Right now, I'm listening to the audible.com version of 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
while thinking about what it means to have the Turks decide it's time to take on the Jews. I just finished the part on Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality where Rousseau posits that in our natural state, humans just want to maximize pleasure. To Rousseau, civil society is an unnatural set of inhibitions that improperly prevent full-scale, thermonuclear self-gratification*.The Euros seem to have embraced Rousseau completely. Lots of time off from work, no going to church, plenty of legal drugs, legal prostitution, lots of sex, no children and on and on and on. It's paradise recreated from Rousseau's imagination. Except for the part where they import Muslims.
Faced with an internal and external population dedicated to creating a religious state, devoted to a religion that defines itself in political as well as theological terms, the Rousseauean Euros are powerless to stop it. You can't face down a dedicated, intractable enemy with a pack of aging hippies.
What this means to Israel is simple. If the Creatures of Rousseau can't take on the Muslims in their own countries, they're certainly not going to stand up for other countries. Mark Steyn made this point in an interview recently when he said that asking the Euros to support Coalition efforts in the Middle East was doomed to fail, not because it had been led by George W. Bush, but because the growing Muslim power within the European countries made facing down radical, Islamic nations problematic.
As far as I can see, that leaves the world far less stable than it was before. A heavily armed and legitimately fearful Israel is sitting at the end of a long, darkening corridor, faced with growing external threats. As the Obama Administration shows greater and greater weakness in its support for Israel, the foes of that nation grow bolder. Given that Hamas and Hezbollah are explicitly dedicated to genocide of the nuclear-armed Jews, instability is the last thing you want.
I'm optimistic about the American economy and our ability to weather the current recession, but this problem doesn't look like it's going to end well at all.
* - It's worth noting that Rousseau was a total swine. He had several mistresses, treated them all shabbily, sired plenty of children, many of who died in lousy French orphanages after Rousseau himself had them sent there despite his ability to care for them. Like Kinsey, a debased pervert writing paeans to total sexual freedom, Rousseau developed an elaborate philosophy to excuse his own horrid behaviors.
6 comments:
If the Creatures of Rousseau can't take on the Muslims in their own countries, they're certainly not going to stand up for other countries.
Yeah, that, and the fact that they just don't like Jews. Sorry, Zionists. They just don't like Zionists.
Great post.
One of my 'most influential books' is Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt. Two of the chapters therein examine and compare Edmund Burke and Rousseau, the same ground as Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions.
Sowell, an economist and author (The Economics and Politics of Race, etc.), presents a provocative analysis of the conflicting visions of human nature that have shaped the moral, legal and economic life of recent times. For the past 200 years, he writes, two visions ofor "gut feelings" abouthow the world works, have dominated: the constrained vision, which views man as unchanged, limited and dependent on evolved social processes (market economies, constitutional law, etc.); and the unconstrained vision, which argues for man's potential and perfectability, and the possibility of rational planning for social solutions. Examining the views of thinkers who reflect these constrained (Adam Smith) and unconstrained (William Godwin) visions, Sowell shows how these powerful and subjective visions give rise to carefully constructed social theories. His discussion of how these conflicting attitudes ultimately produce clashes over equality, social justice and other issues is instructive.
It's too bad that such wisdom as is contained in books like this is ignored by the lefty teaching 'profession'.
Thanks, Jeff.
ligneus, outstanding comment. Thanks for the links. I'll be sure to put these on my wish list on audible or Amazon.
Those musicians look like they belong on a flotilla. Nice post. I also highly recommend Thomas Sowell's 'White Liberal, Black Redneck'.
Well thought out post KT, thanks.
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