The Golden Pen of Diana West on Multiculturalism

Diana West has become one of our favorite columnists, if not THE favorite. She "gets it" about Islam and its interactions with our culture, and she gets it in terms of PRINCIPLES. We know of no other syndicated columnist that does this other than Charles Krauthammer, another whom we also admire.

In Burnt offerings on the altar of multiculturalism, dated 18 July 2005, Ms West addresses multiculturalism, the virus the "postmodernists" set free into our culture as a intellectual terror weapon.

She identifies the problem:

"Without it -- without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies."

"I'm thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe."

"How strange, though, that even as we devise new ways to see inside ourselves to our most elemental components, we also prevent ourselves from looking full-face at the danger to our way of life posed by Islam. Notice I didn't say "Islamists." Or "Islamofascists." Or "fundamentalist extremists."

Have you ever asked yourself what is at stake were our national policy to turn rational, say, toward the problem of Islam? Have you wondered why our intellectuals, journalists, and people in positions of power and influence, avoid such? Here is what is at stake, beautifully written by Diana West:

"This is key, because any serious action -- stopping immigration from jihad-sponsoring nations, shutting down mosques that preach violence and expelling their imams, just for starters -- means to renounce the multicultural creed. In the West, that's the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death -- as it is for leaving Islam under Islamic law -- the existential crisis is to be avoided at all costs. Including extinction."

The irrationality she writes about comes from the irrational philosophies following the Enlightenment which have lead to today's "postmodernism." Its advocates would literally rather die than give up these irrational ideas and logical practices stemming from these ideas. It is as though passengers, on a neo-Titanic in an era like today, where all can be saved, would choose to ride the ship to the bottom of the sea rather than be rescued.

We have written considerably about postmodernism, mostly on 6th Column Against Jihad, but in the interest of being clear about the subject, let us say that postmodernism is total rebellion against modernism, in much the same way that Islam is total rebellion against reality and reason per se. In this case, modernism refers to the Enlightenment principles and their logical consequences: reality, reason, individualism and rights, and the greatest of all possible evils in the view of postmodernism, capitalism. Just as Islam and America are incompatible, so are postmodernism and America.

In the climax to Atlas Shrugged (published in 1957 before postmodernism had become such a cultural influence), when America has all but fallen apart even as a nation, the captured protagonist is asked by a "Mr. Thompson," the head of state, to save the country, which really means asking him to save civilization. The protagonist tells Mr. Thompson that he and his gang must resign and turn the government over to men of reason, i.e., get out of the way totally. Mr. Thompson, who had promised the protagonist that he was willing to do anything whatsoever, if only the protagonist would only tell him what to do, responds in the manner of today's postmoderns. He tells the protagonist that he and they cannot do the rational, i.e., to step aside. The irony is overpowering.

Were those who advocate the suicidal behavior of America against its very obvious enemies to renounce their behavior, they would face what they fear the most: a metaphysical void, in which they count for nothing, and mean nothing. They would come as close as is possible to that bogus concept of Heidegger's: "nothingness." This is what Ms West refers to when she writes of the multiculturalists' fear of an "existential crisis." Thus, they would have us all die and be destroyed in sundry ways rather than change their thoughts.