The Neo-Conservative Tragedy

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I used to consider myself something of a neo-conservative (pejoratively abbreviated ‘neo-con’ by the left, often with an anti-Semitic edge to it). I was genuinely enlivened by the prospect of the West enforcing its moral and political standards on the rest of the world, believing for some time that the project was a simple yet complete fix for the problems of our time; most importantly, the problems of terrorism and Islamic anti-development.

Like many, I now know better. Neo-conservatism has failed, and failed badly, in practice. The use of the doctrine to liberate and improve the condition of Iraq has barely succeeded. While the country is now technically democratic, it remains crippled by religious tradition, unable and unwilling to develop beyond the limitations of that tradition. This should really have been predicted from the get-go. The fact that it wasn’t exposes the fundamental naivety at the heart of the neo-conservative experiment.

Put at its most basic, neo-conservatism pushes the idea that democracy has a positive value. Neo-cons (if there still are neo-cons) believe that democracies are less likely to go to war, less likely to collapse into chaos, tolerate corruption and extremism or shelter terrorists than are dictatorships and autocracies. On the surface this sounds reasonable enough. The Western democracies of today are certainly more averse to these evils than the third world; as are the remodelled nations of the far-east. Why wouldn’t the same be true for the rest of the world?

The answer in the case of the middle east is Islam. As political equations go, Islam plus democracy equals regression is one of the most reliable. The evidence for this can be found in modern ‘liberated’ Afghanistan – a country which has gone from a tribal theocracy controlled by the Taliban, to a democratic theocracy policed by the Taliban. One can also point to ‘liberated’ Iraq, which itself has gone from a secular Baathist dictatorship to a democratic Shia theocracy. Looked at from this vantage point, was either project worth thousands of free Western lives lost in the course their completion?

I was a fool to have ever thought so.

As well as Iraq and Afghanistan, neo-conservatism has also destroyed the nation of Libya, a country that previously had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. Post-liberation, the country is a sharia-ridden desert, robbed of its infrastructure, foreign investment and political coherence. As to whether Syria falls to the neo-con wave remains to be decided. One can justifiably presume that if democracy does strike the country, it will swiftly go the same way as Iraq and Afghanistan have.

If neo-conservatism was – as its detractors have always maintained – merely an ideological cover for destroying the Muslim world, then it has been remarkably successful. But I don’t believe in that conspiracy. Neo-conservatism – I think – was simply an embarrassing misfire of the Western intellect. We will be living with the consequences for a very long time.

D, LDN

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Characteristics of a Real Refugee

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The vast majority of Muslims seeking ‘asylum’ in Europe, whether from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq, are not real refugees. If they were, as has been said countless times before, they would have settled in the first peaceful country they arrived at after fleeing their own.

It is now clear to all but the most doctrinaire Leftist that these people are actually migrants, most of them seeking solely material benefit and financial reward. They are economic refugees, then, not political ones (as the media would have us believe). Not that we should allow political refugees in either, of course, since the first-safe-country principle is also valid in that case.

The only possible exception to this principle – and thus the only conceivable justification for allowing, say, a Syrian or Afghan asylum seeker to settle in Europe – is if the person in question were proven to qualify as a cultural refugee; that is, someone who is fleeing not merely the violent excess of Islam, but Islam itself. While this remains vanishingly rare, it will cost us nothing to briefly define what such a case would be like.

Imagine if in the future a man in his twenties washes up on the southerly coast of Spain. After being taken into custody he is revealed to be a Moroccan citizen who has swam the distance from North Africa to Europe alone and without any possessions. To the surprise of his interrogators the man speaks very good English and announces – convincingly – that he has had enough of living in the age of religious barbarism and wishes to join the Dar al-Harb permanently. He emphatically identifies himself as an atheist, or a Christian (or whatever other non-Islamic identity you care to imagine), and he can eloquently back up his self-identification with detailed arguments and sincere passion.

What to do with him? The response would almost certainly depend on and reflect the deepest ideological poise of those who are asked the question. A nativist, or ethno-nationalist, for example, would politely decline the stranger or perhaps unceremoniously throw him back into the Mediterranean. A Leftist meanwhile would also rather the stranger return to his land of origin, since there is enough ‘Islamophobia’ in Europe already.

