Anyone who visited Paris a few times over the last 20 years, and Munich and Amsterdam, etc, knows how much visually those cities have changed. And not to the better. Munich subway in 2003 is durtier than NYC subway. So much for German cleanliness, doesn’t last without germans.

French elites are getting what they deserve. The French people, anti-semitic and anti-american, have a chance for redemption. Likely they will blow it.

In 20 years France is likely to become a (semi)-Moslem country. Even now France is a hostile neutral in any realistic way. USA should be prepared for a raise of a hostile Moslem nuclear power in the heart of Europe.

Couple that with a raise of super-power and hostile China - next 20-30 will be very challenging, to say the least.

End of History indeed.

I wonder how long it will be before a leftist court in France outlaws Le Pen’s party. Vlaams Blok has already been outlawed in neighboring Belgium, whose supposedly Representative government is now a sham. The left’s endgame is apparent. Without a strong non-liberal culture to counter it, liberalism will invariably lead to totalitarianism.

At some point, any remaining patriotic French (or Belgians) will need to seriously consider the formation of a paramilitary wing if they are to survive.

The Front National is hearing the totalitarians’ footsteps and, unlike most other parties, is trying to do something about it. The FN uses the internet creatively and aggressively to get the word out and tell the truth about what is happening in France, while avoiding prosecution under France’s race censorship laws. Here is a surprisingly respectful, if hardly admiring, Guardian article about the FN’s internet tactics: http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1229822,00.html. I think the FN’s Quotidien Français d’abord is the best source for news about what matters in France today. Interested francophones can find it here: http://www.frontnational.com/quotidien.php. Subscription to the daily updates is free.

As a francophile who has lived in France, I don’t think matters are quite as dire as Mik says, although I agree that France’s situation is critical. I believe that soon French nationalism (chauvinism if you will) is going to assert itself and the French will insist that France remain French. The growing role of the FN is some evidence for that, as is the presence of a strongly nationalist, anti-EU gadfly such as Philippe de Villiers in the more establishment Right. I don’t think de Villiers has a British, German or Italian equivalent, unless it is (very inexactly) Umberto Bossi of Italy’s Lega Nord. It is a shame that French resistance to the Moslem invasion has been weakened by the strident secularism of a century’s worth of French governments, which has made a French Christian response to Islam’s religious and cultural challenge almost impossible. HRS

Based on the news article’s summary of the French court’s ruling, one is led to the impression that the judge’s reasoning was rather poor.

“In its verdict, the court ruled that Bardot had deliberately tried to draw a link between Islam and terrorism by mentioning the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in a chapter on a Muslim holiday celebrated in France and elsewhere.”

Is the court saying that their is no connection between Mohammadanism and terrorism? Is the court saying that the Osama bin Ladin and the September 11 highjackers are not motivated by their religion, Islam? Is it now a crime for a Frenchman to assert the obvious, that al Qaeda is an Islamic organization; that it shares a similar world view with other Islamic terrorist organizations, such as Palistinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, PLO/PA, and Hezbollah? Has any cleric, Ayatollah, Iman, or mullah of any repute within the Islamic world condemned terrorism and declared that those who engage in terroristic jihad, whether against Israel, India, Russia, Europe, or the United States, are heretical and must repent of their sins?

“It found that the book argued that ‘the presence of Muslims on French territory and only seem undesirable to the reader, who is ineluctably led … to reject members of the Muslim community through hate and violence.’”

The court appearently believes that if large numbers of Frenchmen became convinced of the rightness of Bardot’s arguement as to the undesirabliy of Muslims in France, that they would beat or kill any Muslims they see rather than aggitate for their deportation.

I hope Howard Sutherland is right, but this asinine court decision only reminds me of the classic line, “Whom the gods destroy they first make mad.”

This ruling makes me sick to my stomach. This ruling like a bad dream or movie about a Bizarro-World. Who can deny that the terror attacks of 9/11 were a result of hateful Muslims? Who can even say that Islam is peaceful? Islam itself means submission to allah and once the world fully submits to allah, ONLY then there will be peace. How backwards is that? They kill their own women (children, sisters, aunts, wives, mothers) in honor killings. They cut off the heads of Jews and display them on video. They scream for the death of infidels on a daily basis. Hello?!!!
I wonder what this judge thinks that Islam was a factor when the “Allah is great” shouting hoodlums attacked the Jewish students in France last week. I will ask the obvious question: When will the koran or the hadiths become hate speech as they clearly call for the death of infidels.
Am I being hateful or truthful?

Naarah askes: “When will the koran or the hadiths become hate speech as they clearly call for the death of infidels?”

The short answer, Naarah, is never. Leftists like the judge who made this ruling view Mohammedans as useful allies or proxies to help achieve the leftist goal of abolishing tradtional Western civilization in the short term. For the long term, the leftist elite is counting on the poisonous, degenerate popular culture and indoctrination in public schools to reduce the Muslims to the same type of lifeless, bloodless, zombies who will acquiesce to their totalitarian ambitions - like the majority of the native French. They might be in for a rude awakening in this regard, for the Muslims appear to be fairly resistant to such attempts at seduction. It will be interesting to see what happens when France or another EU country gets a Muslim majority and begins to impose Sharia upon some of the other favorites of leftists, like homosexuals or even the leftists themselves.

