And so we hear that Western democracies will become demographically unworkable by, say, 2020 because the birthrate of muslims will overwhelm liberal and pluralist democratic ideals. There's a genre of discourse we should maybe call gothic impotence. Characterised by stern warnings and dark intimations of disaster, it takes solace in patent inevitabilities as a kind of bitter vindication. Scaremongering that doesn't bother to sell us practicable solutions is just indulgent.
Instead of getting edgy that soon "The skyscrapers will be theirs", and so, presumably, will our women; we should remember that prosperity and incorporation into the structure of our societies changes people - and is pretty much who "we" are anyway. It's right to insist on the framework of polite contestation that democracy depends on. Curiously, Mark Steyn believes the fatal problem for "Western civilization" is a loss of primal manliness (grr!) in the face of muslims everywhere who think-as-one: "The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb".
Curiously, Mark Steyn believes the fatal problem for "Western civilization" is a loss of primal manliness (grr!).
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's a fair summary of Steyn's position, even allowing for the license of caricature.
Scaremongering that doesn't bother to sell us practicable solutions is just indulgent.
"Scaremongering" suggests fears are being cultivated with an ulterior motive. If so, what do you think the hidden agenda is? If not, why couldn't someone draw attention to a big long-term problem even if they can't provide a solution?
Thanks Peter, glad you're holding me to account on this.
ReplyDeleteI'm using "scaremongering" here to mean the selling of fear. Selling fear is sometimes not that far removed from the political process as it involves consensus-building, narrative and appealing feelings of solidarity – all that good stuff. But this particular story (in the gothic impotence style) is at the less noble end of a rhetorical spectrum. The content's in the grandstanding with this theatre critic; and to relish the fear, we're encouraged to suspend disbelief in a set of monolithic identity labels that foster the dramatic irony of a lately effeminate and critically embattled civilisation. It's an indulgent conceit because it promotes hostility and suspicion and it messes up civil society, without a cogent higher purpose.
Is the thing. And Mark Steyn trumpets "Western civilization", but rejects secularism and mistrusts social welfare. And environmentalism, for good measure. To which I reply, "Grr, let's get the Mohammedans!"