Ultimate Tradcon Parlor Fantasy

Ironically, Enlightenment universalism is the only perspective, or at least the only one I'm familiar with, that can legitimize Christian civilization (such as it may be) from the outside--which is to say give it independent objective validity and thus any universal claim to "rights".

Otherwise it's just a power rumble between subjective adherents to respective civilizations in the jungle of nihilism, where simply the most powerful beast wins.

You know, when Islam conquered Greek Byzantium, they preserved much of the Greek classical heritage, and we got copies of Aristotle etc. from them.

Another example, the barbarians conquered Rome, but they soon found themselves Christian, speaking Romance, and wearing togas. Oh, wait, not that last one.

My point: Islam might conquer some of the world but find themselves very influenced by that world.

"Jim Pinkerton goes on to propose a grand global alliance of the Christian peoples against all others (and drawing Israel under our protective umbrella)."

Gee, what a surprise. Pinkerton's been singing that same song for years now, along with the others at techcentralstation.com . Dallas's own Fred Turner dispenses the same pro-Israel Kool-aid to anyone who can stand his didactic, leaden prose.

The US and Israel against the Rest of the World- that's the neo-con dream.

You know, when Islam conquered Greek Byzantium, they preserved much of the Greek classical heritage, and we got copies of Aristotle etc. from them.

Another example, the barbarians conquered Rome, but they soon found themselves Christian, speaking Romance, and wearing togas. Oh, wait, not that last one.

My point: Islam might conquer some of the world but find themselves very influenced by that world.

This is an interesting point, and I would like to hear a response to it.

Sure, Islam may do away with much of popular culture, but what traditional conservative wishes to conserve that anyway?

I suppose people have to worry about something, and this sounds like a good one, in that it is
1. Outside the control of any individual, therefore we don't have to (can't) do anything about it, and
2. All in the more-or-less distant future, and
3. In any case highly unlikely.

Not unlike the fear of Global Communism. Or, looking further back, the Domination of Protestant America By The Pope.

Global Communism fell beneath the wheels of the economic power of the West. As did Roman Catholicism as a secular force (and, in many cases, as a spiritual force). I suspect that, as Nick points out, Islam will be no different.

Now, whether the culture into which all these people have been or will soon be integrated is a good thing.....well, that's another question.

"The history of Christendom, with a few exceptions, has been nothing but domination. Islam is just plagerizing Christendom's thinking here. Sorry, it is all in the history books. And we will all suffer for the sins of our fathers."

How silly. Christendom has its share of blood and sin, but to compare the preservation of Western Civilization with 1400 years of ravenous Islam is ridiculous. You may as well believe in fairies. No, it's not in all the history books, unless all the history books are written by Noam Chomsky. The clearest refutation of this nonsense is an eyes-open look at the differences between Islamic societies and those (today and yesterday) derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition (which preserved the Greek tradition even as it modified it). Yes, the "Judeo" part was not recognized for a long time; that doesn't make it any less essential.

Furthermore, even the horrific sins of Christendom produced advances in civilization which we must recognize, even as we do not forget the crimes of the past. The Spanish Inquisition added the novelty of presenting witnesses in your defence. The Crusades (and similar battles) staved off the murderous advances of Islam into Europe. History is like that: progress often comes from the depths of sin, rather than the posturing of the good. Kicking the Muslims out of Spain saved Spain. Kicking the Jews out of Spain saved nothing; it just became another sorry chapter in the history of Christians persecuting Jews.

When the Crusaders sacked Constantinople the Pope was so angry he excommunicated the Crusaders (no small penalty back then). Today, we can't even get the so-called moderate Muslims of CAIR to denounce suicide bombers.

As for us all "suffering the sins of our fathers," it's not our fathers that are to blame. It is us. We are the one's bequething a world of increasingly violent jihad to our children. WE won't suffer (most of us won't) but our children and grand children will reap what we have sown.

The kind of psuedo-historical/philosophical thinking represented by theisticagnostic just muddies the waters.

"And that, I think, would be terribly wrong. If this is what you think, I think you should defend that straight out. If it's not what you think, you should refute it, for these are unhappy views, I think."

Sal, that's not how this blog works, at least as far as I've observed.

Rod tosses the red meat straight up at center court, and the hounds leap and snap at it as they will.

