Decent people and street fighters.

Pastorius points out the alarming parallels between now and the West's response to Nazism in the 30s:

As Nazism flourished in most of Europe during the 1930s, so Islamism is now flourishing throughout the Middle and Far East. The avowed goal of Islamists, like that of the Nazis, is world domination and the extermination of the Jewish people. As such, the bellicose statements emanating from the likes of Ahmadinejad, Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and others are reminiscent of the bellicosity that Hitler and his minions displayed prior to WWII.

The West, with the exception of Israel and the U.S. are behaving in much the same manner that their grandparents displayed during the 1930s. . . .

* * * *

In the 1930s the Spanish Civil War served as a staging ground for the confrontation between Nazism and the rest of the world, much in the same way that Iraq and Afghanistan are serving a similar purpose today. Currently, a surrogate war is being fought in these two countries between the West and Islamism. While the prosecution of that war and the performance of those fighting is admirable, the weaklings and appeasers at home are betraying the sacrifices made by the brave men and women who are daily risking and in many cases, losing their lives.

Rich democracies really do have a hard time deciding to get up out of comfortable arm chairs and reach for Old Betsy over the fireplace. "Oh, please, Lord, let me not have to disturb myself for some vile brawl."

Rebecca West, in her The New Meaning of Treason, analyzed the character William Joyce, the British fascist who was tried and executed for treason after WWII for broadcasting on the radio to Britain as Lord Haw Haw. Joyce, she wrote, "enjoyed, with a constant driving esurience [hunger], street fighting."

That is to say, Joyce loved street fighting. He didn't want to leave others alone and he had no interest in devoting himself to the normal pursuits of family and career.

In part, this explains the West's reluctance to fight.

How does a reasonable person with a reasonably satisfactory and secure life mentally come to grips with having to make sacrifices to deal with someone who loves to bash heads and cut throats in the street? Who in his right mind wants to spend Tuesday night, let alone the next 36 months, taking the fight to such an enemy? Let the cowboy Americans shoulder the load as they always seem to love to do.

And the further away the news of some Muslim outrage is, the more difficult it is to comprehend. Beslan school children murdered by Chechen terrorists? Ah, yes, beastly, wot? Some school teacher's throat slit in Afghanistan for teaching girls? ¿Muy terrible, no?

Like Steinberg's famous New Yorder cartoon of the view of the world from Manhattan, even bizarre and horrific events are subliminally seen as distant and remote phenomena.

And this tendency toward incomprehension and inertia is buttressed by the madness that is multiculturalism, in which doctrinal fever swamp we are all manipulated to drift as in a warm bath that is part of a sensory deprivation experiment.

"The New Nazis." By Pastorius, Infidel Blogger Alliance, 1/30/06 (excellent photo!).