Wake up Europe!

The rioting in and around Paris has prompted Mark Steyn to issue a warning. As always with Steyn, his message is blunt: Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands.

...the rioters aren't doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn 'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.

'Brussels Journal' has more comment on Europe's No-Go Areas, and 'The Times' has a summary of France's "burning rage," and Robert Bidinotto reflects on a media showing "desperation to minimize the role that Islamism may be playing in the wave of rioting and vandalism."

This outbreak of nihilism is a sign of some chickens coming home to roost, specifically the chickens of cultural relativism. That is,

...the trendy notion that all cultures are morally equivalent. Western society is no better than any other, the multicult proclaims -- and, in fact, is in many ways far worse: it is racist, imperialist, hegemonic, sexist, etc., etc. On that premise, multiculturalists have for decades tried to appease the world's butchers and barbarians, most recently those who go on nihilistic rampages in the name of Allah. In doing so, these "intellectuals" have only empowered and emboldened the savages...

Tell thugs that they are moral in their aspirations and justified in their grievances, and pretty soon they begin to believe you -- and act accordingly. Appease them when they bomb and behead, and they quickly learn that terrorism works -- and act accordingly. Invite them into your own country while assuring them that they don't have to abandon their doctrines of hatred, and they will accept the invitations -- and act accordingly.

Bidinottto concludes:

Ultimately, the war for civilization is philosophical -- and it is not primarily against Islamists or the proponents of similar death-worshipping doctrines. Without the aid and comfort of Western benefactors and apologists, these backwater barbarians would have no power, prestige, or prospects.

No, the war for civilization first must be waged against the pampered postmodernists of the West -- those poseurs who serve as nihilism's Excuse-Making Industry.

Because multiculturalists are the intellectual enablers of nihilism.

Quite right. And that is the straight-talking that Europe's so-called statesmen need to understand, and to begin using.

Linked articles: Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands, The suicide bombers among us, and Jihad begins in Europe?