"And that, I think, would be terribly wrong. If this is what you think, I think you should defend that straight out. If it's not what you think, you should refute it, for these are unhappy views, I think."

Sal, no tradcons that I know reject the entire Enlightenment out of hand, or say that no good at all came from it. It is the universalism of Enlightenment philosophy, the idea that reason and empirical knowledge are the whole ball of wax, that would have to be overturned (if I'm reading Rod right), and that's unlikely to happen.

Assuming that Islam cannot be lived with, there is a third alternative besides (i) genocide and (ii) separationism - de-Islamisation of the Muslim world. I would like to hear comments on how to go about this.

I've said this before, but the firmness of Islam seems to depend on its connection with patriotism. A Kurdish friend of mine has apostatised from Islam, and maintains that Islam is the religion of his oppressors, the Arabs. I don't know whether this helps, though.

"a) traditionalists who reject modernism and feminism and embrace traditional Western values"

It's just so hard to fully reject modernism on a global, geostationary satellite networked, Internet blog, isn't it, M_David; it's like that booger you just can't quite thump off. ;-)

There are a couple of problems the neocon fantasy fatally ignores: First, Christianity, no less than Islam, is a proselytizing religon. Evangelicals especially feel compelled by Christ in Matthew 28 to "go into all the world, making disciples of all men." This creates an irreconcilable conflict with a live-and-let-live diplomacy.

Second, we live in a world of asymetrical power. It only took nineteen men and a quarter million dollar investment to give us 9/11. And while Afganistan provided bin Laden shelter, no government plotted with him. No one has yet suggested a satisfactory militarily response to such a threat Bush and the neocons have ignored this reality, preferring to create straw men to knock down conventionally in their great Global War on Terror. This tactic has predictably created more jihadists than it has killed, leaving Bush and his ilk looking more and more like Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby, but without Brer Rabbit's insight into his perdicament.

I don't think M_David suggested the clash was between Luddites and Geeks. It would be a mistake to assume that tradition is an enemy of technology, notwithstanding the fact that technology poses certain challenges to the good life.

"I don't think M_David suggested the clash was between Luddites and Geeks. It would be a mistake to assume that tradition is an enemy of technology, notwithstanding the fact that technology poses certain challenges to the good life."

It's more a case of being one of Ray Bradbury's "Martians": no one can really be a traditionalist any more, we can only be different types of modernists, perhaps antagonistic, perhaps not, squabbling over which mandarin purity test of "traditionalism" or "modernism" should apply to whom, to what degree.

It figures Tolkien would be used to justify war against multiculturalism. Our friend J.R.R. was quite the British imperialist in his time.

That said, even with all the gloom and doom on here from Rod and others, I still can't see the continent that fought the Battles of Vienna and the Crusades (and countless other wars against the Ottomans) surrendering without a shot.

Granted, Europe ain't quite as militaristic as it was :-) (Though I thought, given the events of the 1930s and 1940s, that's exactly what we in the U.S. were aiming for.)

But even in the "anything-goes" Netherlands, when extreme Islam has reared its ugly head, Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi-Ali have risen up at the cost of their lives, or at least livelihoods, to combat it.

In Germany, the large Turkish-German population (and an overall nation understandably worried, after those horrific "events" of the last century, about civil liberties) is not stopping the interior minister, Wolfgang Schauble, from being a bit bull against Islamic-inspired terror threats.

And in Britain, no one is calling Gordon Brown and his home secretary, Jacqui Smith, "soft on terrorism" -- even as they make the subtle but important distinction (in a land where Muslims from the Subcontinent are a significant share of the population) that anti-terrorism is a series of police actions rather than a war.

I still have hope, unlike some of you, that Osama Bin Laden won't soon be holding the rotating presidency of the EU ...

"I still have hope, unlike some of you, that Osama Bin Laden won't soon be holding the rotating presidency of the EU ..."

What if it's God's will, though?

(And, Larry, you would have to put OBL "in the presidency of the EU ..." wouldn't you! Now, he'll be elevated from Boogeyman to Anti-Christ!)

Heifer

Larry:

It figures Tolkien would be used to justify war against multiculturalism. Our friend J.R.R. was quite the British imperialist in his time.

I'm sorry you get that impression. I seriously doubt Tolkien saw himself in that light. Indeed, I am left to assume that you've not read very much of what he wrote. The mythology for which the War of the Ring is the end of a long cycle is rich with the futility of war and the hubris of ownership and intolerance (born of unreasoning fear) towards others. He wrote very strongly about the embracing of evil for so-called good ends, and the tragic fruits to be had from it.

