There’s a wonderful book, A Confederacy of Dunces, the title of which refers to an epigraph from Jonathan Swift's essay, "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting": "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." I was reminded of it this week when the confederacy of dunces both here and in Great Britain seems to have linked arms against the genius of Western civilization and the long-suffering middle class which has for so long sustained it.

Key players in the confederacy are perpetually offended feminists who find patriarchal tyranny lurking behind every pronoun and university library stack. This week we learned to our horror that in Rotherham, England over a 16-year period 1,400 children -- mostly white girls -- were raped by multiple Pakistani Moslem men and they were beaten, raped, abducted, drugged, threatened into compliance, and trafficked around Northern England. Worse, the situation was widely known to the police, the city council members, and countless child welfare workers, all of whom refused to do anything to bring the miscreants to justice and stop the abuse. The story has legs and reports are already coming in of similar stories in other towns and cities in England and elsewhere in Europe.

If you searched the usual feminist websites for the story as it broke you’d not have heard of it. Why? Quite obviously because “feminists” in the US and UK are like the old line Communists’ “useful idiot” pawns, set off to do battle with make-believe opponents on the basis of lies while their allies do far worse to them. The bureaucrats in Rotherham were, we are told, afraid to act because the pervasive worldview of multiculturalism has so paralyzed their brains that they feared being called “racists” if they took action to protect the girls.

To be sure, as Ciaran, the author of the above-linked piece, notes, “multiculturalism is a Moral Autoimmune disorder”:

A month or so ago I introduced the concept of Moral Autoimmune Disorders (MAIDs), a social strategy employed by free riders to turn cooperators’ altruistic punishment defense against themselves. In short, the free riders fool the cooperators into identifying their own group or even themselves as free riders, inducing them to direct their punishments upon themselves rather than the free riders.  This gives the free riders free reign to exploit the assets and resources of the cooperators.

The Rotherham rape case provides a vivid example of just how effectively a MAIDs attack can be in suppressing a population’s instincts to self defense. When the political leaders on the left created the cult of multiculturalism to secure their own political advantage, and implemented both the carrot of “diversity” and the stick of “racism” to enforce it, they cast the native population of England as the moral transgressors, and fooled the English into seeing themselves as the free riders. So strong is the instinct to punish free riders in the English population that they not only refused to protect themselves, but they punished anyone who attempted to do so.

Just consider the protective instincts that had to be suppressed to allow this catastrophe to happen:  the protective instinct all humans feel for children; the protective instinct men feel for women; the defensive instinct that groups feel against outsiders; the possessive instinct that men feel for the women of their group against outsider men. These powerful instincts have played an essential role as long as man has walked the earth in protecting each society’s self interest against those who would harm them. And yet, here they are in Rotherham, rendered completely ineffective by this coordinated Multicultural MAIDs attack.

And no case of this capitulation to Multicultural MAIDs is more astonishing than the feminists’, as they have yet another powerful instinct to overcome -- the natural fear and revulsion women have to rape, amplified and intensified by years of feminist rape indoctrination. Despite all their cultivated outrage and their patriarchy-smashing aggression, these feminists have been rendered deaf, dumb and blind by gangs of Pakistani rapists and the progressive elites who enabled them.  These feminists don’t care about the Rotherham rapes because they are too scared – scared to lose their social standing among their New Totalitarian peers.

The moral of this story is clear -- those that do not protect and pursue their own interests because of ideology or deception, are exploited by those that do.

The links between the Moslem extremists in the UK now burrowed into the state-supported schools and local councils like Rotherham’s are coming to light, mostly in the alternative media: Here’s one well-researched account linking Labour’s Shadow Justice Minister with the most extreme Moslem financiers and preachers.

I think there can be little argument with that, but from a political science point of view, fear is not all that has zipped the feminists’ lips. Like the Moslem beneficiaries of the West’s long sleep, they believe they have more to gain by playing footsie with leftist politicians than they do by actually defending women. How else do you explain their recent history in the US? Recall, if you will, that they got President Clinton to sign an order requiring employers charged with sexual abuse to detail under oath their personal sexual histories despite the legal irrelevance to the case. Obviously they believed that this would encourage quick settlements on behalf of women claimants regardless of the weakness of their charges. When Paula Jones caught President Clinton in this trap of his own creation, he perjured himself. From the feminists, not a word of criticism. Nor did they ever spring into action when he engaged in sexual relations in the White House with a young intern and his Praetorian Guard whipped out their nuts and sluts defenses against her and other women. And those women were, like Paula Jones and the Rotherham youngsters, often from the very poorer class on whose behalf their leftist allies purport to be working.

Here’s the great Pat Condell detailing the leftist/Islamist tilting infiltration of local councils like Rotherham's.

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He calls this “Progressive moral depravity” and when the facts in Rotherham’s scandal become known who could possibly disagree with that characterization?  Can the Western world’s feminists who ignore Rotherham, female genital mutilation, child marriage, and honor killings avoid the same characterization? I think not.

They are perfectly content to survive by lies and hypocritical behavior. This week in Time, Christina Hoff Sommers detailed “Feminist Myths That Will Not Die”. Myth Number 4 seems to echo the victory they achieved when Clinton tipped the litigation scales in their favor on sexual harassment claims.

MYTH 4: One in five in college women will be sexually assaulted.

FACTS: This incendiary figure is everywhere in the media today. Journalists, senators and even President Obama cite it routinely. Can it be true that the American college campus is one of the most dangerous places on earth for women?