Me? I’d demand a probationary period of police vigilance on the fellow, and after that a path to citizenship. In my 3 years as a blogger, I’ve found that ex-Muslims are a very potent resource of resistance to Islam, far more indeed than the average Native. And surely this hypothetical case is exactly what an asylum law is designed for. Just as in the time of Communism we generously admitted those Russians and Eastern-Europeans who wished for freedom, but did not admit Communist sympathisers or state bureaucrats (for reasons of security). So in the age of political Islam must we admit those opposed to barbarism and keep out those dedicated to it.

Whenever a native of the Muslim world shows up at the Free World’s borders, one question should be asked before all others: Why are you leaving? If the answer is not in English, the answer should be treated with suspicion. If the answer is in English but is nevertheless punctuated with inshallahs, al-hamdu lilahs and salaams, the response should be a swift refusal. But if in reasonable English the native says something like the following: “I am looking for freedom. I want to live in the modern world and leave behind the darkness of Islam and its primitive, undeveloped society”, a more generous and warm response is surely merited.

One cannot reasonably ask that the native returns to the first safe country he or she came across, because the first safe country might no longer be safe for an infidel. A more reasonable action would be to inter the individual while background checks are carried out, and then if the individual is clean of connections with Jihad relocate that person to an appropriate part of the Dar al-Harb. It might not be somewhere as illustrious as London or Berlin, but there are many options available.

Over time, a policy like this would lead to the only logical resolution we can hope for in our clash with the Islamic world; geo-cultural segregation. The Free and the Unfree kept apart, and never to merge again.

D, LDN

Learning From Liberals

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Let’s acknowledge an unpopular but important truth. Liberals are – on average – more successful, more pleasant and more intelligent people than Conservatives. They ordinarily have better careers, better cars, better manners and more sophisticated philosophies than those on the political right. Though I can’t speak for you, I would much rather share an apartment with a liberal than with a conservative. Indeed, I have always shared properties with liberals, consciously and deliberately. They make for friendlier and less judgemental associates. They are also more likely to lend a helping hand than conservatives, to bail a friend out of trouble, to offer a patient ear etc… Why is this?

There is a well-referenced body of evidence to suggest Liberalism becomes more attractive the better off one is in society; that once a person is liberated from the brutish concerns of bread and shelter, they become more willing to turn their caring eye away from themselves and towards society as a whole. Liberalism in this sense is a luxury, an indulgence. It is not available to the majority, but can only be afforded by the privileged few.

This does (or should) count as a mark of illegitimacy for liberals, but despite it, despite knowing it, I still fundamentally prefer them as human beings. I can’t help it. There must be a reason they have scaled higher peaks than the majority, and that reason, since it usually precedes their liberalism, must be independent of it.

We are trained by our culture of egalitarianism not to speak of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ human beings. To do so is the intellectual equivalent of swearing. By polite convention, all people are strictly equal, and all perceived ‘difference’ is a merely a dancing variation on a single, immovable baseline – a baseline from which we all begin and to which we all return.

Science is unfriendly to this theory and clashes with it frequently. Indeed, society only manages to prop it up with the same primitive tactics one uses to make any common lie seem true. Social thinkers simply ignore the findings of the laboratory, the G-test and the brain scan, offering in their place the produce of their own private goodwill. Let’s not do that here.

Let’s ask the question straight – Why are superior people more liberal? I don’t think the mystery is unsolvable. In fact, I think the solution is rather simple.

Conservatism has for a long time dallied in both great and stupid ideas – and the bad ones, being very bad, have obscured and discredited the good. When the idea that private property undergirds a democratic society is promoted in the same manifesto as the idea that Africans have no place in civilised society, or that homosexuals are trying to convert the young, or that scientists are lying to the public, it will be rejected. As it should be.

This idiot-conservative coalition was never inevitable. It is rather an unfortunate development of history; a quirk of fate. And since its basis is so flimsy, it can be undone.

