White Colonialists At It Again

Sexular Colonialism

APRIL 14, 2019STEPHENMCALPINE

If my male, pale and stale heart could be warmed, it would be so by the growing realisation that the baton of colonialism, long the historic burden of the conservative, Christianised West, can now been handed to the woke Left in our culture.

The evidence is coming in in spades.  The progressive narrative has created, and is the process of enforcing, a new colonialism and, in a great irony, is enforcing it upon those it once championed.  For so long the progressive side of politics accused the historical nations of the West of colonising ethnic minorities, but suddenly they’ve signed up to the agenda.

And it’s all come down to sex.  The progressives have their own version of cultural assimiliation – let’s call it Sexular Colonialism.  What else to make of what is becoming a widening conflict between the self-aware sexular culture of big money, big government and big sport in the West, and many of those who are the actual players on the field?

In the wake of Israel Folau’s injudicious Instagram message, there has been a growing response from other rugby players of Islander backgrounds, who are backing his stance upon pain of sanction by their own unions.

Go through the list of those who have backed them.  Not a Smith or Jones in sight.  But plenty of names you can’t pronounce quickly and that you know come from Pacific Islander and other ethnic backgrounds.

So we get this from England’s Australian born Billy Vinupola, as quoted in The Guardian:

What was the UK response to this, frankly, historical orthodox view of Christian sexual ethics, minus the obvious “pleasure principle”?

Well Channel 4 cut him from their commentary team.  The Rugby Football Union has hauled him before a disciplinary board.  And when he took to the pitch to play this weekend he was roundly booed by spectators, and the tannoy speakers at the ground were pumping out  “It’s Raining Men“, just to make sure he got the point.  In other words, we’re watching you mate, and don’t forget it.

Well it might be raining men, but the men it’s raining are predominantly white, secular, well-heeled, well-educated men for whom sexual identity IS the foundational identity of a human being, and who have the power to enforce that perspective in the public square.  It’s Sexular Colonialism big time.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I do think Izzy blew it. I do think that we have all sorts of identity markers in our lives, and as a dreaded Pale/Male/Stale I’ve certainly learned to recognise this  And as a Christian I’m not so pious to airily wave my hand and say “Well, my identity is in Christ”.

Yes it is, theologically and in reality, but that’s not how I always manage to live my life, and in some senses other markers are important.  If we didn’t think identity markers were important then we wouldn’t have such clear gender definitions grounded in creation.

But notice what Billy said? 

There just comes a point when you insult what I grew up believing in that you say enough is enough.

For Billy, for Israel, and for a host of other players in the spotlight, they’ve come to realise that their deep ethno-religious frameworks upon which they have built their lives have to bow down the idol of sexual identity.  There is no option if they wish to continue in their employ.

These other markers – ethno-religious -, for so long championed by the Left, are now being viewed as barriers to progress.  And we know how the Left treats barriers to progress.  There is a pecking order when it comes to identity, and race and religion sit squarely below sex.   It must be quashed.

Sexular Colonialism right there.

Still not convinced?  So a friend working in the public service in our home state tells me that after a long intense PD day on how to promote sexual diversity in his workplace, he approached the organisers and said that many people within the Australian indigenous community would have a problem with this.  The response?  “Well they will just have to get on board.”

Get on board.   The bulk of the indigenous community who hold to traditional values in terms of marriage, will have to get on board the whitefella’s agenda.  Since when did that become anything but colonialism? If they don’t get on board, they’re gonna get run over.

Sexular Colonialism is also the reason why 600 Muslim families, of assorted racial backgrounds, have been protesting outside government schools in the UK, where a radical sexual curriculum is being rolled out across schools.  The very cohort who the Left has championed for so long are now firmly in the same cohort’s crosshairs.

You would assume it would make the new colonists stop and think.  And it does.  They stop, think, and then say “You’re wrong, get on board.”

Now none of this is to say that there are not those within these communities who take a different approach to sex.  But what it is to say is that when it comes to pushing a dominant cultural barrow that is alien to those outside the West, the Left is as good as any at doing it.  And they’re hypocrites for denying it.

