Sunday, January 13, 2008

Why Europe mirrors "Blue State" America

The archives of Unqualified Offerings contains an exposure of the secret of anti-Americanism.

Mencius Moldbug declares:
I believe anti-Americanism is best described as an epiphenomenon of Universalism. The single most significant fact about the world today is that sixty-two years ago it was conquered by a military alliance whose leader was the United States, and whose creed of battle was this nontheistic adaptation of New England mainline Protestantism. I don't think it's a coincidence that the European ruling class holds essentially the same perspectives that were held at Harvard in 1945. The US Army did not shoot all the professors in Europe and replace them with Yankee carpetbaggers, but the prestige of conquest is such that it might as well have.

Moldbug thinks that Euro-American infighting mirrors a feud between "Blue State" vs. "Red State" government agencies. The State Department and the welfare agencies comprise the former, while the Defense Department, the White House, and the CIA comprise the latter.

The "Anti-American" European is thus "just like the San Francisco liberal who 'loves her country, but doesn't trust her government.'"

His thesis is suggestive but controversial, and it runs a gauntlet of criticism in the comments. While Moldbug's view of Europe is indubitably patronizing, his argument could offset the more dualistic arguments that Europe and America are being separated in an extreme civilizational schism.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Contrary to Mencius Moldbug's proposition, there's less difference between the blue and the red than there is between trio of trolls with a sack full of hobbits. They're all made out of the same enlightenment dust, and with the same insatiable lust for hobbit flesh.

Thus, while who wins out may make a difference to the trolls, it matters relatively little to us hobbits as the world continues its regression from the light of the Faith.

Or looking at it according to their materialism: Given fallen nature, does the world Bellamy proposed really look any different than the workers paradise of the democratic capitalists?