Sunday 24 September 2017

The West’s Schism Over Liberal Values - NYTimes.com

"To save the Enlightenment, we had to destroy it" (apologies to Ben Tre)

LETTER TO NEW YORK TIMES:
Sylvie Kauffmann hammers the leaders of Hungary and Poland for the "offence"' of undermining multiculturalism and betraying the Enlightenment. (The West's schism over liberal values. September 23-24). [Archive].

But wasn't it Merkel who said in 2010 that attempts to build a multicultural society had been "a complete failure"?

And wasn't it Merkel who in 2015, in a spectacular display of cognitive dissonance, opened the doors to millions of Muslim migrants (all illegal, by the way), whose progenitors had become the failed multicultural experiment she had excoriated five years prior?

And isn't it now also Merkel, who in her latest "pivot" is trying to stem the tide she herself had unleashed? 

This is the paragon Kauffmann claims now has donned the mantle of "leader of the free world"?

Meantime Macron. Surely there is no better example of hubris and hypocrisy than this grandiloquent statement of his, quoted by Ms Kauffmann: 
"Is there any other continent with such a commitment to freedom, democracy and the social balances that hold us together, to this reconciliation of justice and freedom which are at last combined.... In Europe today, sovereignty, democracy and trust are in danger". 
Yes, but who are they in danger from?  Surely as much from the likes of Merkel and Macron who see no problems in opening the doors to millions who have no interest in "freedom, democracy and social balances". Whose core ideology is in direct opposition to those values.

Thus it is that very many concerned citizens, not of the Alt-right, believe it is the precisely the likes of Merkel and Macron who are imperilling "sovereignty, democracy and trust". They are not saving us and the Enlightenment. They are imperilling us by imperilling it.

It is very unlikely that allowing unprecedented millions into Europe who despise the West and its Enlightenment will contribute to its lustre. 

Pf, etc