"Brad, what then is a modernist?"

Damned if I know, other than what all of us are here in the here and now.

In reference to this topic, while reading the current Christopher Hitchens piece about Tariq Ramadan in "Slate" I came across this link (via an Anne Applebaum article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali) to a fascinating article defending Hirsi Ali, and criticizing both the response of the European elites to her and the preference for multiculturalism instead of individual rights and women's rights.

It is by the French philospher Pascal Bruckner. It is long, but well worth reading to the end.

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1146.html

I don't think M_David suggested the clash was between Luddites and Geeks

Thanks, Loudon. My division is between:

a) people who seek an individualistic culture (modernists & feminists)

b) those who seek a culture where individuals are inextricably linked to family and and God-centered community (traditionalists).

This has nothing to do with technology.

But one of the reasons some think traditionalists are Luddites is that they are not afraid to reject technologies they find damaging to the community, family (say Amish with cell phones and cars, or cons who reject abortion or IVF).

However, modernists are progressive and utopian and look to some 'future' in which our problems will be solved by technology. In a sense, science becomes a religion, their hope.

Traditinalists see children and culture as their hope and future. Modernists cannot, because they see the world through individualistic eyes, and can only point to 'progress' as their hope, so the kids must always 'alright' regardless of facts.

Well, M_David, I think you only make my point, that modern "traditionalists" simply define themselves as anything they want to be at any given time, giving and taking this, giving and taking that as it suits them, and define "modernists" as only some sort of Manichean opposite.

"Modernists cannot...because they see see the world through individualistic eyes, and can only point to 'progress' as their hope...see children and culture as their hope and future."? Where do these cartoon creations, and by the same token their Manichean opposites, even exist?

But if it works for you, more power to you.

If any one of these trends changes, then the whole "Islamic Europe" scare disappears in a puff of smoke.

Rich, a few issues with your analysis:

1) we have never seen a feminist, liberal culture like Europe replace itself. No "cycle" here. A culture can't just decide to start having kids, no matter what the government does. Yes, if Europe decides to ditch feminism for traditional family life, sure, they would start having kids again. But there is no precedent for women working jobs and having enough kids to replace the population.

2) it really doesn't matter if Muslims fall into the same trap and quit having kids. Then they too will vanish. There are cultures right now showing great growth in population. Those people will be the ones who fill Europe. Anyone who thinks the whole world is going to go extinct along with feminist Europe needs to brush up on their Darwinian theory. Somebody is gonna breed.

Where you are going wrong is that you think demographics can turn on a dime and there is no cultural reason for population decline - it just "happens". We know through observation both assumptions are false.

Populations are quite predictable (except downward via genocide or disease). You can't just say hey I'm gonna start cranking out kids en-mass. People aren't built that way, trends happen over many generations and are long term. Even tiny "baby-booms" like the 1950's are just that, tiny, and little blips in overall trendlines of population. We know quite well what populations will be by 2050; this isn't some great leap of faith.

As for who will replace Europe if Muslims don't: UN Data shows Africa currently at 905m, and they will be around 1936m by 2050 (this is factoring in current losses from disease and war). Their TFR is around 5 kids per woman right now, and holding fairly steady in many of these countries.

Trust me, somebody is gonna be around to fill Europe with people. Even millions of years ago humans fought Neandrethals for Europe. It's valuable real estate. The arrogance of white Europeans thinking they will rule the land forever even as they shrink simply blows my mind.

what happens when someone spurns his family in favor of his church co-congregants...Traditionalist? Modernist? What?

I said God-centered community, Brad. This is a worldview, not a membership organisation...I never mentioned church congregants at all. A culture can have different denominations and the same general God-centered worldview (America circa 1800).

Breathe deep, relax. It's like my post is a red flag and you are the bull.

And I don't mind a lack of charity, just lack of comprehension. ;-)

"Good question, Brad, and since when do the RRers decry individualism anyways? I thought that was their mantra? Especially as an afront to anything "social.""

Oh, they're trying to talk about abstract radical individualism, which is a logically inevitable precipitate of the modern individual-relation-to-God paradigm, which succeeded the prior individual-relationship-to-tribal-relationship-to-God paradigm.