The other thing I’ve noted is the sheer bravery – if not always entirely sensible – of those such as Billy Vunipola.  For all of those of you who wish to tear him down, I’d like to see you deal with anywhere near the public pressure and scorn that he is facing. You’d curl up in a ball and cry in a minute.

He’s actually had time to watch how Folau has been scorned by the progressive narrative.  He’s seen the ridicule heaped upon Folau by the likes of Peter Fitzsimons and the ABC.  He’s realised that Folau’s career is dead in the water, and that the sensible thing to do – the thing he would feel under enormous pressure to do – would be to distance himself from Folau, or try to find reasons to support him while not supporting him at the same time.

What does he do?  He puts it all on the line.  Of course Billy has been praised time and time again for putting it all on the line for his football.  But for his faith?  Don’t even think about it.

If anyone wants to say “Yes, but” at this point, especially a Christian, then just project yourself to The Last Day and ask, will Billy be ashamed of saying what he said about God and sex and the gospel when he stands before Jesus?  If you can’t say “No” to that then perhaps you’ve been more colonised than you think.

And look, I don’t pretend that I would stand up and say what either of those two men said and I could find a way to consider it stupid, uneducated and not culturally savvy.  But I am pale, male and stale after all, that’s how we pale, male and stale types justify ourselves.

For the large cohort in the West that seems to be insulted by just about everything that ends up on social media that drops onto the insular safety of their iPhone, the fact that Billy can stand on a grass pitch in the middle of an oval being booed by fans, and then scorned by the public address system before the game has even begun, before knowing that he faces disciplinary procedures from his employer, is testament to his bravery.

And that’s for saying something far milder, with less sting in it, than Folau did. But Sexular Colonialism will have its way.  It must have its way.  Dissenting voices in the public square now know what they will face. It’s both sad and admirable to realised that it’s those who have already emotionally muscled up to public scorn on the football field for their skin colour, who are emotionally muscling up for another round of colonialism.

Meanwhile the male, pale and stale of us sit in the comfort of the stands munching on a pie.

Steve McAlpine is approaching an age which would be a more than useful Test batting average. He is a pastor of Providence Church in WA, is married to Jill and together they have two children, Sophie and Declan. Steve grew up in Northern Ireland, but apart from rolling his “r’s”, and talking too fast, is a West Aussie through and through. He has degrees in journalism and theology and enjoys combining the two through writing and blogging, especially on matters of church planting and cultural negotiation for Christians in the increasingly complex West.

Imperial Legacy

Forgotten Glories

These days the Imperial British Empire is largely regarded with vituperative scorn amongst many historians.  Others express embarrassment.  What is left of the old imperial "structure" is now reflected in the Commonwealth of Nations.  This has been eagerly and persistently maintained by Elizabeth II as representing the best of the humanitarian ideals underlying the old Empire.  

In many ways it is a "force" to behold.  We suspect that as time passes, the better fruits of Imperial Britain will come more into focus and attention.  But for the present the injustices, the use of force, the disregard for local populations, and the atrocities of the Empire predominate.  More time is needed for a balanced appraisal to emerge.  As one historian put it

The British Empire is too recent to be regarded by most commentators with the detachment that can be applied to older empires such as the Ottoman or the Mughal.  When the latter used violence against their subject peoples, they can be said to have carried out "stabilizing operations"; but when the British did so, they committed "war crimes," even "genocide."   [Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), p. 785.]

The inability of the present generation of historians to deal objectively with the matter is patently obvious.  This is particularly the case when regimes which replaced the administration of the Empire turned out to be more oppressive and incompetent than the British administration they replaced.

Post-Colonial Myopia

The Second Hundred Years War

For the past fifty years or so the West has practised the politics of guilt and pity with respect to Islam.  It has done so assiduously.  The guilt is grounded in nasty Western imperialism, which the Chattering Classes long ago rejected as evil.  The navel of Islam--the Middle East--suffered under Western imperialism--hence the guilt.  Backward, impoverished and ignorance are perpetual conditions in the Middle East caused by Western sins.  

