Daniel Pipes rallies his anti-Islam and anti-Europe team in Malibu

If, by chance, today or tomorrow, you are in Malibu, California, and you have nothing better to do, go and watch a rare collection of frustrated, angry and godless European intellectuals. They are meeting in the Public School Section of Pepperdine University, where Daniel Pipes is a visiting Professor since Jan. 1, 2007. Theme is nothing less than:

The Collapse Of Europe, The Rise Of Islam and the Consequences for the United States

The collapse of Europe carries no question mark for the participants. They believe in it as firmly as some Californian sects believe in the space ships from Mars that are soon coming to pick up them for salvation and redemption, leaving the mass of idle earthlings behind to burn in hell.
The Program of the Conference is witness:

SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2007

Introduction: The Collapse of Europe
9:00 am - 9:15 am
Overview: Avi Davis, Senior Fellow, American Freedom Alliance 9:15 am - 10:00 am
Opening Plenary: The nature of the threat to Europe and its impact on the United States.
Keynote Speaker: Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is a Canadian humorist. I am not acquainted with Canadian humor. But I suppose it is something that makes you laugh. Perhaps, the following dark prophecy, written by Steyn in the Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page on January 4, 2006, provokes a sardonic "Schadenfreude" laughter when a specific kind of US audience is present?

It's the Demography, Stupid
The real reason the West is in danger of extinction.

BY MARK STEYN
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.

One obstacle to doing that is that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society--government health care, government day care (which Canada's thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain's just introduced). We've prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity--"Go forth and multiply," because if you don't you won't be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.

Americans sometimes don't understand how far gone most of the rest of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the health department. I don't think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health and Human Services. [..]

No, no - I did not invent this. The Wall Street Journal printed this nonsense and carries it still proudly on its website. You got the message, loud and clearly. Caring Conservatism at it's best. Shut up about health care. Fuck against the Turk! Until the Aya Sophia is full of smart little rosy-white babies, tended for by subdued white Christian mothers who forgot about women's lib! Don Rumsfeld won't be there any more, to oversee that shock and awe, but Cheney's daughter will show you the way. Did you know, that the Virgin Mary got her child the same way as she did?

The conference couldn't have had a better start than this. And now, with the same Canadian clown Mark Steyn as moderator, straightaway into the heart of the matter:

10:00 am - 11:15 am
Panel Session: What has been the role of Islam and the EU bureaucracy in fostering collapse?
Moderator: Mark Steyn
Panelists: Greg Davis, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Philippe Karsenty

I am not sure, who Greg Davis is. He may be the Evangelist 'Bishop' Greg S. Davis, who, with his Amy, is permanently on "Campus Mission", as (how funny!) "Davis verses Goliath". (By the way, Davis, it is: "versus", not verses. - Is this stupid error a heavenly signal, that the collapse of Western Civilization has already begun?) Mr. Davis is evangelist for the "Church of Jesus Christ", the denomination of the founder of Pepperdine High School in 1937. So, if I got the wrong Davis, his portrait conveys a feel for what Pepperdine is about.

How will the second member of this panel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, feel, after Steyn's and Davis' introductions? Will she follow Mark Steyn, and get many, many white Christian babies in order to push the Turk out of Aya Sophia? Will she agree, that "faith" is a core business of national Government? And that care for beaten women is of a secondary rank?
- No, no: She will do as she always does: Tell her own tear-jerking story and put some humor in it. That'll make her the third clown in a row. Everybody will be moved and laugh. Sweet girl goes too far in denying God, but that is forgiven, for she will painstakingly avoid talking about other religions than the Islam. "Pipes vaut bien une messe", will she think after French king Henry IV, when he as a protestant, joined the catholic faith to get what he was after: to be ruler of France.
She will probably also be the first speaker, who tackles the subject of the panel. The collapse. At first, I did not understand, why all of a sudden, worries about "European Bureaucracy" were introduced in the meeting. Is our Brussels peaceful office-park undermined by Moroccan dishwashers, Turkish cleaning ladies and other such Muslim staff? Or, are the well-paid European aides who are living in villas in the thriving countryside, members of the world-wide dhimmy conspiracy, that cancer of progressive "good-doers"?

