THE IDEAL -- AND THE REAL

by Betty Luks
Why is it we have continually been fed the idea that 'multiculturalism' and/or 'multiracialism', will prove an outstanding success in the western nations? The League of Rights has been smeared and demonised for all these years because it publicly criticised such ideas, and warned that by bringing in large numbers of peoples who will not, or cannot assimilate, the main political parties have sown seeds of future conflict for us all.

Europe is now a good example of this folly
There are now close to 15 million Muslims in Europe and many have no intention of assimilating. Professor Fouad Ajami of John Hopkins University, in "The Moor's Last Laugh", The Age 22/4/0, set out the dilemmas: "In the 1980s, terrible civil wars were fought in Arab and Islamic countries -- with privilege on one side, militant wrath on the other. The despots and the military caste in Algeria and Tunisia and Syria and Egypt won that struggle. Their defeated opponents took to the road; from Hamburg and London and Copenhagen, the battle was now joined. If accounts were to be settled with rulers back home, the work of subversion would be done from Europe…The geography of Islam -- and of the Islamic imagination -- has shifted in recent years.

The faith has become portable
Muslims who fled their countries brought Islam with them. Men came into bilad al kufr (the lands of unbelief), but a new breed of Islamists radicalised the faith there, in the midst of the kaflr (unbeliever)."

Scant loyalty and resentment towards 'assimilation'
"The new lands were owed scant loya1ty, if any, and political-religious radicals savoured the space afforded them by Western civil society," he continued. They also resented the logic of assimilation. Their sisters and daughters were denied the right to mix with "strangers". "You would have thought that the pluralism and tumult of this open European world would spawn a version of the faith to match it," wrote the good professor. But no, "precisely the opposite happened. In bilad al kufr, the faith became sharpened for battle…"
We may carry their nationalities, said a Muslim talkback caller in Sweden, but we belong to our own religion.

The New Radicalism
"Satellite TV has been crucial in the making of this new radicalism," warned Ajami. "Preachers take to the air and reach Muslims wherever they are." From the safe havens of Western cities, "they counsel belligerence and inveigh against assimilation. They forbid shaking hands with women examiners at universities. They warn against offering greetings to 'infidels' on their religious holidays, or serving in the armies and police of the new lands." 'A Muslim has no nationality except his belief,' wrote an intellectual godfather of radical Islamism, the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by then president Jamal Abdul Nasser in 1966…

Radical Islamism's adherents are unapologetic
What is laicite (secularism) to the Muslims in France and their militant leaders?" asks the professor. "It is but the code of a debauched society that wishes to impose on Islam's children -- its young women in particular -- the ways of an infidel culture." What loyalty, if any, is owed France?
France is in serious trouble with its Muslim youth. "The wrath of France's Muslim youth in the banilieues (suburbs) is seen as revenge on France for its colonial wars. France colonised Algeria in the 1830s; Algerians, along with Tunisians and Moroccans return the favour in our own time." The policy is obviously to grant "its troubled Muslim suburbs everything and nothing. It leaves them to their own devices and grants them an unstated power over its foreign policy decisions on Islamic and Middle Eastern matters, but it makes no room for them in the mainstream of its life."

Assimilation is seen as 'cultural rape'
Belgium is not without its problems. "In Antwerp, Dyab Abu Jahjah, a young Lebanese, only 32, has stepped forth to 'empower' the Muslims of that country. Assimilation, he says, is but "cultural rape"… The constitution of Belgium recognises Dutch, French and German as official languages. Abu Jahiah insists that Arabic be added, too."

Europe's leaders and their 'false bonding'
Alouad Ajami continues, "In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam. Give the Arabs - and the Muslim communities implanted in Europe - anti-Americanism, give them identification with the Palestinians, and you shall be spared their wrath. Beat the drums of opposition to America's war in Iraq, and the furies of this radical Islamism will pass you by." This is seen as a way around the troubles. But there is no exit that way, he insists.
For the radical who "can't agitate against Mubarak in Cairo, can do it from the safety of Finsbury Park in London. The ferocity of the debate in the Arab world about France's decision to limit Islamic headgear in public schools is a measure of this displaced rage."