The pity is an expression of atonement, a longing to make things right, an expression of restitution and atonement for wrongs committed and sufferings caused.  So, when Islamic heroes commit murder--even mass murder--they are immediately washed with the cleansing flow of Western guilt and pity.  "We can't blame them.  We in the West are to blame".  Mea culpas all around.

Western imperialism notwithstanding, the West has willed itself to ignorance when it comes to Islam and Islamic teaching.

Man's Inhumanity to Man, Part I

Blaming the Mongolian Race

In Emma Larkin's wonderful volume [Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: The Penguin Group, 2011)] she describes the long history of tyranny which has afflicted that nation for many centuries.  Sadly, the British--as colonial masters--were little better.  By the time Burma became a colony the doctrines of evolutionism were becoming more and more embedded in the colonial mind.  This led to a "natural" conclusion that primitive native people were not sub-human.

She cites a government report at the time:

In Burma we are dealing with a Mongolian race . . . and Mongolian races appear to have always found an element of cruelty in their punishments necessary.  [Op cit., p. 146.]

In other words, "we need to treat them in the only way these brutes understand".  George Orwell served as a policeman in Burma for a time.  During his time there in the early 1920's some 20,000 criminals were being locked up every year.  He describes the horror of British run jails in Burma in The Road to Wigan Pier:

The wretched prisoners squatting in the reeking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos, the women and children howling when their menfolk were led away--things like these are beyond bearing when you are in any way directly responsible for them. [Ibid., p.46]

This is not to say, of course, that the British were any worse than the authoritarian rulers that preceded them.  Rather, it is to say they were as bad.

New Model Colonies

Nineteenth Century Changes to Colonisation

In his book Fairness and Freedom, historian David Fischer provides some interesting insights into the world-view in Great Britain which shaped the colonisation of New Zealand in the nineteenth century.  He notes that the New Zealand experience was different from what occurred in the British imperialist and colonial experience up until that time. 

The Colonial Office was run by Sir James Stephen for much of the first half of the nineteenth century.  He took a particular interest in New Zealand.

Stephen summarized his purposes [for New Zealand] in a single sentence: "The two Cardinal points to be kept in view in establishing a regular colony in New Zealand are, first, the protection of the aborigines, and secondly the introduction among the colonists of the principle of self-government, to the utmost extent in which that principle can be reconciled with allegiance to the crown."

Governed by a Dead Man

How Obama Thinks

Dinesh D'Souza, 09.27.10,
Forbes Magazine.

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?

The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.

The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unfair--to the rich.

Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.

Recently the London Times reported that the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a free man.

One more anomaly: A few months ago Nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?

Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution.

These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.

A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?

It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.

Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.

What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.

So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.

An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.

I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.

Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."

Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.

Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"

As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."

Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.

While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in 1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and is the dominant outside force."

From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.

Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.

Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his law forcing every American to buy health insurance.

If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them; therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100% rate is justified under certain circumstances.

Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.

Finally, nasa. No explanation other than anticolonialism makes sense of Obama's curious mandate to convert a space agency into a Muslim and international outreach. We can see how well our theory works by recalling the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. "One small step for man," Neil Armstrong said. "One giant leap for mankind."

But that's not how the rest of the world saw it. I was 8 years old at the time and living in my native India. I remember my grandfather telling me about the great race between America and Russia to put a man on the moon. Clearly America had won, and this was one giant leap not for mankind but for the U.S. If Obama shares this view, it's no wonder he wants to blunt nasa's space program, to divert it from a symbol of American greatness into a more modest public relations program.

Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father's influence because those who know Obama well testify to it. His "granny" Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his grandfather's other wives) told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things--he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son."

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"

The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."

In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.

Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.

But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the King's College in New York City, is the author of the forthcoming book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing).

Where has That New World Order Gone?