How might we separate conservative logic from right-wing drivel? How might we attract intelligent people away from left-liberalism and back to the cause of freedom? For a start I would suggest ruthlessly cutting loose the crazies, pushing them to form their own political clan away from the mainstream. Cultural conservative leaders and intellectuals must publically reject (denounce) homophobia, colour-racism and the belittlement of women. They must cease fighting popular culture and embrace it (in order to attract dissenting elements in Western youth). Even if it exists, the influence of religious eschatology must be undetectable in policy and never endorsed by a candidate for office. More compassion should be displayed towards the poor. Arguments against abortion and gay marriage should be secularised. Candidates from urban environments should be sought over those from rural areas. And finally, perhaps most importantly, the right must rediscover its respect for worldliness and the intellect, no longer prioritising folksiness and the limited, small-town worldview.

In an age when liberalism has gone astray and allied itself to the enemies of freedom, conservatives must fill the void they have left. To do that successfully requires adapting to new realities and discarding unnecessary burdens. The defence of Western civilisation should be a friendly, positive and vibrant cause, not a moth-eaten and eccentric one.

D, LDN

The Politics of Irrelevance.

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Gay marriage has been legalised in all 50 states of America. Jubilation is conquering the social networks. Celebrities are popping open extra bottles of champagne. The religious and conservative are bemoaning the imminent destruction of the country, if not the world.

My view? None of this matters… and that was always the point.

Gay marriage is part of the politics of irrelevance (POI), a very deliberate side-show performed in democratic countries to distract voters from a lack of real choice.

In America, the POI usually concerns things like flag-burning laws, school meals, the death penalty debate, prayer in schools and cannabis law reform.

Airy and light topics like these are easy to speak passionately about. It is easy and respectable to take a different side on any of these matters to your core electorate, even to your best friend or partner.

By contrast, real politics, real life and death issues – China, immigration, foreign policy, Islam etc… – are more difficult for the actors in a phoney democracy to speak freely about.

Since politicians in the West want to get elected more than anything else, they won’t lay out a concrete position on substantial issues for fear of diminishing their vote. Instead, they will practice a very developed (almost artisan) kind of hypnosis – dancing a merry dance around the subject and climaxing with a very vague (but complete sounding) answer.

America would change dramatically if the politics of irrelevance was no longer an option. Politicians would then be forced to take a stand on real, flesh and blood topics. Career politicians would be weeded out almost immediately. The mind-numbing centrism of the modern US would give way to a sharp divide, providing the people with genuine choice.

There is a reason Fox news and MSNBC exist. In Britain, we call it ‘Punch and Judy politics’ (Punch and Judy are the titular characters of a traditional puppet show – popular in English seaside towns – in which each character beats the other with a stick). The kind of politics so loudly combative and dumbed down that everyone can understand it – everyone except the genuinely informed. Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity are not real journalists. They are cartoon characters – Mrs Liberal and Mr Conservative, and they fight exclusively about the irrelevant.

But what happens when the irrelevant can no longer be made to seem relevant? We may soon find out.

Gay marriage has now gone. Flag burning legislation was worn out years ago. Cannabis is being steadily legalised… The authentic is primed for a comeback, and that could be explosive.

The long sleep of the real has provided protective cover to profound failures of government. It has deadened the limbs of the libertarian majority, who when woken may throw off the establishment, both right and left. Phoney politics has postponed argument over the relationship between Islam and Islamist terrorism, the increasing use of the Spanish language in a traditionally English-speaking nation, government surveillance of law-abiding citizens, suicide rates among army veterans, the Mexicanisation of the pacific South-West, the national debt, trade imbalances with China and India, and a whole variety of real, consequential topics.

American politics is due for a makeover.

D, LDN.

Can a Man Be a Woman?

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I never thought I’d be writing an article like this. The subject matter isn’t something I worry about on a daily basis, nor is it something I have spent much time considering in my casual hours. But since there seems to be no bigger story in the world at the moment, I will comment here on the transformation (so called) of athlete Bruce Jenner (yes, my fellow Englishman, I’d never heard of him prior to this month either) into a trans-woman called Caitlyn.

My thinking about this has been prompted by an article of quite remarkable lucidity published on Glenn Beck’s media outlet ‘TheBlaze.com’. It is entitled ‘Calling Bruce Jenner a Woman Is an Insult to Women” and was authored by the conservative blogger Matt Walsh.

