Left/right, liberal/conservative, red/blue, what are the sociological/psychological roots of this divide? Leftists present themselves as super-altruists who simply want peace and justice for everyone, except maybe their arch-enemies – the greedy self-centered corporate fatcat idiot-genius Right Wingnuts oppressing the world. This Fjordman essay takes a long hard look from the other direction.

The Left have become ideological orphans after the Cold War, or perhaps we should call them ideological mercenaries. Although the viable economic alternative to capitalism didn’t work out, their hatred for this system never subsided, it merely transformed into other forms. Multiculturalism is just a different word for “divide and conquer,” pitting various ethnic and cultural groups against each other and destroying the coherence of Western society from within.

Multiculturalism. Political correctness. Victimology. Class warfare. Different faces of the same beast.

In Norway, a tiny Scandinavian nation that was until recently 99% white and Lutheran Christian, native Norwegians will soon be a minority in their own capital city, later in the whole country. And still, Norwegian politicians, journalists and University professors insist that there is nothing to worry about over this. Multiculturalism is nothing new, neither is immigration. In fact, our king a century ago was born in Denmark, so having a capital city dominated by Pakistanis, Kurds, Arabs and Somalis is just business as usual. The most massive transformation of the country in a thousand years, probably in recorded history, is thus treated as if it were the most natural thing in the world. To even hint that there might be something wrong about this has been immediately shouted down as “racism.”

Likewise is the US. Were the Native Americans who didn’t like the White Man flooding his lands nothing but racist xenophobes?

In Germany, Hans-Peter Raddatz in his book “Allahs Frauen” (Allah’s Women) dissects the destructive attitude of Multiculturalism that is shared by many civil servants, journalists, politicians and lawyers in Germany and the EU. In particular, he documents how the German Green Party has a program for dismantling and dissolving the Christian “Leitkultur,” or common culture, that so far has been the foundation of Germany and the West. Raddatz thinks that the decades of Muslim immigration are used as an instrument for breaking down the institutions, norms and ideas that the Left has earlier tried to break down through economics. From powerful positions in the media, public institutions and the system of education, these Multiculturalists are working on a larger project of renewing a Western civilization that, according to them, has failed.

Green sitzpinklers Trojan Horsing Germany? Say it ain’t so!

Much of the political Left is simply engaged in outing their opponents as evil, instead of rationally arguing against their ideas. Attaching labels such as “racist” or even “Fascist” to anyone criticizing massive immigration or Multiculturalism has become so common that Norwegian anti-Islamists have coined a new word for it: “Hitling,” which could be roughly translated to English as “to make like Hitler.” The logic behind “hitling” is a bit like this: “You have a beard. Adolf Hitler had facial hair, too, so you must be like Hitler. Adolf Hitler liked dogs. You have pets, too, you must be like Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. You like carrots, you are just like Hitler.”

Any “right-winger” can be slimed with such accusations. Curiously enough, the reverse is almost never true. Although Marxism may have killed 100 million people during the 20th century and failed in every single society in which it has ever been tried out, there seems to be little stigma attached to being a Leftist. The fact that Leftists can get away with this and claim to hold the moral high ground amply demonstrates that we didn’t win the Cold War. We let our guard down after the fall of the Berlin Wall and never properly denounced the ideology behind it. This is now coming back to haunt us.

Well, actually I can attest there is enough of a stigma attached to being a Leftist that simply using the word will get you some grief from anyone who feels their left-handed ideas are under attack. Personally I don’t understand it. Call me a Rightist, wingnut, neocon, facist. Feel better now?

I have a blog. Adolf Hitler made bunkers out of big logs, I am just like Hitler.

Some people think Islam is no threat, or is an imaginary threat cultivated by “Western media commentators”, or is a real threat but only because we made them attack us, and therefore they feel “solidarity” with the Islamists.

I am not making this up.

Why We Support Radical Islam [1]: Don’t Believe the Media Propaganda
by jo swift at 12:16PM (CEST) on August 2, 2005

Far from being unreasonable fanatics, the terrorists fight for the same things we do. We have a common enemy.

Ian Buruma, writing in the Financial Times, reveals that “suicide bombers and jihadis” are by their very nature unreasonable.

