Thank You, Fleming Rose

Fleming Rose, the brave soul who published the controversial Muhammad cartoons in Denmark, has written a great piece published by the DLC. He reminds us of the truth that cannot be stressed enough-- that rampaging multiculturalism and political correctness in Europe are helping to foment radical Islam, and undermine liberal values. Many in the multiculturalist Left, in Europe (and in America) are unwittingly undercutting everything progressive they supposedly stand for. Two points, among the numerous gems particularly stand out. Rose lays out plainly the descent into relativism:

Europe today finds itself trapped in a posture of moral relativism that is undermining its liberal values. An unholy three-cornered alliance between Middle East dictators, radical imams who live in Europe, and Europe's traditional left wing is enabling a politics of victimology. This politics drives a culture that resists integration and adaptation, perpetuates national and religious differences, and aggravates such debilitating social ills as high immigrant crime rates and entrenched unemployment.

He also goes further, and indicts one of the chief culprits of this renegade philosophy:

Now, in Europe's failure to grapple realistically with its dramatically changing demographic picture, I see a new parallel to that Cold War journey. Europe's left is deceiving itself about immigration, integration, and Islamic radicalism today the same way we young hippies deceived ourselves about Marxism and communism 30 years ago. It is a narrative of confrontation and hierarchy that claims that the West exploits, abuses, and marginalizes the Islamic world. Left-wing intellectuals have insisted that the Danes were oppressing and marginalizing Muslim immigrants. This view comports precisely with the late Edward Said's model of Orientalism, which argues that experts on the Orient and the Muslim world have not depicted it as it is but as some dreaded "other," as exactly the opposite of ourselves -- and therefore to be rejected. The West, in this narrative, is democratic, the East is despotic. We are rational, they are irrational.

This kind of thinking gave birth to a distorted approach to immigration in countries like Denmark. Left-wing commentators decided that Denmark was both racist and Islamophobic. Therefore, the chief obstacle to integration was not the immigrants' unwillingness to adapt culturally to their adopted country (there are 200,000 Danish Muslims now); it was the country's inherent racism and anti-Muslim bias.



Read the whole thing, and be enlightened.

Hat tip: Centerfield