Saving The West: the story continues

Hello, I'm Back

In the time of reflection since my last post I've had quite a bit of food for thought. We spent two weeks in China, I've read F.A. Hayek's classic “the road to serfdom”, and the anti-Christian sentiment in Australia has been bot more obvious, and has even started to be objected to in newspaper articles (well, except in the left wing press obviously!).

There has also been the Islamic State terrorist attack in Brussels and the less noticed but more lethal attack targeting Christians celebrating Easter in Lahore (the majority of victims were in fact Moslem – but that does not diminish the intent nor the human suffering).

To start, since Hayek gives valuable contemporary insights into the historical roots and rise of Nazism in Germany and since Germany is the focus of the current European “invasion” by Moslem “refugees” I will start with this.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, has been at the forefront of encouraging this massive movement of people into Germany and in pushing other European countries to follow suit.

The immigrants are coming in huge numbers.

They are overwhelmingly Moslem, many fanatically so, and some even Islamic State fighters deliberately infiltrating with the others.

They come from all walks of life, but many are young single men with no skills likely to make them employable. Already in the Moslem areas of Brussels for example, there is a staggeringly high rate of unemployment.

Unlike the immigrants who flooded into the United States, Canada and Australia after World War II, they show no interest in assimilating into their new country and prospering together with its previous citizens. On the contrary, as these terrorist attacks highlight, they despise and reject the cultures and peoples of their adopted homes.

So how could anyone have thought that this “open door” plan could end well?

How could Merkel, her ministers of state, and other European leaders have been so blind.

I think the answer lies in European history – particularly since the French Revolution. But for the moment I will single out Germany because Hayek has provided some insights there.

Up until about the 1870's, Hayek says, England was exporting culture, ideas and religion to the rest of the world. After the 1870's England began to import all these, particularly from Germany, who took over as the world intellectual leader.

I can relate to that in the field of religion. About that time German Biblical scholars and theologians came to dominate. Even when I was in seminary – late 1970's – I remember the Old Testament professor giving a list of books to read for our coming course on the first part of Genesis. There were many by German authors, then he named one – again by a German scholar. As everyone was copying down the details the professor added as if of no consequence “Of course it is 1,100 pages … in German” everyone in the class stopped copying down that title!

The rise of German Biblical Scholars and Theologians also heralded the tsunami of “liberal theology” which has sapped the vitality of the Christian Church and nearly destroyed anything which rose above a purely nominal faith in Christ. I do not mean to blame Germany – the fact that England stopped exporting Christian ideas and began importing them speaks to a spiritual malaise in England.

Hayek goes on tho say that from about then socialism came to dominate German politics. By socialism he is not referring to social justice, but to government control of the means of production and all that goes with this type of policy. It is illustrated by an old joke: A Russian Communist official came to England as the guest of a militant union. They showed him round a modern London bakery. He seemed impressed but puzzled. At last he asked: “but where is the committee that decides how many loaves of bread are to be baked in London each day?” In Socialism everything is centrally planned: in a free market lots of little businesses make decisions – and succeed or fail on the strength of their decision making.

He maintains that even before WWI there were German academics who saw Germany's role as the superior and militaristic “revolutionary” bringing the superior Socialist economic system to the world against the commercial spirit of the, non-militaristic and individualistic “counter-revolutionary” England.

The bitterness of defeat, the myth of betrayal and the harsh reparations imposed by the victors did much to pace the way for Hitler, but Hayek points out often neglected factors.

From the 1870's on there was a rejection of academic freedom of thought – rejected as English weakness. More and more succeeding generations accepted suppression of dissenting views – culminating in the student book burning in Berlin May 10 1933.

The economic chaos in Germany in the early 1930's was worse that other parts of the West. Low-paid white collar workers saw that militant unions had pushed blue collar workers' wages much above theirs. Both were a failure of the old socialism.

Hitler's National Socialists capitalised on both. Unlike Communism the Nazi's were nationalistic rather than international in outlook. Then this second socialist revolution drew on the “oppressed” white collar workers' anger.

I would add another dimension, one visible in the rise of veneration of old pagan mythology in Hitler's Germany – the previous weakening of Christianity and the widespread “taming” of churches to serve the purposes of the government.

As we all know, that train of events caused misery and destruction. The German people to give them credit after the war rejected Nazism. To their credit, and unlike Japan, they “confessed and repented” of the evils done.

However a new socialism has taken hold, (not just in Germany of course but right throughout the West). Progressivism, or progressive socialism has wormed its way in everywhere.

To illustrate the difference between revolutionary and progressive socialism consider the old wives tale about boiling frogs. If you throw them into boiling water they (so the saying goes) jump out again. But if you put them in cold water and slowly heat it up they stay put – until it is too late!

In Australia even the term “progressive” only came into widespread use a few years ago. Only in the last year or two have they really been coming out into the open. Now we see clearly our whole Christian-based moral sysytem, we may guess white-anted from the inside over decades, collapsing before our eyes. Only now do we see that for decades progressive ideology has been seeping into and taking over every social institution. I only pray that us little frogs all over the world still have time to jump!

In Germany in particular and the EU generally, Christianity has been effectively neutered and neutralised. The progressive socialist dogma is well established, and like the old German socialism has taught generations of students to be anti-rational and to silence any dissenting voices.

So to Angela Merkel: Her policies are the result of this ideology. They are in a way also the end product result of nations rejecting God. They are also likely to fail spectacularly.

On present course there are two probable scenario's.

1.) Like Turkey in the middle ages: the Moslem “invaders” will take over.

2.) Like the 1930's : the failure of international progressive socialism will pave the way for a new national socialism and some new Hitler.

Is there another way? The only one I see as having any hope of a better outcome is a Christian revival.