N.O. Pundit

Individual Rights

Coyote Blog: Respecting Individual Decision-Making

Coyote,

Great post!

You may be interested in one of Steven den Beste's articles entitled Three Way Struggle:

The three modern forces who are now contending with one another are all deeply different from one another. Each is enormously varied internally. One of them is Islamism, the second is idealist, elitist and socialist, and third is humanist, realist and capitalist. And all of those descriptions are inaccurate, alas.

If equality is one way to tell these three apart, responsibility is another. The Islamists believe that Allah is responsible for it all; the duty of believers is to follow His will, and leave all else in His hands. For the idealists, responsibility lies with the state. Citizens should rely on the state for all things, and let the state be responsible for taking care of it all. For the realists, everyone has primary responsibility for their own fate, and though they may rely to some extent on others, or on the state, or on God, ultimately each person should look out for themself as much as they can. And these summaries are also, alas, generalizations which are not totally accurate.

Two contending factions are agnostic (but with some religious members), one is theistic (but with some agnostic members). Two are idealist, one is realist. None really like or trust any of the others, but the realists have been prospering while the others have failed, and so it is that the other two are afraid. In peaceful competition, they'll lose.

When the Islamists lashed out violently at the realists, the idealists tried (and failed) to prevent the realists from fighting back, and thus the lines in this war were drawn. The realists are engaged in a shooting war with the Islamists, and in diplomatic war with the idealists.

This quote is near the end of a very lengthy article. The take-home lesson (for me) is that the Idealists (think Old Europe and the UN) are in an "unholy alliance" with the Islamists. Why? Because their world views are both collectivist/elitist, though the fountain of authority differs. Ask a Eurocrat why they are allied with the Islamists and against the Realists (think mainly America, but also New Europe, Australia, and pockets of others) and of course he would recoil in horror and deny any such thing.

It is stark (if still subconscious) reality for the Idealists that the liberating victories in Afghanistan and Iraq directly undermine their core world view: that people are better led than left alone, and that tough decisions are best left to the elites.

I hesitate to say that we are in an end game of sorts. Clearly the level of confrontation and hatred coming from Al Qaeda/Islamofascism is to be expected; the level of confrontation and hatred from the Idealists is really quite striking (just look at world opinion of the US contribution in the tsunami relief effort; no matter what, we are horrible stingy people).

Islamists and Idealists understand that Realism (Coyote's Individual Decision-Making) must be destroyed at all costs. The Good News? Ain't gonna happen.

Posted by nopundit at January 8, 2005 12:48 PM