No matter how much they may wish to feel virtuously superior to the rest of us, I just don't see how they can wish themselves back through that historical-cultural transformation, at least not without replacing the succeeding paradigm with the former.

But as I mentioned on another thread, on my last day at the office I'm down with donning the penis gourd there and dancing myself. ;-)

I'm with you, M_David. "Progress" may be, as e.e. cummings put it, a "comfortable disease," but the exaltation of it as a good in itself is still a disease.

Yes, I'd definitely call the hope of improving the human condition in the future, which includes your children as well as mine, a disease.

That was sarcasm by the way.

Rather "dis" ease, that is.

M_David
You didn't touch the immigration argument. Without mass immigration there is no Islamization of Europe. The numbers just aren't there otherwise. As for the rest of your argument....

we have never seen a feminist, liberal culture like Europe replace itself.

But we have also never seen a feminist, liberal culture like Europe. We don't know whether that kind of culture can replace itself long term, because we don't know whether it will remain a feminist, liberal culture. They don't have to "ditch feminism for traditional family life" in order to have a higher TFR. They just have to decide they want kids. Cultures change rapidly. The culture you see in Europe was largely created in the last 40 years, and could be dramatically different in another 40. The people who created the current culture won't be around then.

But two other things you said really make me think you are off the mark. You said:

A culture can't just decide to start having kids, no matter what the government does.

and in the same post you referred to the 1950's baby boom as "tiny". I think that is silly. The U.S. baby boom was massive. Total live births almost doubled in only 15 years. We still haven't reached the total annual birth rate of the late 1950's even though our population has almost doubled. TFR doubled in many European countries during the same period. If you don't think a culture can just "decide" to start having kids, then look again at population and birth charts for the 1940-1960 time frame. It wasn't a tiny change.

The Muslim population of Europe is so small that a slight uptick in European TFR along with immigration restrictions would push off the Islamization of Europe indefinitely. Birth rates matter, but so due overall numbers. It's hard to out-reproduce the native population of a continent when you make up less than 10% of that continent. And if there is a pan-European backlash against immigration, then African TFR is irrelevant too.

It can get a lot stranger. Think of a scenario where the Muslims have taken Western Europe but the US, Israel and Eastern Europe (including Russia) have divided up the Middle East.

Scenario two: The Jihadist threaten Rome and Paris, in turn, threatens Mecca. (France has had them nukuler weppens for a long time now.)

Scenario three (hang onto your hair): Germany remembers that it has some plans for getting rid of large numbers of people hidden away somewhere.

Hang onto your seats folks. The ride is just starting!

Did anyone else read this piece and feel like Pinkerton got a little too abstract? By the end, I think the Tolkien analogy had been overstretched and his commentary was too far removed from reality to be practical. As Rod noted, his entire proposal is dependent first upon some major changes in the mindset of Wester citizens in the first place. Perhaps he could have devoted more time to discussing how to bring that about first.

M_David...Without mass immigration there is no Islamization of Europe. The numbers just aren't there otherwise.

Rich, my numbers are clear and easy to understand.

The current TFR of Europe is 1.4 (UN 2004). And this includes all of children of immigrants, which means the native European TFR is actually much lower.

It's really not complex. If you don't have 2.1 children per woman, your population shinks. You can do the math as well as I and see when Europe becomes sparse enough to not matter anymore. Of course, Europe itself won't depopulate: other folk will move in. For example,

Europe's population:

728m in 2004
653m by 2050 (UN 2004 proj)

And this 653m projection is only this high because immigration is factored in, which must happen to sustain the economy.

So...it won't be white native Europeans who own that landmass soon. It really doesn't matter who comes in to take over, Islamic folk or African folk.

They don't have to "ditch feminism for traditional family life" in order to have a higher TFR. They just have to decide they want kids.

I think this is kind of funny. Only a person raised in an individualist society could ever think such a thing. It's like saying all a bum has to do to make the big bucks is "decide" he wants the money. No, he has a big lifestyle change ahead of him.

How much time and treasure a couple might invest in children is not made in a vacuum, and it's a lifetime commitment. Children have a high lifestyle cost, and you need two parents to make it happen in quanitity and quality. Young punks rasied as individuals don't just "decide" to be parents and go on to make it happen. It takes training in the hard knocks of family life, and in Europe most women don't even know how to have large families anymore, let alone want them.

