Citizen Tom

The above picture is from a National Park Service web page (here).  Here is the caption. 

Under Washington’s firm guidance, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in his own lifetime grew from a small collection of dilapidated buildings (top) and 30 students to a 2,000-acre campus of 107 buildings, more then 1,500 students, and nearly 200 faculty members. The students themselves constructed most of the school’s buildings. (Top: Booker T. Washington National Monument; Bottom: Library of Congress)

The students also made most of their own bricks. 

When James Atticus Bowden commented on the previous post, he mentioned an amazing story that Booker T. Washington told in his autobiography,  Up From Slavery: An Autobiography.   It is a story about perseverance and the hard struggle of learning.  Here is the story.

In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience was in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work reasonably well started, we directed our next efforts toward the industry of making bricks. We needed these for use in connection with the erection of our own buildings; but there was also another reason for establishing this industry. There was no brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market.

I had always sympathized with the “Children of Israel,” in their task of “making bricks without straw,” but ours was the task of making bricks with no money and no experience.

In the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was difficult to get the students to help. When it came to brickmaking, their distaste for manual labour in connection with book education became especially manifest. It was not a pleasant task for one to stand in the mud-pit for hours, with the mud up to his knees. More than one man became disgusted and left the school.

We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that furnished brick clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was very simple, but I soon found out by bitter experience that it required special skill and knowledge, particularly in the burning of the bricks. After a good deal of effort we moulded about twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a kiln to be burned. This kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was not properly constructed or properly burned. We began at once, however, on a second kiln. This, for some reason, also proved a failure.  The failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to get the students to take part in the work. Several of the teachers, however, who had been trained in the industries at Hampton, volunteered their services, and in some way we succeeded in getting a third kiln ready for burning. The burning of a kiln required about a week. Toward the latter part of the week, when it seemed as if we were going to have a good many thousand bricks in a few hours, in the middle of the night the kiln fell. For the third time we had failed.

The failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar with which to make another experiment. Most of the teachers advised the abandoning of the effort to make bricks. In the midst of my troubles I thought of a watch which had come into my possession years before. I took the watch to the city of Montgomery, which was not far distant, and placed it in a pawn-shop. I secured cash upon it to the amount of fifteen dollars, with which to renew the brickmaking experiment. I returned to Tuskegee, and, with the help of the fifteen dollars, rallied our rather demoralized and discouraged forces and began a fourth attempt to make bricks. This time, I am glad to say, we were successful. Before I got hold of any money, the time-limit on my watch had expired, and I have never seen it since; but I have never regretted the loss of it.

Brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the school that last season our students manufactured twelve hundred thousand of first-class bricks, of a quality stable to be sold in any market. Aside from this, scores of young men have mastered the brickmaking trade–both the making of bricks by hand and by machinery–and are now engaged in this industry in many parts of the South.  (from here)

Washington then went on to explain what he learned from these difficulties.   Because of what he had learned, he gained satisfaction and pleasure.   That  satisfaction and pleasure did not come merely from overcoming the difficulties he had encountered.   It came from things unexpected that he learned.   Thus Washington felt he was more than amply rewarded by his hard work.

Up From Slavery: An Autobiography, by Booker T. Washington, is one of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time.  Imagine what it must have been like.

This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education. As I have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. As fast as any kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view men and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found in the night-school. Some day-schools were formed soon after freedom, but the principal book studied in the Sunday-school was the spelling-book. Day-school, night-school, Sunday-school, were always crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room.  (from here)

The American Civil War ended when Washington was still a boy, and he seized every opportunity to educate himself.   Washington finished (assuming anyone ever does) his own education at what was then known as Hampton Institute (history here).   Eventually he taught at Hampton Institute, even helping to establish its alumni association (here).

What Washington became most noted for, however, was the establishment of the Tuskegee University (history here).  This job and the fame he achieved allowed Washington to become a spokesman for America’s former slaves.

