VFR’s Quote of the Year

It seems to me that I understand why liberals don’t oppose immigration: their goal is not less than controlling the whole world. Who cares about some small country like Britain, when the whole world is at stake? Our countries are nothing but instruments for winning over the hearts and minds of other peoples, like infantry brigades for General Staff.

— Dimitri K., May 22, 2007, in response to article, “Melanie Phillips on ‘Liberalism versus Islamism’”

Also, if you haven’t read the linked article, in which I comment on Melanie Phillips’s failed attempt to think her way out of the liberalism that paralyzes her response to Islam, I recommend it. See in particular Thucydides’ discussion of what’s wrong with the idea of “equal respect for all people,” and my replies.

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Charles G. writes:

That was a brilliant quote. I’ve often thought that the white middle class in America was like some kind of bug under a petrie dish being endlessly analyzed and manipulated by some strange force called “liberalism.” But Dimitri’s description is more cogent and immediate.

We’re like soldiers in the trenches being ordered to go over the top in yet another hopeless assault against the forces of “intolerance” and “racism.” And like those soldiers, we get mowed down without ever seeing any progress. And if we’re particularly enthusiastic we get a medal.

LA replies:

That’s a good image, except that I don’t think Dimitri was speaking of how liberals treat us as individuals. He was speaking of how liberals regard our society as a whole, not as something valuable in itself, but as a mere expendable instrument to advance the cause of liberalism.

And the cause is not hopeless. It is currently apparently in charge, and winning, though the setback of President Bush’s Kill America bill shows that there is at least one Western nation which doesn’t want to be cannon fodder. Or, at least, it doesn’t want to be cannon fodder when the plan to turn it into cannon fodder is made as obvious as it was in this case..

Ben W. writes:

Dimitri is perfectly right. For the liberal, a country is an ephemeral, transient form (as in Darwinian evolution in which all forms are transitional one way or another). Any country, the U.S. or Britain, is a universal shell that transcends any particular culture, race or religion.

It was emphasized this week on NBC’s “Today” show about London in which more than one Londoner said that this city is great because it is a meeting ground for all of the world’s peoples. This is a form of secular religiousity in which anthropologically all of the earth’s peoples are equal in essence and spirit. A city or a nation becomes greater as it approaches this universality. And this secular universalism—the meeting place of spirits (the secular congregation)—is the sacred ground for the liberal.

As such borders are a sign for the liberal that to some people’s minds there may not be just such a universal gathering place. Border enforcers are a type of spiritual and intellectual mafia to the liberal! That is why liberals categorize some cities as “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants (where in the Old Testament refugeees found safety from prosecution).

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 30, 2007 11:51 PM | Send