Preserving Western Civilization—the horror, oh the horror!

F. Roger Devlin

February 14, 2009

There was a time, within living memory, when a call for “preserving Western civilization” would have elicited about as much controversy as a panegyric upon motherhood. How things have changed. To a Baltimore Sun columnist, last weekend’s Preserving Western Civilization conference sounded “creepy.” The proceedings were declared “extremist” by the Anti-Defamation League, the authorities on moderation, while they also decried the speakers for employing “strident rhetoric” which “demonizes ethnic groups,” stereotypes Islam as a “militant ideology,” and promotes racism, white supremacism, anti-Semitism and all other manner of horribilificosity.  But—somehow—I emerged unharmed to file this report.

The conference was organized by pro-Western Jews displeased with tendencies which have surfaced at Jared Taylor’s biennial American Renaissance conferences. Anti-anti-Semitism was not the focus of Preserving Western Civilization, however, and only Lawrence Auster briefly alluded to the issue.  (See "Jews as allies," TOO, Nov. 13, 2008.) Instead, speakers addressed the themes of third world immigration, racial differences, and Islam.

The ADL is right, of course, that there exists a stereotype of Islam as a militant ideology—a misconception due, no doubt, to its 1400-year history of slaughter, rapine and wanton cruelty. The conference’s opening speaker, Srdja Trifković, got down to basics with an account of the life and deeds of Muhammad. The prophet of the “religion of peace” instigated forty-two battles in the ten years between his flight to Medina and his death; an entire Sūra of the Koran (the eighth) is devoted to the rules for dividing plunder.

Muhammad favored peace in the same manner as Joseph Stalin—after the worldwide triumph of his doctrine and the annihilation of all opposition to it. Muhammad repeatedly commanded his followers to perform acts morally repugnant not only to Christianity or liberalism, but even to the coarse sensibilities of heathen Araby. Only the direct command of God could have induced his followers to repeated treachery, murders, or the satisfaction of Muhammad’s adulterous and otherwise irregular lusts.

But Allah’s commands—revealed always, of course, through the mouth of his prophet—tacked and turned constantly so as to accord with the prophet’s perceived self-interest at any given moment. It is hard for outsiders to miss the suspiciously convenient pattern of Muhammad’s revelations, but Muslims face death for pointing out the obvious: just ask Salmon Rushdie.

Women, of course, are particularly threatened by the advance of Islam, and this was the theme of Brenda Walker’s talk. Walker, a feminist and registered Democrat, is an opponent of immigration on progressive grounds. She related the story of fourteen girls killed in a fire in Saudi Arabia a few years ago when police prohibited them from fleeing a burning building without their veils.

Meanwhile in Scandinavia, where Muslim rapes have become common, female professors tell the native women that being raped is their own fault. In England, Thomas à Beckett’s current successor in the office of Archbishop of Canterbury has recently welcomed the introduction of Sharia law as a force for social cohesion. The present writer has no sympathy with the feminist doctrine of sexual “equality” or the notion that women are bearers of group rights enforceable against men; but disagreements between progressives and traditionalists make little difference in the face a religion which gives its blessing to the beating, mutilation and even murder of women by their menfolk.

Patricia Richardson gained notoriety in 2004 as the first Jewish member of the British National Party elected to public office. She explained that the Muslim population of Great Britain is increasing at ten times the rate of the rest of the population. Between 2004 and 2008 the Christian population shrank by more than two million. Yet Britain is now the most densely populated country in Europe, having recently overtaken Holland. The Blair government had the opportunity to opt out of the EU open door policy but passed it up. Asylum seekers are flooding into the country and no accurate information is available about them. 90% claim the same birthday—January 1^st—and many grown men among them are officially sixteen years old: they must be tried as juveniles when they commit crimes. Meanwhile, a Muslim member of the House of Lords successfully used the threat of mass demonstrations to prevent the showing of Geert Wilder’s film Fitna in Britain.

Blogger extraordinaire Lawrence Auster reprised the Muslim theme by outlining a “Real Islam Policy for a Real America.” Muslims would need a good reason to be allowed onto our soil (e.g., status as recognized diplomats or their dependents), and all proselytizing would be met by swift expulsion; naturalized citizens would have their citizenship revoked in the event of their conversion to Islam; no Mosques; and so forth. Auster admits that his proposal is unconstitutional: a new amendment is necessary to clarify that Islam, because of its political nature, is not protected under the First Amendment.

Canadian Professor of Psychology J. Philippe Rushton addressed the heritability of IQ, recounting his travels to Africa and the Balkans to obtain optimal measurements of intelligence for different racial groups. He summarized ten separate arguments in favor of the hereditarian hypothesis, including twin studies and racial patterns in brain size.

Anthropologist Henry Harpending discussed a theme of insufficiently recognized importance: the fragility of Western monogamy. When men are not forced by conditions to work in order to feed their families, they turn to competing with other men, as did the warlike European aristocrats of old. Since 1800, however, and particularly in the modern Welfare State, it has been lower class males who are unreliable fathers.