“There is nothing to negotiate with people who wish to kill as many infidels as they can to establish a divine realm of the faithful,” he instructs us. They see “mass murder as an existential act,” he adds.

What source is Buruma drawing on to make these extravagant conclusions? I have been paying attention to this issue as well, and I have seen nothing that would lead me to make similar statements.

Buruma is not alone in assuming authority on the subject of the terrorists’ motivations. Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, and any number of other internationally-renowned Western media commentators never bother to offer a source on their unanimous and unquestioned assumptions about Islamist terrorists and what they want and how they intend to get it.

According to the pantheon of Western media commentators, the terrorists are by definition insane, they have no respect for life but rather propagate a “culture of death,” and they seek to convert all of us to their twisted perversion of a religion, or kill us in the attempt.

So goes the story about the Western world’s latest bogeyman. It is repeated by lesser lights throughout our own national media as though received gospel truth.

As such, the terrorists cannot be negotiated with, reasoned with, or compelled to behave. They wish to die, apparently. It’s a scary and compelling picture, except I’ve seen no evidence for it in any books I have read.

How is it, then, that a bunch of white non-Islamic men working in London and New York can come to this definition of the Islamist movement while the bulk of reliable analysis emanating from societies in which Islamism has taken root report almost an entirely opposite picture?

Sources? You could start with the daily reports of Islamist attacks against civilians all over the world via TheReligionofPeace.com, Jihad Watch, and MEMRI. If you’re really serious about understading the “bogeyman” then read Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not A Muslim. If you haven’t read anything else about Islam read at least that one book.

Those of you who have selected denial, time to wake up. The bogeyman has taken Mogadishu.

What’s Going On?
Andrew C. McCarthy, June 08, 2006, 6:01 a.m.

The victory of Islamic militants in Somalia over the warlords (who reportedly had U.S. backing) is about as thorough a disaster as one can imagine short of an al Qaeda attack on the homeland.

At a very basic level, the triumph signals an opening for al Qaeda to set up a reasonably stable shop. The terror network, we know from experience, was far more effective at projecting power when it had a central headquarters. All of the major attacks against the U.S. occurred when al Qaeda had a real headquarters (Sudan and later Afghanistan). Ever since the Taliban was routed after 9/11 and Qaeda’s leadership was chased out of Afghanistan, bin Laden and company have had to scramble—it’s not easy to plot big operations when you have to keep moving just to survive. Do we have the stomach and the resources for a military incursion if that is necessary to stop al Qaeda from establishing a new headquarters? I hope so, but I don’t know.

In terms of giving a real shot in the arm to our enemies, this is a cataclysm. We are now in year five of the war on terror, which we (finally) engaged after 9/11 with the stated purpose of eradicating an organization and ideology that we said we understood could not be reasoned with. To have what is potentially a new terror state arise notwithstanding all that strongly suggests to our enemies that if they hang in long enough, we don’t have the resolve to defeat them, which is what bin Laden has been telling them all along—thus boosting his credibility (and remember: anything that boosts his credibility increases al Qaeda’s ability to recruit and train new operatives).

Finally, the galvanizing role of Sharia courts should not be lost here. This was a revolt centered around Islamic law. Sharia authorities were able to whip up jihadists who have now ousted the warlords (warlords—as the jihadists will tell the tale—who were backed by America). In the new constitutions the State Department helped write in Afghanistan and Iraq, Islam was established as the state religion and provision was made for the influence of Sharia law. Sharia is part of the jihadist problem, and it is mind-boggling, after all this time and burying all our dead, that we could possibly ever see it as part of the “democratic” solution.

I remember at the time thinking, like everyone else, the Somalis obviously didn’t want us there. Unfortunately when Clinton pulled the US military out of Somalia he didn’t just leave the natives to die. He emboldened the jihadis. The general public did not then understand Islam nor the Islamic component to the events there. The jihadis did. They saw US withdrawal as a sign of weakness. Just as they view the anti-war demonstrations and the pacifist rhetoric of Western leftist politicians as a sign the West has no spirit for struggle and is ready for collapse. The Islamists may be right judging by the thumbsucking, bedwetting, and hand-wringing that goes on whenever the West takes action in its own self-interest.

