The intellectual dysfunction of our age is not a lack of passion, but reflexive contrarianism tinged with self-loathing.
Yeates has an oft-quoted line in which he complains that the "best lack all conviction" while "the worst are full of passionate intensity," but these days the brightest minds of the liberal west possess plenty of conviction — it just happens to be directed against anything that even slightly sniffs of patriotic unity, national self-interest, or negative judgment of our enemies. It's very nearly inspiring how much mental effort is exerted to this end.
World War II analogies are trite — or at least we're supposed to regard them as such because the moral clarity of that era now strikes many as uncomfortably "simplistic" — but one nevertheless wonders how today's social media warriors would have conducted themselves 70 years ago.
I'm certainly no fan of Nazis, but did you know you're statistically more likely to die from a lightening strike than get shot by the Wehrmacht? Kinda puts the fearmongering into perspective, doesn't it?
Invading Europe is exactly what Hitler wants us to do. Every time we bomb Germany we just reenforce his thesis that National Socialism is locked in an existential war with international Jewry. A whole generation of Germans will wind up Nazified if we play along.
Man, did you hear? A Lutheran church in Minnesota was spray painted with nasty Germanophobic graffiti. And did you see the newsreel footage of that guy screaming "Krauts go home" at the poor German lady at the supermarket? SMH. Who are the real bigots?
If you ask me, the problem is that Canada doesn't have enough Germans. If we could import a couple hundred thousand by the end of the year I think we'd be striking a real blow for inclusion and tolerance. I mean, sure, maybe their views about Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals are a bit more… conservative than my own, but as long as they keep it to themselves, what do we care?
Yes, yes, we hear endlessly about the invasion of Stalingrad, but what about the brutal Dutch occupation of Indonesia? Where's the world war to stop that?
Such is the shape of arguments we hear from today's sharpest brains regarding Islamic terrorism, which, no matter how grim and vicious it gets, is invariably portrayed as reflecting worse on ourselves than those who perpetuate it. Among liberal thought leaders, every statement of judgement towards nihilistic jihad or sympathy for its victims must be qualified with contextualizations that either undermine its significance, or sire feelings of guilt and ambiguity to numb instincts of outrage and resolve.
To the extent our left-wing betters are interested in pushback, their suggestions are indistinguishable from their peacetime agenda: pull back the military, repeal anti-terrorism laws, shame perpetuators of microaggressions, and hike third world immigration. In this formulation, ISIS' villainy is roughly equivalent to that of the Grinch, or perhaps one of the Care Bears bad guys — someone who wants everyone to be miserable, and stomps their tiny feet in rage when we instead gather 'round the piano to sing John Lennon songs. A Globe and Mail editorial supposed ISIS members wake up "screaming in the night" at the thought of exquisitely liberal Canada, "where Muslims and people of all faiths and none are welcomed and live together in peace."
ISIS, for its part, has been more than clear in words and deed about the sorts of things that actually make it mad. Its official statement on the Paris attacks, for instance, justifies gunning down fans at the Eagles of Death Metal show on the grounds they were "pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice." Such a worldview is essentially closed to negotiation, which is presumably why liberals from the President of the United States on down prefer to believe the real ISIS agenda is opposing their Syrian refugee policy.
Such lazy bromides, which prescribe no action that could possibly upset the reigning progressive consensus, are becoming the sole animating spirit of liberal pundits, politicians, and internet meme-makers across the first world as they react to the increasingly hideous bloodlettings of the greatest monsters of our time. Despite what your lying eyes would suggest, the truest evil is always ourselves, they insist — which is to say, a western civilization they have made careers out of feeling profoundly alienated from, and spend much of their ordinary hours denouncing as racist, sexist, colonialist, and so on.
Theirs is the moral bankruptcy that comes with listening to no one but yourself.
Written by J.J McCullough
