January 16, 2006

The Neighborhood's Going Downhill

OpinionJournal ran a piece by Mark Steyn, normally of the New Criterion, called It's Demography, Stupid. Its also linked on Dartlog. The basic premise is a Huntingtonian Clash of Civilizations type idea, that multiculturalism will kill us all.
Think of a codgity old man, complaining about all the damn blacks moving into his neighborhood. Now extrapolate that out into some global scale argument informed by every conservative misinformation, a half-literate sense of foreign policy, and for good measure, toss in a few talking-point-based tangents about the left, feminists, and, ugh, sodomites.
It goes on, and I'm not going to bore myself (or our faithful readers) taking it down point-by-point. The real problem is that this somewhat articulate, if batshit-insane, view of the world is pretty common among mainstream conservatives. It contains the characteristic untruths, inability to think in shades of grey, hyperbole about the spectre of (gasp!) change, and remarkable conglomeration of all things non-conservative into the same civilization-eroding evil. This kind of us-or-them, fight-or-die mentality (and in this case, the fight entails not only military combat but also canceling that pesky welfare state), whether written intentionally as a manifesto for conservative minions, or the honest delusions of this man, calls for policies that are far more dangerous and more likely to threaten our well-being than any of the things this guy whines about.
So if any of ya'll browsed this and we're interested in taking up Mr. Wilson's manifesto (as I've dubbed it....hence the comic above), you should probably, oh I don't know, read a book.

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