Chris Smith – Failure of the Test

The Rt. Hon. Chis Smith, NuLab's former Culture Minister, is the latest liberal to bemoan the decline of the West. As a gay Christian socialist he fails to understand that Europe is great DESPITE Christianity and its bastard offspring, liberal individualism. His proposed solution – yet more liberal individualism – is guaranteed to finally destroy our civilization.

Smith and Richard Koch have a new book out – SUICIDE OF THE WEST. In it they propose that the West has succeeded for 6 major reasons: Christianity, Optimism, Science, Economic Growth, Liberalism and Individualism. It's a mystery how it took two men to come up with this drivel. Richard Koch is a “management consultant” and previous author of trite self-help manuals in the tradition of Dale Carnegie's HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, only not so original.

Let's see how Smith & Koch's analysis stands up to by far the greatest current threats to European cultural integrity; resurgent Islam and environmental degradation:

Christianity - How this weak religion preaching universalism, loving your enemy and turning the other cheek will save us from Islam is anyone's guess. The Christian establishment in Britain increasingly champions the 'rights' of immigrants and refugees above those of the indigenous population. Only last month, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor held a rally for illegal immigrants in front of Westminster Cathedral where he declared, "as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, you are Londoners". Meanwhile Belgian churches provide sanctuary to illegal third world Muslim refugees (“sans papiers”) who pray to Allah in the aisles (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1064), with the support of Catholic bishops.

Optimism – complacency more like! (see Economic Growth, below)

Science – Western science grew out of a pagan outlook, first in Ancient Greece, then more recently with the re-discovery of pagan thinking and knowledge during the Renaissance. Newton and Darwin may ostensibly have been Christian (at first, at least), but Newtonian physics and Darwinian evolution owe nothing to the Bible and everything to the open, progressive thinking encouraged by European paganism – the Faustean/ Promethean Spririt.

Economic Growth – The very last thing this planet needs is more “economic growth” in it's present consumer-capitalist form. Smith and Koch would have us gasping for polluted air while drowning in a rising sea of toxic filth.

Liberalism – The profound error of liberalism – the reign of quantity against quality - is too vast a subject to tackle in a couple of sentences. Either you get it, or you don't. Smith and Koch don't.

Individualism – here's the nonsensical notion of the Tabula Rasa revived. Real individuals are always the products of particular cultures and communities, and it is those cultural communities alone which can give meaning and definition to the individual. To be fully human (e.g. to speak a language, appreciate art etc.) we must be part of a culture, which always takes precedence over us as individuals.

What's so galling about all this is that Chris Smith, Baron of Finsbury, was in a position, at least for a while, to be able to do something practical. He had power as a Cabinet Minister, and he squandered it. Only now are we beginning to understand how fast the downward spiral to destruction accelerated during Blair's first Cabinet 1997-2001, during Chris Smith's watch. Smith is as much in the dark as he ever was.