State of the Culture: Richard Dawkins and the refugees

By Jonathon Van Maren

Another week gone by, and time for the culture update. The wheels of “progress” are ever turning.

Big government, of course, continues its slow slide into totalitolerance. Especially in this century, since they’re in the business of legislating morality. Not morality based on science, like banning abortion, but the ideology of secular progressivism. They have established their own version of truth, pulled on the tattered and transparent garb of “neutrality,” and now scurry about to stomp out dissent, a drag queen in jackboots. From The Telegraph in the UK:

Sunday schools could be banned from teaching children that marriage should be between a man and a woman, under plans to force them to undergo regular Ofsted inspections, Tory MPs will warn.

The Conservative MPs – Sir Gerald Howarth, David Burrowes, Gary Streeter and Fiona Bruce MP – warned that the changes could have a “seriously detrimental effect on the freedom of religious organisations”.

The proposals follow warnings by the Prime Minister about a small minority of Muslim madrassas and other groups where he said children have their “heads filled with poison and their hearts filled with hate”.

However campaigners said Ofsted inspectors could be sent into Sunday schools, church youth groups, Scout troops and even bell-ringing circles to search for signs of children being “radicalised”.

Christian groups said at the time that the plans, outlined in a consultation paper published quietly by the Department for Education, could unwittingly turn Ofsted into a “state regulator of religion”.

In a letter to the The Telegraph timed for the end of a consultation on Monday, the MPs said that Christian groups feared “the prospect of an Ofsted inspector observing meetings and then imposing sanctions for the expression of traditional views on matters such as marriage – views which, until very recently, were considered mainstream in Britain”.

They added: “This would be an intolerable but very real possibility given the clear desire of the Department for Education to investigate what it calls ‘prohibitive activities’, such as ‘undesirable teaching… which undermines or is incompatible with fundamental British values…

A spokesman for the Department for Education said Sunday schools were unlikely to be affected by the changes.

She said: “The Government is not proposing to regulate institutions teaching children for a short period every week, such as Sunday schools.

“We are looking specifically at places where children receive intensive education, to ensure that the children there are in a safe environment, which does not subject them to intolerant and hateful views.

Now why does that not make me feel any better? Is it perhaps because disagreeing with gay marriage and the new transgender delusion means, in today’s West, that I am automatically “intolerant and hateful?”

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The Western elites obsessed with whether or not a Bruce Jenner joke is “transphobic” or not may soon have bigger things to worry about as migrants from across the Muslim world continue to flood into Europe and sexual assaults by migrants skyrockets. A European population with a plummeting birthrate is watching an entire population of people who don’t see gender equality as a thing tromp right across their meaningless borders and start to act as if they own the place. Perhaps that’s because unless something dramatically changes, they will. Even the perpetually angry atheist Richard Dawkins is starting to think that may be having a few more Christians around might be a good idea:

In a text that is coursing about on social media, professional God-slayer Richard Dawkins begrudgingly admitted that Christianity may actually be our best defense against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world.

“There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings,” Dawkins said. “I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.”

In a rare moment of candor, Dawkins reluctantly accepted that the teachings of Jesus Christ do not lead to a world of terror, whereas followers of radical Islam perpetrate the very atrocities that he laments.

Because of this realization, Dawkins wondered aloud whether Christianity might indeed offer an antidote to protect western civilization against jihad.

“I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse,” he said.

As the decadent Western elites get a good look at what constitutes real misogyny, they’re going to have to start admitting what Dawkins has come to realize. There are Christian fundamentalists, too. Some of them even want to withdraw from society. But the Amish don’t seem interested in blowing anything up.

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But for the secular left, there are more important things to attend to. Having accomplished the enforcement of transgender ideology in New York City—if a dude wants to show up at a restaurant in drag but insists he’s a she, the owner can either let him work as a waitress or pony up a few hundred thousand dollars—Washington State is now following suit.

A legislative battle over transgender restroom access is brewing in Washington after a state commission enacted rules requiring that bathroom, shower and locker room use in public accommodations be based on “gender identity,” not sex.

State legislators are already working to draft bills in reaction to the Washington State Human Rights Commission’s newly enacted rules, saying the panel overstepped its authority by leaving the Legislature out of such a major change in policy and understanding.

The commission took action after an eight-month dispute over transgender access at the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap counties, which at first allowed and then prohibited opposite-sex use of bathrooms, showers and locker rooms.

In a Dec. 15 statement, YMCA President and CEO Bob Ecklund said the organization planned to be in compliance with revisions to the Washington Administrative Code effective Dec. 26.

“As this relates to our restrooms and locker room procedures, we will not discriminate based on gender identity effective December 21,” Mr. Ecklund said. “This timing will allow for staff education and training.”

Commissioner Charlene Strong said the panel’s rulemaking only “enhances” the state Legislature’s work “and in no way harms that work.”

And another step is taken towards abolishing reality entirely, making way for a world in which anyone can invent their own identity, regardless of biological reality. Or, as I heard on the radio on the way to work today, “The day when perhaps there are as many genders as there are people.” And yes, we the taxpayers fund the CBC.

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Speaking of the CBC, a couple weeks ago I happened to be driving through a cold Calgary night listening to a European panel on foreign affairs. Discussing the migrant crisis, one of the British fellows said, “We know who they are. But for there to be an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’ we have to know who ‘us’ is to begin with.” There were murmurs of agreement all around, as each European expert agreed that, yes, it’s true, we have no idea what “we” are, if we could even agree that such a thing as “we” existed in the first place.

And that’s the point. As I wrote after the Paris attacks, the West has no idea what it stands for anymore, beyond the new religiously rigid principle of allowing girly-men with penises into female bathrooms. David Warren put it quite brilliantly:

It is said, by the paranoical, that Islam is overrunning Christendom. But this is not true. The great majority in the latter realm are not Christian at all: only post-Christians, with seriously deformed “former” Christian attitudes. It is inconceivable that a continent of Christians would have let themselves be invaded by Saracens. They would have fought.

This is because, at the most primal level, a Christian knows that he is a Christian, as opposed to something else. His identity is not up for negotiation. He stands for something, and may stand down from cowardice, but hardly from confusion over his identity. The old Christian Europe, for all its internal squabbles, intended to remain Christian.

History happens, over time. Those last two World Wars were themselves ultimately a product of the loss of Christian faith, over centuries preceding; the loss of Christian identity and its replacement with secular, national ideals.

The new post-Christian Europe hasn’t a clue. Pegida itself doesn’t know what it stands for: it is itself part of a fully “secularized” Europe, and the term “patriotic European” is merely fascist. There never was a Europe to be patriotic to. There was a Europe that was Christian, and now this.

Indeed. And now this.