Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Some thoughts

When Fukujama in early 90 declared the end of history, he completely overlooked existence of the last undefeated aggressive, expansionist, totalitarian ideology - Islam. It is called "religion", but it is religion in name only because of its clearly stated political goals. Historically some other religions also declared such goals, but were urged to drop them when confronted and challenged by liberal political philosophy; this reform was the heart of Enlightenment. Islam has not undergone this transformation, and it is not clear yet whether it can accept it or survive it. So, Islam is the enemy. By diplomatic reasons it would be unwise to declare it officially; diplomacy inevitably includes good portion of hypocrisy. But it would be a suicide to fool ourselves by "religion of peace" rhetoric. Eradicate Islam is not possible now, but it is not needed. Our goal is to defeat, defang and disarm it, put it back into lethargic submission, which is its natural disposition.


Giving duly prizes to democracy and liberalism, one should also be aware of their inherent weaknesses and moral dangers. Enlightenment has a dark side to it — skepticism turned to relativism turned to nihilism. And democracy should have counterweights in form of aristocracy of spirit, or meritocracy. Otherwise it devolves into conglomerated mediocrity. Evelyn Waugh nailed it his The Loved One, and gave some cures in Brideshead Revisited. George Orwell declared that Waugh was "about as good a novelist as one can be while holding untenable opinions." But half a century after, these opinions do not seem to me untenable. One simply need have some faith to defend them.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad they can't be relegated back to the lives of goat-herders and camel-jockeys that they so richly deserve. It is one of history's bad jokes that the largest source of crude oil in the world has Muslims living over it.

Anonymous said...

"So, Islam is the enemy".

Sir,

Are you insane? Islam is not the enemy, zealotism in all its forms is.
The zealotism foud in the ideolgies of sucide bombers is a distilled version of your own: that we can make broad generalizations about huge, unimaginably diverse, groups of people based on our own limited belief.

Many muslims are doctors, mathematicians and other such leaders of rational thought.

What kind of "mathematician" makes broad sweeping, irrational generalizations about the spirit of millions of people, or the values which they hold dear, when he could not dream of being able to quantify them? You can believe that this screen is purple all you want, but that does not make it so. The human spirit is indomitable regardless of what name it calls a church.

Kassandra Troy said...

Hi Sergey,
Welcome to the blegosphere. Loved this post. Very promissing. I too am trying the make sense of this postmodern madness, that is getting worse by the day. In Moscow too, eh? Meantime I'll put you on my blogroll.
Keep up the good work!
Cassandra,
Athens, Greece
http://millennium-notes.blogroll.com/

Sergey said...

Hi, Cassandra,
Potmodern madness has its place in Moscow, too, but only in relatively small circle of pro-Western intellectuals. Much more vicious is pre-modern or even primordial madness of almost everybody else. Enlightenment was very superficial in Old Russia, and was after revolution almost completely eradicated by Communists. No wonder, it is very hard to find a truly enlightened person here.

Sergey said...

To anti-fa:
I need not "quantify" spirit of Muslims, because it reveals itself with unambiguity in their holy book. It is as intolerant and hell-bent on world domination by military conquest as Mein Kampf. (My grandmother was an Arabist and Koran translator, historian and specialist on Arab Khaliphate.) I also know that many prominent Nazi were doctors, mathematicians, engineers and other leaders of rational thought. They built their ballistic missiles and extermination camps very rationally.

Cappy said...

I see brave, anonymous anti-fascist has bravely slunk away to the magic land of Kumbiyah (most likely one of our stupid liberal enclaves, such as Berkely, or Cambridge Mass.), where there are no Muslim terrorists, only happy Muslim Keebler Elves baking cookies, and all the Minarets are made of candy canes.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sergmiezer,

It is the radical factions of Islam that are the enemy and we must remain clear about that very important distinction. They are the one that have invited us into their war global civil war – the war within Islam. Liberalism has many allies within Islam and we should not lump them all in as the enemy -- to defend our Islamic democratic and socialist friends from those who are trying to re-establish an Ottoman style caliphate, with all of it’s intolerance to what we see as common human rights, is why I support this war – I think we, a union of neocons and anti-fascist or classical liberals, should be very clear about this. However, ultimately these are just my thoughts.

buddy larsen said...

It's very confusing. However, even if the evil is only an interpretation of the book--it still comes from the book.

Proper "outside" response to this confusion would be to ignore it.

However, when the confusion begins to attack and kill and destroy the "outside", then the "outside" has every right to fight back, and since the confusion has not been rectified by the people themselves, there can be no requirement to make distinctions that the "inside" won't bother to make.

buddy larsen said...

It's very confusing. However, even if the evil is only an interpretation of the book--it still comes from the book.

Proper "outside" response to this confusion would be to ignore it.

However, when the confusion begins to attack and kill and destroy the "outside", then the "outside" has every right to fight back, and since the confusion has not been rectified by the people themselves, there can be no requirement to make distinctions that the "inside" won't bother to make.