Below is perhaps the most famous speech made by Washington.  It is the address which he delivered at the opening of the Atlanta Cotton states and International Exposition, at Atlanta, Ga., September 18, 1895.  At this exposition, Blacks, then referred to as Negros, had their own exhibit hall.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens.

One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heading the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”–cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits of the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.  As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed–”blessing him that gives and him that takes.”

There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:–

The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug-stores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our education life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.  (from here)

Because he so overshadows other heroes, we often think of the Civil Rights Movement as beginning in the 1950’s with Dr. Martin Luther King.  In reality, progress has been incremental.  Because we are so stubborn, we make progress in small steps.  Thus the Civil Rights Movement goes back much further than five or even ten decades, and many would say the movement has yet to end.

In retrospect, I now find it strange how I was taught history.  Instead of reading the writings of the people who lived during the times I studied, my teachers primarily instructed from history books.  I would happily have read both works from the period of study and history books, but that never seemed to be a matter of much consideration.

Admittedly, because its English is so remote from our time, Shakespeare is hard to read.  Yet with a little practice, high school students still do it, but it seems to me they now do it less often.  Franklin’s autobiography, however, is eminently readable.  So for your enjoyment and edification, I offer a couple of passages from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin.

The first is a list of virtues.  Conscious that his character needed improvement, Franklin set about the task.   He contrived a written plan, and in this plan he identified the virtues he thought important.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1.  TEMPERANCE.  Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2.  SILENCE.  Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3.  ORDER.  Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4.  RESOLUTION.  Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5.  FRUGALITY.  Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6.  INDUSTRY.  Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7.  SINCERITY.  Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8.  JUSTICE.  Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9.  MODERATION.  Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10.  CLEANLINESS.  Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11.  TRANQUILLITY.  Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12.  CHASTITY.  Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13.  HUMILITY.  Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Note that Franklin’s original list contained but twelve virtues.  Here he explains.

My list of virtues contain’d at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show’d itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc’d me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it.  I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto (a group of men with which Franklin carried on carefully conducted discussions), the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present.  When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc.  I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me.  And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.  Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

[Thus far written at Passy, 1784.]

It is fortunate that Franklin added humility to his list.  Pride is the greatest of sins.   Pride is the sin that led to Lucifer’s downfall.

The Fall of Lucifer

¹² “ How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
¹³ For you have said in your heart:

‘ I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
¹⁵ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.
¹⁶ “ Those who see you will gaze at you,
And consider you, saying:

‘ Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who shook kingdoms,
¹⁷ Who made the world as a wilderness
And destroyed its cities,
Who did not open the house of his prisoners?’
¹⁸ “ All the kings of the nations,
All of them, sleep in glory,
Everyone in his own house;
¹⁹ But you are cast out of your grave
Like an abominable branch,
Like the garment of those who are slain,
Thrust through with a sword,
Who go down to the stones of the pit,
Like a corpse trodden underfoot.
²⁰ You will not be joined with them in burial,
Because you have destroyed your land
And slain your people.
The brood of evildoers shall never be named.
²¹ Prepare slaughter for his children
Because of the iniquity of their fathers,
Lest they rise up and possess the land,
And fill the face of the world with cities.”

Isaiah 14:12-21 (New King James Version)

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1.  TEMPERANCE.  Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2.  SILENCE.  Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself;
avoid trifling conversation.

3.  ORDER.  Let all your things have their places; let each part
of your business have its time.

4.  RESOLUTION.  Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without
fail what you resolve.

5.  FRUGALITY.  Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself;
i.e., waste nothing.

6.  INDUSTRY.  Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful;
cut off all unnecessary actions.

7.  SINCERITY.  Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly,
and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8.  JUSTICE.  Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits
that are your duty.

9.  MODERATION.  Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much
as you think they deserve.

10.  CLEANLINESS.  Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths,
or habitation.

11.  TRANQUILLITY.  Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents
common or unavoidable.

12.  CHASTITY.  Rarely use venery but for health or offspring,
never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's
peace or reputation.

13.  HUMILITY.  Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

This is a review of a strange and fascinating book.   The book is the The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West by Lee Harris.

