Progressivism/liberalism and its unintended but certain consequences.
[..]All forms of collective violence have a religious dimension” Roger Scruton, the most influential English philosopher, professor at St. Andrews University, a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature tells me in our conversation. “Christians are vulnerable and ISIS will go on with their decimation and will not stop until the West militarily attacks the Islamic State. The West is in retreat from the world, has lost all the spiritual and cultural values on which Europe was founded. Otherwise, facing these reports of Christians killed and churches destroyed, the West would immediately intervene against ISIS. But it will be punished, even by its own European multiculturalism”.
A few hours after this conversation, a Muslim tried to kill a good many Westerners on a train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris. According with Scruton, the fault lies in the culture of repudiation. “The Christians of the East are the scapegoat of our weakness in this existential moment. There is a deep sense of guilt, but also the elimination of war from our public and political imagination. Muslims, instead, want to fight for something and are eliminating in their passage entire cities, cultures, innocent people. Feminists and those who have defended the ‘minorities’ are silent on the return of the sexual slavery for Yazidi girls. The fate of Christians in the Middle East is important for us Westerners. We must not turn our backs on these communities since their fate, in the long run, it will also be our destiny”.
But the West is letting Islamic forces destroy people and civilizations. Who in the West would be capable of the sacrifice of Khaled Asaad, the archaeologist of Unesco’s jewel, Palmyra, beheaded by ISIS for refusing to tell them where he had hidden its treasures?
Finkielkraut says: “God is gone, and getting Him back is beyond our control. ‘Where there was God, is today’s melancholy’ said Gershom Sholem.”
They are both right, Finkielkraut and Houellebecq, and they both explain why only Israel and its people, not the West, are the ultimate hope of civilization. Only Israel still uses war and military force for good reasons, and only in Israel you have that mix of vibrant modernity and ancient spirit which give reasons for survival.
A wonderful article that gives perspective on the core issue of our time.