Rowan Williams and Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady | Melanie Phillips

Rowan Williams and Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady | Melanie Phillips

Published in: Melanie's blog

More Sharing ServicesShare | Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print

You've really got to hand it to Dr Rowan Williams, the erstwhile Archbishop of Canterbury – he's got a sense of timing to die for.
Five years ago, he set off a cultural earthquake when, as head of the Anglican Communion, he made a speech in the Royal Courts of Justice in London in which he welcomed the 'inevitable' accommodation of Islamic sharia law in the UK.
At no stage, neither then nor subsequently, did he ever indicate that he regretted the intellectual fatuity and legal and theological shallowness of this suicide note for Britain's ancient culture.  Nor the deep shock felt by many that the country's principal Christian prelate was cheerfully willing on the Balkanisation of Britain and the destruction of its foundational democratic principle of 'one law for all'. Nor even that he understood this was the import of what he had said.
Now, some ten days after the barbaric murder in Woolwich, south London of Drummer Lee Rigby at the hands of Islamic fanatics quoting the Koran, Dr Williams looks set to repeat his triumph.
In what promises to be a high-profile event in the lawyers' Temple Church in London – which for some reason has taken a lead in promoting sharia in the UK – Dr Williams will today help launch a new book, Islam and English Law, published by Cambridge University Press.
According to the pre-launch blurb, the book will ask:

• 'Is sharia law compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights?
• Should English law give greater recognition to Islamic custom and practice?
• Should freedom of speech be restrained to protect Muslims' sensibilities?
• Can Muslims be full members, in good conscience and without qualification, of our pluralist society?'

and also

'…what changes, if any, to legal provision and practice will narrow division between the UK's communities, promote understanding and accommodation – and, to improve the protection offered to them all.'

Well, I suppose it's possible that the book – along with Dr Williams -- will answer that last question by saying: 'Stop sharia now'. Such an answer would certainly bring relief to the many thousands of British Muslims who want to live in freedom and security under democracy, equal human rights and 'one law for all'.
However, given that the contributors to this book are

Abdullahi An-Na'im, Mashood Baderin, Marion Boyd, Nicolas Bratza, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Ian Edge, Khaled Abou El Fadl, David Ford, Robin Griffith-Jones, Mark Hill, Stephen Hockman, Sydney Kentridge, Christopher McCrudden, Dominic McGoldrick, Tariq Modood, Nicholas Phillips, Tariq Ramadan, Albie Sachs, Shaheen Sardar Ali, Prakash Shah and Rowan Williams,

I'd guess that the answer to the questions listed under the bullet-points above might be mostly 'yes', 'yes', 'yes' and 'yes'.
If so, then Dr Williams will doubly deserve his place in the pantheon of ridicule savaged by Douglas Murray in his dazzling new book, Islamophilia, which I am delighted to be publishing today as the latest title from my new electronic imprint, emBooks, in response to the Woolwich atrocity and its aftermath.
Islamophilia  is not about terrorism. It is not about Islam. It is not about Muslims. It is instead about those utterly ridiculous public figures -- including movie stars, literary giants, pop idols, army generals, bishops, museum curators and politicians -- in whom an epidemic loss of cultural nerve and the terror of losing their reputation in fashionable circles has made them victims of the debilitating affliction of Islamophilia. The book is laugh-out-loud funny. It is also jaw-dropping. And it is tragic.
This little firecracker fulfills my aim when I launched emBooks last month – to provide a platform for writers of talent and integrity to describe the world as it is, not as some people would like to remake it. My hope is thus to get right away from the polarisation and caricatures of so much political and cultural life, and reclaim instead the true, decent, rational centre ground of western society from those who have hijacked it.
I hope lots of people will join me.

About Melanie

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain's educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents.
Read full biography

Books

• 
• 

Tommy Robinson EDL speech Newcastle May 2013 Woolwich responce

Tommy Robinson Speech to the EDL at Newcastle over the brutal murder at Woolwich

 

The End Of Britain A Financial View

A superb video from money week on the end of our nations economy , and the reasons why .
we at Horwich nationalists recomend to all , 
1st buy a Bible, it,s all in there.
2nd Buy silver 
3rd Get out of London and the major ethnically cleansed areas of our nation.  

