What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Tony Blair and the Jihad.

I am conflicted on the subject of Tony Blair. There are good reasons to dislike him intensely. He has, for instance, presided over the abolition of Britain’s liberty. There has been no more reliable advocate of Liberalism, or more feckless and even perverse skeptic of multiculturalism, than Tony Blair.

On the other hand, his loyalty and eloquence as an ally has been unfailing; and shone most brightly when America was in her hour of need. This is no small thing. Nor should it be forgotten that he disarmed Socialism in Great Britain, and allowed the British people to prosper — at least materially.

Whether Britain can be said to have prospered, in the more general sense, under his Governments, is an open question. Business enterprise has been unfettered to some degree — but rushing in behind the levelers of Liberalism, Blair’s men, has been a wave of social ruin and debasement, of nihilism and passivity, almost unparalleled in the Western world. It is like American cities in the 1970s. And perhaps the Liberals can take credit for this at least: they have demonstrated that their philosophy, when implemented with sufficient vigor, can deprive men of any race, creed or color of their culture and manners, and reduce them to barbarism.

Into these ruins filtered the agents and provocateurs of the Jihad; and they will not be easily dislodged. This may well be Blair’s most lasting legacy: as from ruins of the decaying Byzantine Empire the Turkish Jihad acquired its resources and even manpower, so too may today’s incarnation of the Jihad soon gain control of substantial resources in Europe, including in Great Britain. Tony Blair presided over the first steps of this ominous process.

It is not a process without precedent, as I intimated in referring to Byzantium. That very word indicates for us a maze of impenetrable rules and exceptions: not unlike, say, “nondiscrimination” regulations in the workplace, or zoning rules in urban centers. All over the Western world, but most markedly in Europe and Britain, byzantine bureaucratic despotism is descending upon human endeavor, and Tocqueville’s prediction is borne out:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

This sort of thing was the doom of Greek Rome, the empire of Constantinople. And once the yoke of the Byzantine state was thrown off, often by the armies of the Jihad, all that great reservoir of human capital — the inheritors of both Greek antiquity and Christianity, their culture, philosophy, literature, rhetoric — was made available to the Caliph or Sultan. Every lawless adventurer could rise through the ranks; every cunning and amoral seadog could acquire own ship and wage his piracy under a holy banner; every gangster could find backing; every renegade succor. And then, having inked deals of some sort with the skilled ruffians and brigands, the Jihad began its unholy conscription, what might be the most awful form of slavery ever conceived by the depraved mind of man: the devsirme, the taking of Christian boys into service as the Sultan’s shock troops — the theft of the flower of Greek society and its transformation into their conqueror and oppressor.

Could this ruthless exploitation of caged potency be repeated? None can say for sure; but I for one will not rest soundly in the belief that the industrial capacity of Europe will never be turned against my descendants and countrymen. Read any expert on Islam — Paul Marshall or Andrew Bostom or Bernard Lewis — and you will learn of the famous Islamic patience. Our own Liberals may have achieved more despoliation than the “liberals in a hurry” ever dreamed of, but the Islamic nemesis of Liberalism is not in a hurry about anything. The original Arabic Jihad first assailed Constantinople in the 7th century; and by the time Mehmet II took the title of Roman Emperor, having finally conquered Nova Roma, his Sultanate, the inheritor of that original Jihad, had already absorbed much that was Greek Rome. Can this astonishing process be repeated, and once-Christian Europe be given over a new form of the Jihad? I believe it can.

An institution as mighty as the Jihad, which once digested such towering unities as Greece, Rome, the Empire and the Orthodox Church — that only the last has endured should give even our freethinkers pause — is not to be taken lightly.

Tony Blair took it lightly, I fear: and his country will pay dearly for this blunder.

Comments (5)

"There has been no more reliable advocate of Liberalism, or more feckless and even perverse skeptic of multiculturalism"

Immigration has shot up since Blair came to power, only very recently has he come to question it. But immigration remains as high as ever, and he refuses to do anything about it. Also the British 'culture' that politicians want immigrants to integrate to is completely decadent; beer swilling larger louts and mass atheism. The soccer pitch is their church.

"This may well be Blair’s most lasting legacy: as from ruins of the decaying Byzantine Empire the Turkish Jihad acquired its resources and even manpower, so too may today’s incarnation of the Jihad soon gain control of substantial resources in Europe, including in Great Britain. "

I'm confused, is this a dig at Blair's support for Turkish EU membership? I doubt the Muslims will ever 'gain control of resources', given that most of them subsist on welfare as is.

"Can this astonishing process be repeated, and once-Christian Europe be given over a new form of the Jihad? I believe it can."

Yes if the Turks get into the EU, otherwise no. They are too dependent on the wider society for all manner of sustenance, and as Denmark has shown, you can easily cut off Muslim immigration with the political willpower.

I said it is conjecture that Muslims will gain control of Europe's resources, but who in the 11th century could have predicted that the wild Turks of the Asian steppes would, having adopted Islam, take control of Byzantium's resources?

The welfarism will abate if the British State fails, which is likely to eventually happen, given mounting social pathologies.

What do you make of western culture in all this? I mean look at what immigrants see on entering the west - imagine seeing Amsterdam for the first time, what would you think? I would certainly reject those values. Immigrants, sadly, seem to have only decadence to integrate towards, and that is the wests biggest problem. Immigrants rationally reject western culture in 2007, I certainly have, and reach back to what it once was.

The only solution to this is no immigration.

Labour has become rhetorically less socialist, and converged instead on the American model of managed capitalism, but so what? Our system is preferable to the Soviet - at least we, and our English cousins, needn't wait in bread lines - but it is not without its shortcomings, either. So, to the extent that Blair has defanged old Labourite socialism, one cheer for him, perhaps, though at least those old British socialists were quite often patriots, and still had a country worth loving. Blair it seems, has done much to change that, too.

As to his support of the United States, it brings to mind the old book review - what is good is not original, and what is original, is not good. Insofar as he backed the US in Afghanistan, and provided intelligence support and succour, he did nothing that the leaders of numerous countries have not done, including the much-maligned "Old Europeans" in France and Germany. Where he was distinguished from others, it was by his (eloquent by Bushian standards) advocacy of, and provision of diplomatic cover for, the Iraq folly in particular, and for "global democratic revolution" - by force of Anglo-Saxon arms where necessary - more generally. Whatever his intentions, it is unclear that he did us any favors by that. Whatever good he may have done for the US is far outweighed by the harm he has done to Britain.

All fair comments, Cyrus; and the last is a summary I cannot hope to refute.

Thanks for stopping by!

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.