Via TheReligionofPeace.com:

Islam Incompatible with Europe, Say Dutch
Angus Reid
June 7, 2006

Do you think Islam is compatible with modern European life?

Yes 37%

No 63%

Hmmm. Can we get a breakdown by religion? I’m curious how Muslims voted.

So let’s say we accept these results. Now what? “It’s not practical to deport millions of people”? There is no god but Allah? What do we do?

Well why do we have to do anything? Is the burden not obviously on Islam to purge its intolerant precepts? Or would it be better for European women to go get veils, for men to get suicide belts, and homosexuals to curl up and die? Maybe if the Dutch withdraw the troops they don’t have in Iraq and ignore the problem it will go away.

Another jihadi visits Allah’s Waiting Room:

…if you listen to the media, who don’t seem to appreciate the difference between objectivity and negativity, you’d think Iraq was in complete disarray. More than a few right bastards might even feel a bit uplifted at the notion. So sorry to burst your bubble. There has always been a plan, and it’s going fairly well. Two elections and a constitution into it and you’d think people would have noticed by now.

In spite of this and contrary to popular opinion the military has not quite done all they can in Iraq. And I’m not talking about building more schools and hospitals. The fact is after 9/11 we had a tough problem: how to draw our enemy out of the shadows that favored them to fight instead where our military might could be brought to bear. There is no good time or place to wage war, but could we have expected anything better than the giant Alpha Whiskey Romeo Iraq has become? Are we not still busy issuing one way tickets to paradise? The enemy is where we want him and he’s losing. Which understandably flummoxes those whose twisted worldview figures the US as supervillain. “The bad guys can’t win! They must therefore immediately surrender and withdraw!” Riiiiight. Sounds like we’re doing just fine.

There is still plenty of work to do in Iraq, for humanitarian reasons sure but selfish ones too. There’s the Keep the Drain in the Middle of the Swamp From Clogging reason, and the We Don’t Have to Worry About WMDs in Iraq angle. And my favorite, Clawhammer, I Need an Airstrike on Another Alpha Whiskey Romeo. Lots of those kinda jobs left.

I’d like to point out that reactions to news of Zarqawi’s death, as with certain other telling events, serves once again to illuminate the chasm that dominates the political landscape. The divide between those who blame America first and foremost for the world’s ills, and those who recognize the value of life, of civilization, and the need to aggressively defend it from the fascist-nihilist jihadis actively trying to end it all.

UPDATE: Time’s 19 June cover.

UPDATE: Nothing but a myth created by the Bushites. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The Senate’s bill is not amnesty. Amnesty is a pardon. The Senate bill goes beyond forgiveness. It grants rewards. As Mark Steyn says:

The undocumented guys only have to pay taxes for any three out of the last five years? How come Americans can’t get a deal like that? Meanwhile, any attempt to enforce the border requires “consultation” with Mexico. Vicente Fox has just got his own permanent Security Council veto in the Department of Homeland Security.

I think it’s very hard for conservatives to support a Congress that would pass such a bill. Aside from the entitlement explosion and the national security issues, this bill is a cynical corruption of the integrity of US sovereignty and citizenship.

And he says it so well.

This bill is no compromise. It obviously satisfies and locks into precedent virtually all pro-immigrant desires. It will retroactively legalize what has been illegal since the last amnesty. It will immediately add ten million new residents to the “official” rolls, a number that will probably double or quadruple before the next amnesty. It offers a shortcut to citizenship for most of these new residents.

We now need another name for “legal aliens”, one that hasn’t lost its meaning.

The parts that appeal to the anti-immigrants are modest in scale and emminently defundable once the media spotlight moves on.

A compromise along similar lines from my point of view would be: a coast-to-coast fence, internal enforcement, deportation, anchor babies back on the boat and shipped home free of charge. Oh and you can have a limited form of your guest worker program, subject to financial circumstances of course. Ahem.

It’s embarassing to be so greedy in what is supposed to be a “compromise” but that’s what the Senate bill is like, just skewed the opposite way.

Whether this bill dies in commitee or gets a few bits lopped off before passage, the damage is done. The carrot is being shaken within easy grasp for millions waiting beyond US borders, and it’s obvious there isn’t much of a stick for those who ignore the rules.