#1 Follows is a posted comment from the 'Californian' to Smith's blog on the recent violence in South Africa. I believe I may have a future use for the phrase... "global citizenship and universal Birkinstocks". I hope to see comments and insights more from the 'Californian.'
Californian 11:23 AM
I have confronted various liberals here in America and Europe with this question: "Why did you single out white-ruled South Africa for such opprobrium while you tolerated or even supported various communist and third world dictatorships?" The liberal answer is basically ideological: "Apartheid era SA upheld white rule over blacks and thus was (horrors!) 'racist;' therefore, apartheid had to go."
The thing to grasp is that liberal ideology is beyond rational reasoning. It is on the level of a demented religion which calls for its followers to sacrifice anything and anyone in order to maintain purity of faith. In pursuit of liberalism, liberals will turn over their children to be cut to pieces (Amy Biehl) or marched off as sex slaves (Rotherham).
The "struggle against apartheid" allowed liberals to engage in their fantasy of fighting for a world of equality, one-man-one-vote, global citizenship and universal Birkenstocks. And if black-majority-rule led to an Idi Amin or Rwanda massacre? Well, ghee whiz, the people of those countries are just overcoming the "problems" of colonialism and are nonetheless marching towards a democratic future.
In some cases, liberals were thinking in terms of the American Civil Rights struggle. Bantus and Xhosas became downtrodden Southern blacks; Soweto was Selma; the South African Police were Bull Connor's cops; Sharpseville was the new Edmund Pettus Bridge battle; Nelson Mandela was the reincarnation of Martin Luther King, jr; and by supporting the ANC, your American liberal enlisted in the ranks of the new Freedom Riders and thus guaranteed a place among the select when the final trumpet doth blow.
Never mind that Africa is not America, never mind that every attempt at black-majority-rule on the continent has led to black-run dictatorship, failed states and non-stop bloodbaths in the name of "liberation." Never mind that black majority rule in Detroit or Selma has led to those once thriving American cities being turned into urban wastelands.
Ideology is king.
I suppose there is some schadenfreude to be found in recent events in Europe and America. Africans and other third worlders riot in cities like London, Paris and Malmo. We've seen the mass sexual assaults by "refugees" in Cologne. I wonder how many white victims of these crimes were anti-apartheid activists? Similarly, here in America Black Lives Matter runs amok on liberal college campuses, despite liberal protestations that "We supported Martin Luther King, we opposed apartheid!"
I'll close out with my usual quote from James Burnham: "Liberalism is the ideology of Western Suicide." |
in the Pretoria area two days ago.