Oh, so you mean that the Jewish-Zionist-Likud cabal hasn't only hijacked American foreign policy. It's hijacked Christianity too?

(Of course, those really in the swim have known that for years....)

The explanation for Pat Buchanan's opposition to deposing Saddam wasn't anything as flowery as Bush's "reshaping conservatism in the image of Christian progressivism."

Buchanan just hates Israel.

Barry:

As Christianity is Judaism for the Gentiles, so too is the End of History democracy for the non-Anglo-Saxons.

I think John Keegan's analysis is better:

“The new conservatives who had rejected Left-wing solutions to the world’s problems were nevertheless left with the conviction that any solution would be political. Confronted by the residue of tyranny, as in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, they expected democracy to take its place. Inside any people’s democracy, they might have said, there is a real democracy struggling to get out. In the case of eastern Europe, they were genuinely right. Fifty years’ experience of Marxist orthodoxy had conditioned every intelligent East European to yearn for democracy and to embrace it warmly wherever it showed itself.

The neo-conservatives’ mistake was to suppose that, wherever tyranny ruled, democracy was its natural alternative. So, when planning for the government of post-war Iraq, the lead agency, the Pentagon, dominated by neo-conservatives, jumps to the conclusion that, as soon as Saddam’s tyranny was destroyed, Iraqi democrats would emerge to assume governmental responsibility from the liberating coalition and a pro-Western regime would evolve seamlessly from the flawed past.

To think in such a way was to reveal a dangerously post-Marxist cast of mind. Marxists can think only in political terms. They accept, even if they despise, liberal and conservative opposition. What they cannot accept is that their opponents may be motivated by beliefs which are not political in any way at all. That explains their hatred of religion.”

Of course, President Bush himself has brought a measure of genuine religion (geunine at least in a personal sense) to the table, which is very good. But I have my doubts as to whether Mr. Bush really understands religion at all.

For religion is not so much the beliefs a man holds as the world in which he lives, or the vision he possesses of the world in which he lives. Bush and his men seem not to have contemplated the possibility, supported by 1400 years of history, that the world of Islam and the world of Christendom are irreconcilable. They have been in a state of war, with only brief moments of quiescence, for that entire time.

Bush is evangelical, whereas you're a racialist. He thinks Islam can be protestantized--you wouldn't even let brown Christians into the country.

Race has very little to do with this; and I suspect you brought it up only to insult me.

No, race is central to the far Right's distaste for immigration and disbelief in the universality of democracy.

You have said this before. Since I have uttered not a word about immigration here, I will confine myself to noting that most of the Right's disbelief in the universality of democracy stems from its distaste for Jacobinism, which Burke defined as the idea that "all government, not being a democracy, is an usurpation."

I will let Orrin explain how he can stand with the Jacobins against Edmund Burke, and still assure us he is a Conservative.

But we are talking about religion. I am not controverting on whether Islam is compatible with democracy. I am arguing that, as a matter of religion, Islam is not compatible with Christianity.

It is unlikely that radical Islam can be subsumed or even 'bought off' to co-exist with the West. So the issue is how much of Islam is radical and therefore unapproachable.

However, before all of Islam is targeted (or before our only option is to vaporize Mecca and Medina), we need to try to forge some accomodation or relationship, not out of weakness or New Age blather, but from strength.

Paul:

Islam as currently constituted can't meet the needs of the End of History, so it will change. That which is incompatible with Christianity is doomed.

We need to try to forge some accomodation or relationship, not out of weakness or New Age blather, but from strength.

Well said. But this will require facing down hard questions without the facile resort to giddy Jacobinism. The "Isolate and put a cordon sanitaire around the Moslem world" option is the most attractive, but it is complicated enormously by our need for oil.

The first step, in showing the kind of strength that an essentially premodern world will understand, is to stop all Muslim immigration to the U.S.; and basically declare that Islam is not welcome here.* Trade and commerce could still continue, just as neighbors may still communicate and remain on genial terms without throwing open their homes to one another.
________
* Note to Orrin: this need not contain a "racialist" element. We could still allow Arab immigration -- but insist that it be the ever-persecuted Arab Christians.

That which is incompatible with Christianity is doomed.

Byzantium said the same thing; just before Constantinople fell and the Turk marched all the way to the gates of Vienna.

I don't know why the far right gets antsy when their obvious racism is pointed out. The more intellectually honest position would be to admit that, yes, the far right believes certain ethnic groups are inferior in intelligence, on average, probably for genetic reasons. So they're unfit for admittance to the United States and unable to create democratic and prosperous societies.

A few on the far right - John Derbyshire, for instance - gladly admit this and don't mind calling themselves racist. Steve Sailer comes close to admitting the obvious. But Sailer still nurses rather forlorn ambitions for a career in the mainstream media, so he can't be quite as blunt as Derbyshire. The 2Blowhards site also creeps close to the great admission.

Why not just come clean? It's not like the far right is fooling anybody. A more honest debate could then take place.

Paul:

and then? You seem to have the same kind of faith in Islam that Harry has in Stalinism.

It is the same "faith," as you put it, that you have in the decline of Europe into irrelevancy: that is, not a faith at all but a judgment about the trajectory of history.

The Muslim was repelled from Vienna in 1683(Christendom saved again by the Poles), but he will perhaps control Parlement in 2015, and may perhaps unite with other ethnic blocks in Congress in 2020 to end U.S. support for Israel.

Or maybe he will not. I do not think anything is inevitable, just more or less likely.

It is interesting to reflect on what is left unsaid by such vituperation as Mr. Abell has shown us. What he appears to believe (because it underlies his argument) but will not say, is that men with less intelligence are inferior as men. That is, intelligence is the measure of man.

