Looking Good

Trudeaupia 2.0 bares its soul:

“Very, very few” of the thousands of Syrian refugees who have come to Canada came from refugee camps and most had been living in rented apartments in Syria’s neighbouring countries, a senior CBSA official told Parliament in February.

Conservative are now accusing the federal government of conveying a false perception to Canadians that refugees were selected from refugee camps. But the government says it has never said all Syrian refugees came from refugee camps and that it chose the most vulnerable refugees and those who did not pose a security threat. And another expert says the living conditions in some of the apartments are worse than the camps.

This is a reminder - should one be needed - that liberalism isn't about doing good in the world, it's about feeling good. Whether it's the social disaster of social assistance, or the economic chaos breed by government regulation, liberalism is the ultimate way of going through the motions of life. The number of refugees which Canada and the other western democracies admitted - Germany excepted - was pitifully small given the scale of the humanitarian disaster in what is left of Syria and Iraq. Helping a few hundred thousand out of tens of millions in the region was never about solving a crisis, it was about pretending to solve a crisis. That a few hundred European women and girls got raped was the unavoidable collateral damage of liberalism's good intentions. 

The Western powers will do very little of anything practical. They will preen, cajole and launch an occasional air strike. This may tip the balance between two or three very dreadful alternatives, at least for a brief while before the cycle of violence reasserts itself. Beyond moral posturing our actions will come to naught. The root of the humanitarian crisis is tyrannical government. The root of tyrannical government is a collectivist mindset. Until the Arab nations leave their instinctive tribalism behind them and accept individualism as their lodestar, the horrors we have seen in recent years will repeat definitely. 

The West has two options in regards to the Middle East: 1) Do nothing and wait for the Arab nations to enter modernity or 2) Directly or indirectly reimpose colonial governments on the region until it reaches something like a civilized level of development. Not Switzerland on a long weekend mind you. If they could do India on an average Tuesday it would be massive improvement over what they have now.

Neither is going to happen. If we do nothing the nations of the West will feel guilty. If we do something useful we must commit ourselves to a generations long project of social redevelopment that will likely costs trillions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives. The modern West lacks the courage to look away or the courage to tackle the problem head on. Instead we engage in a kabuki theatre of moral vanity, a conceited display of our rhetorical intentions. For all the hypocrisies, errors and sins of the British Empire you could never say about the red coats traversing the plains of Africa or India that they lacked guts. 

The one thing no one will every say about Justin Trudeau is that he has guts.

 

Comments

[Joel]

I think you're right that current Canadian activities regarding refugees are strongly fueled by our desire to feel morally creditable, and no, our initiatives aren't a solution to the overall refugee problem. But so what? Bringing in our handful of refugees is a doable and down-to-earth way of (partly) solving the problem facing the specific families who come here. The assumption that human messes should be addressed through some type of comprehensive, systematic, state-devised solution that will deal with "the root of the issue" and fix everything in toto is one of modernity's sketchier mental reflexes. Here's to patched-together make-do responses that help real people--leave the statistical analysis of human aggregates to the actuaries or evolutionary biologists or whatever.

As to the idea that Middle Easterners' "collectivist" streak is what produces tyranny in the region: how are Middle Easterners any more collectively oriented than, say, the people of India, to use a society you mentioned? The latter doesn't seem to have the trouble with tyranny you ascribe to the former. Boo to the precious individualism of modernity (that's Trudeau's territory)--we could use a little more group-mindedness over here.

[Mark Collins]

Post at CGAI's "3Ds Blog" based on yours:

"The West and the Middle East: No Guts"
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/mark-collins-the-west-and-the-middle-east-no-guts/

Mark
Ottawa

[Cytotoxic]

Joel gets it right at least in his first paragraph (no thanks to more group-mindedness you can go to Facebook for more of that). Admitting refugees and more immigrants in general is the fastest easiest way to 1) make Canada economically and socially strong and 2) make the world a freer place.

The ME is changing. The Arab Spring was the first stage of this and although it did not turn out so great it's part of a long-term process that will see collectivism rolled back. Hell, Dubai is more pro-capitalism than anywhere in Europe that isn't a microstate.

The claim of 'hundreds of rapes' is highly dodgy. There were incidents but they seem to have been exaggerated in the fever-dreams of Mark Steyn & co. In any event, the troubles can laid at the feet of a disarmed society.