Salim Mansur, Toronto Sun, March 22, 2008
Perhaps the most apt manner to describe multiculturalism as an ideology and government policy in western liberal democracies would be what the incomparable English writer, journalist and non-conformist, Malcolm Muggeridge, wrote in his 1970 essay, The Great Liberal Death Wish.
Perhaps also no contemporary of Muggeridge (1903-90), nor anyone after him, made as incisive a dissection of the deepening liberal malaise in the 20th century as he provided. He also exposed apologists of liberalism and their untiring efforts to discredit and dissolve the West as a uniquely gifted civilization.
In every culture there are to be found some dissidents or skeptics questioning its legitimacy and moral authority as those in the former Soviet Union—Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others not as well known—did. They exposed the lies of a system that rationalized the organized effort of tyranny to extinguish freedom, and their sacrifice eventually contributed to its demise.
But the oddity about skeptics in the West, as Muggeridge wrote about them and their liberalism, is the death wish to undo a culture where freedom, having sunk deep roots, thrives. They would replace this culture with a pale shadow of one negating all that is noble, life affirming, uplifting and founded on the values celebrated by the Christian church.
This is the great liberal death wish, a twisted psychology of that intellectual class which willingly goes out to buy the lies of a culture that entombs freedom, as was done in the Soviet Union—and continues in places such as China and Saudi Arabia—and fashion these lies as a cure for manufactured ills in the West, with the purpose of undermining it.
Muggeridge wrote, the “great liberal death wish arises out of a historical, or maybe biological, necessity, rather than out of any rational, or even irrational, considerations. Civilizations, like classes and families and regimes, degenerate, and so must be wound up.”
The strength of the West measured in terms of freedom—of Prometheus unbound and its creative spirit unleashed soaring upwards despite risks—resides in its assimilative capacity and openness to share its freedom with those beyond its cultural boundaries seeking the same.
Yet keeping the West strong requires perseverance and vigilance. The spirit that soars also can sag through fatigue, the creative can begin to lose fecundity, freedom can become corrupted in time, and decay can loom over that culture ever larger.
It is in these circumstances that false hope readily may be planted and false remedy readily sold. The curative unthinkingly bought turns out to be medicine hastening the end.
Muggeridge again: “Previous civilizations have been overthrown from without by the incursion of barbarian hordes; ours has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual elite.”
POLITICALLY CORRECT
Multiculturalism is in appearance the most pleasing of liberal barbiturates offered to stave off the West’s demographic decline through immigration. For it to work the requirement demanded is suspension of critical and discriminating thinking replaced by politically correct speech that must offend none except, if need be, the patient (the West) requiring the cure.
And so Muggeridge would have said that multiculturalism being one big swindle it is a “sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a precipice; blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish.”
Original article
(Posted on March 24, 2008)
Comments
Liberals will for sometime keep up the white flight, until in a generation or 2 there will be no place left to run. Then the fun will start. Their few children liberals happen to muster up will forever curse them for the loss of freedom.
Posted by at 5:19 PM on March 24
Liberals are extremely demented people. To them, a nation that believes in superstituous religious experiences, shamanism, herbs, Santoria, or any other experiences that lead to “higher consciousness” is the same as nation that has gone to the moon, built computers, or sends probes to outerspace. Same experiences, just manifesting differently to the liberals progressives.
I always get a kick out of the thousands of gullible rich people who flock to a Deepak Chopra lecture, or go to his “Clinic” in San Diego, California, to experience “higher states of mind”. Too bad the good Dr.doesn’t go back to India and meditate at the foot of the Ganges River in order to clean it up. Somehow I don’t think it would work, However, a donation by him of a few million of his millions on environmental technology might do the trick. Most of what surrounds Americans is illusion, but this will soon pass. The liberals and neocons are making sure of it.
Posted by Bobby at 5:40 PM on March 24
Had a hard time following this article and digesting it for thought. One thing that did give me hope was seeing A Toronto byline. Maybe freedom of thought and speech isn`t ready to die in the Frozen North just yet after all…
Posted by Tim MC Hugh at 6:07 PM on March 24
Salim Mansur is one of the few credible journalistic voices coming out of southern Ontario. When I lived there, the ultra-left political correctness sickened me beyond belief (much less of that on the prairies, to be sure!). Reading the Toronto Sun (NOT the Toronto Star) helped me maintain my sanity, as it convinced me that there were others who truly felt as I do. Bravo, Salim! We need ethnic immigrants to stand up for the West, as whites like myself invariably get shouted down with accusations of ‘racist’ whenever we voice our opposition to multiculturalism.
