers rebelling against their loony-left dad, or …
Brent Weston at February 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Terrific post.
The hatred that the “liberal” and left-wing crowd has for the traditional institutions that created the successful and powerful Western world is too deeply bred to permit them the flexibility of thought that would allow recognition of the impending multiculti and social disaster that is heading our way.
They are moral cowards, hiding being words they read somewhere, espousing ideas that are convenient because someone bled to make them possible, and institutions someone else paid to make practical.
How will our children forgive the manner in which we destroyed their inheritance?
I would at least go to my grave with a slight sense of satisfaction if I could read an article about one of the Trudeau children being attacked by a gang of angry welfare-supported immigrants as he wandered down a street in Ottawa one day, or read about Louise Arbour catching multibacterial resistent TB while sharing a four bed hospital room with a bunch of refugees who have been collecting welfare since arriving in Canada and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical treatment
Wait, is that hate speech?
Toronto and environs is the breeding ground of Islamism, radical or otherwise. Don’t feel smug, it will spread. Nothing to stop it.
With our Multicultural policies and Charter interpreted by a Leftoid Judiciary they have free reign over us. They are now in the process of taking away our freedom of speech through the HRC’s, the Commie’s would be proud at the work of these Commissars.
Never mind the Radical Imams are exempt, they can spew hatred,no problem.
We better all keep watch at what happens with Levant and Steyn. If these cases are not tossed out, we have a major problem.
Me No Dhimmi:
Thank you.
Newspapers continue to struggle.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/earnings/2008-01-31-ny-times_N.htm?csp=34
Whoops, sorry. Previous post was put in wrong comments.
When viewed with the understanding that the Left is all about destroying Western civilization, all this Lefty coddling of Islamists Makes perfect sense. They figure if they can use Muslims as a bigger/better multi-culti bat to smack the eeeevile racist imperialist conservatives, its worth throwing women and gays under the train.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or is it fiend…?
Remember my friends, “An armed society is a polite society.” Then there’s my other favorite, “God made Man. Sam Colt made men equal.”
Reading the comments in rabble, which I rarely refer to as it sickens me, about the Native who let his two kids freeze to death ties in so well to this discussion. The posters seem unable to properly blame the one person who killed his children. It was his responsibility and he failed.
They blame everyone else, whitey, the government, RCMP, poor unloved Natives and on and on. The same idiots are in Europe and everywhere else.
What it really frightening is when the choice of fighting or joining islam we know which one they will pick.
As Me No Dhimmi noted in the second comment above: “Bawer is a gay uber-liberal New Yorker who decamped to a allegedly more enlightened Europe only to awake to the developing disaster in the sleeping Europe.”
True, but isn’t it curious that Mr Bawer took his leave of the US in preference for Europe, yet he managed to retain a belief in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, a concept that is decidedly American – and more to the point, decidedly NOT European.
You can take the boy out of the land of liberty, but somehow you can’t really take the idea of liberty out of the boy.
As Me No Dhimmi noted in the second comment above: “Bawer is a gay uber-liberal New Yorker who decamped to a allegedly more enlightened Europe only to awake to the developing disaster in the sleeping Europe.”
True, but isn’t it curious that Mr Bawer took his leave of the US in preference for Europe, yet he managed to retain a belief in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, a concept that is decidedly American – and more to the point, decidedly NOT European.
You can take the boy out of the land of liberty, but somehow you can’t really take the idea of liberty out of the boy.
Excellent observations. Thanks.
I bring up the “Apartheid High” issue here because, if anyone—Colby Cosh at the National Post today—thinks “Afrocentric” schools won’t be hot beds of revisionism to downright lies, as well as incubators for radical Muslims, who will, among other subversive things, be studying Arabic as an “international language”, is naïve to the nth degree. As I’ve noted before, I don’t believe there are enough authentic educators, versus the legion of PC impostors in the system, with either the brains or integrity to make the correct pedagogical and moral choices needed to provide the kind of schools ALL of our children deserve, let alone those with pathological problems.
I’ve spent some time in “Afrocentric” schools—those with large populations of black students—where far more emphasis is put on Martin Luther King—an American: what irony!—and any number of others with dark skin than Canadian history, the product of which is the free society in which these black students and their families enjoy all kinds of privileges and perqs. (For many of them, welfare recipients, this is on the back of the rest of us: by omission to propaganda—for one thing, check out Canada’s history textbooks—our public school systems basically allow, even encourage, black—and all other—children to dismiss and hold in derision the host culture.)