The U.S. baby boom was massive. Total live births almost doubled in only 15 years. We still haven't reached the total annual birth rate of the late 1950's even though our population has almost doubled.

The baby-boom never even cracked a TFR=4, and it vanished to below replacement within a generation. I'm sorry, but that's tiny. The only reason we got moderately large populations was from the existing population; the baby boom piggy-backed on many generations of TFRs=6+ that were standard hundreds of years ago.

As a point of reference: Africa - the whole da*n continent! - has a TFR=5 today, and has for a long time. We never even got to 4 during a tiny anomoly caused by a war! Dude, that's tiny when graded on a curve.

If you don't think a culture can just "decide" to start having kids, then look again at population and birth charts for the 1940-1960 time frame. It wasn't a tiny change.

People back in the 1950s had intact families and were raised in a family-friendly culture. They could decide to have large families, as feminism had not yet shattered the family. It was a different era; you had the human capital to work with for raising 4 kid families in quantity if you wanted.

If you doubt how different the world was for mothers in 1950, just listen to how liberals rant and rave about how terrible '50s were for women's rights. And from a feminist's perpective it was. A woman's place was in the home, and a male breadwinner might be paid more for the same job as his woman coworker. Families, mothers, and children were protected. Something like this is what European culture would have to absorb in order to have kids in quantity. Fat chance of that!

...immigration is factored in, which must happen to sustain the economy.

Sure, just look at Japan. They have a TFR of 1.29 and falling, and they have instituted massive guest worker programs to help sustain their economy. Oh wait, no they haven't. Total foreign national population in Japan is about 2 million. About half of those are students. The Japanese government has tightened immigration regulations in the last 3 years.

Because of the one-child policy, China has a TFR around 1.7. The average age in China will surpass the U.S. by 2015 and Europe by 2025. At what point do you expect China to begin importing millions of workers? It's not likely because it is culturally anathema to them.

Depopulation
without immigration could lead to more automation, higher wages, and cheaper real estate. All these in turn could feasibly make family formation more affordable and spur another baby boom. Or not. Who knows? Higher wages and more available land did appear in much of Western Europe following the Black Death. Depopulation can have positives for those still around.

But here's my point. China and Japan are examples of very large countries facing the same demographic issue as Europe. They have not turned to mass immigration as a fix. You say it "must happen". Well, then explain why it must, and explain why China and Japan will begin importing workers as well.

OK, you still haven't made a single argument on immigration other than it "must" happen. But let me address your new ones.

First, I was arguing with your usage of "traditional family life". It just isn't necessary for high birth rates. You keep plugging away at the TFR of 5+ in sub-Saharan Africa. Look a little deeper and you'll find that some of the highest birthrates in Africa are in areas with matriarchal communities that don't resemble traditional Western family structures at all.

In fact, some of the highest birthrates in the U.S. are also amongst single mothers. Two parents may be needed for quality, but not quantity. If those "young punks" you mention decide they want babies, then they will have them. Often times they will have them without "deciding". We aren't talking about the best or wisest way to raise a family. We're talking numbers. Read Theodore Dalrymple. Lots of people in Europe are popping out babies without inculcating the values that you think are necessary. Right now they are a minority, but it may not stay that way. Reproduction only requires will.

As for the baby boom, you are still missing my point. The rate is important but so are the absolute numbers. I know a 3+ TFR is much lower than Africa's. But if native Europe had a 3+ TFR for one generation then dropped back to 1.5, that would increase the overall population enough to push back any talk of Islamization for a couple more generations. The baby boom in the U.S. added at least 1 million more people a year for almost two decades than you would otherwise expect from prior trends. Just reproducing at replacement level would mean another almost 1 million a year when those people hit child bearing age. And that's pretty much what we saw with the so-called "Echo Boom" beginning in the late 1970's.

Cultures change. Sometimes they change rapidly. The culture in Europe and the U.S. could become natalist very quickly without a reversion to 1950's norms.

M-David, just rest assured that the Irish are very, very good at making babies.

M-David, just rest assured that the Irish are very, very good at making babies.

My friend, you are living in the past. Irish TFR=1.9 and dropping like a stone. I've been to the island and seen it myself.

----------

OK, you still haven't made a single argument on immigration other than it "must" happen.

Rich!

