When ideologies confront confounding evidence, they tend to fare poorly.
Echidne’s take on the recent sexual assaults in Germany isn’t that deluded, but just look at the comments.
Liberalism in many places in the Western world is now or will soon be reaching a crisis point, and like conservatives when their Weltanschauung was confronted with reality liberals will also retreat ever more deeply into deranged and fantastical thinking and will not emerge for decades.
Women in the much of the Western — especially European — world are about to be sacrificed both to neo-liberal fantasies, to the idols of multiculturalism, to the eidolon of inclusivity, and as they are being sexually assaulted and raped in the streets will be told it has nothing at all to do with the desire to lower wages or with multiculturalism, depending on which ideological idiot is doing the dismissing.
I don’t hate refugees. I don’t care what color their skin is. I don’t care that they come from North Africa or China.
What I care about is that if they come with Enlightenment-hostile values and are unsuited to the society they wish to join. And that it is not that society’s duty to change to accommodate their medieval thinking — which is the standard liberal line, either stated outright or implicit in their thought.
As I’ve said before, letting young women-hating men into your country en masse will lead to nothing good.
If I were a woman in many Western European countries, especially the smaller ones, I’d be considering immigration. It will not be a friendly place to you in a decade or two.
Classical Enlightenment thinkers, for the most part, did not include women in their notions of individualism and freedom. So it’s not only Enlightenment thinking to which many refugees are hostile to, it is also towards this development of women seeing themselves as individuals with freedom and not as communal property or family property. This is why you see a lot of conservatives and liberals who say they love Enlightenment thinkers but are anti-women’s rights and it doesn’t cause them the least bit of cognitive dissonance.
The idea that the modern state is supposed to ensure your safety in public is something which hasn’t quite reached women of all stripes. Thus, street harassment is not taken seriously until it’s so egregious that it’s classified as a public safety issue. This happens when women who are out with men are not safe, because there’s usually a tacit agreement that men don’t bother women with male escorts. And even then people resist the idea that it’s serious. The people who do take it seriously discuss it in terms of “They’re threatening our women.”
I was more talking about the continuing Enlightenment (now receding?), but didn’t use that modifier. The Enlightenment also of course lead to feminism eventually, but you are right about most actual Enlightenment thinkers not having any place for women. For the most part, women were better off before the Enlightenment if you don’t include the modern era.
Anyway, enough with all that.
Most people in this debate only care about the women being assaulted so far as they are seen to be owned by another man.
It’s one semi-patriarchal culture battling another ultra-patriarchal culture. Both are bad, but one is far worse.
I want to destroy both. But now it has become “evil” to speak about the real dangers and threats that are occurring — and mostly to women — due to the refugees is something I won’t have any part of.
I care more about protecting women and letting them live free, equal lives than some liberal bozo calling me a racist because I want to prevent a woman he doesn’t care about from getting assaulted by a refugee — a refugee whose actions he believes are ok for cultural reasons.
The rule in politics seems to be at first sign of anything, throw women under the bus.
Just to hell with that.
I don’t think we’re really disagreeing.
If I were a woman in many Western European countries, especially the smaller ones, I’d be considering immigration. It will not be a friendly place to you in a decade or two.
Where in the world would they immigrate to? Honestly, there’s no utopia for women. Scandinavia?
I care more about protecting women and letting them live free, equal lives than some liberal bozo calling me a racist because I want to prevent a woman he doesn’t care about from getting assaulted by a refugee — a refugee whose actions he believes are ok for cultural reasons.
It’s racist to make the tacit assumption that refugees can’t/won’t alter their behavior and therefore should be excused and should have their sensitivities catered to.
The right of self defense is not something society seems to extend to women, especially non-white women. I can’t really say much about European societies but it definitely applies in America. Sure, people talk a good game about open carry, the Second Amendment, and stand your ground laws. But the minute a woman exercises that right she is subject to far more scrutiny than a man would be. The amount of fear and threat a white guy can reference in a gay panic defense or “scary black person” is absolutely risible to me contemplating self defense, especially aggressive proactive self defense. In general, everyone expects women to tolerate levels of fear that no man would be expected to. I think is also an area where the Enlightenment has lagged.
Yeah, we’re agreeing — approaching from slightly different directions.
“The right of self defense is not something society seems to extend to women, especially non-white women. ”
This is so true, and about women being expected to tolerate levels of fear no man would be expected to. What many women have to live with seems insuperable to me. In a whole host of ways, I identify with and feel commonality with (most) women more than men — but not sure I’d actually want to be a woman for that reason alone.