"Europe's Two Culture Wars"

By George Weigel at Commentary:

Earlier this year, five days short of the second anniversary of the Madrid bombings, the Zapatero government, which had already legalized marriage between and adoption by same-sex partners and sought to restrict religious education in Spanish schools, announced that the words “father” and “mother” would no longer appear on Spanish birth certificates. Rather, according to the government’s official bulletin, “the expression ‘father’ will be replaced by ‘Progenitor A,’ and ‘mother’ will be replaced by ‘Progenitor B.’” As the chief of the National Civil Registry explained to the Madrid daily ABC, the change would simply bring Spain’s birth certificates into line with Spain’s legislation on marriage and adoption. More acutely, the Irish commentator David Quinn saw in the new regulations “the withdrawal of the state’s recognition of the role of mothers and fathers and the extinction of biology and nature.”

At first blush, the Madrid bombings and the Newspeak of “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B” might seem connected only by the vagaries of electoral politics: the bombings, aggravating public opinion against a conservative government, led to the installation of a leftist prime minister, who then proceeded to do many of the things that aggressively secularizing governments in Spain have tried to do in the past. In fact, however, the nexus is more complex than that. For the events of the past two years in Spain are a microcosm of the two interrelated culture wars that beset Western Europe today.

The first of these wars — let us, following the example of Spain’s birth certificates, call it “Culture War A” — is a sharper form of the red state/blue state divide in America: a war between the postmodern forces of moral relativism and the defenders of traditional moral conviction. The second — “Culture War B” — is the struggle to define the nature of civil society, the meaning of tolerance and pluralism, and the limits of multiculturalism in an aging Europe whose below-replacement-level fertility rates have opened the door to rapidly growing and assertive Muslim populations.

The aggressors in Culture War A are radical secularists, motivated by what the legal scholar Joseph Weiler has dubbed “Christophobia.” They aim to eliminate the vestiges of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture from a post-Christian European Union by demanding same-sex marriage in the name of equality, by restricting free speech in the name of civility, and by abrogating core aspects of religious freedom in the name of tolerance. The aggressors in Culture War B are radical and jihadist Muslims who detest the West, who are determined to impose Islamic taboos on Western societies by violent protest and other forms of coercion if necessary, and who see such operations as the first stage toward the Islamification of Europe — or, in the case of what they often refer to as al-Andalus, the restoration of the right order of things, temporarily reversed in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella.

The question Europe must face, but which much of Europe seems reluctant to face, is whether the aggressors in Culture War A have not made it exceptionally difficult for the forces of true tolerance and authentic civil society to prevail in Culture War B....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 05/15/06 09:08:25 PM
Categorized as More Than Readworthy.

Rosenthal Calls Mainstream Media a Pack of Liars

Well, not exactly.

A. M. Rosenthal, sometime reporter and editor for the New York Times, died May 10. Terry Mattingly, over at GetReligion, directs us to an NYT editorial, May 12, in which Rosenthal is quoted:

When A. M. Rosenthal's years as executive editor of this newspaper were over, he wrote fondly of his first day on the job here as a 21-year-old cub reporter. He rushed off on an assignment — a hotel homicide — and after he had proudly flashed his press card and asked to see the corpse, he was told by a detective, "Beat it." That rebuff was a perfect starting point for Abe Rosenthal. He died on Wednesday at the age of 84 after a remarkable six-decade career that included numerous newspaper achievements but none more of a personal memorial than his fierce defense of press freedom — his bristling refusal to accept "Beat it" from government.

This toughness culminated momentously in The Times's battle with the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the government's own classified history of the grievous missteps that mired the nation in the Vietnam War. He put it this way: "When something important is going on, silence is a lie." In the newsroom, where he led the paper through 17 years of unparalleled journalistic and economic growth, Abe Rosenthal could be a fearsome presence, punishing editors and reporters for perceived shortcomings. But he was just as unapologetic in rebuffing outside critics. In both cases, he envisioned The Times as a precious institution that had to be protected daily — "a world of land, sea and mind in which to roam," he once exulted....

When something important is going on, silence is a lie.

Recently, a memo was obtained and translated by the American military, in which al Qaeda in Iraq lamented their increasing failures and inadequacies:

.... At the same time, the Americans and the Government were able to absorb our painful blows, sustain them, compensate their losses with new replacements, and follow strategic plans which allowed them in the past few years to take control of Baghdad as well as other areas one after the other. That is why every year is worse than the previous year as far as the Mujahidin’s control and influence over Baghdad....

Both Mark Tapscott and Jack Kelly have found that mainstream media has reported absolutely nothing about the memo.

When something important is going on, silence is a lie.

Thanks, Abe. You hit that nail right on the head.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 05/15/06 08:43:04 PM
Categorized as Media.