Let me repeat one more time: a TFRpopulation loss. Without adding more people somehow, eventually you will have zero population. Put a hole in a bucket, the water runs out.

So if you have a TFR

The computer ate my post above. Once again,

...a TFR less than 2.1 means a population loss. Without adding more people somehow, eventually you will have zero population. Put a hole in a bucket, the water runs out.

TFR below replacement gives a government two options: import or vanish. Somehow, I don't think they will choose the last.

Rich,

...you'll find that some of the highest birthrates in Africa are in areas with matriarchal communities

Matriarchal is a debatable term here. They certainly are not western, but they are very pro-parent, pro-child cultures where motherhood is considered the highest calling for a woman. Feminists are scorned. Men are considered powerful if they have lots of kids. They are the opposite of Europe. And most importantly, Africa is not Europe. It takes thousands of years to create cultures like Africa has. They might fall apart quickly, but complex social cultures are not built in a day. Europe's only hope is to return to something close to her roots, or vanish.

In fact, some of the highest birthrates in the U.S. are also amongst single mothers.

Rich, I think you just made that up. Last I read unmarried women make up about 33% of all births, which would put them below the average fertility. Data, please.

Two parents may be needed for quality, but not quantity. If those "young punks" you mention decide they want babies, then they will have them.

Ah, but they are not, are they? Most women want babies, but few are willing to bear them in this family-hostile climate. Women are not irrational actors; they do what is in their own best interest. Having children in this day and age is not, as we can see from the birth rates.

We aren't talking about the best or wisest way to raise a family. We're talking numbers. Read Theodore Dalrymple.

Sure. Rich, one more time: the European TFR=1.4 and is falling. These are the numbers on the ground. There are NOT "lots of people in Europe are popping out babies". Could they? You say yes, but I say no or they would be already. Something is stopping them.

I get your point on the baby boom. I just doubt by using the human capital we have from the MTV generation we could have another baby boom. I just can't see it happening without force.

Cultures change. Sometimes they change rapidly. The culture in Europe and the U.S. could become natalist very quickly without a reversion to 1950's norms.

Look, I agree cultures can implode overnight. I don't think they can grow overnight without the human capital needed. And why would they? As you said, people don't add up the population numbers when they plan their families.

Franklin:

Don't get me started on Tolkien (particularly The Hobbit). People have irrational attachments to the man, IMHO, as the record box office receipts for the three LOTR movies showed. I once was verbally gang-tackled in my "Literature of Fantasy" class as an undergrad for daring to even suggest that J.R.R. wasn't the second coming.

M_David:

I should have formally protested your characterization of liberals as "anti-Western values" before, and do now. Forget Americans -- was Gladstone against Western values?

But I will give you your due elsewhere.

On this question of birth replacement rates -- and red and blue states -- you have a point. Numerous U.S. studies have indicated that people who consider themselves politically conservative, for reasons of moral belief generally and their (related) lesser use of birth control specifically, have larger families than people who consider themselves liberals.

So the ultimate political fate of the U.S. (I'll only go that far, though you would call it a cultural fate) will depend on whether liberals recruit the children of conservative parents to switch sides at a far higher rate than conservatives are able to appeal to liberals' children.

Even if it's break-even, you're right, Karl Rove may yet get his dreams of a permanent Republican majority. (Though I still doubt it.)

"It seems to me you've just made a pretty good case, in a purely civic sense, for a Judeo/Christian civilization."

No, Erin, although you may have, for yourself, with your reformulation

"If a personal relationship to "a god" (or, as I would put it, to God) is beneficial to society in helping to maintain that stable but dynamic tension between the individual's needs and that of the various groups you mention"

of the conceptual phrases I used. Your reformulation is known as sophistry. For doing so, if having done so mendaciously, not merely mistakenly, Erin's stated principles require Erin to no longer speak with Erin about what Brad was talking about until she straightens up. :-) You then went on to try to utilize this poorly compounded sophistry to partisan advantage to try to objectively justify your religion as superior to both Islam and radical individualism. This reliance on objective epistemology over faith is known as heresy. ;-)

What I actually said was the personal-relationship-to-god (contrasted, in an earlier post, with a personal-relationship-to-god-mediated-only-through-a-tribal-relationship-to-god) was the basis of modern, nihilistic, abstract individualism, the thread topic under discussion.