Obamastan | Melanie Phillips

Obamastan | Melanie Phillips
 

Fort Hood, Benghazi, the Boston bombings, Iran/Syria, Israel. The pattern is unmistakeable; the danger to America is exponentially increasing; the scandal is deepening into something nearer to a national crisis.
The Obama administration is playing down the Islamist threat to the US and the free world, empowering Islamists at home and abroad, endangering America and betraying its allies -- and covering up its egregious failure to protect the homeland as a result of all the above, while instead blaming America for its own victimisation.
What is coming out in the Benghazi hearings would be jaw-dropping if it had not been apparent from the get-go that the administration failed to protect its own people in the beseiged American mission where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff were murdered in 2012, then lied about the fact that this was an Islamist attack, and then covered up both its failure and its lie. (Apparent, that is, to some -- but not to the American media, most of which gave the Obama administration a free pass on the scandal in order to ensure the smooth re-election of The One).
But the administration has form on this -- serious, continuing form. After the Fort Hood massacre in 2009, in which an Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas shouting ‘Allahu akhbar’, not only was it revealed that his radicalisation and extremist links had been ignored but the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies classified the shootings merely as an act of ‘workplace violence’.
Weeks after the Boston marathon terrorist atrocity, there is still no explanation of why the FBI did not act against the Tsarnaev brothers, despite having had one of them on their books as a dangerous Islamic radical after a warning from Russian intelligence; and why, as the House Homeland Security Committee heard yesterday, the FBI didn’t pass on their suspicions about the brothers to the Boston police.
Even now, the US authorities are playing down or even dismissing  Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s extremist Islamic views. Whether or not the brothers had links to foreign extremists is still unclear. But what is bizarre is the authorities’ belief that if they did not have any such links, they cannot have had any religious motive.
Despite evidence such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s outbursts at a Boston mosque, where he denounced clerics' references to Thanksgiving and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘contrary to Islam’, the brothers were described by Philip Mudd, the former Deputy Director of National Security at the FBI and the former Deputy Director of the Counterterrorist Centre for the CIA, as merely ‘angry kids’. Mudd told Charlie Rose:
 

‘They may be disenfranchised. They may have had a bad experience at school. They may not have friends, and they say, “Look, we want to do something.” This tactic of terrorism is a tactic of the 21st century. I don’t necessarily think these are real jihadi terrorists. I think they’re angry kids.’

You really do have to pinch yourself. How in heaven’s name can a guy like Mudd, with his background in so-called intelligence, possibly come up with anything quite so stupendously shallow? It is precisely such angry, isolated, disturbed kids who are vulnerable to Islamist preachers who target, groom and manipulate them -- whether in person or through the internet -- to believe that ‘Islam is the answer’ and that they are its soldiers engaged in holy war against the unbelievers.
The wilful and perverse refusal to acknowledge the religious nature of this holy war -- and worse, to lay the blame for such terrorism on the the society that is its victim -- is what lies behind the Benghazi scandal. 
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings this week produced testimony from Gregory Hicks, the former deputy to the murdered Ambassador Stevens, that was simply devastating for the Obama administration and its former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton -- who infamously erupted, under questioning last January about the nature of the attack,

‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’

Well, Mr Hicks has started to provide the answer. Despite repeated calls for more security to combat the clear threat of jihadi attack on the US mission, Mrs Clinton’s State Department had farmed out its security to none other than a jihadist group. When the fatal attack started, Mr Hicks vainly appealed for fighter jets to buzz the besieged compound. As the Times (£) reported:

‘When a team of four special forces troops were about to leave Tripoli, at Mr Hicks's request, their leader had to stand them down because he was not cleared by senior military chiefs to travel. Mr Hicks said the furious officer told him: “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has shown more balls than someone in the military.”’

Disingenuously, the Pentagon says in response that no forces could have arrived in time to mount a rescue. But there was more lethal testimony from Mr Hicks.
After the attack, the Obama administration claimed that it had resulted from a protest that had got out of hand over an anti-islam YouTube video. But Mr Hicks testified that it was known from the start that it was a jihadi attack which had nothing to do with that video. The Wall Street Journal reported:

‘Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Tripoli, recalled his last conversation with Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who told him, "Greg, we're under attack." Mr. Hicks said he knew then that Islamists were behind the assault. In other words, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's public claim at the time that an anti-Islam YouTube video spurred the assault was known inside the government to be false when she and White House spokesman Jay Carney said it.

‘Mr. Hicks said he briefed Mrs. Clinton that night, yet the father of victim Tyrone Woods says she later told him that the YouTube video maker would be “prosecuted and arrested” as if he were responsible for Benghazi. Stranger still, Mr. Hicks says Mrs. Clinton's then chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, ordered him not to give solo interviews about the attack to a visiting Congressional delegation.’

Mr Hicks further claims that he was instructed by officials not to talk to congressional investigators, and then demoted after he asked why senior Clinton aides had blamed the attack on a video protest. Again, officials have denied his claim of demotion. But the cat is now out of the bag. The Times (£) reports that an e-mail has surfaced  revealing that senior State Department figures — including Ms Clinton — knew within 24 hours that the group responsible for the Benghazi attack was linked to Islamic terrorists.
Meanwhile, from the beginning of this affair there have also been persistent questions about quite what the US mission was actually doing in Benghazi. Now the Washington Times has reported this:

‘A U.S. intelligence official tells Inside the Ring that the hearing and congressional inquiries have failed to delve into what the official said is another major scandal: CIA covert arms shipments to Syrian rebels through Benghazi.

‘Separately, a second intelligence source said CIA operations in Libya were based on a presidential finding signed in March 2011 outlining covert support to the Libyans. This source said there were signs that some of the arms used in the Benghazi attack — assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades — ended up in the hands of the terrorists who carried out the Benghazi attack as a result of the CIA operation in Libya.

‘The unanswered questions — that appear unasked by most congressional investigators — include whether the CIA facility in Benghazi near the diplomatic compound and the contingent of agency officers working there played a role in the covert transfer through Turkey of captured Libyan weapons or personnel to rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.

