Europe’s Man of Destiny is Geert
Wilders, the 35-year-old leader of Holland’s tiny
Freedom Party. He has provoked the world Muslim
community in order to draw the violent jihadists
out of the tall grass, and he seems to be
succeeding. Call what Wilders has done nasty but
necessary, and blame Europe’s so-called mainstream
leaders for abandoning their posts, and leaving
the standard in the hands of a young man with the
courage to grasp it. At the moment the Dutch
government is quaking over the consequences of a
10-minute film that Wilders plans to release in
April denouncing the Koran.
Strictly
speaking, I do not quite agree with Wilders that
the Koran should be banned along with Hitler’s
Mein Kampf as an incitement to violence.
Nonetheless, he is doing precisely the right
thing. A house divided against itself cannot
stand, as Abraham Lincoln
quoted
the Gospels as he made ready to tear down the half
that was misbehaving. No civilized state can abide
a rival from within who contests the monopoly of
violence of legitimate government. If governments
refuse to act, the optimal course of action is
pre-emptive: bring matters to a decision as fast
as possible before the rot destroys the entire
house.
Wilders has succeeded in getting
the world's attention. "Should it come to riots,
bloodshed and violence after broadcasting the
Koran movie by PVV leader Geert Wilders, then
Wilders will be responsible," the visiting Grand
Mufti of Syria threatened the European Parliament
in January.
Geert Wilders emphatically is
not a right-winger; on the contrary, he is the
last remnant of a European mainstream which has
melted down into a mush of appeasers. He will have
nothing to do with Europe’s racist fringe. He is a
Catholic, and an admirer of Israel, where he spent
two years as a young man. As he said in an
interview posted on his website: "As a liberal, I
feel close to the conservatives and liberals, but
I am not sure they want to cooperate with me. I
definitely would not like to work with
[Jean-Marie] Le Pen [of France] and like-minded
parties - fascists - in whose category many people
mistakenly place my party."
Delaying a war
that must be fought is the most dangerous course
of all, as Europe learned in 1914 and again in
1939. If only Germany had attacked France during
the First Morocco Crisis of 1905, I have
speculated in the past, Europe would have had
brief and bloody reprise of the Franco-Prussian
War of 1870, rather than the ruin of all
contending parties.
One might describe
Europe’s civil condition as a low-intensity civil
war. Outright violence is limited to the sort of
rioting by Muslim youth gangs that erupted in
France in October 2006, and on a smaller scale in
Denmark during the past week. But the threat of
violence, including widespread intimidation of
public figures, is continuous. Wilders lives under
constant police protection. The courageous Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, co-maker of the film that cost Theo van
Gogh his life in 2004 and the author of a
bestselling tract against Islam, remains in
constant danger of assassination. Her predicament
sets in relief the moral bankruptcy of Europe’s
governments.
Not since lions tore apart
slaves for the prurient enjoyment of the Roman mob
has Europe witnessed a spectacle as revolting as
Hirsi Ali’s appearance last week before the
European Parliament. She has lived under guard
since Theo van Gogh’s murder in 2004. To its
shame, the Dutch government has stopped paying for
her security. On February 14 she asked the
European Parliament to fund her security, saying:
"The threats to my life have not subsided and the
cost is beyond anything I can pay ... I find
myself in a very desperate position. I don't want
to die. I want to live and I love life. I'm going
to do anything legal to get help."
Before
the eyes of the world, a leading citizen of the
Netherlands begs the legislature of Europe to
protect her against assassins whose declared goal
is the destruction of Europe’s liberties as well
as its civilization. The Dutch government turns
its back. Europe’s Parliament listens politely and
refers the matter to committee. A group of French
members of parliament has invited her to apply for
French citizenship so that the French government
might offer her protection.
Thus far, the
authorities of Europe have made clear that they
will do nothing to prevent the murder of a
prominent citizen. If Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose plea
to the European Parliament made headlines, can
expect no help from the authorities when her life
is at imminent risk, what succor can the anonymous
victims of Islamist violence expect?
