This piece at Stop Shouting is worth your time and attention. I recommend it highly, in part because it provides an alternate approach to understanding the solidity and resilience of the Islamic exclaves that have emerged in Europe.
The haymaker at the very end is particularly worth pondering:
No matter who "wins" in November, a shadow government structure is necessary for what will in the out years be called the Continuation War, which will be a continuation of America's 1st Civil War... which is what the original Revolutionary War was. I say this because more Americans fought each other than British fought the Insurrectionists. There is no voting our way out of this. The only solution is to build upon the revolution, one social structure at a time. Yes, some neighborhoods will have knitting circles, others will have "not a rifle club" structures. In the end, what matters is social, ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Nothing else is sustainable in the long term.
But why does such homogeneity matter more than, say, a uniform level of prosperity? The answer is simple, and simply elegant: A high degree of homogeneity translates into a high percentage of defenders, should the “shadow state” be attacked or otherwise challenged. It has the “consent of the governed” in the most meaningful way: its residents will defend it personally.
Europe’s Islamic exclaves are as impenetrable as they are because virtually the whole population of such an exclave is committed to its defense and maintenance. To dissolve it would require an assault of extraordinary magnitude. Success would probably require the complete dispersion of the inhabitants...assuming any were to survive.
The steady galacticization of American society, as communities draw in upon themselves and find ways to expel their dissidents, might well give rise to such “shadow states,” especially if our racial, ethnic, and sectarian tensions continue to escalate. Whether their residents would assert and maintain them as staunchly as the Muslims of Europe have asserted and maintained theirs, I cannot say.
3 comments:
as always a great essay
You can make a plausible case that, in the end, what matters is the maintenance of traditions. In most countries, that includes homogeneity. In the US, the tradition includes heterogeneity.
I believe Joseph may have missed the point. We in the U.S. may indeed have a "tradition" of heterogeneity, but that doesn't mean that we will defend it. If my neighborhood or town is threatened in some way, but my neighborhood consists of the "model U.N.", a polyglot of different languages, traditions, religions, each person wearing their colorful native costumes, my efforts will be focused on defending my family, and nobody else.
I feel absolutely no allegiance to the U.N., whether it is global or in my neighborhood. I don't necessarily wish any of them ill, but I'm not going to risk my life, my fortune, or my sacred honor defending them.
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