Of course, if by some miracle enough of the French electorate regains consciousness and decides very soon to get rid of the leftists in the ballot box, things could change for the better - at least that’s what we keep hoping for.

Mr. Joshua writes:
“The court appearently believes that if large numbers of Frenchmen became convinced of the rightness of Bardot’s arguement as to the undesirabliy of Muslims in France, that they would beat or kill any Muslims they see rather than aggitate for their deportation.”

Mr. Joshua, the court doesn’t believe it. As a matter of fact there are very few thing the court believes apart from inevitability (if not desirability) of dhimmization of France. The possibility of French going beyond mere “agitation for deportation” to actually real deportation of the Muslims is almost inconceivable under the all pervasive and increasingly powerful ideology of multiculturalism. Still, it is much more plausible than a scenario where the French would spill into the streets and “beat or kill any Muslims they see”. The Court is not afraid of that at all. Actually the court would welcome a few sporadic outbursts of anti-muslim violence as it would provide it with the pretext to impose more strict “anti racist” legislation and enable it to crack down on those who may still believe that the process of islamization of Europe may be halted if not reversed. Such development would entail bringing to justice the now ruling elites which populates, governments, media, education sector and of course the court. This is what the court is afraid of.

I’m astonished at the bias present in the Yahoo news reporting, with such strong words as “extreme right-wing” and “xenophobic”. The passages quoted in the reporting do not bear out this kind of condemnation.

Taken in combination with the outlawing of Vlaams Blok, this all raises an interesting question:

At what point does a government cease to be legitimate? What are the moral obligations of those dissidents when the legitimacy line is crossed?

I don’t think an absolute case can be made that majority support defines governmental legitimacy in and of itself. The Third Reich was legitimately elected and enjoyed the support, at least initially, of the majority. It was nevertheless an illegitimate government becuase it violated transcendant morality or natural law - the morality that exits outside of ourselves. Thus the German army officers who tried to assasinate Hitler in 1944 were actually patriots, not traitors.

This is, of course, the question our founding fathers had to answer. If things keep heading in the direction they have been, it’s one we in the US might have to answer as well.

With all due respect to my fellow posters, I have to dissent with regard to the leftist goal of destorying western civilization. I am a law student. I am around leftist law professors all day. Do you want to know what the defining characteristic is of all leftist judges?

The answer: They’re wimps. Testosterone = 0. I know this sounds like a belligerent post…but it’s not meant to be.

That French leftist judge is the same kid in high school who would start kissing the behind of whatever jock or cool new kid came into your school.

The Muslims have entered France, and they’re loud and rough…and these leftists judges are wimps and won’t dare stand up for themselves.

What being tolerant really means is that you don’t have the guts to stand up for yourself against anyone else. There’s no agenda…go meet these people…they’re worthless.

But Mark, we’re talking about two different sides of the one phenomenon, liberalism/leftism. There are the liberals, the passive nihilists, who have given up the belief in the transcendent order and the social order, and so “won’t take their own side in a fight.” And there are the leftists, the active nihilists, who actively desire to tear down and destroy the civilization. These are not different movements, they represent different degrees within the same movement, serving different functions within it.

Something perhaps unprecedented in the history of the world has happened in recent decades: large-scale fast-moving declines in the quality of population, by means of immigration.There scarcely exists a vocabulary to respond to the enormity of this change, or to measure it. California schools went from the top ten percent, down to the bottom percentiles of state school systems in about thirty years. It is a jurisdiction of tens of millions, and long has been one. Officials try to censor the response to these debacles, but they only prove their complicity in evil. They show the intensity of their hatred against civilization and human merit.

Mr. Bolton captures the singularity of what has happened to us. It’s all so vast and amazing and overwhelming that we can’t keep our minds focused on it consistently. But there it is.

I say “Bravo!” to Ms. Bardot, who I had a massive crush on during my youth. She had to be the singularly sexiest woman I had ever seen, ever moreso than MM. It is somewhat amazing that a female actress of her stature has become an activist conservative. My only regret is that I have never met her, and that as I recall, she gained an enormous amount of weight after leaving the film industry.

Today, who has taken her “sex queen” status…Britney Spears? Pamela Lee Anderson? NOT!

Carl writes: “I don’t think an absolute case can be made that majority support defines governmental legitimacy in and of itself.”

Carl is absolutely right. For majority support to define legitimacy in and of itself would justify gang rape.

Mr. Auster: What is the proper definition of nihilism? I am perhaps confused…I was under the impression that it meant one didn’t believe in any values at all. Does this correlate with destroying western civilization? If one believes that western civilization needs destroying, doesn’t one have to value an opposing form of civilization? Is that nihilism?