Because Harris’ book is so unusual, it goes over the heads of some.

This simplistic, muddled, frustrating and loopy analysis of Islam and the West contends that history has been hijacked by alpha males, high on testosterone, who, as fanatics dedicated to a cause, will easily ride roughshod over the rational, reasoning West. We have underestimated the realities of such fanaticism, and “for reason to tolerate those who refuse to play by the rules of reason is nothing else but the suicide of reason.”

Who’s tolerating such fanatics?  (continued here)

In The Suicide of Reason, Harris expands upon two subjects he discussed in Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History (my review here).

• Tolerance:  Human beings have difficulty tolerating those outside the family and tribe, but the rise of civilization depended upon expanding the definition of tolerance.  Western Civilization further expanded the definition of tolerance.   How?  Harris referenced John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration.   Locke explained we should tolerate any willing to abide by the ideal of tolerance.  Since Locke’s time the goal has become mutual toleration.  We have learned to tolerate any willing to leave others in peace.
• The Shaming System:   Harris described how the social conscious of each of us has been educated through shame.  When children, we were each taught to be trustworthy by being shamed when we violated the values of our society.   With the shaming system, our adherence to social values becomes “anchored at the visceral level in our automatic and mechanical sense of shame and pride” (pg 183 of Civilization and Its Enemies).

In The Suicide of Reason, Harris wants us to consider the implications of tolerance as now taught in the West and the fanatical intolerance of Islamic societies.  What happens when these two cultures meet.   As a New York Times book review observes, Harris perceives a lopsided contest.

“The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam,” he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the effect of creating a society of holy warriors.

By contrast, the West has cultivated an ethos of individualism, reason and tolerance, and an elaborate system in which every actor, from the individual to the nation-state, seeks to resolve conflict through words. The entire system is built on the idea of self-interest. This ethos rejects fanaticism. The alpha male is pacified and groomed to study hard, find a good job and plan prudently for retirement: “While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin,” Harris writes, “the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive and ruthless.”  (from here)

The New York Times book reviewer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, then goes on to disagree with Harris’ pessimistic analysis and argues that Muslims can learn learn to be tolerant.  Not until months latter does Ayaan Hirsi Ali start to appreciate that Harris’ pessimistic analysis is as much an indictment of the West as it is of Islam (see here).  For example, the book contains this all too accurate description of public education.

Today, however, our modern system of education refuses to recognize that the modern liberal West might also have core traditions that cannot be overturned without destroying the foundation of liberalism itself.  Here again the consumerist model is implicit in our theory of educating children:  They are taught to think of themselves as ideology consumers, picking whatever religion or politics appeals to them.  Inevitably even the most intelligent consumer, especially a child, will be unconsciously swayed by the clever sales techniques of those peddling their own brand-name ideology, just as they are swayed when buying footwear and blue jeans.  Indeed increasingly our education system is being turned over to teachers who are frankly salesmen for the ideological brand that is in vogue among the interlectual elite.   (from page 196 of The Suicide of Reason)

What does Harris think is being lost?  Janet Levy puts it this way for FrontPageMagazine.com.

In The Suicide of Reason, Harris explains the evolution of America’s enlightened culture as a natural development originating from the ideal circumstances of pioneer life. He describes how America was settled by stubborn, rugged individualists who fled to the New World to escape religious persecution and freely practice their religion. These early settlers were mostly Protestant dissenters who valued hard work, were determined to hew their own path and refused to take orders from anyone. While the Old World remained a hierarchal society of landowners and serfs with a strong military and government enforcing laws and maintaining the status quo, the North American continent was a wilderness unburdened by history and rife with opportunity. It was geographically separated from Europe and free of threats except for Indians. It couldn’t be conquered, only settled, and every pioneer was in charge of his own destiny. While the Old World admired the life of the idle rich and military strength and subjugation were the keys to wealth and power, in America, a settler with a Protestant ethic cleared his own land or paid someone else to do it. He held in contempt those who subjugated others to do their work. Hard work was honorable and the route to freedom, wealth and the good life. These unique characteristics of the New World — the right to keep the product of your labor, religious freedom and the lack of imposition on others — spawned American liberalism. Thus, America became fertile ground for the creation of a culture of enlightened reason.  (from here)

Harris thinks the Bible played a critical role in the development of America’s enlighten culture.

