On the Left's Strange Courtship of Its Executioners

It seems to me that there are two essential theories about how a democratic republic functions. "Well" and "badly", one is tempted to say--but let us lift our collective brow and dub them the Socratic and the Machiavellian Theories. The former would hold that small groups of people with distinct interests converge upon some significant few points of common concern in order to create a majority. The latter would hold that such groups compete in pretending to share interests with other groups until they gain control, then hoist their true colors and destroy one-time allies to achieve absolute power. Socrates would probably argue that such cynicism is irrational--that in an atmosphere of constant back-stabbing, people would cease to trust each other and meaningful coalitions would never be formed. Machiavelli would probably counter that the cutthroat party does not have to conceal its true tactics for very long--that one successful round of this game would leave its members in possession of an oligarchy, rendering further consensus needless. In other words, the Machiavellian view describes the last days of a republic. It dramatizes the death throes, one might say, of a quondam Socratic republic where people honored their promises, recognized a good superior to their special interest, and were not consumed by a passion to dominate.

I loathe Machiavelli as much as I love Socrates--but I loathe the Italian thinker's ideas precisely because they are always an imminent danger, a plausible projection of man's fallen nature. One certainly cannot deny them a practical relevance, just as one must not grant them a moral legitimacy. On the contemporary scene, we have ample reason to conclude that republican government is dying around the world as unscrupulous players exploit the incredible gullibility of "democrats". The paternalistic liberal elite of Europe and the New World, already inclined to oligarchy--but always in a spirit of missionary zeal rather than cynical opportunism--is forming many patently contradictory alliances that it may vanquish the remnants of Western tradition and Christian self-abnegation in favor of "progress" and "self-expression". Its feminists and homosexuals welcome radical Islamists and male-dominant Third World cultures on board with the fulsomeness of some decadent vizier kneeling before his slave and entreating, "Beat me!" Do these swooning fantasists really not divine the extermination which they openly court?

Extermination... no. But I think the craving for flagellation is genuine. The New Left, having "evolved" clear of any religious faith, has nowhere to turn in its guilt, nowhere to confess its sins. And the burden of guilt is immense: in Europe, two world wars and the Holocaust (to which various Soviet pogroms might be added were we not talking about the Left); and in the U.S., a fabulous affluence which bores with its abundance as children daily die by the thousand in Africa. A substantial number of our best-educated, most sensitive citizens wish to be penitentially flailed by the Third World. I might cite in evidence an attractive young woman from a wealthy Boston suburb with whom I attended graduate school: she had freshly decompressed from suicidal tendencies in an institution and was also recently divorced from a Muslim who continued to charm her (when he showed up periodically for a weekend in her bed) with talk about her selfishness, about her need to serve rather than to think. Believe me, this woman's sisters are legion.

Yet they do not, I repeat, want to be exterminated. After all, their souls are flabby: they could never face the execution block. This is just where their flourishes of free expression will land them if Taliban-style Islam persists in spreading throughout Europe. Under the aegis of a European Parliament which imprisons "hate speech" criminals and constantly changes laws to prevent opposition from organizing, Islamists are securing their base of power inexorably. (In Shelbyville, Tennessee--our own back yard--a Tyson Foods plant recently bumped Labor Day as paid time off and substituted the last day of Ramadan, acceding to the demands of Somali workers.)

Of course, Islam also deplores homosexuality: Koranic law punishes it with death. Our entertainment industry, too--by whose standards Breakback Mountain was a relatively wholesome opus-- will enjoy little scope once its board of censors is composed of imams (though starlets will certainly be able to find remuneration for at least some of their talents in the new corridors of justice and power). Nor is the Koran the only challenge faced by progressive liberalism: Mexican "gays" have been seeking asylum in our nation for years because the "culture" in their homeland will not tolerate their displays. The Hadith licenses the execution of homosexuals: in Mexico, gangs of men just cut them up in dark alleys.

I suppose a loyal Westerner might jokingly claim that he could view the decapitation of Hillary Clinton for wearing a pants suit with a certain equanimity--with the satisfaction, at least, of having said, "I told you so!" It would be hard for mourners at the grave of Western culture to sigh when they look up and see the white letters of HOLLYWOOD now dripping blood on an infamous Los Angeles escarpment. (Indeed, would we ever have invaded Afghanistan if four kamikaze jetliners had assaulted MGM Studios on 9/11 rather than targets on the eastern seaboard?) Nevertheless, we will grieve once we reflect upon the loss even of our most abused freedoms. Excess and folly were always the price we agreed to pay for genuine creativity and painful maturity. When the new "multicultural" world begins eviscerating lunatics and fools because it is also a post-civilized world, we will know that no beauty or spiritual insight looms over our near horizon. Then the Western conservative will become the new liberal, "tradition" will mean rule by the hairiest apes in the clan, and the sign of the fish will carry a death sentence.