Now I happen to believe in the moral equality of men, which is the equality of men before God; and disbelieve in the intellectual equality of men.

But to look at the mind and call it the soul, is the only way to get the proposition "certain men are less intelligent than others" to mean "certain men are inredeemably and by nature inferior to others."

In short, to look at the mind and call it the soul is to inaugurate the Eugenic State.

That the U.S. will become majority Muslim?

Hardly Muslim majority, but likely majority anti-Israel.

Do you doubt that before long there will be a Islamic Caucus in Congress?

Mr. Cella;

Probably, but I think that Islamic political power is waning in the USA, not waxing. It always depended on the cover of political correctness to prevent people from pointing out the obvious results of unreformed Islam. As the war grinds on and the tides of political correctness recede, Islamists will find it ever harder to defend themselves in the court of American opinion. Like Kerry, to know the Islamists is to despise them.

AOG:

You assume that the tides of political correctness will indeed recede. The evidence for that is mixed at best. Islamic power will increase as Muslims continue to immigrate here.

Using terms like "vituperation" to dismiss my comments doesn't enhance my opinion of the far right's intellectual honesty. Especially when Mr. Cella comes ever so close to the great admission. He says that he disbelieves in the "intellectual equality" of human beings.

Unfortunately, he immediately emits some covering smoke about "moral equality" and how I'm a nasty person for pointing out what the far right obviously believes.

Almost there, almost there. Just make the final concession that you believe certain ethnic groups are intellectually inferior, on average, and probably for not easily changed genetic reasons. You've come almost clean.

After all, we're talking about the core conviction of the far right. The intellectual inequality of ethnic groups is their one uniting principle. That's why they dislike Israel (Jews are intellectually superior and thus not to be trusted) and fear black and Hispanic immigrants (intellectually inferior and thus a drain on white America).

It explains Pat Buchanan so perfectly that it's no wonder Mr. Cella thinks I'm not nice for stating the obvious.

I fear that Mr. Abell overestimates my powers of influence if he believes that I am capable of enhancing his opinion of the far Right, which is clearly quite resistant to any influence.

But what is really noteworthy is that Mr. Abell can imagine that so huge a thing as the moral equality of man is mere "covering smoke." Next he will asseverate that when the Framers spoke of liberty it was nothing but covering smoke for their rapacity and greed. Or that when the Reformers proclaimed "faith only" against the Catholics, what they meant was church lands alone.

I will assure him that I feel no guilt about, nor any desire to conceal, my view that there is variation in the intellectual capacity of men; that, in brief, there is no intellectual equality among men. Whether or how much intelligence is inherited are questions which I am open to persausion from knowledgeable parties.

But I am intrigued to see Mr. Abell's evidence that there is in fact no intellectual variation among men.

Paul:

How can they hope to compete with the Christian Latinos?

The possibility of a Muslim caucus in Congress is slim to none. There are only a couple of areas I can think of where a Muslim could ever be elected (suburban Detroit, possibly Brooklyn or a district in northern NJ), but unless the district were formed expressly for that purpose, it won't happen. Would said Muslim run as a Democrat? Would the DNC run away or embrace him? Would the GOP demonize him, or just ignore him (like the black caucus)?

Don't forget, there is just as much stratification in Muslim circles as there is anywhere else, with light-skinned Arabs on top, the unwashed and uneducated throngs in the middle, and the blacks and non-Arabs at the bottom (along with the Palestinians).

On the international stage, the Muslims will have *power* only as long as oil is the blood of the world economy. While we don't know when the weaning process will occur, once oil is old news, so will PC with respect to the Muslim world. And it will probably happen even sooner than that.

Oh well, Mr. Cella can't quite get the words out. No problem. Everybody knows that the far right is based on the belief that certain ethnic groups - not just an antiseptic term like "men" - are, on average, intellectually inferior or superior. And all the blather about "moral equality" and now the Founders can't conceal that fact.

Not that I think this belief is confined to the far right. Noam Chomsky, for instance, fears and loathes Israel exactly because he believes in the general intellectual superiority of Jewish people and thus their capacity for what he sees as evil influence in the world. Chomsky is Jewish himself, of course, and his exalted opinion of his own intelligence only adds to his deep suspicion of Israel.

Like Mr. Cella, though, Chomsky can't quite bring himself to say this. Which diminishes my respect for his intellectual honesty.

The final refuge of the far right, when confronted with the obvious racist basis of their beliefs, is to challenge others to produce evidence that ethnic groups are NOT intellectually unequal, on average. Which is pretty funny, because many on the far right won't admit to their belief in the intellectual INequality of ethnic groups to begin with.

I figured Mr. Cella would get around to this dodge sooner or later.

It was sooner. And since Mr. Cella can't even admit to his core conviction (which truly dares not speak its name) my particpation in this discussion is finished.

Who says the Christian Latinos will be pro-Israel?

Mr. Abell has finished his discussion as he began it: talking to himself.

I don't think it is accurate to say "the far right is based on the belief that certain ethnic groups [...] are, on average, intellectually inferior or superior." It is more accurate to say that liberalism must reject any such proposition, even if it turns out to be a true fact about nature. Liberalism must reject any such possibility a priori. Accepting such a proposition may indeed make one categorically illiberal, but that has to do with the nature of liberalism not with the nature of any specific illiberalism.

Paul:

The Bible.

OJ:

You confuse the Jews with the nation-state they have founded.

AFAIK, Mr Cella is pro-Israel.

Paul:

The Jews are toast anyway, but Christians will take over Israel unless a seriously reformed Islam exists.

As in Holy?

or Ashes to ashes, toast to toast?

Indeed, one must take the millenial perspective....