A civilization set on auto-destruct - Sauve Qui Peut

By Editor Friday, August 28, 2009

By: David Solway
FrontPageMagazine.com
Thursday, August 27, 2009

It bowls us over that what seemed so substantial—the multi-storied castle of lit ballrooms, grand staircases, fine furnishings, a self-sufficient man-made world of beauty and luxury—could slip so swiftly into oblivion.
Robyn Sarah, Maisonneuve

However one looks at our current cultural and geopolitical situation, whatever symbol or metaphor one uses to clarify our dilemma, one remains with a sinking feeling. The story of Noah’s Ark is no longer relevant for our times except as a children’s fable. For the Ark has been replaced in our unconscious, as it has in our collective destiny, by another emblematic vessel.

The Titanic is foundering. Captain, crew and passengers have together conspired to set course directly for the iceberg while irrationally refusing to admit its existence. The ship of state, having been transformed into a ship of fools, may not be able to be hauled into port and retrofitted. Everything considered, perhaps its adversaries might be better off leaving the West to its own devices, as a civilization set on auto-destruct.

Even should we be spared the worst, the prognosis is not good. The task force of the Western mind seems to have been permanently disbanded and succeeded by such self-serving and ostentatious groups as Nelson Mandela’s Council of Elders, foregrounding a vespiary of professional appeasers of an anti-American and, of course, acridly anti-Israeli pedigree like Jimmy Carter, Fernando Cardoso, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and Kofi Annan. (They are, as I write, busy spreading the gospel in Israel!) Such people are collaborators of the first order, giving aid and succour to the enemies of the West in the guise of a rather flocculent peace deputation.

There is no doubt that the major, long-term threat to the civilizational life of the West—though by no means the only one—emanates from theocratic Islam. Christopher Caldwell brings up an interesting idea in his 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, suggesting that the undeniable success of Islam may compel Europe to re-examine its religious and cultural roots. “Everywhere Islam has asserted itself in recent years,â€