Beverage (Author’s note:  Senator Albert Beverage in his biography of John Marshall) notes the importance to the formation of the American republic of the stubborn individual, who insisted on doing all his own thinking.  But where did this trait come from?  Was it because of the pioneers and frontiersmen carefully followed the development of advanced European thought of the time?  No, the only book they read was the Bible.  And because the American pioneers were mainly made up of Protestant Dissenters, they each were fully convinced that they themselves could determine the conduct of their own affairs.  They did not need priests or experts to tell them what the Bible said:  No matter how simple and uneducated they might be, they had been raised to believe they could figure out what the Bible said for themselves.

Strange as it may sound, the Bible idolatry of the Protestant Dissenters played a critical role in the formation of America’s culture of reason.  As we discussed in Chapter 10 (Author’s note: entitled Reason and Autonomy), the tradition of the Protestant Dissenter is one in which each child has not merely a right but a duty to make up his own mind.  The American Baptists, for example, did not believe in forcing the child to submit to his parent’s religion; children had to accept Christianity into their own hearts;  it is not permissible to ram it down their throats.  (from page 170 of The Suicide of Reason)

So “Bible idolatry” is the source of American rugged individualism?  For the most part Harris succeeds in his effort in writing a book where he appears to be thoughtfully objective observer.  With this strange turn of words, “Bible idolatry,” I suspect Harris betrays his own inner struggle.   Harris frankly explains that a culture of enlightened reason is a freakishly unlikely event, one he must attribute to a particular book.  Yet he apparently finds it difficult to share the views of the Protestant Dissenters.

Hence The Suicide of Reason considers three raging struggles.

• The cultural/philosophical conflict between the West and Islam.
• The ideological battle within the West over the cultural values.
• The puzzling of one man over what he should believe about God and reason.

Because I prefer to listen to audio books, most of the books I read have been around awhile.  Nonetheless, they still manage to be timely.  Such, fortunately,  is the case with America Alone:  The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn.  Steyn’s subject is the threat posed by the Islamic Jihad.

In his estimation, we are engaged in a struggle with three possible resolutions.

1. Submit to Islam
2. Destroy Islam
3. Reform Islam

Steyn’s concern is that “because most of us don’t take number one as a  serious possibility, we’re equally unserious about being forced to choose between two and three.”

Steyn concerns arise from his perception of the implications the immigration of Muslims into the Christian areas of Europe and Asia.  His book attracted my curiosity because I have observed the large movement of Hispanics into this nation, and I wondered what it might be like if a more hostile group were moving into the area.   Steyn provided a scary scenario.  For a sanity check, I decided to compare notes.

Daniel Pipes at the Jerusalem Post provides a fair summary of the book in A devastating thesis.  As Pipes observes, the book focuses upon the threat to Europe.

He begins with the legacy of two totalitarianisms. Traumatized by the electoral appeal of fascism, post-World War II European states were constructed in a top-down manner “so as to insulate almost entirely the political class from populist pressures.” As a result, the establishment has “come to regard the electorate as children.”

Second, the Soviet menace during the Cold War prompted American leaders, impatient with Europe’s (and Canada’s) weak responses, effectively to take over their defense. This benign and farsighted policy led to victory by 1991, but it also had the unintended and less salutary side-effect of freeing up Europe’s funds to build a welfare state. This welfare state had several malign implications.

What are the malign implications?  In an interview, Steyn provides a succinct summary.

Basically, 17 European countries have what demographers call lowest-load fertility, from which no society ever recovered. That means they are basically not having enough babies.

And the way Europe is set up, they have these unsustainable social programs and welfare. And they imported the babies that they didn’t have. They imported them essentially from the North Africa and the Middle East.