Many teachers in such schools are politically motivated, lefty cheerleaders with mushy brains. A sense of proper order and adult authority, and the lack of intellectual rigour in these (and, BTW, most other public) schools is often palpable. The administrators are by far the worst: political correctness is both their religion, and the altar on which they’re prepared to sacrifice any teacher of integrity, who’s actually colour blind re matters of accountability and discipline. (I’ve been the victim of this travesty myself and know countless colleagues who share the same, demeaning, dangerous-for-all-of-us experience.)
As a society, as a civilization, we’re committing suicide.
Most people here know that I’m a committed Christian—very used for the past 15 years to keeping my opinions off the public record. (Now, why would that be?) I believe entirely that our “death wish” has everything to do with the fact that we’ve become a secular society—very fertile ground for multiculturalism and its twin, moral relativism.
As a British-background (family here for over 200 years) Christian, who’s lost just about everything of my cultural identity in the public square—thanks, Trudeau—I have a pretty firm idea not only of where I come from and who I am, but of how I feel about that: damn proud!
I know one does not have to be either Christian or descended from British stock to feel the way I do. But, I posit, that, in Canada, as the respect for both the political and judicial institutions the British, including members of my family, bequeathed to this country, and the Judeo-Christian foundation on which they were built, has dwindled, so too has the sense of a strong cultural and personal identity, which is not prey to the sinewy, deadly tentacles of political correctness.
That’s my take on it. I believe the Christian part of the puzzle is accurate for—ironically !—Britain as well as the non-British West. What do others think?
Why has the West so colossally lost its integrity, pride and guts?
When viewed with the understanding that the Left is all about destroying Western civilization, all this Lefty coddling of Islamists Makes perfect sense.
Posted by: The Phantom at February 1, 2008 1:46 PM
Indeed ti does! One of my life’s most memorable epiphanies (would that it had occurred a bit earlier!) was the realization that they are not unwittingly destroying the west — out of a lack of good information and understanding — but that they are actively seeking it.
Viewing it this way, for example, one would not be at all surprised to observe the deafening silence of Western feminists concerning Islamic misogyny.
A related epiphany is that most of the public will only get a visceral understanding of a threat when they see it in their own backyard. Think of socialized medicine: anyone who knows anything at all about economics knew that it must needs collapse. The average Joe doesn’t get it until he sees what happens to Uncle Joe or Aunt Jane, or mom or dad, or grandmom or granddad, etc.
“Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets if be done to him.” – Mohammad (Tirmidhi, a sahih/authentic hadith)
There are many other verses as such in the Quran and Hadith. Some go so far as to instruct exactly how homosexuals should be put to death as well, ie. stoning, thrown off a building, etc.
The texts are the foundational basis for the ideology and were institutionalized into shariah law. Shariah law is the basis for so-called Islamic Human Rights. For example, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted and Issued at the Nineteenth Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in Cairo on 5 August 1990 – is entirely based on shariah. The last two articles abrogate whatever might be considered decent and moral before:
Article 24
All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah.
Article 25
The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.
So, even their so-called human rights declarations promotes, or at least allows Islamic theocracies to get away with murder. Al-Fatiha estimates that 4,000 homosexuals have been executed in Iran since their revolution in 1979.
However, the ideology is dualistic.
They preposterously hold two contrary points of view on many things, including homosexuality. For example pedestry has been promoted and practiced throughout Islamic history, without it being considered a sin. Or at least not a sin worthy of punishment.
(Bukhari LXII, 25) As for whom(ever) plays with a boy: if he caused him to enter him, then he shall not marry his mother.
Quran 52:17-29 And they shall have boys [ghilmaan] circulating among them as if they were hidden pearls.
The problem with most people in the west is that because Islam is veiled as ‘religion,’ it’s accepted and protected as if it were like any other religion. Therefore most remain blissfully ignorant of the actual ideology as described in the Islamic trilogy and practiced throughout history. It is indeed unlike any other ‘religion’ in the world.
I don’t believe there are enough authentic educators, versus the legion of PC impostors in the system
Bingo, lookout. This is exactly what I concluded some 30 years ago during my brief tenure in the trenches. The simple truth is that the candidates for the teaching profession are not the brightest and/or best-educated, and are more motivated by the perception of a relatively easy life with lots of time off to pursue their true interests, and the expectation of a good inflation-indexed pension. Lest I appear snobbish here, I include myself in that group at that time in my life.
And state-licensing! Consider that technically a PhD in history, without a Education diploma, can’t teach in the public school system (not sure if this is still true).
And lookout, concerning the disinterest shown in your winning methodology, this makes sense: that would be threatening — would reveal that failure is due to poor methodoloy, which is fixable, and not to systemic racism and discrimation — a bureaurcatic cop out.