Here is a summary by quotation:

“(Bruce Jenner) is a mentally disordered man who is being manipulated by disingenuous liberals and self-obsessed gay activists. Far from having the appearance of a genuine woman, he reminds me of someone who is being abandoned to his delusions by a culture of narcissistic imbeciles..

“A woman is a woman not merely because of whatever cosmetic feature a man might vaguely emulate. A woman is a woman because of her biology, which Bruce does not share and never will. A woman is a woman because of her capacity to create life and harbor it in her body until birth, which Bruce cannot do. A woman is a woman because of her soul, her mind, her perspective, her experiences, and her unique way of thinking, of loving, and of being — all things Bruce can only mimic….

“’Bruce Jenner Unveils New Female Self’. Um. What? You don’t get to have a “new” self or another self… Your self is your self. It’s your being. It’s your essential personhood; your particular and unrepeated character… A self can only be what it is…We’re talking about a sex change like it’s an Apple product. With this kind of language, we have not only made the self mutable, we’ve also commodified it and turned it into a spectacle that can be sold for profit. This is a bastardization of our humanity on a scale and to a degree that wouldn’t have even crossed the tortured minds of last century’s most prophetic social critics.”

Before adding my own viewpoint, I feel compelled to first make clear my attitude to homosexuality (something not exactly relevant here, but usually a revealing marker of general sexual-political worldview). In my view, people have the right to do whatever they wish to each other providing both parties are consenting adults. Persecution of minority communities by the state is an evil phenomenon and one with much innocent blood on its hands. And in any case, no government should ever be allowed to extend itself into the bedroom of ordinary citizens. With that said, religions must be free to remain true to their scriptures, and if a Holy Book describes homosexuality as wicked, its believers should be free to hold and express that view, so long as they do not incite violence or crimes against the person.

For me, the question raised by Mr Jenner is not whether he should be allowed to do what he has done, because that should only involve his own private court of judgement, but whether we teach our children that Bruce Jenner is now literally a woman, or whether he remains a man. It is, as Walsh argues, a question about the nature of reality.

Bruce Jenner is not a woman by any scientifically valid method of consideration. He is a man down to his bone marrow, and will always be. He is a father and a grandfather to his children and children’s children respectively, and will remain in that role until his demise. He cannot become pregnant. He is much less likely to develop breast cancer than an actual female. He will always be physically stronger than any natural member of the sex he aspires to join. He once was a masculine man and he is now just a deliberately androgynous man.

I’m aware that it is convention to use ‘she’ and ‘her’ when talking about men who have made the transition to female, but as conventions go, I find this one rather sinister. Should you use those words in front of a child, you risk interfering with his/her developing perception of reality. Naturally, children must one day learn about transgenderism and homosexuality (in fact, I am one of those dastardly liberals who believe it should be taught in school) but when they do learn about these things, they should be taught a neutral outsiders view, rather than an inside account with an insiders glossary.

I can’t agree with Walsh that calling Jenner ‘mentally disordered’ is in any way warranted. It’s bad to be cruel, especially when talking about someone who doesn’t wish us any harm. While the causes of gender dysphoria remain a mystery, it’s probably best to live and let live.

… And to leave sexual categories as they are.

D, LDN.

Political Destinies.

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So, it’s election week… Are you excited? Do you know who you’re going to vote for yet? Do you think this election will make a difference?

My answers are as follows – 1) The election is thrilling, perhaps the most thrilling in my lifetime. 2) I’m not physically able to vote physically this time around. Had I been, I would vote for UKIP or LibertyGB (the latter if they are standing, the former if not). 3) Absolutely.

Nobody, not even the most seasoned political commentator, dares to predict who will be running the country this time next week. Despite the avalanche of newsprint, debate, advertising and scandal, the vote remains stubbornly too close to call.

As far as I can see, the UK faces one of 4 possible destinies. Let’s briefly look at each one:

1. Labour Victory.

This would be a disaster; a further half-decade of socialist rule would corrode social and race relations to (or beyond) breaking point. Immigration would remain at the current level, and possibly even get worse. Fear of Islam will apparently be legislated against, eroding our right to resist it. The tentacles of the government will squeeze through more legal gaps, blocking out light and lurching deeper into our intimate affairs. Taxes will rise. Green superstition will rule the laboratories. The army will grow ever more ornamental.