Here is a chilling question: Would an Islamic France be preferable to a nihilist or militantly secular one?

Obviously no sane Christian or even merely Western man would look with anything but horror on either, but it may prove worth reflecting seriously on which nightmare would threaten us more grievously. Of course, as many have said or implied, this may prove to be a false choice — in the sense that nihilistic France, having betrayed her history and traditions, and having abandoned the fighting spirit, will simply decay into Islamic France.

In reply to Mark, nihilism is not merely an absence of values. Nihilism is the active promotion of no-values as the ideal. Nihilism isn’t merely nothing; it is the fervent embrace of Nothing as the highest good.

To Mark,

Nihilism doesn’t mean the absence of all values. It means the denial of objective truth. Nihilists may have all kinds of values, but those values are seen as not being based on truth.

I think our civilization is now enacting the Tower of Babel story.
I am not terribly fond of quoting predictions, but A. Malreaux’ forecast that “21st century will either be religious, or not at all” can not be entirely dismissed considering the past few decades with the promoted by the Left ever accelerating erosion of the spiritual foundation of the Western civilization.
But we will never understand, or hope to stop, this Left-inspired process of dismantling our civilization if we only believe that Left’s goal is nihilism, or destruction for their own sake. The deepest and (therefore) least discernible drive which moves the Left is war on God, and Left’s “eschatological” goal is a vision of the man-made Paradise from which God is banished. Both Nazism and Communism were the instruments Left used in its hope to create its God-less Paradise. Today it is Multiculturalism. But, I think, man’s choice is not really between God and atheism, but between God and idols, and the more man is liberating himself from God the more he is trapped by idols.
While it is true that the idols are man-made and not “real” the offering they claim is man’s soul or the most real thing about man. In the Western Europe many, perhaps subconsciously, are quite bothered by the vision of the soulless society and while the diluted, insipid, apologetic and politically correct Christianity doesn’t seem to offer any real alternative to that bleak mess, the assertive, vocal and vigorous Islam does. Hence its increasing popularity expressed in the growing number of converts to Islam - (at least in the Western Europe). So perhaps the first part of Malreaux prediction is not so unlikely.

Mr. Hanski writes:

“The deepest and (therefore) least discernible drive which moves the Left is war on God, and Left’s “eschatological” goal is a vision of the man-made Paradise from which God is banished.”

I agree that this is what the left wants. But this is not in contradiction with nihilism. It is nihilism. Nihilism is not only destruction for its own sake. That is the most extreme form of nihilism, but, as Fr. Seraphim Rose teaches in his book “Nihilism: The Revolution of the Modern Age,” there are other forms of nihilism that are much more common, such as liberalism, materialist reductionism, and vitalism. Nihilism in these cases means the pursuit of values that are not based on truth, the construction of a world not based on truth.

I see clearly Mr. Auster’s point.
Still, I see nihilism rather as a method, an approach, or rationalization which allows its proponents to remove from the traditional values their absolute, or morally compelling, aspect. It affords them the greatest possible freedom to act in-History while pursuing the ultimate goal attained at the end of History – I mean the man-made Paradise. Paradoxically, to struggle for such a Paradise one needs faith, and faith can not be sustained without accepting, however intuitively or “subconsciously”, the reality of truth. What Left wants is to tame and thus own it through removing the _transcendental_ out of truth. But I don’t think it attempts “the construction of a world not based on truth”. Well, I’d better stop here lest I get caught in the jungle of semantics.

Mr. Hanski is only pointing to the inherent ambiguity—the necessary hypocrisy—of liberalism. The essence of liberalism is that it wants to topple transcendent truth while still enjoying the benefits that derive from the belief in transcendent truth. Therefore liberals may still appeal to the symbol “truth.” But at their core they don’t believe in transcendent truth, they only believe in the “truth” of each individual’s (or each cultural group’s) own preferences. So, yes, the moderate nihilists who are called liberals do want to “construct a world not based on truth,” if we remember that the truth being referred to is transcendent, objective truth. And it is the denial of such truth that defines nihilism.

Once again, I recommend Seraphim Rose’s brief but indispensable book, Nihilism, which takes the reader beyond the conventional and not very useful understanding of nihilism, into the core of it. The conventional understanding of nihilism is that it means the total negation, the total destruction of what is. But that is so extreme that virtually no one, except maybe Hitler in his final throes, could be called a nihilist. Fr. Rose, by contrast, in his analysis of the stages of nihilism ranging from moderate to extreme, shows nihilism as the governing, operating philosophy of modern society. When you read this book you will feel as Keats did when he read Chapman’s Homer: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.”

In the meantime, here is a brief summary by me of Fr. Rose’s four stages of nihilism:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001940.html

While the leftist Tranzis running France occupy themselves with stamping out all vestiges of “hate” (patriotism, Christianity, etc.), Islamic media broadcast in France for the edification of the 8-10 million Mohammedans on hand recently presented a series devoted to various anti-Semitic tales - especially the famous blood libel.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13715