Our lower- or underclass is taking on the characteristics of the African matrilineal family structure where men have low status and marriage bonds and father-child bonds are weak. Among the Herero, a gentleman avoids returning home after dark for fear of embarrassing his wife in the midst of consorting with another man; Mr. Harpending learned this apparently elementary rule of African courtesy while doing fieldwork in Namibia. His new book, The 10,000 Year Explosion, argues that—contrary to a widely received notion—the rate of human evolution has significantly increased since the advent of civilization.

Steve Farron, an American Jew who taught classics at Witwatersrand and still lives in South Africa, shared with the audience some of his unmatched research into the discriminatory practices euphemistically called “affirmative action.” Contrary to a common perception, Asians have not been victimized by such policies, and once voted 61% against repealing them in California: its victims are virtually all white.

The scandal of university admissions policies has been widely revealed thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, but less appreciated is what Prof. Farron calls “affirmative graduation.” This occurs even in medical schools where, as Farron noted, it should be viewed as criminal. When Harvard began recruiting blacks and Hispanics in the 1960s, they abolished letter grades. Instead, all medical students receive either a ‘Pass’ or an ‘Incomplete’ on their coursework. Students with ‘Incompletes’ take a series of five progressively easier tests until they pass; occasionally they fail all five and are passed anyway.

Furthermore, the US Medical Licensing Exams have been made so easy that 99.7% of white students pass on the first attempt. Prof. Farron made the point that abolishing explicit quotas can actually make matters worse; the usual response by authorities is to gut standards for everyone, so even incompetent whites start getting through.

Other speakers dealt with various aspects of immigration. Historian and native Californian Roger McGrath detailed the meltdown of the Golden State under the Mexican onslaught in a talk entitled “Paradise Lost.” This catastrophe is just now entering the national consciousness as California bonds are devalued and state politicians discuss whether to balance the budget by unloading the prisons or withholding pay from state employees.

Peter Brimelow explained the consensus among economists that there is no net economic gain to Americans from immigration: the effect is merely to shift wealth from labor to capital and from tax payers to tax eaters. He explained the folly of Republican “outreach” to Hispanics in a country where whites still do most of the voting. 42% of voters in the late election were white Protestants and the voted 65% for McCain; this would have been enough to give him the presidency in an America with the racial balance which prevailed as recently as 1976. Nonwhites went 79% for Obama, while Jews, according to one exit pole, went 85% for Obama. The shift of Jews to the Republican Party, once confidently predicted, has not occurred.

If an amnesty is passed and whites become a minority in America, it will mark the historical end of the American Nation State, but not the end of Americans. Implicitly or explicitly white Nationalist third parties will arise, or regional secession movements will move from the fringe to the mainstream. To paraphrase Churchill: Americans may not have fought on the beaches, but they can be counted upon to fight in the hills.

Law Professor Lino Graglia explained the legal history of birthright citizenship, a bizarre doctrine unique to the US whereby any child born on our soil—even to illegal aliens—is ipso facto an American citizen. This law is a powerful incentive to immigration both legal and illegal. An industry has sprung up in Pacific Rim countries of flying women to the United States in order to give birth here.

Birthright citizenship arose out of a misinterpretation of a clause in the 14^th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The original intent of this wording was to exclude American Indians, who were under the jurisdiction of their tribes; and this interpretation was upheld in a Supreme Court ruling of 1884.

So how did the words get twisted into a grant of automatic citizenship to the children of immigrants, even illegal? It was not done by the Supreme Court, which has never heard a case on the subject. It appears to be nothing more than a decision by the Immigration and Naturalization Service! As such, it could be easily overturned by statute. But so far no bill to this effect has reached Congress: attempts to introduce one have gotten bottled up in committee.

Even if Congress summons the nerve to do away with birthright citizenship, there will inevitably follow a Court challenge on the grounds of—what else?—the 14^th Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy will then decide the matter in his capacity as Swing Voter on the US Supreme Court and, in effect, Ayatollah of American Constitutional Jurisprudence. In response to a question from the audience, Prof. Graglia noted that even if all this could occur tomorrow, it would do nothing to alter the status of the millions who already enjoy birthright citizenship.

*    *    *

The talks given at Preserving Western Civilization last weekend will eventually be made available either as CDs or as a volume of conference proceedings, or both. But often the best part of such events is the private discussions and planning sessions which take place between or apart from the official talks. I even saw a number of familiar names from the internet turned to flesh and blood before my eyes. Comic relief for the dire matters discussed was provided by Julia Gorin at a well-catered banquet on Saturday evening. Conviviality continued for several hours in the hotel bar following the conference on Sunday.

If you get an opportunity to attend an “extremist” event such as Preserving Western Civilization, do not pass it up; you’ll learn more than you will from the Baltimore Sun or the ADL. 

NOTE: I would like to thank the conference organizer, Dr. Michael H. Hart, for allowing me access to several of the recorded speeches in order to insure the accuracy of this report. 

F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D., is an independent scholar and the author of Alexandre Kojève and the Outcome of Modern Thought. He is also a contributing editor to The Occidental Quarterly.

 

Permanent link: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Devlin-PWC.html