So we’re seeing one of the fastest population transformations in history, whereby an aging ethnic European population is being replaced by a Muslim population. And the Muslims understand that, in fact, Europe, as they see it, is the colony now.  (from here)

In his review, The Tyranny of Numbers, Alan Caruba uses Steyn’s book as a springboard for a polemic.  He observes that Steyn’s is a book about demographics made interesting.   Here is an excerpt.

Meanwhile, most of us toiling away at our daily lives need to focus in on “what really did happen between 1970 and 2000”, says Steyn. “In that period, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, and the Muslim nations increased from about 15 percent to 20 percent.”

Ask the French what that means. They are now into their second year of an all-out Intifada being fought by young Muslims (the press always calls them “youths”) who are burning cars and now buses with people still in them. There are areas in cities throughout Europe where no non-Muslim dares to go these days.

“The salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Russia,” says Steyn, “is that they are running out of babies.” It’s all about fertility rates and, in one developed nation after another the native-born population is not replacing itself as they continue to age and retire, living off the largess of the few young people left to do the work. This is what happens when you create a socialist system that pays for just about everything and promises to take care of you in your old age in case your kids will not.

Not every review, however, endorsed Steyn’s conclusions.  Engin Akcay, writing for The Journal of Turkish Weekly, provided a soft spoken and almost sleepy counterpoint.  In his review, he denies the existence of Islamism.

Asking what the West prepared to die for after 9/11, Steyn should actually be asked whether dying was the only alternative in the world for cherishing goodness and keeping a civilization alive. Is it not that possible to sustain it by living? Sometimes, interestingly, to live requires a much more brave heart than dying in today’s world… Each conscious individual has the responsibility for making the world better, not killing for but eliminating hatred. Describing Islamism as “militarily weak but ideologically confident” while “the West is militarily strong but ideologically insecure”, the author emphasizes that the West does not have any strategy to combat terrorism which has strong ideology. Although academic sources indicate when the “Encyclopaedia of Islam” was completed, the concept “Islamism” had virtually disappeared from the English usage, by 1938; it is hard to understand why Steyn insistently uses it to reflect an ideological characteristic via an additional “ism”. It is well known that there is no any Islam-related professional union gathering all Islamic countries under the frame of an ideological aim. In this case the only modern example is – including no ideology – the Organization of the Islamic Conference of which the Secretary General is from secular Turkey and is officially represented in the UN.  (from here)

Johann Hari, clearly not a Conservative, noted what he called racism in Steyn’s book.  He offered observations such as these.

Steyn’s prose has a jangling musicality that may, for his less discerning Talk Radio-addicted readers, gloss over the outright distortions in his work. He is genuinely funny, at one point noting he would counsel his readers to run for the hills “except they’re full of terrorist training camps.” Every delusional statement is sweetened with such a screwball one-liner; like Ann Coulter, Steyn writes in a demonic demotic that makes you chuckle even as you retch.

But this cannot hide the gaping holes of logic and fact in his argument. To fulfil his headline predictions, Steyn needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 200 million European Muslims – in just 13 years. Only Fallaci’s rats could reproduce so rapidly (Author’s note:  This is apparently a reference to Oriana Fallaci and her book, The Rage & The Pride.  See here.)  Steyn even admits that the history of demographic predictions is hysterically inept, noting that “most twenty-year projections… are laughably speculative, and thus most doomsday scenarios are too” – before offering his own.  (from here)

Truth be told, the Steyn’s book does leave the impression that Europe is being rapidly and irretrievably overrun with Muslims (Had the European Union admitted Turkey, that very well might be the case.).  However, when I checked CIA World Factbook, I found out that in France, which seems to have the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, only between five and ten percent of the population is Muslim.   So if we are talking about a Islamic Jihad based purely upon demographics, we are talking about a uncertain project.

What might shorten the time line?  As Steyn suggests, the answer lies in fanaticism.

What more can be said?  Look for a review of the Suicide of Reason by Lee Harris within the next couple of days.