A Culture Worth Defending

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A Culture Worth Defending

• A presentation to the Global Security Scan
  Conference
• March 21, 2007
• TM Denton

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Why are we here?

• The attacks of September 2001
• Marked the beginning of a new era (for us)
• Resumed the importance of explicitly religious
  quarrels
• Found us wholly unprepared
• Most of ones attitudes towards these issues
  depends on
• The nature of the species you belong to, and
• Is there an enemy out there? Or is it really just
  a manipulation of our senses?

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The wholly predictable

• Great power issues
• Rise of China and India
• Iran will seek and likely obtain nuclear weapons
• The great jihad will continue
• Islamic war on all fronts against the unbelievers
  will not relent.
• Why should it? It is winning
• Demographics those already born and being born
  will be here in eight years
• Those who have immigrated will be here forever
• Significant Muslim presence is here forever

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Geopolitical alliances

• Two biggest events in global alliances that will
  shape elements of the future
• USA shares nuclear secrets with India
• Japan warns China about invading Taiwan
• Japan remains under US nuclear umbrella
• China will seek alliances in client countries
• India and Japan on our side, China pursues own
  goals, Russia the opportunistic troublemaker
• Europe in trouble
• Unresolved issues of Islamic immigration,
  population growth, acculturation, crime,
  insurrection

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Sunni versus Shia

• Irans obtaining of nuclear weapons will set off
  an arms race in Sunni regimes to counteract Iran
• Historical hatreds dating from the origins of the
  faith
• Whom do they hate more, Israel or each other?
• Pakistan could go rapidly into a militantly
  fundamentalist Islam regime, nuclear-armed

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The Long War Hypothesis

• Philip Bobbitts The Shield of Achilles
• The history of Europe (since the 1450s) is a
  history of wars fought to determine the
  constitution of states
• Princely, dynastic, territorial monarchy,
  state-nation, nation-state, and now, the
  market-state
• Wars end when a constitution of one kind prevails
  over its rivals
• The long war 1914-1990 was about whether
  national-socialism, international-socialism or
  parliamentary government would prevail
• Regime change accompanied victory for defeated
  axis powers
• These patterns can only be discerned when the
  time horizons are broad enough

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The long war of Islam with everyone else

• The Islamic/non-Islamic divide has been at war
  since the inception of the religion in the 600s
• Egypt, North Africa, Western Asia were once
  Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, pagan
• We thought it was over since WW1 and the
  secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate (Kemal
  Attatürk and the rise of Turkey)
• It has resumed, and we are clueless as to why
• Re-conquest of Spain-1452? Re-conquest of the
  Balkans-19th century? Israel -1947?
• A society that thinks religion largely irrelevant
  confronts a society that believes every action is
  of religious significance and for which God has
  issued a rule
• We need to adjust our thinking in fundamental
  ways

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Secular versus religious questions

• The rise of India and China are events of prime
  importance but they do not require an adjustment
  of our culture
• Neither India nor China is seeking the export of
  the Hindu or Confucian social order
• The Islamic thing I do not define it- goes to
  the heart of what our culture shall be in 100
  years
• Like the communist dream of Marx, it envisages a
  different society for all of us, with us being
  transformed or converted
• We are very poorly prepared for this discussion,
  to the extent it is a discussion, for several
  reasons
• Assumed superiority of multiculturalism
• Assumed undiscussability of the central issues in
  the public square
• Assumed inferiority of both Christian and
  liberal-market values
• Assumed insensitivity of all such discussions
• Example the yeux bridés flap

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Issues at stake

• The Islamic thing confronts us with issues we
  had thought were settled
• That there exists realms of human activity for
  which secular reasoning is sufficient
• Science, politics are fully secular activities
  (weyes Islamno)
• That there is one, final, comprehensive source of
  guidance for all issues, social, religious,
  economic (wenoIslamyes)
• That multiculturalism is in principle a desirable
  state of affairs (weyesIslamno)
• But are we clear in our understanding of what
  culture means?
• That parliamentary constitutional government is
  the final arbiter of political life
  (weyesIslamno)
• Viz Sharia
• The challenge will not go away because
• we do not recognize it, or
• Have declared it off-limits to discussion, or
  even to thought

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Not just a social faux-pas, but a crime

• Rational discussion of cultural and religious
  issues is made difficult because
• All cultures are held equally deserving of
  respect (proposition 1 of post-modern discourse)
• Therefore of equal intrinsic value
• Extreme anxiety around expressions that contest
  proposition 1
• Actual threat of prosecutions that hangs over
  public discussions of religious, racial, cultural
  issues

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The lessons of history as we have learned them

• Historically, much greater folk-memory of events
  within our zone of civilization and culture than
  from outside of it
• People still remember the lessons of history as
  we have learned it
• Remembering the most recent wars (anti-fascist,
  anti-communist), not the one we are in
• The very efforts to prevent the spread of racism
  and the rise of fascism since WW2 have
  effectively made large areas of discourse
  off-limits to public discussion
• Spirit of the times
• legal speech controls
• Grievance groups render discussion personally
  dangerous
• The lessons of the 20th century are largely
  irrelevant to the struggles before us. Fascism
  and communism are dead doctrines.

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The challenge will always come at us from a
direction we do not expect

• The attacks will come out of our blind spots
• Ideological, cultural, religious, scientific
• Precisely what we think is settled and
  undiscussable will be the places from where the
  attacks proceed
• The attacks are meant to intimidate we cannot be
  conquered, but we can succumb
• Read up on dhimmitude - the status of
  non-Muslims in Islamic society
• The challenge is not just to the state, but to
  the culture
• It is not something we did, but what we are, that
  offends the laws of God as revealed in Islam
• We thought we had settled the fight between the
  secular and divine realms, but the resolution
  only applied inside the boundaries of Christianity

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How we damage ourselves

• The immune responses of western liberal culture
  have been compromised
• Suppression of vigorous debate on controversial
  topics in the name of social peace, settled
  consensus, false sensitivity or what we all know
• Race, class, sex, nation, religion, science, etc.
• The we are always wrong school
• Most controls on speech and behaviour assume that
  we are the problem
• The fear that
• reason will not prevail
• they may come for you
• you may not assert standards of decent speech or
  behaviour

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This issue is moral, not technological

• We have a culture worth defending
• Asserting the values of a liberal society
  (freedom of discussion, religion, association)
  may look illiberal in a universe where all
  cultures are considered of equal value.
• Doing so is not
• The battle is inside our heads technology will
  not prevail if we will not defend our way of life
  
• The science issues of our time concern the
  attempt to suppress debate on scientific
  questions
• A commitment to intellectual and spiritual
  freedom is required of all of us
• The answers will flow from there

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Closing thought

• Next to obedience to lawful authority is a manly
  and determined resistance against lawless violence

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Thank you for your attention