He thinks Spain in attributing the bombing visited on it "to its association with America's expedition into Iraq," has missed the point. The truth is darker. Jacques Chirac may believe that he has spared France Spain's terror by sitting out the Iraq war. But he is deluded. The Islamists do not make fine distinctions in the bilad al kufr.

Europe is now host to a war
"The war is between order and its enemies, and is fuelled by demography. 40 per cent of the Arab world is under 14. Demographers tell us that the fertility replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman. Europe is frightfully below this level: in Germany it is 1.3, Italy 1.2, Spain 1.1, France 1.7 (this higher rate is a factor of its Muslim population).
Fertility rates in the Islamic world are altogether different: they are 3.2 in Algeria, 3.4 in Egypt and Morocco, 5.2 in Iraq and 6.1 in Saudi Arabia. This is Europe's neighbourhood and its contemporary fate. You can tell the neighbours across the Straits (and within the gates of Europe) that you share their dread of Pax Americana. But nemesis is near.

Five centuries ago, the Castilians took Granada from Boabdil. They were a hardy breed of sheep-herders driven by a Malthusian logic, outgrowing their grazing lands, pushing southward -- and into the New World from Seville -- to answer Castile's needs. Today there is great turmoil in Islamic lands and a Malthusian crisis. Were it only true that those in harm's way in Europe are solely the friends of the Americans. The New World is a demon of this Islamism it is true. But that old border between Europe and Islam has furies all its own."
Fouad Ajaml is a professor at Johns Hopkins, and author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs (Vintage, 1999).

BRINGING THE 'DRAFT' BACK IN AMERICA

John Sutherland of The Guardian, 31st May, 2004, announced to the world the U.S. authorities are going to reintroduce the draft. But it's such a vote loser, no one wants to mention it. Last Wednesday, the American public was officially instructed to panic. Attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller - brows furrowed, faces grim - took over primetime TV to deliver a spine-chilling message to their fellow citizens: 'Al-qaida attack imminent.' When, where, and what form the outrage will take, is unknown. But something very, very awful is going to happen very, very soon.
Cynics will be sceptical. Was this another attempt by the administration, like those 'orange alerts' last year, to divert attention from Iraq, the soaring price of gasoline, and Abu Ghraib?

On the same day that Ashcroft was terrifying his countrymen, I was emailed by an American student friend. He too is terrified. 'The US legislature,' he wrote, 'is trying to bring back the draft asap. Check it out at www.congress.org. For some reason no major news networks or printed media in this country are carrying this story. If these bills go through, the only thing between me and military service is my asthma.'
"He's right," says Sutherland, "There is pending legislation in the American House of Representatives and Senate in the form of twin bills - S89 and HR163. These measures (currently approved and sitting in the committee for armed services) project legislation for spring 2005, with the draft to become operational as early as June 15."

"There already exists a Selective Service System (SSS). All young Americans are obliged to 'register for the draft'. It has been a mere formality since conscription was abolished three decades ago, after Vietnam, together with the loathed (and much burned) draft card. SSS will be reactivated imminently. A US$28m implementation fund has been added to the SSS budget. The Pentagon is discreetly recruiting for 10,350 draft board officers and 11,070 appeals board members nationwide.
Draft-dodging will be harder than in the 1960s. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a 'smart border declaration', which, among other things, will prevent conscientious objectors (and cowards) from finding sanctuary across the northern border. There will be no deferment on higher-education grounds. Mexico does not appeal.

All this has been pushed ahead with an amazing lack of publicity. One can guess why. American newspapers are in a state of meltdown, distracted by war-reporting scandals at USA Today and the New York Times. There is an awareness in the press at large that the 'embedding' system was just that - getting into bed with the military and reporting their pillow talk as 'news from the frontline'. The fourth estate has failed the American public and continues not to do its job.
The American public just wants the war to go away. One thing that would get their attention (but not their votes) would be (more of…ed) their children being sent off to die in foreign lands. Best not disturb the electorate until after November, seems to be the thinking. There are, after all, more important things than wars: getting your man into the White House, for example. Kerry has clearly calculated that, as president, he too may have to bring in the draft. So his lips are also sealed."

