jueves, 23 de enero de 2014

There is a “natural human instinct to forget the distant past and to assume that the more or less benign trends of the recent past will continue


Repeating 1939: 
The Islamization of the West



The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?


In his 2005 book, The West’s Last Chance, Tony Blankley noted that there is a “natural human instinct to forget the distant past and to assume that the more or less benign trends of the recent past will continue.” Nevertheless, observed Blankley, “shocking divergences from the status quo have defined the path of history.” But these divergences are seldom anticipated. For example, “Londoners in the summer of 1939, my parents included, never expected that forty thousand of their fellow Londoners would soon lie dead in the streets from German bombing.”

The West’s Last Chance is about the danger that Islamization poses to the West. Blankley’s book warns that the citizens of the West face a threat similar to that faced by Londoners in 1939 and are handicapped by a similar inability to recognize the gravity of the threat.

The evidence for Islamization in Europe that Blankley pointed to in 2005 is far more abundant than it was when he wrote. But rather than go over facts that have been chronicled in detail in numerous recent books and articles, let’s ask why Westerners have so much difficulty in recognizing what should be obvious.

Part of the difficulty lies in the natural tendency to “forget the distant past” and assume that the status quo will continue. In our times this tendency is exacerbated by a greater than usual disconnect from the past. Modern man has difficulty remembering the near past, let alone the distant past. To a generation hooked on the sensation of the moment, 9/11 already seems like ancient history. So does the Beslan atrocity, the London tube bombing, and the month-long rioting in three hundred French cities that occurred in 2005. The Boston Marathon bombing happened less than a year ago but seems destined to quickly fade from memory since it was immediately characterized as a “one-off”—an isolated event perpetrated by a couple of self-radicalized lone wolves. It joins a long list of similar “one-off” incidents that include the Buffalo beheading, the “underwear bombers” failed attempt to bring down a jetliner, and Faisal Shazhad’s attempt to blow up Times Square.

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

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