Een vleugelnoot!
Did you know that Europe has wingnuts too? They do! In Dutch a wingnut is “een vleugelnoot” (actually I think that means something completely different, but stay with me, people). And the exciting thing is that their heads are just as far up their asses as those of American wingnuts! This comforts me in a strange way.
In a charmingly insane editorial at the Brussels Journal, Flemish vleugelnoot Paul Belien sighs over the rotten state of Europe. The trouble began with the Enlightenment, he says, when Europe began rejecting its glorious religious heritage (persecution/war/intolerance) in exchange for a deadly secularism of reason and knowledge.
Mr. Vleugelnoot envies the “conservative resources” of America, which is still rooted in that wonderful Christian tradition he misses so much (persecution/war/intolerance). “Every so often I travel to the U.S. to recharge my batteries, and I am not the only European Conservative to do so,” he says. “From time to time one needs to breathe the air of freedom before submerging again in the stifling atmosphere of Europe.”
I’m not making this up.
What’s really eating Mr. Vleugelnoodle is that he’s jealous as hell of Muslims. It totally pisses him off that most modern Europeans aren’t into that whole suicide bomber, die-for-the-virgins-in-paradise thing:
In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom….
Europe’s predicament, I repeat, is entirely self-inflicted. Not Islam is to blame. Secularism is.
Excuse me for a moment while I lean my head out the window and scream in the general direction of Belgium:
“NO, YOU STUPID ASSWIPE!”
See, the Brussels Journal (of which Mr. Veugelstreudel is the editor in chief) is very big into the whole clash of civilizations trip — sensible Europe versus primitive Muslim immigrants. They backed the Danish cartoons all the way as a defense of free speech in the face of intolerant Muslim extremism.
But as this editorial makes clear, European vleugelnoots are no better than American wingnuts at realizing that what makes Western civilization relatively tolerant and worth defending is the very thing they so hate: its secularism. Secularism is why we even have free speech to defend. But Mr. Vooglebooble wishes the Enlightenment had never happened. He thinks the clash of civilizations would go much better if we could turn the clock back to the 17th century and have Christian holy warriors go toe-to-toe with Muslim holy warriors.
And there we get down to it: It’s not really about values for these vleugelnoots at all. It’s not about “tolerance.” It’s about us versus them. Deep down they have absolutely no fucking problem with blowing yourself and everybody else up for God. They just want it to be for their God. They would be happy as hell if all European Christians suddenly started behaving like the most deluded, inflamed Muslim extremists. American wingnuts are exactly the same. Well, hell — at the rate we’re going, maybe they’ll get their wish.
P.S. I have a deep personal affection for both the Flemish and the Dutch, so don’t nobody get their boobledoodles in a wad. I can curse in Flemish, too, so watch out.
13 Responses to “Een vleugelnoot!”
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Infidel says:
I’d love to see what George Bush would do with:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference” when he had so much fun with “fool me once, shame on you–fool me twice shame on me.”
The trouble with Secularists is they aren’t all atheists.February 24th, 2006 at 7:05 am EST -
Lou Minatti says:
He’s right, and that’s why his comments have you so rattled.
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Txfeminist says:
Mister Pflugel-noodle would love pre-enlightenment Europe. I’m sure the smell of burning cowshit smoking up his mud-and-straw hovel would really jazz up his mornings, while coughing up a tuberculine lung before going out to his Lordship’s fields dressed in rags to toil all day before being thrown the pig’s scraps at the back door of the hall to feed the one child left he has out of eleven births, whose mother died in a bloodbath on their dirt floor bearing the last one.
Yeah, good times – good times.
(do I win for longest sentence ever posted?)
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Txfeminist says:
Oh and…. mister poodle doodle would also love being torn apart by four horses and having his head stuck on a pike, for “speaking against the king” – which is essentially what he’s doing today.
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Gabriel says:
Disregarding personal opinion for a minute, perhaps read John Fowles ‘A Maggott’ as it witnesses old English country life not so different perhaps from the rest of Europe at that time, and perhaps not so drastically from Europe today.