The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from 2005 to 2007. Two prominent criminologists, Northeastern University’s James Alan Fox and Mount Holyoke College’s Richard Moran, have noted its weaknesses:

“The estimated 19% sexual assault rate among college women is based on a survey at two large four-year universities, which might not accurately reflect our nation’s colleges overall. In addition, the survey had a large non-response rate, with the clear possibility that those who had been victimized were more apt to have completed the questionnaire, resulting in an inflated prevalence figure.”

Fox and Moran also point out that the study used an overly broad definition of sexual assault. Respondents were counted as sexual assault victims if they had been subject to “attempted forced kissing” or engaged in intimate encounters while intoxicated.

Defenders of the one-in-five figure will reply that the finding has been replicated by other studies. But these studies suffer from some or all of the same flaws. Campus sexual assault is a serious problem and will not be solved by statistical hijinks.

Using this mythical campus rape culture claim, the feminists succeeded in getting the federal government to set up university sex assault panels under Title IX, panels which deny the accused young men any due process at all, a situation so outrageous -- especially after the sickening treatment received by the Duke Lacrosse players by a corrupt prosecutor and an equally corrupt but still unpunished faculty and Administration -- that one can only cheer on those who are suing the universities which are complying with this mandate instead of fighting it. 

Since the professed reason for the federal government's growing supervision of sex on campus is bogus, one is impelled to consider cynical explanations. One need not look far. By showcasing Obama's devotion to women, the 2011 Department of Education letter helped lay the foundation for his 2012 presidential campaign, which trumpeted the charge that Republicans were waging a war against women.

The 2014 presidential task force and McCaskill's bill revive the invidious but politically potent issue for the midterm elections. That some Republicans support the legislation only proves that in politics foolishness competes with cynicism for explanatory power.

But why does the academy readily embrace the illiberal practices foisted upon it by cynical and foolish politicians? Well, here the government is pushing on an open door. Since the 1989 publication of law professor Catharine MacKinnon's “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,” certain quarters of the academy have been internalizing -- and propagating -- the charge that America is a "male supremacist" society whose pervasive structures of oppression deprive women of the capacity to give meaningful consent to sex. The surprisingly widespread acceptance of this radical notion does much to explain the whole campus sexual misconduct industry.

In a male supremacist society, due process rights for men impede justice because by definition heterosexual sex occurs between a male exploiter and an exploited female. In a male supremacist society, the police and courts are hopelessly inadequate because they define rape in terms of physical coercion. Unconscious male objectification and subordination of women and unconscious female submissiveness to men necessitate campus disciplinary boards capable of understanding coercion in terms of impersonal social forces and emotional manipulation.

And, in a male supremacist society, a friendly presidential administration's supervision of campus sexual conduct codes is most welcome, even when it involves government officials' cynical manipulation of preposterous statistics, because extreme circumstances warrant extreme measures.

While feminists and British welfare workers join Obama and his Administration’s silence on Moslem connection to murder and child rape, the UAE is less inhibited by the constraints of multiculturalism -- or perhaps it feels it has more to lose by it. This week by name it condemned “Islamic terrorism”.

Statement of Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba On Challenging Regional Extremism

Islamic extremism is a Middle East problem but it is quickly becoming the world's problem too.  It is a transnational challenge, the most destabilizing and dangerous global force since fascism.

For certain, the United States and the West have a big interest in this battle. But no one has more at stake than the UAE and other moderate countries in the region that have rejected the regressive Islamist creed and embraced a different, forward-looking path.

Now is the time to act.  The UAE is ready to join the international community in an urgent, coordinated and sustained effort to confront a threat that will, if unchecked, have global ramifications for decades to come.

Any action must begin with a clear plan for direct intervention against ISIS but must address the other dangerous extremist groups in the region.  It is also critical to tackle the support networks, the entire militant ideological and financial complex that is the lifeblood of extremism.” [Emphasis supplied]

Charles Krauthammer noted the significance of the strong and surprising UAE statement:

The UAE and the Saudis are very close. As you said, they both were together in attacking Islamic extremists who have taken over Tripoli. You wonder if the UAE statement, which is really remarkable coming from an Arab country, is sort of what the Saudis are thinking but aren't quite yet prepared to say openly. But what's striking to me is that the UAE is not afraid to say "Islamic extremism." The president is. He calls it extremism. In fact, earlier in the show, you showed our counterterrorism, our top guy, Olsen, and he said that the ISIS now is looking to outpace al-Qaeda as the leader of the global extremist movement. He cannot bring himself to say "Islamic." For God's sake, ISIS calls itself the Islamic State, and yet we are so politically correct, we don't want to use the word "Islamic," lest to be a slur on a great religion.

It’s up to you, though. Do you consider the UAE a better judge of danger to the world than our Secretary of State who ranks climate change right up there with terrorism?

This week, he said it was our “Biblical responsibility” to “protect vulnerable Muslim majority countries” from climate change.

Well, I’d take his theological interpretation and view on climate dangers with a full salt cellar. Climate “warming” has been on hiatus for at least 15 years now, 15 years in which the Moslem fanatics have beset the world. Anyway, he’s no great prognosticator. He’s the man who, Iowahawk reminded us, sat down with his wife and Assad and his wife to a warm candlelight dinner in Syria two years ago, then three months ago compared Assad to Hitler and just last week urged us to send help to Assad right away.

Like his boss, his words are written in sand:

The only thing you can really bank on with these morally depraved progressive dunces is you can’t bank on anything they say.