The Time of the West Seems Over

Remember back to the days of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? Remember how politicians spoke grandiosely of a "Peace Dividend"? US President Bush(Sr) proclaimed the beginning of a New World Order. Things were going to change. Humanity was entering a new era.

Forgive us, but we are finding the proclamation of a New World Order passe these days, since hardly a month goes by without some political leader or other declaring yet another one. The latest is Gordon Brown, who in his career has probably pronounced about twenty of them, declaring at the conclusion of the recent G20 meeting that--yes, you guessed it--the world had just entered another New World Order.

Well, actually, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes had already pronounced that nothing was new under the sun. It is not surprising, then, that the New World Order turned out to be pretty much like an Older World Order. The second verse has proved remarkably like the first.

We came across the following prognostication by the late Samuel P Huntingdon the other day--written in 1995, but speculating on what we might be facing in the next few decades. Apparently he was not convinced about "New World Order" rhetoric.

Modernization has generally enhanced the material level of Civilization throughout the world. But has it also enhanced the moral and cultural dimensions of Civilization? In some respects this appears to be the case. Slavery, torture, vicious abuse of individuals, have become less and less acceptable in the contemporary world. Is this, however, simply the result of the impact of Western civilization on other cultures and hence will a moral reversion occur as Western power declines?

Much evidence exists in the 1990's for the relevance of the "sheer chaos" paradigm of world affairs: a global breakdown of law and order, failed states and increasing anarchy in many parts of the world, a global crime wave, transnational mafias and drug cartels, increasing drug addiction in many societies, a general weakening of the family, a decline in trust and social solidarity in many countries, ethnic, religious, and civilizational violence and rule by the gun prevalent in much of the world.

In city after city--Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok, Shanghai, London, Rome, Warsaw, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Delhi, Karachi, Cairo, Bogota, Washington--crime seems to be soaring and basic elements of Civilization fading away. People speak of a global crisis in governance. The rise of transnational corporations producing economic goods is increasingly matched by the rise of transnational criminal mafias, drug cartels, and terrorist gangs violently assaulting Civilization. Law and order is the first prerequisite of Civilization and in much of the world--Africa, Latin America, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, the Middle East--it appears to be evaporating . . . .

On a worldwide basis Civilization seems in many respects to be yielding to barbarism, generating the image of an unprecedented phenomenon, a global Dark Ages, possible descending upon humanity.
The Clash of Civilizations, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 321.

Nearly fifteen years on, Huntingdon's prognostication appears to be coming true. For a while the world "united" around the Coalition of the Willing in an effort to combat terrorism. The coalition fell apart over the war in Iraq.

The global balance of power is now definitely shifting. The West is in decline. Debt has progressively enslaved it to the creditor nations. In turn, debt in the West has been an inevitable outcome of welfare entitlement rights, which have cut through the moral fibre of Western nations with deadly force. The culture of welfare entitlement rights, universal throughout the West, has sliced through savings habits relentlessly (why save when someone else will provide for you). When savings evaporate, dependence results. It has also fed a culture of instantaneous demand gratification and an expectation of the omni-competence of government to solve each and every problem.

The Western liberal-academic complex has championed this pseudo-culture and bludgeoned the West into subjugation with its pagan human rights philosophies being propagated at every opportunity.

But inner spiritual subjugation inevitably transmutes into external subjugation. So the West is increasingly dependant, first upon its own governments, and then upon creditor nations, which fund their governments. Influence and power wanes correspondingly. Western powers, including the US, are simply unable to afford their military any longer. It is impossible over time to satiate rising welfare entitlement demands and the costs of global military superiority at the same time. Powers like China are now at the cutting edge of military research and technology. Normal service is resuming.

Huntingdon's description is likely to prove remarkably accurate. But will it result in a Dark Age? For some it will. It would be a Dark Age for a globalist or an internationalist or someone who genuinely believes in the rectitude and possibility of a "New World Order". But the decline of the arrogant self-righteous West is not a bad thing in itself. After all, the humanist Western Enlightenment bequeathed to the world the Reign of Terror, two world wars, the Age of Colonialism, Western imperialism, the idolatry of nationalism, National Socialism, the African slave trade, Communist dictatorships, the United Nations, and statism. Only the deeply prejudiced would mourn the passing of its bloody global hegemony.