Posted by Matt at 6:17 PM on March 24
It’s ironic how so often it’s perceptive non-Europeans like Salim Mansur who point out the absurdity of the liberal thinking that has our civilization in a death grip. But I guess that a white person saying the same thing, like Sam Francis, is too “racist” for a Canadian paper.
Posted by Brendan at 6:52 PM on March 24
What a nice article. After that introduction, it would behoove you to read Malcolm Muggeridge’s 1970 essay, so here is the link:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/MuggeridgeLiberal.shtml
Posted by big bill at 7:06 PM on March 24
I bet you a million bucks that multiculturalism would fail in short order if all those rainbow colors would move in with those liberal whites….then let them see how wonderful their world becomes!!!!
Posted by lydia at 7:17 PM on March 24
I have had a lot of respect for this man ever since I read his now-classic non-conformist book, Jesus Rediscovered, more than thirty years ago. My respect deepened when I saw him on some television show talking about how he opposed the permissiveness on English college campuses (“sex is the modern day sacrament,” he said). Needless to say, the Liberals considered him a pariah after he started saying such things.
I cannot help but think that the continuance of the West in the world tomorrow will be possible by like-minded Christian thinkers like Muggeridge, and maybe only by such.
Posted by Gardener Ted at 7:30 PM on March 24
Multiculturalism is a euphemism for cultural genocide against European and European-American culture. The reality is that European civilization for hundreds of years did have a superior attitude to non-western cultures. Obviously some of this was misplaced and exaggerated, but there was an awful lot to be proud of.
It’s now like a see-saw, however, since in order to raise the status of non-Western cultures the culture that began with the Greeks, and probably had its end during the First World War, needs to be totally demonized and eliminated in order to make other cultures more important.
Interestingly, in my teaching of students from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other areas of the Orient, many of them appreciate Western Civilization more than a lot of the white youngsters who have been effectively brainwashed into the modern “hip-hop”, ghetto style youth culture of today. If only white youngsters, en masse, could start to reclaim their great cultural heritage then the cultural genocide going on might be stopped in its tracks.
Posted by Paul Jones at 8:10 PM on March 24
Seems like Mr. Muggeridge was a man who was way ahead of his time. He wrote this article back in the seventies, and I have to wonder what he thinks today.
Posted by Louis from Montreal at 10:05 AM on March 25
“But the oddity about skeptics in the West, as Muggeridge wrote about them and their liberalism, is the death wish to undo a culture where freedom, having sunk deep roots, thrives. They would replace this culture with a pale shadow of one negating all that is noble, life affirming, uplifting and founded on the values celebrated by the Christian church.”
Prof. Kevin McDonald and Dr. Lyle Rossiter made the case for America!
Posted by Lisette at 10:14 AM on March 25
Paul Jones wrote:
“students from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other areas of the Orient, many of them appreciate Western Civilization more than a lot of the white youngsters who have been effectively brainwashed into the modern “hip-hop”, ghetto style youth culture”
So if they are being brainwashed, what group is behind it?
Posted by Steve Driver at 10:28 AM on March 25
“It’s ironic how so often it’s perceptive non-Europeans like Salim Mansur who point out the absurdity of the liberal thinking that has our civilization in a death grip. But I guess that a white person saying the same thing, like Sam Francis, is too “racist” for a Canadian paper.”
The above statement is definitely true. Non-Europeans can sometimes stand “outside” our society, and can view the situation unencumbered by White-guilt and government/media brainwashing. An example is the web-site “Iranian for aryans” at:
http://iranianforaryans.blogspot.com/ This site is excellent; the writer is extremely articulate and erudite, and brings a world and historical view to cultural/racial conflict. He is also extremely funny, and very non-PC. Prepare to be shocked!
Posted by at 10:42 AM on March 25
Multiculturalism is the ” holocaust ” of white-Christian western culture. How many non-whites and non-Christians in U.S. congress voted for this ” pogrom ” in 1965 and maintained it ever since ?
Posted by Michigan patriot at 11:55 AM on March 25
Malcolm Muggeridge was a young Moscow correspondent for the left-wing Guardian newspaper in the early thirties & his observations of life in the Soviet Union & the communist-induced mass famines are documented in his brilliant book Winter In Moscow. He reveals how the brainashed intellectual lefties would visit the Soviet Union & send back to their newspapers glowing reports of life in the new socialist state while in reality millions were dying from mass starvation. Of course leftist luminaries such as Beatrice & Sidney Webb founders of the left-wing Fabian Society [Communism in slow motion & still a potent force in the UK today] refused to believe such a thing of the New Socialist Utopia & were gushing in their praise of the mass murderers & were therefore complicit in the genocide but are still revered by the Left today. Today it is extremely difficult to get a copy of Winter In Moscow. I think I’ll go to the Guardian website & check to see if the legendary Malcolm Muggeridge features in that newpaper’s hallowed hall of fame. On second thoughts i won’t bother. I think I know the answer to that already. He’s probably flushed down the memory hole seven decades ago. Wouldn’t want the public to catch on, would we?