2. Conservative Victory.

Better than a Labour victory, but still a postponement of real solutions to the issues facing this country. More austerity, more economic growth, further cuts to the military and police. A jumble of good and bad.

3. Ukip Victory.

Potentially revolutionary, yet also highly unlikely, a UKIP government would transform UK society in many positive ways. Immigration would finally be addressed with the seriousness it requires. The army would be brought back from the dead. Hate preachers would be shown to the nearest airport (though – crucially – their congregation would remain).

4. Coalition.

This seems by far the most likely situation, and also the most chaotic. A UKIP-Tory coalition would never last beyond a few months. An SNP-Labour coalition would never be accepted by the English public. A Libdem-Tory coalition might work but only with awkwardness. A Lib-Labour coalition would be stable but hugely unpopular.

5. Conclusion.

I think this election will be the last ‘mainstream’ contest for quite some time. By that I mean it will be the last in which the traditional parties dominate the polls. In that sense, it is just a rehearsal for 2020.

I strongly believe conservative radicalism will continue to grow whatever the result is on Thursday. This may clear away the obstacles for a truly restorative party to achieve a parliamentary majority in the third decade of this millennium.

D, LDN.

How Does Denial Work?

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The showdown between Ben Affleck and Bill Maher (regarding Islam) has been widely publicised. Affleck’s warped arguments have been subjected to great and detailed criticism (including by ‘liberal’ Muslims) and yet the ideological trenches on both sides remain almost completely unmoved.

That’s no surprise, really. On the issue of Islam, people are only semi-rational. Left-minded folk especially are wedded to their ideas in a very intimate way. Arguments that go against their position are evil spirits. The orthodox defence of Islam is their religion.

I won’t therefore offer yet another analysis of the Maher-Affleck conflagration. I think it will be more worthwhile to consider the human aspect behind the politics; to pose the broad and vital question – How does someone deny the terrors of Islam in the modern world? If we answer this, we may be able to better understand how far we are from winning the argument.

Imagine for a moment that you are a ten-a-penny liberal. Imagine that every night you sit in front of Fox news and scoff at Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and all their stupid bigotries, that you know for certain that they are wrong and that you are convinced Islam is an unfairly maligned religion of peace.

Let’s say that on a single evening, newly severed heads are reported in Syria, Muslim women are reported to have been executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and terrorist plots are frustrated in America and London. As a liberal, your goal is to fail to integrate these events, or else to find an equivalent in the West or its allied nations. If you can’t, then the evil spirits will break through your defensive positions and your political identity is threatened.

Where do you go first? Perhaps Israel. Yes, Islam is surely no worse than Israel. What about all the heads severed by IDF missiles in Gaza? Perhaps if we didn’t bomb the Muslims, they would be perfectly friendly.

Where else? How about America? Damn right. The US army bombs Muslims all the time. So what if those bombs are dropped to liberate Muslims from tyranny? America is a fucking tyranny, right? It’s run by evil corporations and hook-nosed, cigar-sucking Zionists. If anything, the Islamists have come to liberate us.

But you’ve used these self-consolations before and this time, for some reason, they’re not helping. You feel that you might be lying to yourself. In a desperate mood, your mind reaches for the stronger stuff…

Well, what does Bill Maher suggest we do with the Muslims? Kill them all? Put into gas chambers and close the door on women, children and innocent moderates? So what if Islam is violent. Where is all this headed? This isn’t actually a bad argument and so it soothes your mind enough that you are able think about something else.

That’s the end of our experiment. You’re back in an educated, rational mind again. I hope that wasn’t too traumatic. The sort of thinking we have described here has a name. It’s called ‘bad faith’, for which the internet definition is as follows:

‘(in existentialist philosophy) a refusal to confront facts or choices.’

