Not being able to participate ourselves in the Pepperdine 'Collapse Of Europe' Conference on June 10/11, 2007 against Islam in Malibu, California, we depend on the truthful recordings by Vik Rubenfeld in his Blog 'The Big Picture'. He recorded and photographed everything himself, so we can be sure that nothing is lost.
Here is how Vik saw the second general meeting, after the break on the 10th of June, during which he assisted at the 'Eurabia' separate meeting, about which we reported in Pepperdine 3, etc.
Daniel Pipes, visiting Professor at Pepperdine since Jan. 1, repeats here, and elaborates on, his conclusions about Europe ('Eurabia'):
We reproduce Vik here again:
Daniel Pipes.
(This is the third in a series on the international conference on the Collapse of Europe, organized by Avi Davis of the American Freedom Alliance, and the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The first two articles are here: first article - second article.)
At 3pm there was a second panel in the main auditorium for all attendees. At this panel, Daniel Pipes made what appears to me to have been one of the most profound observations of the Conference. He began with an overview of the history of Europe over the last hundred years:
About Daniel Pipes, a US expert on Islam, we refer to:
Wikipedia: Daniel Pipes, starting: "The Arab American Institute, headed by James Zogby, stated "For decades Daniel Pipes has displayed a bizarre obsession with all things Arab and Muslim. ...
The man indulged into discussions about the Tobacco pipe and Islam, the 72 maidens reserved for jihad heroes being in fact grapes and the Arab language not being the original language of the Qur'an. You get the picture. The ideal person to be nominated as president of the American Freedom Association by president Bush! The AFA is one of the sponsors of the conference and wields some government money to distribute among people who will divulge the message everywhere in the world.
Listen to Professor Pipes about Europe. You'll feel somewhat outlandish, you'll not connect immediately to the picture he brushes. Bur surrealism is part of Western Culture. Hold on!
Vik records:
Europe in the 19th century was a confident continent. It was successful and it knew it - whether in terms of political achievement, cultural achievement, scientific, engineering achievement - power projection - Europe until 1914 - what we call 19th century Europe, was superior to any other part of the world. It's achievements stood out. And indeed had been standing out, for four centuries. Europeans entered into world war I with a great deal of enthusiasm - what's been called a delirium of enthusiasm. It had been a century since there had been a major war - the Napoleonic wars. There had been the buildup of the philosophical base - let me just mention the name of Frederic Nietzsche - that found war to be romantic and attractive. And so Europeans went to war in 1914 in this delirium of enthusiasm. And of course, four years later, they came out of it devastated and horrified - and came to the conclusion, never again would they engage in such a war. They would avoid war - they would do whatever it took to avoid such a war. In the 1930s we saw that policy in action, in particular by the british and french governments, as they sought to avoid war - what we call, 'appeasement.'
Well, that didn't work either, did it? And the consensus, the second consensus, was, as we faced, as the Europeans faced the Soviet threat, was that they would not appease. No more Munichs. The lesson had been learned. And that remained in place roughly through the Cold War. And - grant me a lot of generalization here, please - there were a lot of exceptions - but, overall, it was maintained through the 40 years plus of the Cold War.
But with the ending of the Cold War, in about 1990, what I think one sees, is a reversion, to the earlier consensus. In other words, the no more Munichs idea, that held through the Cold War, has evaporated [inaudible], taking 20 years. And instead what one sees is a reversion to that earlier, post-World War I consensus. In other word, we've lived our lives in the post-World War II era, but it is, before our eyes, in Europe, turning into a post-World War I era. As David Galenter of Yale University puts it, it's the 1920s all over again.
Here are a number of things to be set straight:
- Without Churchill and De Gaulle, who put things straight in 1940, the US never would have intervened as they did, later on, when the US were attacked themselves by Japan in 1942. Without the tremendous effort by the Soviet Union, starting in 1941, Nazism would not have been eradicated as it has been. The main force against authoritarianism, against Nazism, came from Europe itself.
- 19th Century Europe was colonialist, draw upon exploitation of African and Asian sources. Theodore Roosevelt, American president at the start of the 20th century, intended to copy that European policy and he got his share of the imperialist world, subduing the Philippines, Cuba and several ex-Spanish dominions in Central America. Later on, the US abandoned this classic kind of colonialism. To their honor. The 1919 restructuring of Europe, was led by an US president, who choose liberty, freedom, democracy over short-term objectives. He shaped the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN. Under Rumsfeld and his NeoCon friends, the US returned to Theodore-Rooseveltian policies (look at his statue in Rumsfeld's Pentagon office!). The US, under the Project for an American 21st century, intend to copy the European colonialist drive, as shown in contemporary Iraq.