I am
ashamed to say that it did not become clear to me
that Wilders has taken the only appropriate course
of action until I read carefully the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s now-infamous "sharia" speech.
Stripped of casuistry, he proposed that Muslim
women subject to forced marriages, genital
mutilation, or domestic violence should be handed
over to Muslim religious courts, rather than be
offered the protection of English Common Law. To
my knowledge, this is the first time that one of
Europe’s spiritual leaders has proposed to abandon
innocent victims to their fate.
Archbishop
Dr Rowan Williams, to be sure, has a point. But he
should have stated plainly what he really thinks.
What he wanted to say is more or less: "To protect
a few hundred or a few thousand colored ladies,
the English state will have to put its big boots
on, kick down the doors of Muslim homes, trample
through Muslim living rooms, tear up the fabric of
Muslim communities, and disrupt the social order.
Why not turn such cases over to religious courts
and wash our hands of them?" I reiterate: this is
satanic hypocrisy.
If decent and
well-meaning men like Dr Williams are so afraid of
communal violence as to abandon the founding
principles of common law and Judeo-Christian
ethics, it is long past time to debate the fine
points. Blessed are the pre-emptors, for they will
get on with it.
Wilders recalls that
authentic American hero, John Brown, the
anti-slavery "extremist" whose 1859 raid on the
Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry hastened the
outbreak of civil war in 1861. Strictly speaking,
I do not approve of armed bands seizing Federal
arsenals any more than I propose to ban the Koran,
but Brown also did precisely the right thing.
Without his provocation, the Union never might
have won the Civil War. American conservatives
like to twit the Europeans for temporizing, but
few governments waffled in the face of manifest
evil like the American government before the slave
interest during the 1840s and 1850s. It was left
to anti-slavery provocateurs to trigger the right
war at the right time.
Abraham Lincoln
stands out as America’s greatest statesman
precisely because he pushed America into war at
the earliest opportunity. But the kindly, paternal
figure of American memory who called for "charity
towards all, and malice towards none" couldn’t
have done it without John Brown.
Enlightened opinion blames the outbreak of
wars on reckless jingoism with little thought for
consequences. On the contrary, the governments and
peoples of many countries had to be dragged
kicking and screaming into a war they needed to
fight, but would much rather back away from.
Blessed are the pre-emptors, for they will make
you fight the good fight even when your heart is
in your boots.
If America’s Civil War had
not broken out in 1861, the Union probably would
have lost the war, and the Southern slave system
would have spread like cancer through South
America. If the South had bought time to ally with
France under Napoleon III, who invaded Mexico in
1862, and Britain under Lord Palmerston, the Union
never could have imposed a blockade on the
Confederacy. The highly motivated Southern armies,
which took casualties amounting to nearly 30% of
military-age Southern men, would have worn down
the North with sufficient materiel.
If the
South had not seceded with a violent tantrum,
firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the North
might not have mustered the support for a civil
war. The secession of the South was of no economic
consequence to New England manufacturers who
bought its cotton, and was remote to the
Midwestern farmers who eventually won the war
under General W T Sherman. Northern outrage
against the Southern initiation of hostilities
gave a military mandate to Lincoln, who had won
less than 40% of the popular vote in the 1860
presidential election.
John Brown takes a
great deal of the credit for the missteps of the
South. His 1859 raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal
with 21 men ostensibly sought to distribute the
100,000 firearms on hand to revolting slaves. It
had no chance of success, but it persuaded
slave-owners that their worst-case scenario was to
have their throats slit by mutinous slaves. Fear
guided Southern policy rather than rational
calculation, and the war came soon enough for the
Union to triumph. Oft evil will shall evil mar, as
Tolkien said. Brown’s name still makes bile flow
in the South. Blessed are the pre-emptors, for
they shall set up the hostiles for a sucker punch.
Of course, there is no need for Geert
Wilders to suffer the sad fate of John Brown, who
was hanged for his heroism. I hope he survives the
death-threats to serves as his country’s prime
minister long enough for the faces of his
opponents to turn the colors of the Dutch flag.
Blessed are the pre-emptors, for they may redeem
you yet. And do unto others before they do unto
you.
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