I think this is the thing that keeps these Lefty education types in business, they’ve managed to successfully hide their actual purpose because nobody would even think that is what they are after.
Its like the gun registry. If you take the Liberals at their word and look at it as crime prevention, its insane. To spend a billion dollars on it is doubly insane, because it does nothing at all to criminals.
However if you ignore the stated purpose and re-frame it as a way to move money around to political friends and win votes while punishing political enemies, the gun registry is actually very clever.
Once you realize they’re lying it all becomes perfectly sensible.
Great minds, MND . . . !
I’ve certainly always marched to the tune of a different drummer than most of my colleagues. I “fell” into teaching, but actually ended up being pretty good at it. It turned into a vocation.
As you note, my methodology often didn’t endear me to my superiors: they always liked the results—better behaved kids making fine academic gains—but, at least in the later years, couldn’t bring themselves to endorse my way of doing things. The fact that I could also carry out my mandate with a minimum of “resources”—I’d have banned computers from my class—didn’t win any board converts either. (Think of the $$ we could save!)
What a world we live in!
MND wrote, “And state-licensing! Consider that technically a PhD in history, without a Education diploma, can’t teach in the public school system (not sure if this is still true).”
In spades, MND.
Hey ho, hey ho, the Muslim homo basher’s have got to go.
Why are we not hearing this chant from iberia, JD and the rest of the trolling leftarded morons?
I will tell you why, because they are all idiotic hypocrites.
Come on iberia and the rest of ya, defend this behavior from the ones who bow to the pedophile martyr!
One other thing. Kingston has one the highest gay populations per capita in Canada, and I count quite a few of them as my friends. If that crap starts here, it is vigilante time!
Me no dhimmi: If that was a joke, I didn’t get it. And if it wasn’t a joke, I get it even less.
KevinB: Oops, sounds like you didn’t get my drift. No offence or joke was intended. I have two daughters too.
I was just curious about the America Alone gift, that’s all: whether your daughters were conservatives passing on something to their liberal dad, or the other way around? That’s all. One of my dauthers — a classical musician with a bohemian bent possessing a Doctorate degree, gets me books to bug me with: e.g. Motorcycle book by Che Guevera for her right-wing old man who happens to be a rider. That sorta thing. Oh, and recently, a book by a “moderate” muslim about Islamic Democracy.
Oh, and when I once praised Giuliani (she lives in NYC) she told me he was a fascist.
Write the CBC and ask why they don’t have a gay character on Little Mosque On The Prairie.
Or even better, a gay muslim character.
The success of the gay movement was built on an activist agenda that produced judicial and political support without necessarily popular support. We were told to accepted them and their rights. Now that individual gays appear to have become targets of islamic homophobia, they may not be receiving the popular support needed to protect themselves from predators. The public may be sub-consciously expecting the courts and politicians to deal with the problem that they arguably created.
Not that Europeans have shown any tendency to support minorities in their midst, be they Jews or gypsies.
“”””Or even better, a gay muslim character””””
they couldn’t afford the coffin!!!
For most leftists the femminist agenda is not about women. The gay agenda is not about homosexuallity. For the leftist femminism, gays and muslims are all means to an end. Their real agenda is the complete dismantling of established order and remaking it in their own utopian image. Unfortunatley the right keeps trying to appropriate leftist morallity just to show how the right is truly enlightened. Thus the right will trumpet the freedom of homosexuallity which only serves to strengthen the leftist position.
Right Joe. Anarchy, chaos and utter destruction, in order to build the new peoples utopia.
However, I don’t agree with “the right keeps trying to appropriate leftist morallity just to show how the right is truly enlightened.” It’s not a question of appropriating morality, the right just doesn’t agree with death as a penalty for something they don’t agree with. There is a libertarian bent where freedom of choice is afforded as long as it doesn’t bring harm to others. Also, the ten commandments don’t prescribe various forms of death as punishment for breaking a command. There’s a blanket statement, “The penalty for sin is death,” but not necessarily at the hands of men.
Me No Dhimmi – I have two daughters too, the youngest, a philosophy major and product of an elite school that her dad and I slaved to pay the tuition for, has leaned left. It’s a peer thing. But, recently married and with a little one on the way, she has become much more engaged in core values that really matter. This Christmas I gave both daughters and their spouses subscriptions to the WSJ. It’s getting read and processed. It was money well spent.
What was it Churchill said, too bad youth is wasted on the young. Good kids with age and attrition return to their roots.
