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PrintAugust 4, 2009
Liberating the Third World with the Chains of Liberalism
I would like to comment on the August 4 piece titled "Avoiding the Next Obama" and commend the author, L.E. Ikenga, for a job well-done. She articulated nicely something I've long lamented: the virulence of the virus of liberalism. It is so virulent, in fact, that it spreads like wildfire even throughout a place such as the Third World, which some may think would have little acquaintance with it. And I have sometimes told people how it spreads: oh-so bright young skulls full of mush from faraway lands come to the West to be "educated" at our oh-so fine universities, contract the virus, and then return to their own nations and infect the hapless souls who lap up their "intellectualism."
I can't tell you how many times I've wished that I could just address these people in the Third World en masse, because I know what I would tell them. I would say:
By all means, embrace America's technology and medical advances, but do not adopt her latest social innovations. Spit them out; reject them without hesitation. If you embrace the modern West's psychology, child-rearing practices, entertainment, feminism and its left-wing academics and its secularism, you will destroy yourselves before even having a chance to come to flower.
I also want you to understand what Europe you are emulating: a dying Europe. Europe did not become great based on the aforementioned, based on what you see today; it is killing itself with those things. It became great because of what some would call the old things, those triumphs better described as timeless: ancient wisdom, Christianity, and the traditions derived thereof. So if you want to look at things European, observe what made Europe great. Read the ancient Greek philosophers; and St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine and the rest of the Church fathers. Read G.K. Chesterton. Imbibe what allowed Europe to rise from barbarism, not what is at this very moment poisoning her soul.
The last part of that is the point Third Worlders are missing. They don't even understand what Europe they are emulating. They are following in the footsteps of a decrepit old man who lost his faith, vigor, passion and lust for life ages ago. He is now just a mere shadow of his former self, contenting himself with his gadgets, his petty pleasures, his frivolous diversions. He long ago "retired" from the job of building the abode of man and now wiles away the hours in that eternal nursing home, that place once occupied by the Greeks and Romans, that last stop on the way to civilizational oblivion.
Now, before concluding, I'll mention where I part company with Ikenga. When he laments how those of his ancestry in the West have lost a sense of their ethnicity, what he is actually bemoaning is assimilation. He essentially says that we're lost if we don't know where we came from, but he misses a very important point: really, we come from God! Once you understand that, once you know your true Father, you are found - never lost. You understand your truest, most basic identity: child of God.
Putting that aside for a moment, however, I'll mention another, more worldly aspect of this. My mother grew up in Germany, but she never taught me German. But even though I had no faith at the time, it didn't matter; I never felt as if I were lost or had missed out on something. I was raised to be American; that was my ethnicity.
Of course, now that rug has been pulled out from under me. Today there is no longer any consensus on what it means to be American. Thus, I can well understand why someone would now be more likely to cling to his ethnicity upon coming here. What is there to assimilate into? What would he become, an ever-in-flux, multicultural man of the moment? What is your culture this nanosecond?
This is one of many reasons why I despise liberalism. It has destroyed the culture in which I was raised, the culture that bequeathed to us prosperity and freedom. And its minions have done this out of a misguided sense of oppression, without any real idea of what will take the culture's place after the deluge. Leftists only know how to destroy, not how to build. They are cultural traitors, and, in a different land and age, they might have been hanged long before causing any trouble.
Now, before concluding, I'll mention where I part company with Ikenga. When he laments how those of his ancestry in the West have lost a sense of their ethnicity, what he is actually bemoaning is assimilation. He essentially says that we're lost if we don't know where we came from, but he misses a very important point: really, we come from God! Once you understand that, once you know your true Father, you are found - never lost. You understand your truest, most basic identity: child of God.
Putting that aside for a moment, however, I'll mention another, more worldly aspect of this. My mother grew up in Germany, but she never taught me German. But even though I had no faith at the time, it didn't matter; I never felt as if I were lost or had missed out on something. I was raised to be American; that was my ethnicity.
Of course, now that rug has been pulled out from under me. Today there is no longer any consensus on what it means to be American. Thus, I can well understand why someone would now be more likely to cling to his ethnicity upon coming here. What is there to assimilate into? What would he become, an ever-in-flux, multicultural man of the moment? What is your culture this nanosecond?
This is one of many reasons why I despise liberalism. It has destroyed the culture in which I was raised, the culture that bequeathed to us prosperity and freedom. And its minions have done this out of a misguided sense of oppression, without any real idea of what will take the culture's place after the deluge. Leftists only know how to destroy, not how to build. They are cultural traitors, and, in a different land and age, they might have been hanged long before causing any trouble.
Again, though, I will emphasize that I do not feel lost because I have my faith, something they can never take away. If anything, I just feel angry when I ponder the late, great U. S.A. Oh, I'm glad I knew ye - at least for that brief period of my youth.
