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miniature painting, during the First Crusade.
[Image from my post "Significance of the cross."]
I was brought to the attention of this blog entry posted by the libertarian pundit Ilana Mercer (about whose inadequacies I have written about here), who says, "Immigration is the reason the Islamization of our societies is underway." This is well and good, and a correct observation. But then she links to her critique of a 2006 article by Mark Steyn who writes about the eventual necessity of a "swift, massive, devastating force that decapitates the [nuke-building Iranian] regime." She calls Steyn's edict a "confrontation of biblical proportions with Iran" and questions the "philosophical basis to wage war on a belligerent Muslim country."
Of course, it goes without saying, and from reading Steyn's essay, that Iran is gearing itself up for a confrontation of koranic proportions with the West. So what’s Mercer point? She simply has an anti-war agenda to fulfill.
The libertarians’ famous "if it doesn't harm us, let them get on with their lives" is rampant in Mercer's writing. In this case, what are harming us (or could potentially harm us) are the Muslims in our countries. What cannot harm us are the Muslims in faraway countries. No, those real, live nuclear weapons, which reduce the proximity of nations into mere inches, are of no consequence. Consider Iran with a nuke as Iran within, or very close to, your border. So, that position alone is absurd.
But, the bigger crime from Mercer is her argument about no "philosophical basis" (she means religious, and specifically Christianity here – but being an atheist cannot quite come up with that word) for going to war against the Muslims.
Well, here is my rebuttal.
Who is she to say that the West’s current crop of insipid and liberalized "leaders" are really the backbone of Western people? It is like saying the leaders of the pro-immigration movement in the U.S. (and Canada) are speaking for the population at hand, when every statistic shows that isn’t true – ordinary people are generally against immigration, and there are leaders who are rising up carrying the truth with them.
Back to Iran and Muslims. Since our current crop of leaders don’t, or won’t, follow Christian tenets for war, her argument, in a smug way, seals her position that there should never be any wars fought that don’t hold some kind of "philosophical" basis. The interesting thing is that she never comes up with a "philosophical" reason why wars (or at least, this war with Iran) should not be fought, other than to say that Iran cannot harm us. But then, look at this typical contradiction (Mercer's articles are full of them): she calls Iran, in her philosophical query, "a belligerent Muslim country." What will a belligerent country do, but act on its belligerence?
Anyway, first, wars are fought to defend one’s nation. Just like a bully is stopped in the school play ground for pure survival/defensive reasons. No philosophical inquiry required here, the truth is staring us in the eye.
Secondly, if we refuse to fight an apocalyptic koranic war because of a lack of "philosophy", there will no longer be any West to come up with philosophical tenets for war, let alone for life. The West would truly be dead and gone.
But how contemptuous of Mercer to have already decided that the West has thrown out religion and God for good, and thus the reason to fight (and live through) this approaching Armageddon! Cannot God Himself drive these anti-God elements away from our lives and fill us with His presence, so we can fight this most challenging evil with conviction? Cannot man find it in himself, at a moment of despair, to turn to God to give him meaning to go on, and to fight? Mercer’s position is so nihilistic, that she doesn’t give any of these possibilities a chance: the chance to bring back Christian civilization, the chance for redemption, the chance for God’s intervention.
"The Crusaders we are not" writes Mercer, in that finalized, dogmatic way which leaves her with no room for a leap of faith (or even a leap of imagination). She ignores the small, ridiculed crusaders that are all over the world. She has not invested in the possibility of these crusaders. She has no interest in joining their movement. As insightful as Mercer thinks she is, she is really no better than those "Usual Suspects" who sit and wring their hands, and write their columns, about the horrors facing us, but who will not join the movements to stop these horrors from happening.
Usually, I don’t get bothered with the inadequacies of the "Usual Suspects." But Mercer’s smug, ultimately anti-West and anti-Christian stance, as I’ve delineated above, is worth untangling because it meanders into her writing in such subtle ways that I don’t think she’s even aware of it. Which means that others are falling for it as well.