Sartre, one of the greatest popularisers of the concept, chose this illustrative example in his Magnum Opus ‘Being and Nothingness’:

“Let us take the case of a woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it will be necessary sooner or later for her to make a decision. But she does not want to realize the urgency; she concerns herself only with what is respectful and discreet in the attitude of her companion. She does not apprehend this conduct as an attempt to achieve what we call “the first approach”; that is, she does not want to see possibilities of temporal development which his conduct presents.”

This example fits our subject rather well. The Leftist does not fail to see what we see about Islam because he is ignorant, he does not see it because he does not want to see it. The Leftist has chosen a mindset, not a position. A mindset is invulnerable to temptations from other ways of thinking because it is bigger than the views it holds.

The Western Muslims who are content to smile and proselytise to us now, desire ultimately a society that offends the human spirit. We understand this intention clearly and would rather stop its potential altogether. The Leftists – so expertly cynical in other contexts – deliberately fail to recognise that potential, seeing only the pleasant signs and chastising those who notice the ominous ones. To put it simply, they deploy strategic ignorance.

I really do wonder how they sleep at night. Surely human dignity must naturally spring back from this poise and keep them disturbed. But perhaps I’m wrongly presuming that they retain any humanity at all.

D, LDN.

Do the Palestinians Want Palestine or Israel?

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“Man can do what he wills but he cannot choose what he wills.” – Schopenhauer.

So, another war is raging between the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of Gaza.

We know the routine from here. When the guns eventually fall silent and the silos close, Western elites will pontificate to Israel as if they themselves were virgins to violence; the UN will achieve nothing at a furious pace; Hamas meanwhile will probably claim a strategic ‘victory’ and won’t – I suppose – be wholly unjustified in doing so.

It seems the Israelis have once again been suckered into a publicity nightmare for zero strategic gain. Only a concerted effort to topple Hamas will prevent rockets being fired into Israel. Hamas knows this, and starts these wars on purpose, daring Israel to make a move. Israel also knows this, or should do by now.

But I don’t want to talk at length about this current dispute. Rather let’s use the occasion to broaden our view and ask a question about the fundamental clash of interests underlying this cycle of violence.

The standard view of the Israel-Palestine conflict (or that upheld by the UN and Western public opinion) is that it involves a claim by two peoples to the same territory. The troubles of the region originate from this simple contest, and are only later exacerbated by religious belief.

The radical or revisionist view of the conflict claims it is the other way around. The territory is secondary and religion (in particular Islam) motivates most of the violence.

A third view, and one I’d like to advance today, considers the economic factors of the divide and proposes that the advocates of at least one of the competing peoples are purposely deluding themselves.

Anyone who has read or studied basic psychology will be well-placed to judge the capacity human beings have for self-deceit, and that the thing one ‘wants’ is not necessarily what one claims to want or even what one wishes to want. If a problem-drinker, for example, goes to the corner shop for a bottle of gin, he may sincerely believe along the way that he is going to buy a newspaper. The human mind is so fallible that it can be manipulated even by itself.

In this context, consider this: Do the Palestinians really want ‘Palestine’ with its olive groves, rolling hills and ancient alleyways? Or do they in fact desire Israel, with its shopping malls, freedom and high standard of living?

It’s surprising how rarely this question is put to the world, and tragic too, since it can illuminate a hidden simplicity behind a seemingly complicated problem.

Given its strategic urgency, there have been innumerable remedies suggested for the Israel-Palestine conflict over the previous few decades, from the UN-backed ‘return to 1967 borders’, through the ‘Arab peace plan’ sponsored by Saudi Arabia, to the ‘three-state solution’, to the US ‘Roadmap’, to the most recent Lieberman Plan.

The last of these is most relevant to the context we have set ourselves.

The ‘Lieberman plan’ – named after its author Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party – suggests that a two state solution include the exchange of the Arab-populated areas of Israel for the Jewish populated areas of the West Bank, thus avoiding the need for a population ‘transfer’.

According to this plan, the Galilee region of Northern Israel would be attached to the bloc of West Bank inhabited by Palestinians. The Israeli Arabs in the area of Israel to be detached would lose their Israeli citizenship and become citizens of Palestine instead. The Jewish settlements of the West Bank would be attached to Israel proper. A Jewish majority in Israel would thus be assured, and the ‘problem’ of Jews on the West Bank would be solved at a stroke.