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM IS

by Anthony Cooney:
The four 'marks' of the Nation are:
· A Common Homeland
· A Common Culture
· A Common Language
· A Common Economy
It will be noted that there is no mention of Race. This is not because the concept of race is irrelevant to the concept of Nation but because it has been subject to two, opposed, notions. From the mid-19th Century, German, American and English scientism interpreted race in strictly materialist terms: as a vertical division of Mankind into varietal-specific entities.

The notion had its origins almost entirely in Darwinism and reached its logical conclusion in National Socialism, so-called. Since 1945, an opposite notion has been popularised: namely that there is no such thing as race, only individuals. It is odd that this notion is mandatory among those who denounced Margaret Thatcher's statement, "There is no such thing as a 'Society'". On the contrary, race is a reality, but it is not simply a matter of genetic code; it is a spiritual or (if you think Greek sounds more 'scientific') psychic phenomenon.

Race is a product of history, that is, of culture
It is nonsense to speak of a "Multi-cultural Society" -- a term which now appears to have replaced the equally nonsensical "Multi-racial Society". A nation may assimilate individuals of a different genetic pool, but the emphasis here is upon assimilate.

Multiculturalism will either divide the land or it will be held together by force
Where two cultural groups inhabit the same land, you do not have a "multi-cultural" society; you have two societies. If one is numerically insignificant the thing will hardly be noticed; where both are numerous then they will either divide the land or be held together by force.

This is not a matter of theory, but of fact
We need hardly cite the present inescapable fact of the former Yugoslavia. Serb and Croat share the same genetic pool; they are divided by language and culture. The experiment of "Yugoslavia" has served only to make matters worse, encouraging since 1919 a blurring of the borders between Croatia and Serbia by Serbian settlement in the former. In Bosnia where the patchwork of Serbian and Croatian areas would have been bad enough, it has been made greatly worse by the presence of a third society, that of the Mohammedans, geographically dispersed.
In Belgium we see two societies separated only by language which are hardly held together in a single state, and Ulster is torn apart by the existence of two societies where the cultural differences might be thought to be minimal.
Note: For a fuller examination of this matter the reader is referred to the section Belloc as Historian in Social Credit- Obelisks by Anthony Cooney - available from all League Book Services.

The Nation then is a reality
It may not be the greatest reality of existence but a reality it is, and must be accepted and treated as such. It is a reality the modern liberalist does not like, but to refuse to accept reality is to court disaster. To say that the Nation is a reality is not to claim that it is as old as Mankind. We know, so the eager liberalist has no need to produce his tomes, that men have lived as wandering pastoralists, bound together only by ties of close kinship. We know that the unit of Graeko-Roman civilization was the City; indeed that Rome was the triumph of the idea of the City.
We also know that the unit of Western Civilisation is the Nation in the special sense here of a People continuing through time, bound together by Land, Culture, Language and Economy.

Compared with these spiritual re-ligaments the bond of blood is of negative importance. Whilst its integrity remains it is almost irrelevant; the Nation can absorb, bring into its historic life, other strains, without injury. Only with a large influx of aliens, insistent in maintaining their distinct culture and language, does the bond of blood become a positive factor. We may pause to wonder however, how it is that our eager liberalist, who is always an evolutionist, has not drawn an obvious conclusion from his Time-Chart of inevitable and ever upward evolution.

The 'NATION' is the creation of Christendom
If the Nation is not as old as Man, if it is not something decreed by a Law of Nature, how did it arise? The answer is that the Nation is the creation of Christendom; it was the Church which gave birth to the Nations. In the wrack and ruin of the Western Roman Empire, with central authority removed, and often beleaguered in Byzantium, administration fell into the hands of the commanders of Roman auxiliaries, but the only territorial structure was that of the Church.
There were of course many other influences, not least the natural frontiers of rivers and mountain ranges, but from this the idea of the Nation grew.

