9-14-15<\/p>\n
We are witnessing, night after night on television news, and in photographs on newspaper front pages and magazine front covers, one of several things, depending on how you categorize it.<\/p>\n
A humanitarian crisis. The flight of refugees from war-torn Syria. Migrations from lands surrounding Syria toward areas of a prosperous Europe. People, some of whom might be terrorists or, certainly, potential terrorists, pushed to migrate. Many Arab and Muslim countries refusing to accept the refugees. White European nations’ reactions, ranging from declining to rend their social fabrics, to countries accepting of them. <\/p>\n
And ascribed motives across the board \u2013 from prejudice to shaky economies to needy workforces to guilt bred of political correctness.<\/p>\n
In all our lifetimes we, sadly, have witnessed similar \u201chumanitarian crises,\u201d usually fomented by natural disasters, or famine, or war. But this might be the first time that virtually every picture and story features the hordes, instead of orderly, hopeful, and grateful\u2026 angry, resentful of their benefactors, shouting curses at their hosts, making obscene gestures to cameras, and, from their scanty provisions, leaving mountains of trash in their wake.<\/p>\n
Different. Different in many ways. We plausibly can say that these scenes comprise the largest funeral, or funeral parade, in history. It represents the funeral of the West. <\/p>\n
As a funeral cortege \u2013 I hear strains of the second movement of Beethoven\u2019s Eroica<\/span> Symphony, labeled \u201cMarch Funebre,\u201d when I watch the videos \u2013 these people are not mourners nor pall-bearers, but rather headed straight for the wake and after-party, so to speak. <\/p>\n In yet another view, this flight of uncountable migrants is war. The invaders\u2019 strategy we know, for the pawns are being resettled by the vilest forces of the region, ISIS especially (the more benign of Arab and Muslim countries, for instance Lebanon, have absorbed many refugees).<\/p>\n The tactics \u2013 war\u2019s other side of the coin \u2013 play upon the West\u2019s weaknesses; guilt or self-loathing among the elites; force of numbers; and the most effective weapon, propaganda and the pliant media. The world should be suspicious or hostile to Muslim machinations these days, yet the Christian West (that is, the post-Christian world) is, despite a few speed bumps and detours, paving latter-day Trade routes and Spice routes from the neighborhoods around Syria through Turkey to Greece and Macedonia, to Serbia and Bosnia. Through Austria, to the promised land of Germany.<\/p>\n Those who do not know history are doomed to criticize my analysis. Of this I am certain. Save your letters; I am not a hater but a lover. I love our nations and our peoples. Opening our hearts, and our wallets, is separate from opening our minds to the extent that our brains fall out. I endorse and insist on compassion, and invite us all to think of the best way to exercise compassion and love and assistance. Anon.<\/p>\n In the meantime it does nobody any good, and does everybody much bad, to deny that this situation is what is. <\/p>\n * Many of the migrants are from places even far from Syria, like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Discarded identity papers indicate such. Some estimates put the migrants from war-torn countries (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan) at only 30 per cent.<\/p>\n * This instant burden of accommodating refugees is not falling evenly. Neighborhood (and prosperous) Arab states including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait have, between them, taken in zero refugees. Iran, an \u201cenemy\u201d of ISIS, has taken in none. Faraway Germany has pledged to take in 800,000 this year and half a million annually after that.<\/p>\n * The EU, unelected; and Merkel, with no mandate, choose to forever change the character of Christian Europe. Clear-thinking leaders (of the Czech Republic, of Hungary, for example) have framed the issue as a spiritual crisis more than economic or social, to their credit.<\/p>\n * We see photos, like the heartbreaking picture of the dead child washed up on shore\u2026 and then read allegations that the man holding her is a human trafficker, a profiteer, from whose overcrowded boat she fell. It is still heartbreaking!<\/p>\n * A real humanitarian crisis would not result in hordes that are 80 per cent healthy young men: in fact, it would be logical to see a majority of elderly, women, and children; but we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n What is going on? A friend, Robert Chandler, recently wrote: \u201cIf you have any historical perspective, you would know that Islam invaded Western Europe in force and gravely threatened our civilization very recently. This when Vienna was under siege by Ottoman armies in the 16th and 17th centuries. … in historical terms, not long ago at all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not \u2018ancient history.\u2019 It is, in fact, at the beginning of modern history. The Balkans are an historic hell-hole because Islam did succeed in gaining a large foothold there, and civil war has transpired for all the centuries since. This is for real now. This is deadly serious.