Penny…you hit the nail. Burn half of Europe down,then they may,just may,realize what the heck is going on.If they don’t,hopefully we here in NA will.Notice how leftards/socialists never blame the actual PERSON reponsible? They deflect to everything and everybody? Guess they can’t handle being human.Mind you,they don’t like responsibility either.
Agreed irwin. What I’m driving at is how the libertarian rightist vaunts “acceptance” of gays as proof that we live in a superior culture. The west, as a result of leftist – rightist moralizing whipsawing, becomes immoral and incapable of recognizing evil. Murder has become nuanced, marriage has become transitory, massive debt has not only been normalized it is viewed as benificial, maternal neglect has been state mandated and supported. Abortion is paid for by the state. Etc.
Stan at 6:44: “Write the CBC and ask why they don’t have a gay character on Little Mosque On The Prairie.”
As Mark Steyn dryly noted,in reference to Little Mosque on the Prairie, Muslim is the new Gay. The cause celebre of LaLaLand and TVland for the 90’s was the normalization of gay culture, an idea now largely accepted by the sheeple. The leftards social-engineering project for the current decade is sensitizing the masses to sympathy for and eventual capitulation to Islam. Dual and even conflicting ideas only confuse the proles and must be avoided!
“Corperate facism [sic: Corporate fascism] is alive and doing quite well in the west.”
Well, Rudy, there’s a connection between “Corporate fascism…in the West” and a steep and steady decline in Judeo-Christian values in the West which, at least in some corporate magnates’ orbits, had some impact on their organizations.
The Biblical mandate “To whom much is given, much is expected” used to be an operative maxim for many wealthy and powerful wo/men. Witness the magnanimity of corporate magnates in the U.S., for instance, the Rockefellers, Mellons, Carnegies, etc., etc., who gave multi-millions of dollars to philanthropic causes in the Arts and Academe (Canadians have been far less generous in this regard–our parsimonious Scottish/Protestant heritage?).
A few years ago, I was at a talk on just this topic, at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum–which may soon have the Royal taken off the masthead: OM, anyone?). The honourary president of the United Way pointed out that just years before, large corporations were readily willing to give generous donations to charity without asking anything in return.
She pointed out that there has been an alarming attitude shift in the past few years: Now, large corporations will give donations, but they have to be coaxed and cajoled and this question satisfactorily answered: “What’s in it for us?”
‘Used to be, that the heads of these same corporations, fresh from their private-school educations, retained some of the Christian message/values they would have heard in their Christian chapels every day. Nowadays, chapel-going at these schools and colleges has been greatly curtailed and is often mere tokenism.
When will otherwise smart and observant people in the West, who lament our moral slide into immorality and irresponsibility but refuse to connect the dots, make the connection between our decline into moral relativism/chaos and our loss of faith?
If you don’t make the connection, there can be no cure. Our malaise is spiritual.
Read Aleksander Solzenhytsin.
Cross post from the downing of the Britannia thread, which fits what irwin daisy, penny, Joe, Justthinkin, Richard Saunders, and batb have said just above.
“batb – I highly recommend the article, “The Revenge of Conscience” by Professor Budziszewski (recommended by EBD yesterday).
“It’s a very clear and chilling account of how warped and completely twisted our societies have become, trying to “round the square” we’ve made by, in your words, “Never suggest[ing] to [anyone] what values or morals they might emulate, just ‘fix them up’ when their irresponsibility and neglect of all of the values and morals that would have kept them healthy [natural law] cause them dis-ease.”
“Budziszewski asserts that we, all of us, really DO know the natural law—I agree with him—but, as we compulsively heap transgression upon transgression, we have to keep making up more fantastical justifications, in order to prop up the pretence that we don’t know. (How Western societies deal with abortion is one of the examples he uses.) The incredible harm all this denial does, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, physically . . . from generation to generation, on both a personal and societal level, is staggering.
“The article ends with the antidote that you and I both subcsribe to: God’s forgiveness. Professor Budziszewski quotes from Psalm 51: “For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me . . . a broken and contrite heart, O Lord, thou wilt not despise.”
“Lent starts this week. (Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of the 40 days of Lent, leading up to Easter, is on February 6th.) If more people were willing to acknowledge their shortcomings—rather than their rights, the dead weight of which is crushing us: what a burden!—and both seek and grant forgiveness, we’d all BE lighter and see more light.
“Kyrie eleison.”
Folks, don’t just read Aleksander Solzenhytsin.
Check out how the Polish people defeated Communism: their Catholic faith, with untold heavenly armies, was the only weapon they had.
It worked.
What’s working for us, here in the untethered West–untethered from our spiritual roots, that is?