Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The Real War of the Worlds

All week long I’ve been hearing the ruckus in the news about the Iraq war, and faulty intelligence, and torture, and oil, and blah, blah, blah. So I’ve decided to take a big picture approach. With the almost daily bombings in Iraq and Israel, the recent bombings in London, the current riots in France, the suicide attack in Jordan, and our own precarious political climate, it occurs to me that the world's future is being decided at this time. Moments like this are extremely rare in history. There are now three ideologies competing to shape the future of mankind. They are militant Islam, Western European secular socialism, and American Judeo-Christian values.

Though most people ignore the fact, almost all of the world's Muslims believe that all of mankind should be Muslim. This, in and of itself, is not troubling - after all, most Christians would like the whole world to be Christian. What is troubling is that if only 10 percent of these Muslims are prepared to use violence to impose their religion on others, we are talking about 100 million people. This is the reason about one million non-Muslim Sudanese have been killed in the last 15 years. This is the reason for the violence in Nigeria - Christians there are also resisting the violent imposition of Islam. This is the reason for Islamic terror - to weaken those countries that stand in the way of an Islamic takeover.

The second ideology seeking to dominate the world is secular socialism as practiced in Western Europe and supported by leftist elites in our own country. This is the reason for the anti-American demonstrations in Europe. Most of these anti war types could not care less about the wars of the world. They have been silent throughout the mass murder of Sudan's blacks, during the genocide in Rwanda, during China's crushing of Tibet, and during Saddam's wars against Iran, Kuwait and the Kurds. American and European “peace” activists have found those atrocities and wars boring. European socialists and their American supporters are as passionate about secularism as Muslims are about Islam, and they want to dominate the world as much as militant Muslims want to. Their vehicles are the United Nations, the European Union, international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocols, and international institutions such as the International Criminal Court in Brussels.

While Islam and socialism dominate many countries, the third ideology is unique to America. There is no other country that claims to be Judeo-Christian, and defines itself as good. Other countries laud their greatness, not their goodness, and there is a big difference (Nazi Germany was great, but not good). This is why America so often “goes it alone” - with the partial exceptions of Israel and Britain, no other society has the same values as we do. It is thus sad that these values are not secure in America. Many Americans, including almost its entire intellectual class, are as hostile to Judeo-Christian values as the militant Muslims and European socialists are. Almost no one is teaching the next generation of Americans what is unique about American values. American children are mostly educated by people who believe in Europe's values, not ours. The American way of life can only prevail if Americans believe in it. That is why, as important as the military battles against militant Islam are, the most important battle is the ideological one within America – a battle that is far from won. This is why I have so much contempt for politicians of both parties. They are too obtuse to see the big picture because they are too busy yapping at each other’s heels over complete nonsense. Given that only America offers a viable alternative to both militant Islam and secular socialism, if we lose the battle here, humanity has a very dark future. To quote Reagan, “If we fail, we will sentence our children to a thousand years of darkness.”

4 comments:

Ray said...

What most in our land do not understand is their very ability to protest against Christians is rooted and grounded in the fact that we have those Judeo-Christian ethics that they despise so much...

If the people who destest Christianity and adore inclusivity really lived under any of the regimes that they support, they would quickly find out how wonderful this place is...

Witness the soldier who fled to North Korea and lived there... He tells a tale of ideological hell, where everyone lives in desperate poverty and the government even told him when to have sex with his wife!

The problem I have with many of these so-called 'enlightened ones' who espouse a "world as a Village" have never lived anywhere except in the cocoon of their protected environment... I have lived in many places, and I am happy that our country is based upon Judeo-Christian ethics, albeit erosion has set in.

To be idealistic is a wonderful thing, as long as it is securely tethered to some type of reality and experience that lends credence to the idealism...

Sorry for the length, but one last thing: Every notice that the most out-spoken idealists are University professors who have tenure? Funny, they have no experience in the 'real-world' and cannot be fired (or it is difficult), and they sit around all day thinking 'great thoughts' having nothing to ground them to... Hmmm

As usual, a thought-provoking post...

Charles North said...

Thanks Ray. Someone once said that socialism has been proven to be such a failure that the only people now arguing for it are intellectuals. Go figure! One of my Yale educated profs was going on one day about how America, because of our wealth, takes too big a slice of the global "pie." Other students agreed, saying that the "pie" needed to be "fairly" distributed. When I said, "why not make more pies?" that simple economics is not a zero-sum game comment flew way over everyone's head.

Ryan said...

Great post.
I do find it interesting that Judeo-Christian values are considered passe in the global village, but we are held to a much higher standard than others.

Charles North said...

Yeah, that's a good observation. Think of when Ghandi asked Indians to lie down on railway tracks to stop British rail cars - he was counting on them stopping because he knew their values. If India was a Nazi German colony would they have stopped? Would Ghandi have even asked his people to lie on those tracks?