In the coming phase, nations and governments would do well to mind their own business, return to basic principles, be friends with all, enemies of none, and adopt a foreign policy of strict, armed neutrality. Meanwhile for the covenant people of the Living God, the future remains bright. As Western idols come to "lie broke in the Temple of Baal" we expect people will be freed from their thrall.

It is through the vale of suffering that a rebellious people will finally return to the God of their fathers.

The Slavery of Maoritanga

The Rise of Historical Determinism—Becoming Enslaved to the Past

In New Zealand we observed the emergence of a modern form of historical determinism with the recent rise of Maoritanga—in all its related manifestations. This is actually quite a curio to many in New Zealand because everyone who lives in this country is a migrant or descended from a migrant. Immigrants tend to loosen their ties over time to their whakapapa and culture. They become less wedded to the past.

For several decades British immigrants felt linked to the home country. They were even prepared to go and fight for it in its wars. But these things fade and today the ties with the home country are now tenuous at best. There is even talk of a republic in the air.

I recall meeting a Serbian immigrant family during the height of the troubles in the nineties. When they first arrived their faces were lined with the stress, the fear, the suspicions, the hostilities, and the animosities of their homeland. However, within two years this had all faded away and the hostilities of the former Yugoslavia seemed like another world. It was.

But for Maori the past is not over.

In the last half of the previous century Maori began to re-assert themselves. They sought to recover their historical culture, their historical language, their historical identity. They came to believe that these things had been virtually wiped out by an onslaught of European colonialism. If they were to survive as a people, if they were to liberate themselves from the pervasive repression (as they came to see it), they had to go back into the past and recover their whakapapa, their traditions, their culture, and their identity. The recovery of these things would enable them to establish their own sense of personhood. By knowing where they had come from (in the broadest cultural sense) they would learn where to stand. They would be able to stand apart from and against the dominant European culture.

This was an interesting development—not uncommon amongst indigenous peoples who now find themselves to be minorities in their own country. But it was new for this country.

In general educated white liberals agreed with the Maoritanga movement. The drivers of white liberal acquiescence to Maoritanga were twofold. Firstly, there was a gnawing sense of guilt over the illegal and unlawful appropriations of the past, and the resulting depredations of Maori for which white Europeans felt they had been responsible. So Maori were owed something. Secondly, there was a strain of elitist paternalism. White liberals knew that the pagan animism of traditional Maori culture, and the social arrangements that resulted, had been primitive and backward. But still white liberals encouraged Maori to recover these things in the same way that an indulgent parent will tolerate and be entertained by a child's play, regardless of how puerile it might be.

And so, New Zealand witnessed the first full flowering of a form of historical determinism. It is around 150 years since Maori “sovereignty” and culture came under sustained pressure from European migration. The recovery of Maori culture today is as curious as if the descendants of English immigrants began to seek their identity and place in the world by attempting to re-create the culture, language, mores, behaviours, dress, tattoos, and customs of working class Victorian England.

Historical determinism is like many modern idolatries. It has just enough of the truth to enable it to curry influence with the credulous. Clearly mankind is shaped and determined by what went before. Clearly, the past is determinative of the present. The Scriptures bear abundant and repeated testimony to this. God declares that He works through generations and families. He would be a God to Abraham and to his children. He would visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. He would also show His lovingkindness to a thousand generations of those who love Him. In Acts, at Pentecost, when preaching the Gospel of the New Covenant, Peter declares, “This promise is to you and your children.” (Acts 2: 39)

Under the Older Covenant every Israelite adult male had to come before God once every year at the Feast of Harvest (Pentecost) to recite a formal creed of whakapapa: “A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number . . . and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand . . . and He has brought us to this place, and has given us this land, . . . and now, behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which Thou O Lord has given me.” (Deuteronomy 26: 5—11) Clearly, the past was shaping the present and the future: God had determined and decreed that this would be the case. God's people were instructed to take this up and mold their lives around it.

