Middle Nation

It is a serious mistake for us to believe that "the West" actually constitutes a coherent and unified civilisation.  That has never been the case, and is even less true now than it ever was.

There is a lot of fairly loose talk these days about Islam and Liberals, Liberalism, Modernism, the West, and so forth; and I think we need to hone this discussion considerably if it is going to be a serious examination of the issues.  As much as possible, we should avoid amoebic terms that falsely amalgamate diverse sociopolitical, philosophical, and cultural threads, and start being more precise and accurate in our language.

It has been pointed out to me that I am often critical of Muslim YouTubers, but the truth is, what I object to is the inappropriate status and importance assigned to them.  We need to be more discerning in how we identify who is a qualified and authoritative voice on specific issues, who can really give fatawa, and try to move our online representatives to stop overreaching their natural limitations by not expecting from them ourselves what is blamelessly beyond their genuine capabilities -- or at least, we should start taking YouTubers' opinions with a grain of salt

The recent ruling by the European Court of Justice allowing employers to fire Muslim women wearing the hijab reveals the superficiality of the values espoused by the West, it is a pantomime of civilization that has identified, but never truly internalized the principles they proclaim

The intellectual architecture of modern, progressive, "woke" Liberal thought is so rife with contradictions, it is bound to collapse from its own weight.  People are required to be rigidly and thoroughly committed to ideas and opinions that cannot be reconciled even with each other -- that is intellectually sadistic.

It has become common, I believe, for people to basically become containers and dispensers of other people's thoughts, ideas, opinions, and arguments.  We allow ourselves to be impressed with the apparent logic and rationale of a position, rather than thinking it through for ourselves, and start parroting the things we have heard even if we have not yet even done the intellectual work to decide if we agree with it or not.  I think this happens a lot more than we might care to admit.  It is like a cheat for seeming like a smart guy; but the problem is, once we espouse such unscrutinized opinions, we become too invested in them to ever re-think them, and we can spend way too long overtly subscribing to ideas we do not actually believe.

Too often we absorb and reflect arguments without thinking them through just because they are articulate.  It saves us the trouble of figuring out where we stand, but in reality, we still don't know where we stand, we just like the comfort of ready-made positions.  That is negligence and intellectual laziness, and we can't afford to do that

What the Left is demanding of people is intellectual sadism: imposing cognitive dissonance through the acceptance of self-conflicting positions.  Traditional values are tried and true and consistent; progress comes from the broader application, not the destruction, of those values.  Hold on to what societies have held onto for millennia, and don't overreact to the radical Liberal trends