‘“There was a ship that transported something to Turkey around the time Ambassador Chris Stevens met with a Turkish diplomat within hours of his murder,” the official said. “Was the president's overt or covert policy to arm Syrian rebels?”’

Was it indeed. If it was, then Benghazi might turn out to be yet another and particularly terrible example of the damage Obama has wrought upon the security of America and the free world.
This is a President who, by persisting with the charade of negotiation with Iran over its race to manufacture its nuclear bomb, has allowed it to become the dominant power in the region.
That is why Iran’s puppet Assad, who has just accrued hundreds of Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists to help him win his bloody civil war, has been able to slaughter more than 80,000 Syrians and use chemical weapons against them -- while Obama himself may have ineptly armed al Qaeda inside Syria. For the Washington Times report goes on:

‘The official said congressional investigators need to ask whether the president indirectly or directly helped bolster al Qaeda-linked terrorists in the Jabhat al-Nusrah front rebel group in Syria and whether the CIA ran guns and other weapons captured in Libya to the organization.

 ‘“Every troubling Middle East-Southwest Asia country — Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and now maybe Syria — where the Obama administration made a significant policy push has gone over to Islamists that are now much more hostile to the United States,” the official said.’

Precisely.
The Benghazi attack was not just appalling in itself; nor was there merely almost certainly a catastrophic failure by the Obama administration to protect its people, and then a mighty cover-up of that failure. Benghazi also serves as a symbol of America’s tragic abandonment, under the Obama administration, of its historic mission to protect life and liberty both in its own homeland and in the free world.
Welcome to Obamastan.

THE LIBERAL DELUSION

THE LIBERAL DELUSION
 From the Liberal Delusion.com

Chapter One

Is western society based on a mistake? Fundamental to any society is its understanding of human nature. It shapes our worldview and explains other people’s behaviour. It affects attitudes and practices on a whole range of issues including: interpersonal relations, the upbringing and education of children, family policy, welfare, economics and penal policy. Our understanding of human nature is crucial, yet we rarely - if ever - discuss it. Since the 1960s the dominant view of human nature in the west has been a liberal one. The word ‘liberal’ is hard to define - a bit like nailing jelly to a wall. Nevertheless, here goes ! The word ‘liberal’ comes from the Latin ‘liber’ meaning free. Freedom lies at the heart of liberalism: free love; freedom from rules, regulations and restraints; freedom from external authority; freedom of thought; freedom from superstition and ignorance; freedom from oppression, hierarchy and privilege; freedom from the past and tradition.

In practice it has led to: the liberalisation of the laws on drinking alcohol, gambling, divorce and abortion, a sexually promiscuous society, economic liberalism with free markets and deregulation, and the ending of censorship. I hope it is clear that I am not using the word ‘liberal’ in any party political sense, but rather indicating a mindset and worldview. In other words ‘liberalism’ with a small ‘l’, not a capital ‘L’. Most liberals are decent well-meaning people, who are rightly concerned about fairness and social justice. Also in the past liberals played a positive role in fighting social and racial prejudices. However these positive aspects should not prevent criticism of liberal ideas in the present.

The belief in freedom rests on an unspoken assumption – the goodness of human nature. If we are good, it makes sense to increase freedom, because we do not need restrictions, rules, morality or religion. Freedom will not be abused; our natural goodness will prevent this. Therefore we can liberalise laws and adopt liberal attitudes, and no harm will come. So maximising freedom assumes human nature is essentially good. I believe this assumption is mistaken. In this book I aim to show that it is contradicted by recent scientific discoveries, by the insights of Freud and Jung, by the evidence of history and by the experience of social workers.

Our view of human nature has changed over time. For thousands of years Judeo-Christian societies were based on the Bible. In the story of the Garden of Eden God forewarned Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They ignored the warning and ate the forbidden fruit. As a result, they were driven out of the Garden. This allegory stands for the imperfection of human nature and the reality of evil. In religious jargon - we are sinners. This does not mean we are wholly bad – in the Middle Ages the word ‘sinner’ was used in archery for an arrow that fell short of its target. We are imperfect - not totally depraved. On this understanding children are sinners too and need to be disciplined and socialised by parents and the community, so they can become productive members of society. Also parents are wiser and more experienced than children, and so should be respected. In the words of Thomas Sowell, the leading African American philosopher, “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of little barbarians, who must be civilised before it is too late.”^[4] In this tradition stands the 17^th century English thinker Thomas Hobbes, who regarded human beings as self-centred, and saw conflict as endemic in social life.