Posted by we will win through at 4:16 PM on March 25
I get the Toronto Sun where I live, Salim Mansur (along with Peter Worthington) is the only reason I read it. He has the courage and the “protected” status as a visible minority that allows him to say the truth about the condition the West is in-an age of insanity. One aspect of this madness is of course the teaching of Western history- in a warped, negative, hate-filled version that bears little resemblance to historical reality. In a literal sense, (for this was the product of the White intelligensia)this is “ancestor hatred”. Where healthy cultures have always venerated, and often worshipped their ancestors and their acheivements, the modern West is teaching its young the opposite- ancestor hatred. Surly this is the sign of a kind of madness. It is a product of the liberal death wish Salim Mansur comments on. Unless the West is cured of this kind of liberalism it will die.
Posted by White Canadian at 6:06 PM on March 25
Malcolm Muggeridge was a young Moscow correspondent for the left-wing Guardian newspaper in the early thirties & his observations of life in the Soviet Union & the communist-induced mass famines are documented in his brilliant book Winter In Moscow. He reveals how the brainashed intellectual lefties would visit the Soviet Union & send back to their newspapers glowing reports of life in the new socialist state while in reality millions were dying from mass starvation. Of course leftist luminaries such as Beatrice & Sidney Webb founders of the left-wing Fabian Society [Communism in slow motion & still a potent force in the UK today] refused to believe such a thing of the New Socialist Utopia & were gushing in their praise of the mass murderers & were therefore complicit in the genocide but are still revered by the Left today. Today it is extremely difficult to get a copy of Winter In Moscow. I think I’ll go to the Guardian website & check to see if the legendary Malcolm Muggeridge features in that newpaper’s hallowed hall of fame. On second thoughts i won’t bother. I think I know the answer to that already. He’s probably flushed down the memory hole seven decades ago. Wouldn’t want the public to catch on, would we?
Posted by we will win through at 6:20 PM on March 25
Abraham Lincoln(not one of my favorites, by the way), perhaps said it best. America is so fortunately blessed with abundant natural resources, and protected from the rest of the world by two huge moats called oceans, that it must either endure forever, or die by suicide. Multiculturalism, political correctness and liberalism generally are that suicide of which he spoke.
Posted by Blowtorch Mason at 8:28 PM on March 25
Multiculturalism is the ” holocaust ” of white-Christian western culture. How many non-whites and non-Christians in U.S. congress voted for this ” pogrom ” in 1965 and maintained it ever since ?
Posted by Michigan patriot at 11:55 AM on March 25
This is the cold and hard truth that is unfolding for all Americans to see…the Obama-Wright saga put it on the table. When Geraldine Ferraro made her famous comment I did get but now I understand where she was coming from….just like Michelle Obama said that this is the first time she is proud of her country she exposed her victicrat mindset perpetrated by this agenda. The whole scheme to turn this country into an even bigger gulag….is coming down like a deck of cards….Yepiekajee….LOL.
Check out Prof. Kevin McDonald…he got the story straight….als pay attention to Lou Dobbs because he will be moderating the debate and let the chips fall where they may!
Posted by Lisette at 10:45 AM on March 26
Lisette, I read some of Dr. Rossiter’s comments on liberalism. Brilliant writer and analysis of the liberal mentality. Thank you .
Posted by Bobby at 5:34 PM on March 26
“Interestingly, in my teaching of students from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other areas of the Orient, many of them appreciate Western Civilization more than a lot of the white youngsters who have been effectively brainwashed into the modern “hip-hop”, ghetto style youth culture of today. If only white youngsters, en masse, could start to reclaim their great cultural heritage then the cultural genocide going on might be stopped in its tracks.”
Reading this brings a smile to my face. It makes me want to cry, looking at the way the white race’s many accomplishments are either demonized or attributed to some other race. I am glad that at least the Asians see us for what we are capable of being. Us whites are too busy brainwashing ourselves due to false guilt while all the low-IQed races believe their own fantasies about themselves (that we have created for them) because they have such inferiority complexes. The hispanics, arabs, blacks and Indians(yes, from India) etc… just love trying to take credit for our accomplishments. Hopefully soon truth will conquer evil.
Posted by Courtney at 7:45 PM on March 26