So when Maori started to assert that their identity was tied up in their past they were half right. But they were also completely wrong. They turned the past into an idol, and separated their understanding of the past from the Living God who governs and ordains all histories, all whakapapa. In separating their understanding of the past from God, it became a pagan construct for them. Inevitably the advocates and disciples of Maoritanga came to believe in a form of historical determinism. If the past was to grant them identity, Maori had to believe they were determined, controlled, governed by the past. Their past has become their ruler or their god.

Every cultural inadequacy, every racial failure, every manifestation of suffering or degeneracy within Maori came to be blamed upon the past—and, in particular, upon how the pakeha had treated them. A deep sense of injustice and victimhood has flowered like a poisonous toadstool. Tariana Turia is a walking icon of the pathology. While wanting to represent her people and speak out for them and defend their interests, she has so deeply imbibed the waters of historical determinism that she believes Maori have suffered a holocaust and their victimhood is ineradicable. It needs to be perpetually atoned for by European immigrants and their descendants. She and those like her are doing Maori a terrible disservice.

Now, Maoritanga has left Maori more degenerate, degraded, enslaved, and eviscerated than ever before. Whenever man comes to regard any aspect of the creation as pre-determining his life he becomes enslaved to it. The more the influence, the deeper and pervasive the slavery. It becomes far worse when you believe a terrible injustice has been done to you in the past, and you are a living manifestation of that injustice today. Passing blame to another and seeing yourself as a victim leads to a realisation of the imagination. Because you think you are a victim, you act as one.

So, Maori, deeply convinced of their being victimised, end up actually role playing in real life all the characteristics of a victim. Consequently, Maori are hugely over represented in crime—both as perpetrators and victims—poverty, family disintegration, drunkenness, gangs, illiteracy, welfare dependence, and so forth.

Forty-nine percent of children living in care and foster placements are Maori. The rates of substantiated child abuse per 1,000 zero to sixteen year olds in this country is double for Maori compared to non-Maori. They have a shorter average life expectancy than non-Maori. Life expectancy amongst Maori has been static, while the rest of the nation's average life expectancy has been increasing. (Brian Easton, Listener, 20 March 2004). The higher morbidity rate cannot be explained by age, gender, location and socio-economic status.

Governmental and social agencies are flummoxed as to what to do about the problems. Their reflex response is to seek Maori solutions for Maori problems, attempting to elevate ethnicity into a solution. The white establishment has bought the ideology of Maoritanga hook, line, and sinker.

Maori are as enslaved today as they have been at any time in their history. They have less power and control over their lives as a people than ever before. And the reason? Maoritanga. If you seek for your raison d'etre in your past, historical determinism inevitably follows and soon after the mentality of a slave follows. You become like the idols you worship. And the white establishment is willingly complicit in the devastation. After all they have become cheerleaders for Maoritanga.

What will change this cycle of degradation? There is no easy way out of the prison cell. It is as if Maori have been led by the seductive sirens of Maoritanga down an increasingly dark and narrowing alley. The press of the followers makes turning around and reversing very difficult, if not impossible. Like the fish pots of their ancestors they have become trapped into an irreversible, one-way tunnel—but in this case they have both made the fish pot and they are the fish.

But there is hope. Two thousand years ago the Son of Man rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God Almighty. As a result, He declared His imperial reign over all nations, all whakapapa's, all histories, all peoples. No longer need any people be enslaved to their past. Despite the past, He summons every people, every culture to turn to Him as their Lord—and be accepted. He summons them out of their past to a new future.

But, in turning to Him, in submitting to His lordship and dominion, certain beliefs and actions result.