"A personal relationship to God" alone may describe Erin, or it may describe Son of Sam; the latter is not necessarily beneficial to society.

What I said was the relationship of the individual to a group mitigates the inherent tendency toward the nihilistic fallacy of radical individualism--the self-created individual--that obtains when the "god" suddenly disappears from the personal-relationship-to-god relationship, such as when there is any collapse of a personal-relationship-to-god faith. There is no logical necessity that any personal god actually has or has not "died" simply because man does or does not think he has, but the consequent pathologies that result from subtracting such a god from these types of formative equations obtain nonetheless.

I also said that, for a healthy individual, one defined as recognizing he was individuated only with respect to a group that recognized him as being uniquely individuated, the healthy relationship to that group appeared to me to be generally dialectical, under a dynamic, balanced tension, collapsing neither toward the pole of pure, e.g., radical, individualism and nor towards its opposite, immanent hive-consciousness.

From what I discussed, however, Islam and Christianity are perfectly interchangeable: the same implicit dynamics of radical individualism are birthed by each, for the same reason.

> Sure, just look at Japan. They have a TFR of 1.29 and falling, and they have instituted massive guest worker programs to help sustain their economy. Oh wait, no they haven't. Total foreign national population in Japan is about 2 million. About half of those are students. The Japanese government has tightened immigration regulations in the last 3 years.

> Because of the one-child policy, China has a TFR around 1.7. The average age in China will surpass the U.S. by 2015 and Europe by 2025. At what point do you expect China to begin importing millions of workers? It's not likely because it is culturally anathema to them.

> Depopulation
> without immigration could lead to more automation, higher wages, and cheaper real estate. All these in turn could feasibly make family formation more affordable and spur another baby boom. Or not. Who knows? Higher wages and more available land did appear in much of Western Europe following the Black Death. Depopulation can have positives for those still around.

> But here's my point. China and Japan are examples of very large countries facing the same demographic issue as Europe. They have not turned to mass immigration as a fix. You say it "must happen". Well, then explain why it must, and explain why China and Japan will begin importing workers as well.

Rich - these are good points. I don't think Islamic immigration into Europe has much to do with the low birth rate. I think it's to do with (i) the boss class wanting cheap wages, and (ii) intellectuals and other creeps who are too cowardly to say that Islam is disgusting.

You Americans complain about Europe's low birth rate, but you forget how overpopulated we are. Much of Europe, especially England, Italy and the Rhine Basin, has a population density massively greater than anywhere in N. America.

Oh, I can hardly blame your good scholars for wanting to and trying to sweep back the sea. It's simply that, when you hardwire individuality directly to the divine, you immediately and divinely elevate it above and beyond any other, necessary mediating establishment, and pathological mischief can then obtain from that special elevation.

If you have religious dogma that roots individuality and divine recognition of it only in the social mediation of individuality, and denies any hardwired elevation of individuality around such mediation by the divine, it may very well avoid sourcing such radical individualism as we are talking about.

I can't say there isn't a brand of Christianity that doesn't hold to this latter structural position, I just haven't heard of it. Certainly it wasn't among the massive rivers of Christianity, that in the world-spasms of the Enlightenment, Darwinism, etc., lost their hold on the public consciousness at large and so birthed the existentialist, radical individuality implicit within them.

But by all means, if you have a dogma that solves this problem, fix it.

>>>You Americans complain about Europe's low birth rate

watch that broad generalization there, bucko. I, for one, think Europe's birthrate is Europe's business, not mine.

""Certainly it wasn't among the massive rivers of Christianity, that in the world-spasms of the Enlightenment, Darwinism, etc., lost their hold on the public consciousness at large and so birthed the existentialist, radical individuality implicit within them."

Precisely. The culprit, according to Bouyer, Hart, Montgomery, Weaver et al. is the philosophical shift that occurred in the late Scholastic period, the shift from the dominance of realism to that of nominalism and voluntarism. So one would have to look for answers in places where nominalism and voluntarism took no root, and I can think of only two places in Christianity where this did not occur: Eastern Orthodoxy (patristic Christianity) and Thomistic Catholicism."

Well, if that's the case (and I don't know either way), there ya go, then: new, resurrected, now radical individualism pathology-immune dominant Christian worldview, here we come. Okay by me.

You really should read Weaver's 'Ideas Have Consequences', Brad, if you haven't done so. He didn't write the book from a specifically Christian POV, but more from a general sort of Platonic perspective.