<\/p>\n \u201cYour children, your grandchildren, not just in Europe, but in America, are threatened by this. The cruelty of ISIS is a foretaste of what could befall us. The cathedrals of Europe, blown up like [historic temples in] Palmyra. Our sons and men tortured and beheaded. Our daughters and wives raped and tortured and enslaved.\u201d<\/p>\n For 1500 years, Islam has been trying to take over Europe, and defeat Christianity \u2013 an equal goal in its eyes, if not to contemporary Westerners and Christians. Vicious battles, \u201csoft\u201d invasions, from Bulgaria and the Balkans, to Greece and Italy (Sicily once was an Emirate), to Spain almost totally, and a significant part of southern France, to Hungary, and the \u201cGates of Vienna.\u201d And of course by waves of migration, forced by their Mohammedan masters.<\/p>\n Many brave defenders of European culture and Christian tradition, some famous in history and lore, sacrificed for their values. The difference today is that many citizens and most leaders in the West do not care about their heritage. Mostly because they do not know about it. A shame and a crime.<\/p>\n One reason the West is losing this war, or has already lost it, is because once we believed in God, and we do not today; and the invaders believe in their god and are thereby motivated. I talk about God, but for a moment I am being secular. We no longer have foundational values; we are indifferent to guiding principles; we mock morality and a heritage worth defending; we have no will to resist.<\/p>\n People see the Muslim baby washed ashore in that photograph and are shocked into action. But we are the same people who read of abortionists in our own country, slicing babies for so many pennies per pound. And to that we are indifferent. <\/p>\n How can such a people \u2013 that which we have become \u2013 prevail?<\/p>\n Next. We still do have the situation of displaced people and war-caused refugees and migrants. As Grover Cleveland said in another context, \u201cit is a condition, not a theory, that confronts us.\u201d <\/p>\n The present \u201crefugee\u201d \u201ccrisis\u201d exists in the first place because of the West\u2019s longtime collectivist, statist, mindset. That is: governments must be all, do all. Answer all, provide all, solve all. The proposition, of course, is absurd; yet it has become the guiding principle of the West. <\/p>\n What? Governments should not respond to the humanitarian crisis? My answer is as revolutionary as it is hopeless in the Year of Our Lord 2015: Governments should respond minimally. Governments, by socialistic and collectivist paradigms, have usurped the roles of individuals, families, churches, guilds, unions, corporations, and associations in such cases. <\/p>\n From hurricane relief to famines to displaced persons and victims of war, governments sometimes help\u2026 but sometimes hinder. Corruption often creeps in. Monies are appropriated, against wishes of citizens, who seldom are provided much information. Usually coercion is involved; and, always, gargantuan bureaucracy. <\/p>\n Private agencies are more sincere, and usually more effective. Individual action often means just that \u2013 people involving themselves, volunteering, even travelling and serving. Peoples\u2019 consciences are at work; and they invest their concern as well as their sweat or resources.<\/p>\n This is how God intended it. \u201cFaith, hope, and charity,\u201d Jesus said; \u201cAnd the greatest of these is charity.\u201d To be our brothers\u2019 keeper never<\/span> meant to let Rome, as it were, take our money and decide what \u201cprojects,\u201d what people and causes, to pursue\u2026 often against our wishes. The Good Samaritan knelt down, did not send a text to the local relief agency, so to speak, instead. <\/p>\n To support \u201crefugees,\u201d even to sponsor some, perhaps to take some into households: governments should let citizens decide such things. Individually. Would things \u201cwork out\u201d in crises such as the present one? I am absolutely certain, after inevitable adjustments, the migrants and the hosts, and our next generations, would be more at peace, and living in higher security.<\/p>\n But then let me tie this together like the end of a Seinfeld<\/span> episode. If we recognize this current \u201ccrisis\u201d as just one more chapter in a 1500-year-old war; if we protect our own heritage, values and traditions (first, by re-learning them!); if we deal with the causes of the swelling migrant tide \u2013 Islamic radicalism, which hates portions of its own people \u2013 and if we return to private initiative, love, and compassion\u2026<\/p>\n Then we will have the chance to fulfill the Lord\u2019s commands, as we operate with renewed hearts \u2013 something that Western governments would never allow \u2013 to witness to lost souls about the love of Jesus.<\/p>\n Heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you<\/span> (Luke 10:9). In this way we minister in love. Instead of being victims ourselves of war, we can wage Peace.<\/p>\n + + +<\/p>\n As an allegory, I offer a video of \u201cDido\u2019s Lament\u201d from Purcell\u2019s Dido and Aeneas<\/span> (1688). She commits suicide\u2026 needlessly, as America is doing. \u201cWhen I am laid in earth, May my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast;\u00a0Remember me! Remember me! Remember me! but ah! forget my fate,\u201d we may sing to History, and begging God\u2019s mercy. Dido played by the amazing Maria Ewing.<\/p>\n