England the first Nation
England was perhaps the first (though some claim Wales) distinctive Nation. Others followed, and with Christianity the idea of the Nation was taken beyond the old Roman frontiers, to Ireland in the West, to Poland in the East. By the time of Otto, the Nation had become the unit of the new Civilisation the Church had nurtured from the old. It is true that the old Imperial unity has haunted Europe, almost as a myth, but always as a glamour, a Romance, and powerful nations have each in turn, but with disastrous results, tried to recreate it.

The Plantagenets, using England as a base, were the first to make the attempt, Henry II ruling an Empire from the Roman Wall to the Mediterranean. Spain followed, then France under Louis XIV, then France again, spurred on by an aberration of Nationalism under Napoleon, then Germany with a pagan Nationalism, and finally the anti-National and anti-Christendom Masons of the European Community.
All have failed, and will fail, against the solid fact that the unit of our civilisation is the Nation: hence we rejoice in the liberation and rebirth of our sister nations of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia; yes, and of Serbia too, if it would but realise that it has been liberated from the Yugoslavia myth.
We rejoice especially because we know that their liberation and re-birth from the U.S.S.R. so-called, is the token of our ultimate liberation and re-birth from the threatened "United Socialist States of Europe".

Mention of "Pagan Nationalism" and the Republican aberration of Nationalism in France raises an important matter.
G.K. Chesterton likened Orthodoxy to a thrilling chariot dash down a narrow road. Constantly the chariot threatens to veer to the left or the right and end in the ditch; only courage, strength and skill can keep it on its straight and narrow course. Nationalism, like all Christian ideas, has been subject to heresy. Now the error of heresy is not that the teaching is wrong, but that it is isolated. It is a doctrine separated from a whole context and balance of doctrine, in which balance alone it is reasonable…

What then is Christian nationalism?
Christian Nationalism is an acceptance of the facts, of the fact of the Nation as an historic thing, moulded by Christianity. For this reason the Christian Nationalist is in favour of Nations; not just his own nation, but all nations. He recognizes that the Nation-State is the smallest genuine political unit, and as such the safeguard of human freedom. For this reason he supports the aspirations of all authentic nations to statehood.
He notes that supra-national powers who have no concern for human freedom have marked the Nation down for destruction. He notes also that having realized that their assault upon the Nation from above and without is resisted and rebuffed, they have launched an assault from within by the promotion of a spurious political "Regionalism" designed to destroy the shield which stands between them and the individual's rights and liberties.

In loving his own nation he does not hate others
In desiring the liberty of his own nation he does not desire the subjugation of others. His concerns do not stop at his nation's borders, but he recognises that to claim to love all nations equally is, at best, to be lacking in a sense of proportion. He does not believe that the Nation is the only, or ultimate, reality -- an 'end in itself', the object of a religious cult to which morality and honour must be subordinated -- but he knows that nevertheless it is a high end, one superior to self-love and self-interest.

The Welsh Nationalist, Saunders Lewis speaks for him when he writes
"Wales my country is a vineyard given into my care to pass on to my children and to my children's children as an eternal inheritance."
McKey, in his Life of the Scots Patriot, Fletcher of Saltoun, had this to say of his hero:
"He would gladly have laid down his life for his country, but he was not willing to do a base thing to save it."
That is Christian Nationalism.
Taken from the Heritage Journal No. 68, June/August 1993.

PEACE IN IRAQ? THE SUDAN EXAMPLE

'HEADS' START TO ROLL

NewsMax.com Wires 3/6/04 reports "CIA Director George Tenet, who weathered storms over intelligence lapses about suspected WMD in Iraq and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has resigned." Bush announced the news in a hurriedly arranged appearance before television cameras.

Tenet's move came amid new storms over intelligence issues, including an alleged Pentagon leak of highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi, the disgraced Iraqi former banker/politician. At the same time, a federal grand jury is pressing its investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's name, and Bush acknowledged he might be questioned in the case.