Rob, Brad, while the vocabulary will be prompting many readers to gnash their teeth and keep a dictionary site open in a separate browser, I want to express my gratitude for your exchange here.

Those who insist on labelling the US as Christian, post-Christian, dystopian from any cause, really don't get the value of neutral ground.

"I might have to concede the advantage to the estimable Rob to the extent that my college years might lie farther back in the mists of time."

So I've fooled some people into believing that I actually know what the heck I'm talking about.... ;-)

Erin, where I'm going, for the third time, is over the same ground I've gone twice before: a thought structure that welds individuality directly to the divine risks radical individualism if the god component collapses (leaving the component individuality hanging as divinely ordained, but without any remaining divine constrainst); or, come to think of it, worse if the individual comes to think of himself prior to any such collapse/disappearance as solipsistically uniquely beloved of the god. A thought structure that makes individuality ultimately a dialectically defined function of a group [an agnostic Bunlap penis gourd-wearing marching band and garden club, for example, or a theistic or otherwise spiritual church {or any other group(s)} whose members gain divine recognition of their individuality only by virtue of their prior, defining, dialectively interactive membership in whichever such group(s) define them], while it may be subject to world loss and alienation both individually and collectively if crisis strikes the group, spiritual, mundane, or otherwise, is unlikely to precipitate radical individualism/pathological solipsism, and particularly not any such radical individualism/pathological solipsism with any clinging suggestion of having been divinely bequeathed.

As to any ancient pagan societies or modern atheistic societies, any thoughts of those are completely eclipsed by my joy in believing you have not yet having either sexually molested nor hanged any of your children today. ;-)

"Brad, I think you've actually made your thesis MORE difficult to understand here. Could you put it in educated layman's terms please?"

Sorry, maybe I just can't help burrowing deeper and unpacking more. ;-)

Anyway, these sort of abstractions aren't personally and practically tractable and are unlikely to be seized upon hereabouts in any event, even if they somehow remotely were. You grasp the concepts, the know the relevant particular religious dogmas far better than I. Please be my guest and them to Erin in terms she'll understand and be satisfied with alongside her existing beliefs.

Well, Brad, the only thing I see in what you've written (bearing in mind my deficiencies in formal philosophical education) is the notion that religious individualism = bad, secular individualism = good. And since I reject that idea maybe it's not worth discussing further, particularly as this thread has now been buried in the near-oblivion of the weekly archive.

"That's why I didn't bother a fourth time. ;-)"

Since each subsequent iteration of your post made it a little more incomprehensible than it had been before, that was probably a good idea.

My disagreement with Brad was over the idea that Christianity and Islam both posit the same approach to deity and individuality, thus when either of them in their religious aspect collapses, radical individualism and nihilism are the inevitable result.

My counter was that Christianity traditionally understood (and by 'traditionally' I mean in either its patristic or Thomist forms) does not have this individualistic component.

It is interesting in this regard that two of the most trenchant critics of radical individualism and nihilism have been fiction writers: Dostoevsky and Flannery O'Connor. The former was, of course, Russian Orthodox, and the latter, a Catholic Thomist.

"Brad, did I waste my time, or did I hit any marks?"

Not with respect to the primary concept, but perhaps with respect to the extent the U.S. political system, in the aftermath of the consequences of ideas I described, codifies a dialectical individual-tribal relationship of reciprocal legitimacy and rights as, so far, a highly functional restorative remedy--a far more practically valuable perception perhaps than any abstract critique of genetic defects implicit in molecular ideas.

"Brad, I seriously doubt any analyst could state, with a straight face, that the US as a governmental agency has ever, in its existence, been "highly functional". Bureaucracies in general, and certainly the one I dealt with professionally in the late 70s and through the 80s, have a collective IQ in the low 60s. If I recall my bell curve correctly, that makes them the equivalent of a functionally illiterate immigrant with no tolerance for any divergence from standard patterns."

Franklin, I trust from your comments on this blog as a whole you understand quite well the difference between a political system in concept, any system, and bureaucratic sclerosis that tends to accrete within attempts to implement one, again, any system.

What is interesting, though, and fairly obvious though lost on many is that such bureaucratic sclerosis is not a function of government per se but rather of organization, any organization, as Roger Smith's GM and the Catholic Church in America illustrate as well as any other.