- Europe is living with Russia as its neighbor. There is interdependence, mainly in the energy (oil, gas) market. That is a different position from the US. The US seeks its energy deliveries in the Middle East, accommodating (appeasing) with the Salafist Saudi-Arabian regime and occupying the Mesopotamian region (Iraq). There is no question, that the EU countries condemn Russian authoritarian policies. But, like the US, the EU has to live with non-democratic regimes at its doorstep. That is the only thing that counts.
- Mr. Pipes is not describing a really existing Europe, but he is referring to what he sees as US-American softness on imperialism. In attacking that false image of Europe, he intends to attack the American Democrats and the left wing of the Republicans. It is like the Russians attacking in the Seventies Albanian practices, meaning China, and the Chinese attacking Yugoslavia, meaning the Soviet Union. Hirsi Ali, who couldn't be less concerned, and De Winter and Broder, lent, without any opposition, their names and their reputation to that villain agitation.
I did not left out a word of this incredible, racist, rant. Pipes doesn't know how to deal with France, a staunch nationalist, republican values-based nation. Sharing most of its national values with the US. The liberty for a "pursuit of happiness", individual and collective, is inscribed in the French constitution, like it has been in the US one. In my humble opinion, this is a big part of the EU coming together and creating a block of nations of a new type, that will play its role in the world and protect itself against dangerous dreams of the Pipes kind!Pipes continued:
...France is a particularly interesting case, because France is, like the United States, a country that is - an idea. We're not related to each other, we don't have a history that goes back together, but we, in one fashion or another, found ourselves in this country, and we're in pursuit of happiness here. The French have liberte, equalite and fraternite. But no other countries have, at least in Europe and North America, have an idea. Not Canada - certainly not the other countries of Europe. And what they find, is particular difficulty in explaining who they are. And as their civilizations are now challenged from the inside, by a substantial and growing population, that says, 'we have something better - we have Islamism, which beats what you have' - the European peoples are finding it very difficult to come up with a response and say, 'no no, what we have is good.' And what one finds is rather pathetic. For example, the famous Dutch film, that shows the Dutch values to be shown to potential immigrants, that shows a topless woman in the surf, or two men kissing - is this really what Dutch culture is? Or, less humorous but also somewhat pathetic, is a website put up by the British government, called "Icons - a Portrait of England," which has some hundred or so, very specifically British things. Sherlock Holmes - Westminster Abbey - certain foods and the like. Just this week the incoming Prime Minister has suggested "Britain Day," to celebrate being British. Nobody quite knows what it means. [Amused laughter].
So both for historical reasons, having to do with the 20th century, and historical reasons having to do with the fact that most of Europe is made up of countries that are one large family - that have a certain set of customs, of language, foods, songs, and so forth - but are difficult to turn into an abstraction, and say, 'no - our civilization is something worth preserving.' And for all these reasons I think yes, there is a collapse of confidence. And while I don't think for sure that it's permanent - and there could well be a revival - at this point I think we're seeing a lowpoint - it could go lower - but certainly a lowpoint in European confidence, and something that really is without precedent. I don't know of any historical phenomenon akin to what the Europeans have gone through in the last century.
If you know the French somewhat, like I do, you will understand, that their constitution is not something unimportant to them. They live their life under its prescriptions. The first thing that is asked from a stranger, is, to abide to the rules of French civility. And they do, the immigrants, happy to be French with the French. They even exaggerate often, being more French than the French, and loathing other Europeans and co-immigrants for not being so.
And, moreover, those French Revolution ideas have been transmitted into the constitutions of all, I repeat: all, European states. To Holland and Belgium as well as to Austria and Turkey. To the German mini-states, as well as to the German Federal Republic as we know it now.
That is European civilization, anchored in its different cultures!
Pipes' humorous examples are drawn from Holland and Britain.
A great friend of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Hague, from her own conservative party VVD, Rita Verdonk, government secretary for integration and immigration from 2003 to 2006, was at the roots of that ridiculous and offending "exam" for would-be refugees and immigrants, featuring homosexual love and bare breasts. In fact, it was designed to bar potential immigrants from applying for immigration. Many friends of Mr. Pipes jubilated, when it was issued. Now, it is featured as a "weakness", typical for European appeasement policies! Poor Rita: It is not easy, to please people like Mr. Pipes and consorts! I am curious to know, how Hirsi Ali will explain all this to her party-friends in Holland...
And what is wrong with developing a program that explains what it means, being British?