Shown in stifling rigidity the country people, characterized by occupation and class, we’re witnessing a murder and are drawn into a world content with its conventions and idiosyncracies. Shown in later parts of this book the maggott reveals itself allowing a glimpse into the future perhaps liberated from tradition and class struggle.
Seeing the world from that perspective will make you realize how easy the transition has become for many to blend into a mainstream culture that is based on the pursuit of happiness and ignorant bliss. The realization that that represents the ultimate form of manifest destiny, the masses are stunned into believing that the future beholds little else but a secured livelihood as baristas and poker players.
But then you’re always free to draw your own conclusions – what a great country!!! -
Infidel says:
Ya think flootensnoot glommed onto Wiegles “Cathedral and the Cube”? Ya know, Violet, your picture looks either like princess leahaa or maybe a wingnut seeing a hand comming from the clowds to twist your head.
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Infidel says:
cloud
mosque
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Alon Levy says:
And the exciting thing is that their heads are just as far up their asses as those of American wingnuts! This comforts me in a strange way.
Actually, my reaction is an annoyed cringe. As long as Dominionism is an American peculiarity, I can be sure that a) it won’t last very long unless miraculously the United States stops running wartime deficits in peacetime, and b) liberals have ample ground to stand if the US “falls,” so to speaks.
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Ben says:
I think what he’s after, in some clumsy manner, is the passion he senses from the Muslim camp for their cause. One cannot argue, there really is a clash of values, and without passion the liberal ideology of Europe as we know it will lose. No cause, however noble, wins without passion. I don’t think he’s pining for the Inquisition at all, I think he wishes Europe had the passion he imagines went with it. But today we have one culture that has declared itself “Free”, and another culture that has declared that there will be limits, violently enforced, if that Freedom is ever perceived as offensive. While that is in place, liberal culture, if not passionately defended, is already comatose. It is a mere joke, for example, to claim that mocking Bush, Rove, and company is an act of courage when we all know that such mockery will not leave you bleeding to death in the street- but mockery of you-know-who will. Oh yes, have no doubt, Margaret Cho knows exactly what kind of joke will get her head chopped off, and so do you, and it’s not a Bush is an Ignorant Fascist joke.
In Europe, and to some degree in the United States as well, culture truly is being strangled. You can say, with some justification, that one should use the freedom of speech responsibly, but this begs the question: are we in prison if we don’t ever say the word “prison”, but we’ve agreed that leaving the room would be “irresponsible”? It’s well and good to say let’s not offend, but the fact remains that when we are ordered not to offend, our “let’s not offend” paradigm really means “let’s not offend those who will kill us if we do”.
So it appears to me that Belien is decrying the lack of will to resist this, although I think it is bizarre to blame it on the Enlightenment. The last few centuries have produced a lot of heros who actually proved that people will defend values like religious tolerance, democracy, and social equality, with their lives if necessary. Western culture isn’t all about hedonism, it’s about being, and the freedom to define one’s own being, and in that light I shudder to imagine a world in which all being is directed by a narrow minded echo chamber of imams. (At this point some will say “but we do have a narrow minded echo chamber…” to which I reply “Yeah. I’ll worry about them as much when Michael Moore and Whoopi Goldberg are in hiding due to credible death threats. The threat form the Imams is REAL, it is NOW, and it KILLS.)
We might have been taught that passion and courage, the passion to beleive in one’s values enough to generate the raw physical courage needed, is an unimportant asset, but dire times will bring out the courage we need. Yes, you can love our freedom enough to be willing to die for it, even if you voted for Kerry.
Belien sees the clash of cultures as inherrently violent, and although it often isn’t, the elephant in the room now is that the very real violence makes every demand an implicit threat. We have a request from Islamic schools in Michigan, that when their little girls play basketball against non-Muslim girls in other schools, the fathers of the non-Muslim girls should be forbid to watch. All well enough, but the problem now is that the implicit “or else we’ll kill them” is there. Belien considers this a strength of their culture, I think it is a dysfunction, but nonetheless I think it is a dysfunction that will require passion and courage on our part to defeat.
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Alon Levy says:
Yes, you can love our freedom enough to be willing to die for it, even if you voted for Kerry.
Oh yeah, the live-free-or-die attitude, the precursor of every totalitarian rule that pretends to give a damn about freedom.
