Media turns ... without a momentary shiver of embarrassment

Lawrence Auster, Times: “Activists marching under the banner of Islam are on the verge … of achieving decisive power across the region”

If you had any doubts that we live in a full-blown Orwellian world, the lead story in today’s New York Times, “Activists in Arab World Vie to Define Islamic State,” should have dispelled them. The Times simply announces, as an established, non-controversial fact, that the democratic revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Muslim countries are leading to Islamist (i.e., Islamic) rule, and that the only remaining controversy is not between Islamism and secular democracy, but between different varieties of Islamism. Last winter, the Times and the entire liberal West sang a swelling song of thanks and praise for “freedom” and “democracy” in North Africa, while Islam-critical websites such as VFR kept warning that democratic elections in Muslim countries would automatically mean Islamic rule and the end of any Western notions of democracy. The Islam critics were of course ignored, and the freedom song continued. Now “freedom” has turned out to mean Islam (translation: submission) and the Times accepts and puts its seal on the new reality without a momentary shiver of embarrassment.

In this we see the Orwellian essence of modern liberalism, how liberals move in a radical direction, say, toward Pig Dictatorship (see Orwell’s Animal Farm), while putting a moderate, reassuring face on it, “All animals are equal.” And when the time comes to take off the mask and reveal the radicalism and tyranny that have been the true and fated destination of the exercise all along, there is no shock, there is no admission of a lie, there is no admission of a mistake. No. There is just a bland, “That’s the way it is, folks. Some animals are more equal than others.” And this reversal of all previous assurances is accepted by everyone without dissent or protest. Liberalism doesn’t just produce radicalism and tyranny; it produces mass mindlessness—the death of reason.

File under: lemmings over the cliff.