Simi Valley Sophist

The Simi Valley Sophist ruminates on all manner of topics from the micro to the macro. SVS travels whatever path strikes his fancy. Encyclopedia Britannica: Sophist "Any of certain Greek lecturers, writers, and teachers in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, most of whom travelled about the Greek-speaking world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return ..."

Name:
Location: California, United States

Retired: 30years law enforcement-last 20 years Criminal Intelligence Detective.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Europe & the U.S.: Shared Fate?

There are some things on this earth that appear to be eternal: the morning sun banishes the night and chases the shadows; and the constant roll of the waves that grow in stature until they collapse onto themselves crashing on the waiting beach. They are but two of a multitude of examples. But, man knows better, doesn’t he? We now believe, based upon our observations of the heavens, that the earth and our entire solar system are but transitory moments in a constantly changing universe. Someday our sun will burn out, the oceans will freeze, and all life as we know it on earth will be extinguished. That is, assuming that some other factor hasn’t done it in already by that time. That is the essence of evolution, change in time. It appears to be one of the basic laws of nature.

Man and his social creations are subject to the same evolutionary pressure. Cultural experiments great and small have blazed, diminished or faded out to be replaced by something else. It is really the change that is the status quo, and the results are cataclysmic on both a macro social level and the micro individual level.

As I type this piece, I am sitting in a Starbucks coffee house in the upscale community of Dana Point. In walks a nubile woman, maybe 19 or 20 years old, and sits down at a table adjacent to me joining an older woman. The young woman is wearing a tight fitting blouse with a plunging neckline revealing a generous amount of her breasts. It never fails to amuse me when women deliberately wear revealing clothing and then spend a considerable amount of time tugging and pulling on garments in unproductive attempts to reduce the square inches of exposed skin. A short time later, a second woman appears with most of her upper chest decorated in a profusion of colored tattoos. I wonder if there are any fundamentally religious people visiting this particular Starbucks. Specifically, I wonder if there are any Muslims nearby, and if so what must they be thinking about these two women. For me the nubile female is a delight, while the tattooed female is a turn-off. You can be sure that Muslims would be disgusted and revolted with both females. And, the way things are going; much of the world is falling under, or is destined to fall under, the control of a new Muslim majority and its rule of Sharia law. They will be the majority that radically changes the cultural norms to which the Western world is accustomed. How did the Western world get into such a predicament?

Two recent articles shed invaluable insight on the questions of whom we are and where we are going.

…Why did Europe and North America embrace democracy and thrive conomically while nations elsewhere suffered oppression and stagnation? 1

Leading U.S. sociologist Rodney Stark says many scholars purposely overlook the obvious answer: It was the spread of Christianity that made possible political and economic freedoms, modern science and resulting Western advancement. 1

Such is the Baylor University professor's contention in "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success" (Random
House),… 1
So if it is Christianity that is the causative factor of the incredible economic success of the Western world, what is the future for Europe with its rapid evolution toward becoming a Muslim continent? And, as you will see in the second article by Mark Steyn, the failure of the Western European society is a direct result of a reduced birth rate concomitant with the growth of socialization and secularization, the decline of the European Christian experiment.

So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world. Such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market culture dominated by fundamentalism--a new Dark Ages. 2

…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. 2

Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. 2

The United States is more fortunate than Europe in that our foreign labor pool shares a common value system and work ethic with the dominant culture. The major difference the U.S. is experiencing is one of a shift toward the Spanish language. Though it is not a threat, it sticks in the craw of many.

There are quite a number of phenomena occurring within the U.S. The dominant culture is split about evenly between traditional Christian/capitalistic values and European secular/social values. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S, and it is the real threat to the cultural stability of this country. Since the 1970’s, Saudi money has created a pervasive fundamental Islamic version, which is taking over the moderate Islam. Islam in the U.S. should be properly viewed as a fifth column.

Americans are the most religiously tolerant of people on the face of the earth. But, it is an inherent weakness to be tolerant of the religious intolerant. The first sin is the arrogance of ignorance and blindness. Americans, in general, are ignorant to what is happening around them. And, half of the Americans have abandoned or are leaning toward abandoning the traditional values of America in favor of the now proven failed values of Europe. The Europeans are beginning to see the fruit of their labor. Is it possible that we can learn something from Europe, or are we destined to repeat the errors?

(1) Christianity gets credit for Western success

(2) Its the Demography Stupid