Fighting
Entropy Part 2
By Richard Fernandez in PJ Media and the Belmont Club blog
The reason the press has been trying
to corner interviewees into “admitting” that George Bush made erred in toppling
Saddam Hussein is the need to reassure themselves that catastrophe in the
Middle East isn’t really their fault. The constant need to be told it’s
not their doing is a form of denial. The more certain they are of their blunder
the more they will need to tell themselves that the sounds they hear aren’t the
footfalls of doom.
Because the alternative is to admit
the truth and accept that to reverse the tide, 20th century Western liberalism
has to die or radically reform itself. None of the people who have built
political and establishment media credentials want to hear that, but all the
same …
Putin is preparing anew offensive in the summer. Aden is under siege. Syria has returned to using chemical weapons and the
Christian Science Monitor’s editorial board says its time to face the
fact that very soon the country will implode.
China is pushing into the South China Sea. ISIS has routed security forces in Ramadi who are
fleeing pell-mell leaving large quantities of US supplied weapons to swell the
armories of the jihad, as Hugh Naylor of the
Washington Post reports.
The fall of Ramadi represented a
huge victory for the Islamic State and dealt a profound blow to Iraq’s
U.S.-backed government, led by Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, and its military
campaign to drive the extremist group out of the war-torn country. Just 24
hours before, officials in Baghdad announced that military reinforcements had
been dispatched to defend the city, capital of Iraq’s largest province, against
a brutal assault that began on Thursday.
But by Sunday, even the roads to
Baghdad, 80 miles to the east, appeared vulnerable to the militant advance.
“Ramadi has fallen,” Muhannad
Haimour, a spokesman for the Anbar governor told the Associated Press. “The
city was completely taken…It was a gradual deterioration. The military is
fleeing.”
The problem isn’t these things of
themselves but the fact that nobody in the establishment seems to understand
how to react to these and other challenges. As it is, no one knows where this
retreat will end. Despite their outward bravado, American liberalism must
suspect it could well finish, politically at least, in the New York Times’ newsroom.
ISIS is adapting very quickly and
while liberalism is adjusting not at all. Like the need for reassurances
on Iraq, the more unsuccessful their projects become the more compelled they
are to repeat them. Even now they must pretend that president Obama hasn’t
given away the store to Iran in his nuclear negotiations. But come on,
they know that he has.
The last Belmont Club post asked: what can defeat ISIS? The answer is a civilization
that can adapt faster than it; which can seize free energy more quickly than
the current masters of the Jihad; a society that can seize the initiative and
not simply be content to reactively “lead from behind”. That eliminates the
Western status quo ideology, based on 1930s socialist ideology, from the
running. That’s never going to change.
Yet the only way to survive the
challenges of the coming years is to change the existing political status
quo. The good news is that change is going to happen come what may.
The bad news is that the Left, because it is the most mobilized, will
probably initiate it.
The classic leftist defense
mechanism against a threat is to morph into fascism. It is highly
probable that as the West comes under pressure in Eastern Europe, Asia and the
Middle East the status quo ideology will become increasingly repressive.
This is probably unavoidable. But it is what comes after
the eventual collapse of liberal fascism that will either save the world or
drown under the surging tide of barbarism. The phase after the collapse
of Western fascism will either tend toward a new “dark age” or lead to a new
era in prosperity and creativity.
Therefore the solution set consists of
those actions that will maximize the exit from the fascist phase on the best
possible terms.
In the next few years the political
parties of Western Europe and the United States will clamp down hard in an
effort to preserve themselves. They will try to square the circle and
cobble together a Frankenstein stew of political correctness, repression,
dysfunction and temporizing. It will fail, big time and when it does, it
will take 20th century liberalism to the trash heap with it.
The challenge before ordinary people
is to join actions which will help Europe and North America work its way
through this coming episode of psychosis. In general three survivable
exits from madness can be attempted.
- Reforming the system through regular political action in a way similar to how the British went from absolutism to a constitutional monarchy. The old system replaces itself with new parts in a more or less peaceful process;
- Creating “monasteries” of survival by establishing affinity groups which preserve culture, technology and values from submergence in the wave of chaos;
- Flight to the frontier. Creating technology that will allow some people to physically escape or hold off barbarism.
Reforming the system through
political action is probably the most obvious response and the one people will
most commonly use. It means engaging in thankless, often fruitless interaction
with the generally dishonest political class, but while it will never deliver
as much change as one hopes, it will never be completely fruitless. It does something.
Whether it can do enough to help us avoid the crisis entirely remains to
be seen. But it should be tried.
Creating monasteries of thought
means fully amplifying the social network model by creating affinity group
replacements for the Westphalian State. It’s already happening. Christian
Health Care Ministries, home-schooling efforts, kidnap and ransom insurance,
independent universities, and even local currency
are all practical examples of limited replacements for the state that already
exist. They are the monastic vessels of the modern world.
The New York Post, for example, describes how Eva Moskowitz helped
thousands of kids “escape from public schools” to her Success Academies where
kids are taught science, math, physics, code in computer languages and play
chess. You can think of many such institutions. Just as the Irish monks
saved Western knowledge from pirates and raiders, so too is preservation in the
hands of latter-day monks.
The monastery technique often goes
unnnoticed but it is more widespread than we think. In Iraq or any other
conflict torn area, affinity groups (such as the Kurds), tribal militias,
barter trades and informal method of governance arise spontaneously to supplant
the state. During World War 2 in Europe similar institutions arose. The
United States, by its federal design, is in many ways designed to operate at a
subsidiary level. If political action is not for you, try being a modern
monk. Ultimately even the Mongol hordes were held back by stubborn
tribesmen or bands of families making a stand in the steep hills.
The last method — reaching for the
frontier — relies on the fact that disruptive technology has played a
decisive role in human survival. It is the creative antithesis of
barbarism. The mastery of navigation, the Green Revolution, the discovery of antibiotics,
the computing revolution were in hindsight the ways in which mankind warded off
the insanity of rulers and passed through the valley of the shadow of death.
Robotics, nanotechnology, new power technologies, and even travel to
other planets may play a similarly decisive role in the future.
People have always made for the
frontier in times of trouble. Even though the world has no more new frontiers
upon its surface, there are still inner frontiers and of course, the cosmos.
Things are not hopeless, nor even
gloomy. Not in the historical sense, anyway. Be any of these three
things: politically involved, a monk or a frontiersman and have some assurance
that you are contributing to your children’s survival. Do any of these things
and you will help build a civilization that can out-evolve ISIS or failing
that, quit this sad old earth and head for the stars.
Only do not become like the hacks
and celebrities of liberalism who prance across our screens. They are the past.
Leave them there.
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