Personally, I don’t think this idea is workable in practice, but the reaction the policy has provoked is almost worth the effort put into proposing it.

The Arab citizens of Israel have branded the plan philosophically ‘racist’ and morally outrageous. The Palestinian establishment outside of Israel’s borders has also condemned the plan, presenting a claim of native descent specifically to the land currently tended to by the Jews, and re-stating a commitment to the return of refugees to towns within the same territory.

Let’s be clear. If, as it is routinely claimed, the Palestinians merely want a state of their own, the Lieberman plan should be sweetly palatable to them. It delivers immediately the state they claim to crave, and even supplies the Palestinian people with a social unity they have arguably never before experienced. Hamas in particular would get its wish of a Judenrein Islamic state, emptied of democracy, development and dirty Kuffar. The PA would be given full political sovereignty over its own citizens. What is there to object to?

The answer can only be that it leaves a highly developed, wealthy and democratic society living next door to them. This society and its high level of living is what is craved, and only by its destruction or infiltration can the Palestinian blood-lust be satisfied.

It has been well noted by travellers for many centuries that Islamic countries tend – almost without exception – to be dirt-piles. Places where nobody of depth or youthfulness could happily spend a week. Why then did any Leftist imagine Gaza could turn out differently?

For years, the PA and its Western cheerleaders squealed for the liberation of that strip of coastline. Now they have it and the rockets never stop coming.

Is that really due to those IDF troops calmly patrolling the other side of the border? Or does it actually involve those skyscrapers towering in the far distance, tortuously superior and forever out of reach?

In some dusty and eccentric corner of the Palestinian mind, does the thought arise that those sparkling buildings are the natural fruit of the territory, and not the work of those who have settled it? Do they imagine that they would be enjoying that same prosperity had the Jews never returned?

I don’t believe the Palestinians will ever be satisfied with gifts of land, however extravagant. There are countless states they could relocate to, and if it really was peace they craved, they would already be in them. But that is not and was never the point. They have glimpsed a better life through a forest of watchtowers and cannot now forget it.

D, LDN.

Second Thoughts on the Veil.

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Ban the Burka, Burka, Burka prison, Defend the modern world, Feminism, France, Guardian, Hijab, Imprisonment of women, Islamisation, Liberal Feminism, Liberalism, liberty, Niqāb, veil, West, Western Feminism, Western world

A few months ago on this blog, I wrote that I could not support a move to ban the Islamic veil in Britain. The reasons I put forward in support of this stance were straightforwardly libertarian:

“It’s true that the Burka (actually called a ‘Niqab’) has no place on English streets, and it’s also true that the veil is impractical and hazardous in many social contexts… But that said, I don’t want to live in a country where the government can decide what people may wear… Should we concede to government the power to choose how we dress, there would be no turning back. The outlawing of the veil could soon become the outlawing of hoodies, baseball caps and any other item of clothing which obscures identity.”

Well, I’ve changed my mind. There has been no particular catalyst for this, or at least not one I can identify, but I regard the reasoning quoted above as adolescent and knee-jerk. Those who objected to my post were correct. The veil is a revolting garment, an affront to women and a moral stain on the standard of our whole society. It should be outlawed across the continent of Europe.

In the same post alluded to above, I went on to say that a ban – as well as being undesirable – would be difficult to enforce. This is now an argument that can be turned the other way. A confrontation with Islamic misogyny in England is just what we require, and the more aggressive, public and discomforting to the multicultural idea it is, so much the better.

D, LDN.

Why is Britain Being Disarmed?

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British army cuts, D-Day, Defence Budget, Defence spending, Defend the modern world, EU Army, EU conspiracy?, European Union, Liberal, Liberal Elite, Liberalism, Lies, UK army, US Army, Weakness, WW11, WWII

It is fairly uncontroversial to remark that continental Europe owes a considerable debt to the British Armed Forces. Despite the tendency of patriotic historians to construct myths about the Second World War, the material which exalts the conduct of soldiers in the D-Day landings or the pilots of the Battle of Britain is rooted in palpable truth. Britain held out after others had long given up, standing bold and alone against the cruellest experiment in political history.