Firstly, Maori will be given a new whakapapa. They will be engrafted into the lineage of Abraham and adopted as his children. The determinative line will become not their ancestors, but Jesus Christ and His ancestors. They will be able to confess and recite, “a wandering Aramean was my father.” They will be given a new history which will shape their lives. But this new history will not imprison them as their own history has done. For this new history is redemptive history: God stands above it, as the maker and shaper of all reality, the all governing, all conditioning, Living God. Becoming enslaved to Christ means that they will be liberated from enslavement to their past and their present. They will find that their new yoke is not like the old: He is gentle and humble of heart. Maori will find rest for their souls.

Secondly, this liberation from the enslavement to the past will allow Maori to create a new future under Christ. In bowing before Him and believing in Him they will necessarily go through what all Christians go through: re-evaluating their past and all their lives in the light of His holy law. That means a comprehensive reappraisal of everything. Much that was once thought good will come to be rejected as evil. Much will required radical reshaping so that it is barely recognizable. And much that is new and never before seen will start to emerge. “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation: the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (II Corinthians 5:17)

Thirdly, the enslavement that results from seeing oneself and one's people as a victim will disappear like the morning mist. While much evil may have been done to my people and me in the past, all has been within the plan and providence of the Living God. Therefore, since God is now my beloved Heavenly Father, none of the events of the past need trap me nor enslave me nor condition me. Maori will be free to escape their past by responding in love to their Heavenly Father and rejoicing in His love for them. As Christ has risen from the dead, so I have risen in Him and with Him: the future is bright indeed, unto a thousand generations, world without end.

Fourthly, in acknowledging one's own and one's ancestors former rebellion and sinfulness against the Living God, and in receiving His gracious forgiveness in Christ, Maori will be accepting responsibility. And as the Lord leads Maori to accept responsibility, they will be free to do, and be, and act differently. In accepting responsibility, one becomes free.

The ideology of Maoritanga is like the old nursery rhyme: “come into my parlour said the spider to the fly”. However, like all idols, it will one day lie “broke in the temple of Baal.” As it brings Maori into increasing enslavement and degradation let the cry of the ascended Son of Man be heard: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

He alone can break the bonds of this slavery—for it is a willful slavery of heart and mind.

Become Obese--Your Government Needs You

Obesity: A Pseudo-Epidemic and Its False Cure

It's official. We have a new epidemic. It's called obesity. The threat is dire. The consequences unspeakable.

Athenian politicians and governments love apocalyptic epidemics. They allow them to take on the patina of being “Great Redeemers”. They are saving us from ourselves.

Recently, the NZ Government introduced an “anti-obesity” bill into Parliament. Yes, the government is going to ban fatness. The Public Health Bill claims to provide new ways for the Cabinet or the Director General of Health to act against the suspected causes of obesity. First it was tobacco. We didn't say anything because, well, tobacco is dirty. Then it was alcohol. That hurt a bit more, but, what can you do? We still did not say anything. The government knows best—and let's not forget all those super educated health professionals (aka highly paid bureaucrat—consultants.) We placidly and supinely let the government restrict, ban, control, and propagandize. We let politicians tell us what to think.

Now it is food. It's too late to do anything now. We have already let them in. The doors are wide open now, and they cannot be shut.

What will happen? Well, we will have taxes on obesity-causing food. We will have restrictions on advertising food and drink that cause fatness. We will have endless sermons and lectures and pontifications from politicians, governments, bureaucrats, and other go-gooders. The fast-food industry as we know it will be black-balled. Subsidies will be given to “Tofu Take Out” joints.

Why? It is a simple question. Why is the government engaging in this new evangelical campaign—apart from its own moral self-righteousness? Money. Western governments are concerned about all the collateral diseases that accompany obesity, for which the taxpayer will have to fund treatment. Billions will have to be found for treatment of heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and other diseases that result from obesity.

Enter the fly-in-the-ointment. A recent authoritative, scholarly paper produced in Holland, published in the journal PloS Medicine (“Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure”) has demonstrated that obese people cost the health system less in the long run. We could also add heavy drinkers and smokers to this list.