This Biblical view of a flawed human nature was challenged around 300 years ago in the Enlightenment, which turned traditional notions upside down. For example Rousseau claimed children are born wholly good, but later their families and society warp them. In his own words, “Man is born happy and good, but society corrupts him and makes him unhappy.”^[5] On his theory children are pure and innocent, whereas parents and society have been corrupted, so children are morally superior to adults. It follows that parents should respect their children who are leading us to a better world. These Enlightenment ideas partly explains our present reluctance to discipline children. Child-rearing and education have fundamentally altered over the last hundred years. We have gone from a strict, authoritarian approach, to ‘progressive’ ideas and child-centred learning. One contributor to this trend was the founder of Summerhill school - A. S. Neill, who believed children are “naturally wise and good.”^[6] So they should be given the maximum amount of freedom, and never be disciplined. He represents an extreme form of liberalism, but his and other ‘progressive’ ideas have seeped into the educational system, resulting in some secondary schools that are marked by ill-discipline and anarchy. In Britain today school councils of pupils have been set up, which in some cases have even appointed teachers. A friend of ours teaches 4 and 5 years olds at a local primary school. She has found recently that more and more of the children starting at the school are aggressive, assertive, disobedient and very difficult to control.

In 2010 Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at Kent University, wrote “A substantial group of parents have given up disciplining their kids altogether…. Powerful cultural pressures are making parents uncomfortable disciplining their children.”^[7] Parents have abandoned ‘tough love’ and try instead to be friends with their children. These ideas have empowered children and enfeebled teachers and parents, whose authority has been called into question. Their confidence in disciplining children has been undermined. Parents no longer feel able or willing to tell their children what to do. It seems now that children teach parents, rather that being taught by parents. As a result many children grow up knowing few boundaries, which often leads to unruly youths and anti-social behaviour. The riots in English cities in August 2011 are a stark illustration of this.

Also on this theory, criminals are essentially good, but have been warped by society, and so should be seen as victims of society, rather than offenders. This has affected our penal policies and the treatment of criminals. I helped run Victim Awareness courses in a local prison. At the end of one session, a group leader said that one of her group had been born very poor in Jamaica and wanted to make money – not unreasonably. He figured the best way was to run drugs into England. He did not have a British passport, so he had to use a fake one – not unreasonably. As a result he was now serving time for drug running. The group leader said we should think of him as a victim, not a wrongdoer. Additionally the prisoners in their cells have televisions, set-top boxes, computers and game consoles. They wear their own clothes; cook their own food; and a new block is being built with en-suite showers. One prisoner said to me - with no prompting on my part - “It’s like Butlins in here mate.”

However the liberal understanding of human nature has been contradicted by science, according to Steven Pinker, who is Professor of Psychology at Harvard. He argues that recent scientific discoveries relating to evolutionary psychology and genetics - including the Human Genome Project - have undermined the belief in inborn goodness. They have revealed a flawed human nature. He wrote, “Genetics and neuroscience show that a heart of darkness cannot always be blamed on parents and society.”^[8] In other words: the human capacity for evil is inborn. Pinker claims these discoveries undermine the worldview of many intellectuals. In his own words, “They eat away at the cherished assumptions of modern intellectual life.”^[9] Pinker rejects the idea of Richard Dawkins and others that the end-product of evolution is altruistic and unselfish human beings. Dawkins argues that blackbirds feed a cuckoo chick in their nest, because they are programmed to feed their own chicks, but their brains ‘misfire’ so they feed other chicks in their nest as well. He believes human brains misfire in a similar way, and as a result we love everyone, not just our kin. Pinker rejects this as nonsense. His stark conclusion is: “In a nutshell: Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong.”^[10] Far from mankind being innately good, Pinker gives a list of inherited human defects, including: the primacy of kinship; limited sharing within human groups; universality of violence, dominance and ethnocentrism; self-deception about our own wisdom and fairness; and a moral sense warped by kinship and friendship.^[11] If Pinker is right, then the idea that men and women are born good is unscientific and mistaken.

Liberal thinking was also rejected by Freud, who saw the mind as an arena of conflict between our conscious and unconscious minds, and between the superego (the conscience) and the id (the instincts such as the sex drive). Powerful forces in our unconscious minds have an influence on our thinking and behaviour of which we are unaware. Jung went further. He dismissed the notion of inborn goodness as nonsense. He held that an understanding of our flawed nature was necessary for us, but we are resistant to the truth. He wrote: “The jungle is in us, in our unconscious, and the psychologist who tries to expose the blind spot faces a thankless task. The human mind carefully refrains from looking into itself.”^[12] And “All that nonsense about man’s inborn goodness, which has addled so many brains after the dogma of Original Sin was no longer understood, was blown to the winds by Freud, and the little that remains will, let us hope, be driven out for good by the barbarism of the twentieth century.”^[13] [Original sin is religious jargon for the idea that we are born imperfect and sinful, rather than innately wise and good.]

Criticism of liberal values has also come from the youth worker and pamphleteer Shaun Bailey. He grew up in a deprived inner city part of London and set up a charity called MyGeneration, which works with disadvantaged youngsters. His background is in the West Indian community of west London, where he was brought up by a single mother on a council estate. He claims liberalism harms the poor, “The more liberal we have become, the more the poor have suffered.”^[14] He describes the outcome of liberal policies as: a lack of discipline in schools; the erosion of marriage; the subversion of parental authority; encouraging free love and casual sex; fostering dependency; and the relaxation of the laws governing drugs and alcohol. He accuses the middle-class liberals of living their lovely lives in leafy suburbs unaware of the damage their policies cause to working class communities.

