Can The Left Abandon Appeasement - Road to the Middle Class

BACK IN 2004 the German writer Henryk Broder wrote to Welt am Sonntag to say that “Europa - dein Familienname ist Appeasement!” Interesting how he used the English word. The German for appeasement, according to Google, is “Beschwichtigung.” Yes. It means what you think it does. “Europe, thy family name is appeasement.”

Subsequently, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, publisher of Die Welt, wrote a stinging amplification: “Europe - Thy Name is Cowardice.”

But let us be charitable to our liberal and lefty friends. Their whole belief system is predicated on the moral necessity of appeasement towards the oppressed and the marginalized, beginning with the working class in 1850. What else would they do?

It was a belief system that worked well for them for over a century. And it also gave them enormous political power.

But the question now before us is: Should we continue the policy of appeasement when it is the Muslim immigrants to Europe and the mad mullahs of Iran that are demanding it?

The saving grace of the old appeasement was that the workers, and after them the blacks, women, and gays, were in the last analysis loyal citizens of their nation states. But the Muslims immigrants may not be. Their first loyalty may be to their faith not to their adopted country.

If that is the case the wages of appeasement is not going to be merely a large public sector and economic stagnation, but something rather bloody.

But can the left change its belief system and its whole way of life in response to the new challenge?

In Israel, according to Dennis Prager, the left that was critical of Israeli policy in the occupied areas of Gaza and the West Bank has all of a sudden changed its tune. Writes Amos Oz, Israeli author and leftist:

"Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. . . . This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages. . . . There can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hezbollah."

But has the mainstream left in Europe or in the United States reached the tipping point where they can no longer continue down the road of appeasement? Don’t hold your breath.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

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E. G. West, Education and the State

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Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
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