Why is this? Obese people live shorter lives. Healthy, gym addicted, diet conscious people live longer, but tend to die from longer term degenerative diseases. It turns out that total lifetime health spending is greatest for healthy people. In other words, if the government is successful in making us more healthy in its attempt to reduce the socialised medicine spend, the more the costs of socialised medicine will rise. The government has been, and increasingly will, waste millions of your dollars trying to make you healthy. If it is successful, it will end up spending even more than it otherwise would have.

Ban fit people. Tax gyms. Subsidize fatty foods. Run tobacco education classes in schools to teach children the pleasures of the delightful weed. Become obese. Your government needs you, fat. The taxpayer needs you. Love those rolls. Let's have beautyflab competitions. I can just see the new TV reality shows now.

So, the economics don't stack up. Public health care costs are ballooning because we are living longer and more illnesses and diseases are treatable with increasingly sophisticated procedures. It turns out that trying to make us less obese by controlling what people eat will only make the problem worse.

Athens is stupid. Stupid in the extreme. But some will object. Should not Christians be concerned when people are in poor health? Surely the command, “Thou shalt not kill” requires us to do all we can to assist others to be healthy? Yes and yes. Surely, then, Christians should support socialised medicine and regard the anti-obesity campaign as laudable and do all they can to support it. No and no and no.

There is just a tiny, small matter of responsibility—personal and familial responsibility. Bluntly put, if you eat the wrong food and become obese you will likely die prematurely. Those are the consequences of your decision. If you feed your children garbage, they too are likely to have all sorts of severe health problems. You are responsible. You are accountable. If you want your children to die early, feed them rubbish. You will be allowed to face the consequences of your stupidity and folly. That is the truth. That is the authentic Christian position. The loving thing to do is to work within the rubric of personal accountability and responsibility because people are better off for it.

I can just hear the “tut tutting” Athenian liberals as they take another sip of pinot gris. “There are many who don't know how to take responsibility for themselves. They are victims. They are oppressed. We have to take responsibility for them.”

This is none other than the twenty first century version of the “white man's burden.” It was arrogant paternalism that led western nations into the reckless colonial era. The consequences are still with us today. But taking over control of countries and territories was justified as having a duty to “help them.”

A similar arrogant paternalism of western liberals has lead to a host of institutionalised evils, socialised medicine amongst them. The consequence is that it has encouraged virtually entire generations not to take responsibility for themselves and their dependants. It's always someone else's fault. Parents are now whining about food companies advertising on TV—wanting the government to “do something about it.” That will help solve our children's eating problems.

Try turning the TV off if its that much of a problem. Take responsibility. Take ownership. Be a real parent for a change. Try putting a decent meal on the table and if the kids won't eat it, take it away and tell them the next meal will be in five hours time. Lock the fridge in the meantime.

For too long successive generations have recited daily the modern Athenian liturgy:

High Priest of Athens: “We will fix it. Don't you worry. Just vote for us.”

People: “Right-oh. You fix it then. How much will you fix, by the way?”

High Priest: “Cradle to the grave, mate. Don't you worry. Cradle to the grave.”

Only it never can be sustained. It never works. It only creates bigger and larger problems on a nation wide scale. And they are here now.

The so-called national obesity epidemic is an outward physical manifestation of a widespread spiritual malaise of self-indulgence, irresponsibility, and a hand-to-mouth gratification. It is a vivid picture of the best that Athens can do. Generations have been taught to believe that others are going to run around them and their children, making things right for them. Cradle to the grave. Omni-competent, infinitely resourced governments will do the trick. We will love you. We will care for you. Just vote for us.

But Jerusalem says, that way may seem right to you, but its end is death. Stop it—now—for your own sake, and the sake of your children. You—yes, you—own the problem. Take ownership. Fix it. Be a real parent, for a change, not just a playactor. If you and your children are going to survive there are some things that are going to have to happen on your watch—and one of them is that you and your children are going to have to eat decent food—that is, if you want them to survive.

Who loves more? Jerusalem or Athens?