History too provides plenty of evidence of human evil. The 20^th century showed the ugly side of mankind: the slaughter in the trenches in World War One; the deaths of over 120 million under communism - 50 million in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1953, 70 million peacetime deaths under Mao, plus those who died in the killing fields of Cambodia and elsewhere.^[15] These deaths are in addition to the 6 million victims of the Holocaust. Everyday there are news stories of murder, violence and war. Anthropologists have found that most primitive societies are violent and conflict-ridden, thus confirming human nature is flawed. So the evidence against the belief in innate human goodness comes from science, psychology, history, anthropology and social workers.

Despite all this evidence liberalism has not merely survived, it has become dominant in western societies. This is a puzzle. Why does it persist in the face of so many objections, and the evidence of human evil in history? The answer, I believe, lies in its emotional appeal. In his book The God Delusion Richard Dawkins exemplifies this, writing, “I dearly want to believe we do not need policing - whether by God or each other – in order to stop us behaving in a selfish or criminal manner.”^[16] This is sentimental and unscientific. It is based on ignorance of human psychology and history. It may be easy to think mankind is good, if you have been brought up by loving parents in a nice area and led a sheltered life. Your fundamental assumption is - unselfishness and kindness are normal. You may be surprised by reports of child abuse, domestic violence and murder, as well as bloodshed in other parts of the world, but you regard these as exceptions. One self-styled liberal said to me, “To be frank I live in a middle-class bubble. I’m not really aware of what goes on in poor communities.”

Many people are deeply wedded to their utopian worldview. They resist any questioning of it. We prefer to think of ourselves as wise, rational and virtuous, rather than flawed, self-centred and fallible. It is nice to think that other human beings are essentially good. I remember discussing the topic with a nice old lady, who lived in a village in the Chilterns. She told me she would be depressed if she thought other people were unkind and bad; she preferred to believe in human goodness. She said to me, “I don’t want to believe that mankind is flawed.” Was she a seeker after truth or someone who had found her comfort blanket? T. S. Eliot wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”^[17] However there is a problem with the rose-tinted and optimistic view of human nature: it can lead, for example, to a failure to socialise and discipline children, and then the outcome can be anti-social behaviour. Whereas if you accept reality, you can take steps to deal with the problems. But haven’t some societies been too strict and disciplined? Yes, that is true. However the abuse does not remove the use. Just because some societies have been too disciplinarian, does not mean there is no place for discipline.

It was in the 1960s that a liberal and progressive consensus came to dominate British society. The Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins claimed a liberal society was a civilised one. However, looking round Britain today, ‘civilised’ is not always the word that comes to mind. Our society is marked by binge drinking, broken families, a growth in violent crime and a decline in trust. We have taken sexual liberation too far and have the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe. As Jung observed, humanity only thrives when spirit and instinct are in harmony, “Too much of the animal distorts the civilised man, too much civilisation makes sick animals.”^[18] We have gone from the Victorian society’s denial of sex, to one that is obsessed by sex: from the dominance of the superego, to the triumph of the id. Our phoney understanding of Freud believes that we should never deny our sexual urges, and that any thwarting of our sexual instincts will result in neurosis.

My attempts to discuss these ideas with liberal friends have met with very limited success. In his book Liberalism and its Discontents, the distinguished American historian Alan Brinkley wrote of, “An unwillingness or inability of many liberals to look sceptically or critically at their own values and assumptions.“^[19] I have often met a refusal to engage with the evidence and the arguments. Steven Pinker has also encountered opposition and personal abuse. Those who challenge the liberal hegemony have been called ‘fascist’ or ‘Nazi’. Pinker wrote, “Part of the responsibility of intellectuals is not to trivialise the horror of Nazism by exploiting it for rhetorical clout in academic cat-fights. Linking people you disagree with to Nazism does nothing for the memory of Hitler’s victims, or for the effort to prevent other genocides.”^[20]

So is this book a straight-forward attack on liberalism? No. It is not as simple as that. There are some areas where I believe liberals are right. I acknowledge that some liberalism is necessary and beneficial. Few would want to go back to the restrictions of the Victorian era or live under a despot. There was also a need to free us from a negative attitude to sex. Liberals are right to be concerned about inequality and to fight for social justice. There still remain great inequalities and their campaign for greater fairness deserves support. I welcome the undermining of the class system, the greater opportunities open to women, and the improved treatment of racial and sexual minorities – the decriminalising of homosexuality is an obvious example. However some liberals seem to think that they have a monopoly of caring. Thomas Sowell, the leading African-American philosopher, commented “Liberals assume that if you don’t accept their policies, then you don’t care about the people they want to help.”^[21]

There is, I believe, a downside to liberalism. Freedom has often turned into selfish hedonism. We have neglected other values: the importance of social cohesion, of duties, obligations and responsibilities to others. We have lost ideals of self-restraint and self-discipline. So my argument is not that all liberalism is bad, but rather that in many areas we have become too liberal; that the liberal pendulum has swung too far. Liberty has become licence. Liberalism is like cholesterol: there are good and bad sorts. Therefore we urgently need to evaluate the positive and negative aspects of liberalism, and to discard those which harm society. In the next chapter I present the evidence against the belief in the goodness of human nature from science, anthropology, psychology and history.