At the close of the war, Germany lay in well-deserved ruins, the territory itself divided in two – one half enslaved to the Communism it had vainly sought to destroy, and the other half humbled to the democracy of which it had vainly sought to take advantage. The French and the Scandinavians, though liberated, were still dulled from the heavy sleep of German bondage. In the fading smoke of the post-war years, Britain’s army was the most highly developed and capable in Europe.

As the cold war took shape and America’s primacy became undeniable, Britain quickly and successfully shifted into its new role as ‘Lieutenant’ to the US ‘General’. In less than a decade, London moved its foreign policy orientation away from the pursuit of colonialism and towards the cooperative defence of Western freedom.

And for many years, we excelled at this role. Britain was among the first Western countries to successfully test a nuclear warhead; the RAF was a leading edge in technical research and radar development, and British bases (the only positive legacy of empire) gave the UK a reach other European states could only dream of.

This splendored history only makes what has happened since it all the more tragic.

Over the past two decades, the British military has been dismantled. The RAF and ground army has declined or been held in stasis even as the world outside has become a far more dangerous place. Our leaders (from Thatcher onward) have felt secure enough to roll back the acquisition of tanks, ground personnel and fighter planes, preferring to direct the military budget into costly electronic, reconnaissance, and guidance systems, as well as monumentally expensive aircraft carriers. While the justifications used for this ‘modernisation’ have been convincing to some, they seem shakier with me every passing year.

As Conservative MP John Baron put it: “(We are) developing expensive bits of kit whilst reducing our manpower and thus ability to deploy force overseas. The old adage of there being no substitute to boots on the ground needs remembering.”

Indeed, what good are aircraft carriers – machines designed for preparatory warfare against a country – if there is no military to impose a lasting decision on that country afterward? There is much more to warfare than bombing, and for illustration, one need only return to the Second World War.

When Dresden was levelled by the RAF and USAF in 1945, nobody – not even the most starry-eyed optimist – would have called the Nazi problem dealt with. Troops are necessary to create a new order and construct a favourable peace. By cutting its numbers so deeply and so quickly, Britain may eventually relax into a state of Luxembourgian irrelevance.

Since it is widely regarded that the death-knell to Britain’s Empire came at Suez in 1956 (by the inability to either suppress Egypt or acquire American backing for doing so), it might be illustrative to speculate what might become of such an adventure today. Have the gaps been plugged? Has Britain got stronger? Have the billions of pounds spent on its military in the intervening period served to redress the problems encountered? On the contrary. Britain’s military today is weaker than that of Egypt by quite some distance.

Would it surprise you to learn that the British army currently possesses less than 500 tanks, and that the army of Egypt boasts more than 3000? How about the fact that the RAF currently operates around 120 4th Generation warplanes, whereas Egypt possesses 240 F-16s? What about the fact that the UK has a combined active and reserve manpower of 300,000 and Egypt over 1 million?

Put simply (and starkly), whereas we were once capable of sustaining the largest Empire in history, we cannot now defeat a mid-sized third-world state.

So who is responsible for this? The most obvious target for the finger of blame is the EU, and the false sense of security a seemingly quiescent Europe provides for our military planners. It is true of course that another war with Germany is a near-impossible prospect and that French animosity has more to do with language-envy and cuisine than a hatred translatable into war.

But the EU security delusion is otherwise extremely naïve. The Brussels experiment is heading for a potentially stormy break-up, the outcomes of which are nearly impossible to predict. Enemies abroad from the continent are not thin on the ground either. In our confrontation with Islamism, we currently face a human resource potential of over one billion.

There are people (usually on the Libertarian right) who perceive a more shadowy reason for Britain’s disarmament, often involving a future ‘New World Order’ in which nation states are levelled to a peaceable parity and a one-world government reigns unchallenged over them all. But if this is a conspiracy, it is very unevenly applied. Germany isn’t getting weaker. France isn’t either. India, China, Turkey, America, Russia – none of these are disarming themselves. In reality no conspiracy. Other countries merely perceive a more dangerous and unstable world than we do.

That might well be of no import were it not for the fact that these countries inhabit the same world as ourselves.

D, LDN.