"It is Turkey, stupid!"
After another hard effort to understand the thinking of the "Collapse" initiators, I saw the light: Olli Rehn! Rehn is the European Commissioner for "Enlargement". As such, this Finn is the main responsible for relations between the EU and Turkey, for he manages the accession negotiations with that country. European Commissioners are not necessarily "bureaucrats". Most of them are former members of Government, appointed on a political basis, and confirmed by the European Parliament. A position, comparable to an US Undersecretary of State.
Like the NeoCons, the Pipes family doesn't want to hear about an European Government structure. That is why the pejorative title "bureaucrat" is used.
And what did the man do, to "foster" the "European Collapse", giving in to "Islam"? What's his crime?
Well, in the name of the European Commission, and of all member states, he warned the Turkish army generals in May, that an eventual army coup against the elected government of Turkey, would put an end to EU-Turkish accession negotiations. The Copenhagen Criteria (2002) for accession, do simply not allow military dictators as prospective EU members.
But such "bureaucrat" rules mean nothing to Pipes and Ali, who, in very similar articles, around 10 May, had called for an European green light for the generals. In the name of blocking the Islam. Pipes wrote in the US press, and Ali in the German "Die Welt" and a series of other leading European papers. The army-sponsored manifestations of "secularists" in several Turkish cities against the election of a Turkish president by a general vote, represented, it was true, only a minority of the Turks. But Hirsi Ali argued, that the Turkish secularists (whom she calls, for unknown reasons "liberals"), needed some time to make up for their "errors" and so win over a majority of the population. What were those "errors"? Well, the "liberals" had neglected the social part of their program and lost contact with the majority of the population, said Hirsi Ali. Anybody, who knows something about Turkey, remebers, however, that the last "secularist" Turkish government (led by conservatives and business interests - no "liberals" around) collapsed dramatically in a tsunami of corruption scandals and criminal maffia-connections.
I am afraid, that Ali's Turkish "liberals" have wasted their time since the overwhelming AKP victory at the subsequent elections, in reading Mark Steyn's humorous articles and following his advice, not to invest into "secondary impulsions like government health care" etc.
It is not easy, to be a Turk who seeks Pipes' and Ali's approval. Their mistake is, that they did not understand, that Steyn's "WJ" injunctions are ONLY for Christian Western Countries. Turks should do the opposite: no more fucking but only caring, and leave the "primary impulsions" to countries that God (or the US) have elected for that business.

All the same, we may expect, that Hirsi Ali will come up with a fitting punishment for those Eurobureaucrats who are so arrogant that they remain deaf for her (and Pipes') instructions!

- And here, I suggest a short break. Although I have only dealt with three people on the long list of very interesting actors at the Pepperdine happening, I have to leave you. Not Europe, but only me, is collapsing. Tomorrow, is another day.

In the next posts, we will dissect Mr. Pipes himself and meet old friends like Leon de Winter, Afshin Ellian, Claire Berlinski and a whole lot of new ones.

My primary impulse is for the moment: going to sleep.

Comments

[truepeers]

well, i'm trying to come up with some Canadian humour in response to this but I can't. So I think it's just best to assure your readers that it's very true we are dull, very dull, very very dull people and yes, some of us are Christians, so don't come here when you wake up to the basic indicators of collapse which, because the good doctor social historian is apparently a gnostic sun king, he hasn't even bothered to address or counter in a serious manner: how, Professor, can a society with negative demographics, large debts, a highly centralized welfare state system, a highly regulated anti-small or new business environment, and a nihilistic largely faithless (beyond Gnostic) culture, not eventually collapse if things aren't turned around? Where's the magic that will reverse all of history's lessons? Will snarky leftist anti-American resentment, endlessly recycled as the now archaic ritual of the "progressives", keep the pyramid scheme afloat? Or is the goal to burn down the old, and then, Nero-like, build the ultimate system, fully dyked, as the greatest proof yet of your magical social historical engineering arts?

I think there will be life after the collapse, but if this blog is at all indicative of current "thinking" in the heart of Europe, let me just remind everyone that long dark winters make certain (centrally located) Canadians, in the words of one of our great scholars, "the most brutally inarticulate people on the face of the earth", with all due respect to the Belgians and the Dutch. And as such we are not to be addressed in a serious manner. Just blow us off, forget that out young men had to come liberate you from Europe's last great indulgence in the Gnostic arts, don't even bother to study our geography, like looking up the correct pronunciation of Sioux Lookout!

[Ted S.]

You should have prioritized your primary impulse.

[Psalm 9:17]

Your cussing and anti-Christian comments are not as classy as Mark Steyn's writings. It is true that Mark uses humor, and puns (which non-English speaking readers usually do not get the humor out of, unfortunately), but Steyn is also a very insightful thinker who pulls together suppressed details and observations to build a very logical and reasonable case for his viewpoints that are unpopular among the Leftists.

I found your comments due to a link from Mark Steyn's web site to your comments about him. This link will probably cause your web page hit numbers to briefly spike, until he removes the link.

[S]

I agree that some of the predictions, and suggested cures, being made at the conference are probably over the top. However, you make your own mistake by concluding that the entire matter is then laughable.
Personally I don’t consider concerns of climate change to be invalidated just because the more extreme forecasts will no doubt turn out to be wild exaggerations. I’m sure you don’t either. However you must extend the same logic to the debate on Islam, and acknowledge that, beneath the hype, at the very least it does pose a threat to the fruits of the Enlightenment. If you cannot see such a problem, I can only draw your attention to MAD magazine’s take on Kipling – “If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs, well maybe you don’t appreciate the seriousness of the situation”!
While it is unlikely that Holland or France will really become Islamic states, it is undeniable that the existing Muslim minorities will become ever more numerous and assertive, and provide constant friction with the host societies. Even here in Australia, where Muslims are less than 2%, they punch way above their weight in the crime and welfare statistics.
I cannot believe that you really see no danger. I suspect that your, er, progressive mindset instead refuses to contemplate it. Hans Christian Andersen had your kind in mind when he penned his tale of the Emperor with no clothes.
The fact that political correctness prevents the debate becoming mainstream leaves the field open to the more hard-edged commentators. By all means wrinkle your nose in delicate distaste and refuse to engage, but don’t be surprised if more robust participants make all the running.
If you have a more benign prediction of European co-existence with its Muslim communities, let’s hear it.

[Anonymous]

Is this all you have in response to the views of Steyn at. al.

I guess Steyn links your site to show the emptiness at the heart of contempory European thought.