[1] J-J Rousseau Seconde Lettre à Malesherbes 12 Janvier 1762 Hachette ed X pp.301-302

[2] Steven Pinker The Blank Slate (London Allen Lane 2002 ) Preface page xi

[3] George Orwell The Freedom of the Press (an essay originally drafted as a Preface to Animal Farm), The Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 1972

[4] Thomas Sowell A Conflict of Visions (USA Basic Books 2002) p. 162.

[5] “Que la nature a fait l’homme heureux et bon, mais que la société le deprave et le rend misérable.” Troisième Dialogue (Hachette ed IX 287) cited by E. Cassirer The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (USA Columbia University Press 1963) p. 18.

[6] A. S. Neill Summerhill ( London Pelican Books 1968) p. 20

[7] Frank Furedi interview in The Sunday Times 21/2/2010

[8] Steven Pinker The Blank Slate (London Allen Lane 2002 ) p. 51

[9] Pinker p. 58

[10] Pinker p. 56

[11] Pinker p. 294

[12] C G Jung Jung Letters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1976) Vol II p. 608 Letter to Mr. Leo P. Holliday dated 6 November 1960

[13] C G Jung Psychological Reflections (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 1971) p. 277

[14] Shaun Bailey No Man’s Land (London Centre for Policy Studies) 2 May 2007 

[15] The figure of 51million in the case of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia see Norman Davies book Europe(London Pimlico 1997) based on the work of Robert Conquest and Roy Medvedev (Appendix III) and the figure of 70 million under Mao see Mao: the Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (London Jonathan Cape 2005)

[16] Richard Dawkins The God Delusion (London Transworld Publishers 2006) p. 260

[17] T S Eliot Burnt Norton (The Four Quartets)

[18] C. G. Jung Psychological Reflections (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1971) p. 105

[19] Alan Brinkley Liberalism and its Discontents (Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press 1998) p. xi

[20] Pinker p.154

[21] Thomas Sowell widely attributed but unsourced

Preparing For The Coming Battle A Time to Stand - Dr. Steve Elwart - Koinonia House

Preparing For The Coming Battle A Time to Stand - Dr. Steve Elwart - Koinonia House

A Time to Stand by Dr. Steve Elwart

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing Services121 Print this article

---

We are fast approaching a time when each of us will have to make some decisions—decisions about our life, our relationships, and our worldview.

After World War II, the Communist Party assumed control of Romania. Once the Communists came to power, they proceeded to co-opt the Church. They spoke of love and tolerance, but these words masked their true intentions.

Those Christians (including the clergy) who did not have a strong Biblical foundation were easily deceived and many who did were intimidated into silence.

After the takeover, the Romanian Communists convened a congress of four thousand priests, pastors, and ministers of all denominations in their Parliament building with the proceedings being carried in a national radio broadcast. One by one, the ministers got up and had nothing but words of praise forcommunism and assured the new government of the loyalty of the Christian Church.

Richard Wurmbrand

One of the pastors scheduled to speak was a man named Richard Wurmbrand. As he listened and waited, his wife Sabina leaned over to him and said, “They are spitting in the face of Christ. Richard, stand up and wash away this shame.”

He said to her, “If I do so, you lose your husband.” She replied, “I don’t wish to have a coward as a husband.”

So Wurmbrand rose and instead of repeating the same thing every other pastor said, he told the assembly how wrong they were and how this flew in the face of Christian doctrine.¹

At this point, the broadcast was interrupted and the martyrdom of the Wurmbrands began. Sabina went on to serve eight years in prison while Richard served a total of fourteen years, eight of which were in solitary confinement. As Richard Wurmbrand said,

In solitary confinement, we could not pray as before. We were unimaginably hungry…The Lord’s Prayer was much too long for us—we could not concentrate enough to say it. My only prayer repeated again and again was, “Jesus, I love You.”²

After he and his wife immigrated to the United States, he was called to testify before the United States Senate, stripping to the waist to reveal the scars of eighteen wounds received from frequent tortures. A reporter with the Philadelphia Herald said of Wurmbrand’s time in prison, “He stood in the midst of lions, but they could not devour him.”

Not all the Romanian clergy were as brave as this. Orthodox and Protestant churches would outdo each other in showing their loyalty to the Communist Party. One Orthodox bishop put the hammer and sickle on his robes and asked his priests to no longer call him “Your Grace,” but “Comrade Bishop.”

The deputy bishop of the Lutheran church in Romania began to teach in the theological seminary that God had given three revelations: one through Moses, one through Jesus, and the third through Stalin, the last superseding the other two.

What Happened?

The Communist coup in Romania was not like authoritarian takeovers in other countries. Rather than the systematic annihilation of their enemies, such as with the Castro regime in Cuba or the Pol Potgovernment in Cambodia, this coup was “civilized.”

Rather than an outright prosecution of the church, they seduced it. After the seduction came the oppression, but by that time it was too late. The time to fight back was past.

What would you do if you face a situation like the one confronting the Wurmbrands? We all like to think that when the time comes to stand up for our faith, we would be as heroic as Richard and Sabine Wurmbrand.