The news caught Washington by surprise. Bush informed his senior staff Thursday morning at an Oval Office meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. Cheney issued a statement expressing regret that Tenet was leaving. Sen. John Kerry, Bush's likely Democrat opponent in the approaching elections, is reported to have commended Tenet who "has worked extremely hard on behalf of our nation." Tenet will serve until mid-July. Bush said the CIA's deputy director, John McLaughlin, would temporarily lead America's spy agency until a successor is found.

BASIC FUND

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor: Royalty:
Following on from Betty Luks' article in OT Vol.40 No.20 "The Fairytale Wedding', it is quite obvious as "The New Idea" also enthuses, 'our' Crown Princess Mary of Denmark is very much a celebrity. And what great scenes they were as the Australian flags, along with the Danish flags, were waved so enthusiastically by the crowds. No comments were forthcoming from the media that the Danish and Australian flags both bore Christian crosses.
What also struck me were the following points:
· Tasmania voted against a republic in the last Constitutional referendum.
· Recently retired premier, Jim Bacon - a former Maoist - and certainly no lover of our Constitutional Monarchy - appointed the one-worlder Richard Butler as the Governor of Tasmania, an open and sworn republican.
· When the home-grown lass from Tasmania was married to the Crown Prince of Denmark - Butler was there with 'bells and whistles on'.
All of the above reminds me of what I observed when living in Canada. The fabian socialists were busily undermining the structures of the nation. PM Pierre Elliott Truduea (banned from the USA because of his Communist record) was well known as a republican - along with many of his fellow Liberal MPs - but would jump over hoops to be present when Her Majesty was present in Canada.
Canada is still a Constitutional Monarchy - because Trudeau and the others, at the time, knew it would be political suicide to declare Canada a republic.
Phillip Butler, Diamond Creek, Vic.

The following letter was sent to the Editor, The Age, 19/5/04:
Dear Sir,
Tony Abbott has not "conjured up an imaginary Australian Anglophobia" as you claim ("Just close your minds and think of England", 19/5), but defined accurately a generation of our cultural history. Powerful interests, particularly those eager to encourage large-scale immigration into this country from non-British and non-European communities, and also the "Aboriginal industry", have for several decades down-played the profound British component of Australia.
The voices of British traditionalists, particularly as expressed through the Australian League of Rights and the Australian Monarchist League, have been denied adequate space in national forums and frequently vilified as "racist". The monarchy, which lies at the heart of our British connection, has been subjected to ruthless attack in the major media in an effort to destroy the House of Windsor and cut us fatally adrift from our mother country. And the struggles of the greatest British nationalist of our times, John Tyndall, founder of the British National Party, have been almost totally ignored in our press. The truth is that Mr Abbott under-stated the situation.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic.

BOOKS FOR KEEN READERS

The Rogue State by William Blum. William Blum came by his book title easily. He simply tested America by the same standards we use to judge other countries. The result is a 'bill of wrongs' - an especially well-documented encyclopaedia of malfeasance, mendacity and mayhem carried out in the name of 'democracy'. $32.50 posted.

The Captive State by George Monbiot. He writes: This is not the first time that corporate power has threatened democracy. Gladstone's efforts to regulate the rail industry were obstructed by the 132 MPs who held directorships in railway companies…Corporations, the contraptions we invented to serve us, are overthrowing us. They are seizing powers previously invested in government, and using them to distort public life to suit their own ends. Captive State tells the story of the coup d'état. $28.00 posted.

Global Spin by Sharon Beder. Global Spin shows how in a relentless assault on democracy and its institutions, the massive, covert power of large corporations has enabled corporate agendas to dominate the international debate about the state of the environment. In the media, corporate advertising and sponsorship are influencing news content and industry-funded scientists are often treated as independent 'experts'. $35.00 posted.

The Myth of 'New History' by David L. Hoggan. The author, David Hoggan focuses on the techniques and tactics used by the 'new mythologists' of American history covering the last fifty years. Published by the Institute for Historical Review. $15.00 posted.