Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
We’re down a homme this week (details about that in the show), but we’re still full to the brim on compelling and clever conversation with our guest National Review editor Rich Lowry, who stops by to talk about his new book, The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free. Is America an idea or a nation? Or both? It’s a wide ranging and detailed conversation (as planned, which is why we only have one guest this week) and raises a lot of interesting points about the pluses and minuses of the movement at the forefront of the political debate not only in America, but in many other countries as well. Also, hats off to @drbastiat for winning this week’s much coveted Lileks Post of The Week award for his The Paradoxical Popularity of Progressive Professionals post. Finally, because we have to, we check in on impeachment and wind up the show revealing our favorite Thanksgiving dishes. Mmmmm, sweet potato with marshmallows.
We’re off next week. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our listeners, especially the ones who are members, and we’ll see you in December!
Music from this week’s show: My Country ‘Tis Of Thee by Aretha Franklin
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Boll & Branch
Use Code: RICOCHET
The right sheets can take your sleep and your style to the next level. With Boll and Branch, that upgrade has never been more affordable. Go to BollandBranch.com and use promo code RICOCHET to get $50 off your first set of sheets plus free shipping in the U.S.
Unfortunately for much of Europe, perhaps even including England, it’s too late. It’s not a question of “until” the barbarians arrive. The barbarians (islamists) have already arrived, and already control many places. Even if the Europeans/British could agree/admit that they have a problem (which many don’t), and if they could agree on measures to correct it (which many wouldn’t); I don’t know that they could succeed.
Just reporting.
This begs the question of whether Europe is indeed decadent. In my lifetime, Europe has certainly grown more secular, with dismaying consequences. But there are still rules and customs–the best ones more or less unwritten. I prefer living in a society in which personal names are not used in addressing strangers and non-intimates, other than children. I like the tu/vous distinction in language. And as long as it is not tyrannical or ideological in nature, I accept a degree of social conformity: one may not paint the roof of one’s house purple. That is, there are bourgeois norms. America is for an old man like me simply too chaotic, with billionaires riding in their limos past sidewalks littered with needles and excrement…Oddly secular Japan has recently given a warm welcome to Francis I, though very few have even the foggiest notion of what the Catholic faith is about. Japan’s shamelessly commercialized “Christmas” might suggest a mindlessly consumerist, indeed, “decadent” land. But, in fact, here too there are unwritten rules that make for a remarkably stable society. The “barbarian” threat to Japan comes from two sources: Chinese imperialism and American cultural lefty lunacy.
You may be right, though, of course, I think we both hope that you’re not. Last year around Christmas time I was in northern Germany, attending a neighborhood get-together, where I spoke to an old friend, a retired Latin teacher, who, with a knowing look and a whisper, referred to the issue of sexual assaults committed by “refugees.” For obvious, historical reasons, polite, well-educated, affluent Germans wish to avoid being suspected of harboring any sort of “racist” or “xenophobic” thoughts, though I think it safe to say that, despite denials, they would not be at all happy if a large number of young Syrian males suddenly moved into their neatly kept neighborhoods…Incidentally, the street where the party was held is named after a well-known Holocaust victim…
A big part of the demographic problems are that they may not be clearly noticeable until they’re entirely beyond correction. Just counting increasing population numbers – and perhaps being panicked about the coming “end-of-the-world” – doesn’t do it. For example, I read somewhere not too long ago that very few “native” French women are still in the childbearing age range. So even if they decided TOMORROW to start having more kids and not be taken over by Muslims simply by reproduction, the bottom line is, they CAN’T. So unless they start bringing in a lot of non-French people from non-Islamic countries, or they get hardcore into cloning or something, it’s simply too late for France, already. Even with millions of French people still alive, they didn’t make replacements for themselves. So when they age and die off, they’re gone.
@dong — Your list of bills passed by Nancy Pelosi‘s House is a devastating refutation of the Never-Trumper doctrine, that today’s Republicans must be crushed “for the future good of conservatism”.
If the Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House, most of those bills would now be well on the way to becoming the law of the land.
P.S.: Love your moniker!
This is unlikely to be tried, but it might be possible to make France a place that unassimilated, fundamentalist Muslims would rather leave.
For example, start enforcing laws which interfere with the subjugation of Muslim women.
In particular, start throwing parents in jail if they allow their little girls to be sexually mutilated; and, of course, put their children in protective care where the parents’ malignant beliefs are not propagated. (No matter how bad you think female genital mutilation is, it’s actually worse. Everyone deplores it; no one does anything about it.)
While we are dreaming, let’s imagine that the French get rid of the dole. Millions of North Africans came to France in the 1960s because there were, briefly, a lot of jobs. The jobs went away; the North Africans stayed, and went on welfare instead of following the jobs.
There’s an old Arab saying, to the effect that “where the nose of the camel goes, the rest of the camel soon follows.”
In short order, the “refugees” become a voting block in favor of admitting more “refugees”. This tends to cancel out the increasing reluctance of the native born to admit more “refugees”.
If the government has a “large number of young Syrian males” to move in, no doubt it will put them in working-class areas; and if the people there complain they are easily dismissed as racists.
I often watch concerts of classical music recorded in Europe. Sometimes I reflect, how long until that beautiful church is converted to a mosque? And when it is, will anybody care? Or will it be extolled by politically correct elites as a proud example of Europe’s (one-sided) tolerance? So tolerant that they tolerate even intolerance, so long as it’s Muslim!
I can still remember how much trouble Ronald Reagan had with his European allies, struggling with their tendency to want to appease/surrender to the Soviet Union.
The other thing I think of is Bishop Sidonius describing the last, golden days of Roman Gaul, when the Goths have already moved in and taken over, but life goes on much as before, and darkness is yet to fall.
Exactly. In fact – because of several facts, actually – it’s already too late. They’re just coasting now toward oblivion. Enforcing laws against genital mutilation etc is just another short-term tactic. Once there are enough voting muslims to repeal the laws, they’re gone.