The truth is if a person has not conditioned himself to resist evil and waits for his “big moment,” he will find himself wanting. If one spends their life compromising their values in small ways, they will continue to compromise in larger ones. In today’s politically correct world, it is easy to find ways to compromise, to rationalize one’s actions. If one subscribes to the idea of relative values, there is no place where you can say, “This far and no more.” Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) once wrote,

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

While written almost 100 years ago, this philosophy still defines the secular worldview today. While a Christian defines morality through the lens of the Bible, the World defines it according to the transient whims of the time.

Though Whitehead was raised in a Christian home, he rejected every aspect of Christian teaching. Amathematician and philosopher, Whitehead’s influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic, as he taught at both Cambridge and Harvard.

Using these universities as his pulpit, Whitehead preached his version of “process theology.” a term used in his time for situational ethics, a philosophy that can be traced back as far as the teachings ofPlato. (It is also through the Greek school of thought that theologians began to allegorize the Bible, polluting God’s basic message to us.)

Relativistic morality is pervasive in the world today. In fact, those of us who hold to a Biblical worldview are not only in the minority, we are on the brink of being ostracized.

It is easy to talk about such things in theory, but it is another thing when it happens to you.

A Personal Stand

For this writer, the recent controversy over admitting homosexuals into the Boy Scouts was the event that turned theory into reality.

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) was founded in 1910 under a charter granted by the United States Congress, one of only two organizations so honored (the other being the Red Cross). The principles of the organization are embodied by the Scout Oath:

The Scout Oath

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

When I joined the Cub Scouts in 1959, the oath was clear and unambiguous. The organization embodied patriotism, a belief in God, the promise to live by the Golden Rule and to live a moral life.

Starting in the 1960s some people began questioning the mission of the Boy Scouts.

Attack from the Atheists

The first attack came from atheists. While the BSA will grant membership to anyone who believes in a “higher power”, atheists believed that the Boy Scouts should not discriminate against them and should grant membership to those who do not have any belief in God.

This issue seemed to be settled when in 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower federal court ruling on the issue. The case at hand was whether the Boy Scouts of America could deny membership to atheists and agnostics without violating federal anti-discrimination laws. The U.S. appeals court in Chicago concluded that the federal law forbidding discrimination in “places of public accommodation” did not include private groups such as the Boy Scouts. The ruling dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of a seven-year-old Illinois boy who refused to make the required Boy Scout pledge to “...do my duty to God and my country.”

As a result, while the BSA could maintain their policy on atheists, they were barred from many schools and other public buildings because of their stance on this issue.

More Attacks

The next group that challenged BSA policy was the homosexual lobby. They sued the BSA over the policy barring homosexuals from being Scouts or Scout leaders.

This issue was supposed to be resolved with the 2000 landmark Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that ruled that as a private organization, the BSA could exclude a person from membership when “the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group’s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints.”

Even with a loss in the courts, the homosexual lobby then took a different tack—they went after the money. Those who wanted homosexuals in the BSA began to put pressure on contributors to the organization to withhold funding to effect a change in the rules.

The Current Controversy

In response to growing pressure to change its membership policy, in July 2012 the Executive Committee of the BSA’s Executive Board released a statement revealing that an “11 person committee” convened since 2010 by the BSA conducted a two-year review and reached a “unanimous consensus” recommending retaining the current membership policy.

Still not satisfied with the outcome, those that wanted a change continued to put pressure on BSA’s large contributors. In February of this year, UPS and Intel both announced that they would withhold their funding until BSA changed their membership policy.

In response, BSA announced that the Executive Board would vote again on the membership issue even though they voted to retain the current policy just seven months before. This decision caused an uproar within the BSA rank and file. Many felt that it was a betrayal of the leadership, caving in to money interests.

The Executive Board then reversed themselves yet again and announced that they would postpone their vote until the upcoming annual meeting, scheduled for next month.

Rules for Radicals

What is happening to the BSA is becoming a common occurrence in today’s society. An organization that used to be viewed as being synonymous with American Values has slowly become vilified and is now being projected as anti-American.

The tactics that were used to maneuver BSA to such a state come right out of a classic book written bySaul Alinsky titled, Rules for Radicals. Rule #13 in his book is, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Alinsky codified a technique that has been used for years for people and groups to push through a particular agenda.

In this case the Boy Scouts were the target. Their position on homosexuals in Scouting was “frozen” in place and “personalized” in the persona of a Boy Scout who was expelled from Scouting for announcing that he was homosexual and a Cub Scout Leader who announced she was homosexual as well.

As a result, BSA found themselves “polarized.” They were polarized from much of America. They went from being held up as model for good citizenship to being booed during the opening flag ceremony at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

They have also polarized their membership. The policy the BSA Executive Board has decided to vote on is the worst of all worlds. The new motion would allow local units to decide for themselves whether or not to admit gays into their troops and packs. The Board argues that the units would not have to associate with homosexuals if they chose not to. In this regard, they are being disingenuous at best. Scouting units come together for larger activities involving multiple troops and packs.

The only way to be sure a unit would not associate with homosexuals in Scouting would be to isolate themselves completely from all other Scouting groups and activities.