All of British immigrants I ever met, are proud of being British, too, on top of their exotic origins. Second-generation Radha gives me the typical British cold shoulder, when I approach her, exactly like her British neighbor Diana would do. Perhaps, Pipes doesn't know what that means. But I am sure, most inhabitants of the British Islands, do. (And I know how to deal with that cold shoulder, and Pipes apparently, doesn't...) While I would have preferred a less exclusively British exposition of culture, as Britishness includes a high share of common European values, (for instance, what would British 18th century music have been without Haydn?), I see nothing wrong in featuring Sherlock Holmes' intelligent reasoning capacities, his un-racial, un-prejudiced judgments. I would be really upset, when Brown would have featured Watson in stead.
Pipes is the 21st century Watson. Prejudiced, short on imagination, quick to jump to conclusion. But our guide Vik R. is flabbergasted by Pipes' views:
In other words, in the United States, we have a goal: the pursuit of happiness. And it's a goal we all believe in as a nation. It's a goal worth defending, a way of life worth fighting for. It shows us why what we have is better than what the Islamists offer, because the goal of the Islamists is to destroy freedom, to destroy equality of the sexes, to destroy free speech - and to accomplish nothing more than to require that all others also join their effort to destroy their own freedoms, and the freedoms of others.Poor Vik! The Freemasons who inscribed "pursuit of happiness" into the American Constitution, denying the traditional Christian view of us all, who are sinners, who have nothing to win by happiness on this earth, would have had nothing against the Muslim pursuit of happiness, but the same contempt they had for Christian toiling and suffering to get happiness after Redemption!
Even the Neoconservatives, who are so trigger-happy to enroll Christian fundamentalists, do not agree with Pipes' and Vik's image of Muslims as destroyers of our freedom. They valuate the disciplining influence of values and rules, that are put forward in traditional Muslim faith. They encourage Muslims to abide by their rules and occupy themselves of the social, communautarian, tasks that are necessary in their communities. And leave big man policies to them (defense, police, law). I do not agree. I believe, that there is no separation between "social" and "state" (or, as Mark Steyn puts it: between First- and Second-degree priorities). Equality of all citizens before the Law, in political matters, is a primary concern to me.
This is the background, against which we have to see Hirsi Ali's and Pipes' call for a "popular rise" against Mosques and Muslims. They feel happy, not to be concerned by its expected outrages. They are concerned only by "grown-up" primary-degree policies, like "defense" (Hirsi Ali and Mark Steyn). They just want to pull the trigger, washing their hands afterwards in innocence.
Vik, however, is completely won for the cause:
Well, yes. As Second-degree players on the world chess board, we should foment popular pogroms against Mosques and against Muslims. Pipes and Co. will do the rest for us. And, do not forget to indulge in "reproductive activities" (Steyn)! Within the family, of course. Women should return to the sacrifice of motherhood (as has been advised by two Dutch CDA politicians lately in NRC-Handelsblad (Rotterdam) in an opinion article leaning heavily on Mark Steyn's 2003 book "America Left Alone").As soon as Pipes said it I knew I'd heard something tremendously significant.
The Europeans can benefit from Pipes' insight by considering what their national goals can be.
All in all, we have to do with an US-Government supported (but not officially subscribed) agitation against Europe, only to nail US (and Canadian) "second-degree" politicians to a supposed European "appeasement" with terrorism.
As we observed in Hirsi Ali's and Steyn's conflicting advice to the Turks, this is not a serious proposal to the European Union. It is American home policy.
That doesn't mean, that there will not be any European fall-out. We spotted already Swiss (French) lawyer Montézac (another European featured in Pepperdine), who proposes "advocacy" against Muslims, by taking "precautionary action" against them, by imposing stickers on Islamic property saying that "Islam is illegally calling for Jihad". Henryk Broder, Germany, on returning from Pepperdine, prefers obligatory reading of "The Devils' Verses" in Mosques. Which boils down to the same. A Dutch connection was already mentioned here.
An example of the intimidating habits of Mark Steyn's friends, we experienced already here, on "A Legal Alien in New York", when he called his own "popular uprising" against us, encouraging his "Campus Watch" pupils to visit this blog and comment on it. Out of the more than 1.000 visits to our blog on 11 and 12 June, only three comments were sent in (all published). Two of them wrote only to warn us, that the tsunami of visits would end as soon as Steyn would put an end to it. Which happened indeed. The third one was concerned about our lack of sleep, which I can but appreciate. Most unsolicited visits came, of course, from US campuses and firms. But not a few originated in the UK, Australia and other English-speaking countries.
Conclusion: A "social", "second-degree-" network is being created in order to apply Steyn's and Pipes' prescriptions. That is what Hirsi Ali "learned" about in the US.
What can we do against these attacks, here in Europe?
I will develop some ideas in a post on "At Home in Europe" and its European sister blogs.