Also, I didn’t vote for Kerry. I’m not an American, as are many of this blog’s readers, as well as everyone your comment might be relevant to (it’s relevant only to Europe).
So it appears to me that Belien is decrying the lack of will to resist this, although I think it is bizarre to blame it on the Enlightenment.
It’s not bizarre at all: for Western conservatives, especially European ones, the Enlightenment was when trouble started – when decadent values like tolerance, equality, and liberty started gaining traction. So far, of all the people I’ve seen decry Western compromise of liberal values, about 95% hate these liberal values unless they can use them as political propaganda. In the West, the people who have any clout at all and use it to advocate a tougher stand against cultures or countries that oppress people are invariably predisposed to support the same kinds of oppression as long as its their culture or country that uses them.
Western culture isn’t all about hedonism, it’s about being, and the freedom to define one’s own being, and in that light I shudder to imagine a world in which all being is directed by a narrow minded echo chamber of imams. (At this point some will say “but we do have a narrow minded echo chamber…” to which I reply “Yeah. I’ll worry about them as much when Michael Moore and Whoopi Goldberg are in hiding due to credible death threats. The threat form the Imams is REAL, it is NOW, and it KILLS.)
Oh, Westerners seldom like to oppress other Westerners; the political reaction to that will be too negative. Instead, they take it out on Latin Americans, Middle Easterners, Africans, and East Asians.
All well enough, but the problem now is that the implicit “or else we’ll kill them” is there.
That’s a load of fact-free shit.
Belien considers this a strength of their culture, I think it is a dysfunction, but nonetheless I think it is a dysfunction that will require passion and courage on our part to defeat.
Good… then you must know that practically speaking, pressing a culture that doesn’t consider you a moral authority to reform only strengthens the hardliners. Racial and cultural tolerance liberalize even the most conservative of cultures; pressure of any kind causes French- or German-style ghettoization. Of course, all that assumes that you care about liberal values, rather than about putting brown people in their place; I don’t know that you don’t, but I do know that Belien doesn’t.
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Ben says:
>>Oh yeah, the live-free-or-die attitude, the precursor of every totalitarian rule that pretends to give a damn about freedom.Also, I didn’t vote for Kerry. I’m not an American, as are many of this blog’s readers, as well as everyone your comment might be relevant to (it’s relevant only to Europe).>All well enough, but the problem now is that the implicit “or else we’ll kill them” is there.
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Alon Levy says:
No, it’s not. Each Western country’s Muslim population behaves differently. Very roughly, the Muslims of Europe are more ghettoized and hence more violent than these of North America. The US is remarkably good at integrating immigrants, especially those who don’t start out dirt poor.
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steve3742 says:
OK, a brief comment
I think one of the long-term effects of the Enlightenment was the effect on religion. Here (the UK) we often have surveys that determine how many Muslims there are as opposed to Christians. (just under 3%, if you’re interested.) But who are we kidding? There aren’t that many Christians in this country, not now. The majority religion of the UK is Aetheism, or agnosticism at the very least. There probably are as many REAL Christians as there are Muslims, a prospect that worries the right-wingers in this country, most of whom are Christian (yes, we have wingnuts here too!)
The implication for this for Muslims, however, is also stark. Alon mentioned integrating immigrants, well the price of integrating into an aetheist society would seem to be aetheism. The Jewish community in the UK is like this – as with the Christian community, they’re not really very religious at all, with a few notable (and vocal) exceptions. Could Islam end up like that? It would seem to be inevitable, given the nature of our post-enlightenment society.
This is, I think, why the few Christians left are so extreme about it – they have to be to STAY Christian in an aetheist society. I predict in a generation or two Muslims too will be like that – a few very vocal, very hardline religious people but a vast majority who call themselves Muslim but hardly ever enter a Mosque. And I think Muslims in the UK can see this and are worried by it.
Really, the Muslims and Christians should strike a common cause. They have far more in common with each other than they have with the aetheists who form the majority of our society. Going back to the Dutch article, the Christian bemoans the fact that Muslims seem to keep the faith whereas Christians are losing theirs. But (IMHO) that’s just a matter of time.