In the name of tolerance, homosexual advocates have moved the BSA from mainstream to almost a fringe group.

But that is not enough for these activists. They have stated that they will not rest until BSA endorses the homosexual lifestyle.

While the tolerant attitude would be to “live and let live” and start their own scouting organization, they have decided to forcibly impose their values on others. They decided that they cannot tolerate intolerance.

This leaves the Christian Scout Leader or parent on the horns of a dilemma. It is very similar to one facing many people in conflict with their church. The question for them is “Do they stay in the organization and work within or do they leave that organization?”

For many leaders the only answer is to leave. To stay in the organization is to give a tacit endorsement to the policies they espouse.

What is happening to the BSA and their leaders is a microcosm of a larger secular war being waged on several fronts. The concept of Freedom of Religion is slowly being replaced with Freedom of Worship, relegating one’s faith and beliefs to the four walls of a building. God-given rights are being replaced with “rights” granted by the state, Freedom is being replaced with “fairness.”

Decision Time

We are fast approaching a time when each of us will have to be make some decisions—decisions about our life, our relationships, and our worldview.

The first thing we need to do is be strong in our faith. Are we secure in Him?

Next, we need a firm hold on our worldview. A worldview is the framework that we hang our life decisions on. If one believes that there are moral absolutes, then the decisions we make every day become easy. If our worldview consists of moral relativisms, then every decision and life choice is studied, considered, and worried over.

Ephesians 6 is one of the best instruction manuals for preparing for the coming battle. It teaches us to put on the Full Armor of God and to put it on before the battle is joined.

But we also must act. Before his death at the hands of the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

Each of us has a part to play in the battles to come. The question is: will we stand tall with Christ as Richard and Sabine Wurmbrand did, or will we spit in the Face of Christ?

This article was originally published in the
April 2013 Personal Update NewsJournal.
For a FREE 1-Year Subscription, click here.

Reverse migration ( Or the Syria Syndrome)

Reverse migration

Apr 8th, 2013

by Dan Atwater. @ Amerika

An estimated one hundred young men left the Netherlands to go to Syria to help their brethren fighting in the civil war. More are leaving soon.
Investigation suggests that this reverse migration consists of Netherlands-born muslims, usually with pretty decent school grades, radicalized only after receiving feedback from a small group of similarly-minded people and the immensely popular “internet imams.” Other euro-countries are also seeing the rise of these “sharia-tourists” too. Mosques, parents, politicians and independent groups in Syria are discouraging youth from coming to the country to fight. They opt for the most reasonable alternative, which is giving money for aid.
Until recently, discussion on this topic has been limited. All current discussions produce no answers, only the same circular reasoning. The result is that important questions are ignored in order to preserve the binary nature of politics. Since votes are like purchases, political ideas are “sold” to groups cultivated by promises. You are either good or bad, with us or against us. But there is another dimension to this situation.
The fundamental question is this: if a citizen of a European nation stands for introducing sharia law in that state, what in earth’s name is he doing in democratic, Jewish, Christian, pluralist Europe? People are like this are completely incompatible with the surrounding society they live in, and yet are mysteriously out of sight by the governments of such states. It is not surprising that they choose to leave for a society that, while perhaps less affluent, is more compatible with the values that are clearly close to their hearts.
As we all notice daily, life is full of choices. We each as individuals make choices every day. Some important, some unimportant. But we all have to live by the consequences of the choices we make. If I want to migrate to another society that offers what seems like a better life to me by my own individual standard, then I’m free to start working there with a visa and from there build up my own position.
Not all of us should make such a deal. People work best and contribute the most when they are comfortable with the people and society around them.
As a country, you have a responsibility to not infect the other apples in the basket. And that leads to the more dangerous questions about this issue. What kind of signal do you give the law-abiding European worker when governments respond to this situation by making two sets of rules, one for the Europeans and one for the immigrant-born? Is a democracy injected with skilled fighters, who fought for sharia law on another continent, a safer place? How are we going to take care of these people when they return maimed and with PTSD? But most importantly, if we’re going to have people here, should we make sure the values of their hearts are compatible with our culture, values and habits?
I can imagine that Americans have way more intellectual context about this, since they are surrounded by soldiers who fought to protect the American way of life. Europeans who are engulfed by ex-sharia fighters do not need PhDs to tell that this situation is unstable. Unless your brains are caught in an Amsterdam threesome with a bag of marijuana, a cheap hooker and a tram, you can see how illogical this two-faced approach is for Europe.
Fundamentally, this is a question of responsibility. If I want to fight a battle for sharia rights, than it is my right to do so! However, at that point my government has also got the right to cut me loose and to refuse to let me participate in western society anymore. At that point, I have chosen a different values system than the one that is European. This way each party finds the surroundings that are most comfortable to them.
This is exactly what needs to be done. Reverse migration shows us the choices that people make when they think about values, and the schism that they keep in their hearts. Instead of forcing migrants to abandon their values, we should stop being two-faced and state clearly what we value. This forces each person to make the choice and face the consequences. If someone is incompatible here, we should cut them loose to find a place that fits their needs.