In an obvious allusion to social problems with Islam, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands stated in her 2010 Christmas speech: "The danger is that what unites us gets obscured and differences are magnified. Then walls of supposed oppositions are raised and positions hardened."

Within the outlines of such a platitudinous court speech, Her Majesty seems to be saying that the rise of Geert Wilders' Freedom Party, and "Islamophobia" in general, promotes polarization. Whereas all human beings essentially share roughly the same needs and aspirations, the warners against Islam ("Islam bashers") will create artificial separation walls. It is in this sense that most observers viewed the royal speech, Geert Wilders included. In a first reaction, he twittered that the twelve recently arrested Somali terror suspects "in the Netherlands certainly were not looking at what unites us."

This is Part 1 of "'I See Further Than Others': Reflections On Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West and The Hour of Decision", a serial essay by Steve Kogan.

In a late autobiographical sketch, Saul Bellow writes that when he was young "Smart Jewish schoolboys in Chicago were poring over Spengler at night." F. Scott Fitzgerald said The Decline was one of the formative books in his life, and Henry Miller read him in his cramped Brooklyn apartment and later wrote a glowing account of his experience. Begun just before and completed soon after World War I, The Decline of the West not only struck a nerve in readers from America to Russia but also generated a “Spengler controversy” among historians, philosophers, and theologians that enhanced its notoriety between the two world wars (1).

No respect for Parliament. No respect for judges. No respect for the constitution. December gave us a taste of what’s coming in 2011.

Obama’s administration grabs the power to regulate the Internet. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a board of five people who are selected and nominated by the President. The FCC declared herself authorized to define rules about how and what can be done on the Internet. With this decision she brings the American Internet under the control of the US government. Three people, all selected by Obama, two women and one man, approved the decision against the two men, chosen by Bush during his presidency. The FCC took her decision although over 300 of the federal senators and House representatives of the 535 in total, a clear majority, had written a statement opposing such power grab. The aversion will certainly be even larger in the new 2011 Congress. The FCC action, with full support of Obama, is also in direct violation of the decision of a federal judge, who in April 2010 decided the FCC has no power to regulate the Internet.

Norway's chattering classes often claim that the American political spectrum skews to the Right. Most Norwegians, I find, imagine that the U.S.'s Democratic Party is right-wing by their country's political standards, and that the Republicans are a cabal of borderline Nazis that wants to shoot abortion doctors and hang the unemployed. Over the last few years, Norwegian pundits and foreign correspondents have informed me that John Kerry, Al Franken, and Barack Obama are all actually ultraconservatives, and that National Review in its current MOR incarnation is actually a magazine of the far Right. One could easily dismiss all this as simple anti-American ignorance, and that may well be part of the answer – but there is something else at work here as well. Scandinavian political blinkeredness is not limited to the U.S. For instance, whenever an election is won by the Sweden Democrats, whose opinions are almost absurdly moderate by any objective standard, cultural elites across the continent react with hysteria and indignation, as if extermination camps in Stockholm and pogroms in Gothenburg were just around the corner. The same sort of reaction occurs whenever Norway's Progress Party experiences a bump in the polls; they, we are told, are right-wing extremists, “right-wing extremists” here and everywhere else in Scandinavia meaning “moderate socialists.”

A New Cause: Privacy For WiskiLeaks. WickiLeaks demands privacy for itself. Euro sharades and what your money’s worth.

The best one. Wait for Assange’s defense against the sexual molestation charges in Sweden. The struggler on the front line for open access to all information will have his attorneys plead what is in this instance an amazing case. The expected claim is that the man’s privacy is violated by the leaked release to the public of the prosecutor’s charges against him for his sexual improprieties. Is privacy and confidentiality not a right that deserves protection?

This, as the newest from this battleground, will be new to you. WikiLeaks had used the Swiss “PostBank” to have donations processed. Obviously, Mr. Assange must have been a victim of myths regarding Swiss banking practices. Accordingly, the business deal went sour. When opening the account, its beneficiary claimed to be a resident of the country. The publicity surrounding the case made the arrangement transparent. The klieg lights revealed that the bit about residency was not quite the case. So PostBank announced that it closes the account. Now a local branch of Assange fans is preparing to sue PostBank. They claim - and I hope you are seated when you read this - that the announcement had violated banking secrecy.

America is on the right path!  The latest historic elections have impact. Even before the new Republican majority is installed in the House. All of a sudden, Obama and his fellow Democrats don’t feel they to have absolute power any longer. The Republicans forced them to listen and to compromise. During the recent two weeks both parties worked together, and the results are acceptable.

The Start agreement. Obama bagged his big international victory. With about a ¾ majority, the Senate ratified the accord with the Russians. However, Obama had to give a couple of important promises: the modernization of the existing US atomic weapons, and the deal with the Russians may not slow down the expansion of the US defensive anti missile systems. Watch out how the Russians will react. They already told Obama to change or add nothing to the agreement.

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy is abandoned, outlawed, with the help of a few Republicans. Pretty soon, gays will be permitted to serve openly as gays in all the military forces. This success fulfills one important Obama campaign promise. The Republicans better understand they won’t receive any credit. Obama gets all the honor.

How much protection for intolerant communities? The to be protected right of an intolerant religion for acceptance. Who is left to lead? Words in response to bullets mean more bullets. Console the poor or improve their lot?
 
1. Turkey’s ruling “moderate” Islamists have found a catching contention. It bolsters the case for their country’s acceptance by the EU. The line is that, a rejection will push them into the arms of Islamist global Muslim irredentism –where they seem to feel rather well. Concurrently, for local consumption, the membership is sold as a way to gain influence in the EU and to accommodate the Muslim point of view. The contradictions are more than a problem of logic. They mark the rocks upon which the good ship Europe might have its hull ripped.

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The PVV, an anti-immigrant party in the Netherlands, recently won the elections and participated in the negociations that led to a new government. As a result, this party has had an important direct influence on immigration policies. More indirect influence on policies have been achieved by anti-immigrant parties, which have recently gained 29 percent of the votes cast in Switzerland, 22 percent in Norway, 17 percent in Austria, 14 percent in Denmark and 5.7 percent en Sweden. (In the 2008 federal elections in Canada 6.9 percent of the vote went to the Green party and 18.2 percent to the NDP). In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel caused a stir around the world when recently she said “Multiculturalism in Germany has failed”.

Can you blame them? Two weeks is all what is left for the Democrat majority in the US Congress to take as much as they can out of the (empty) government chests. And they try hard to do just that until the last day! They even canceled their Christmas vacation. Starting January 5th the Republicans have the majority in the House, and almost the majority in the Senate. All what the Democrats didn’t dare to bring up for a vote in the last two years, although they had an absolute majority for most of the time, is now brought before the Congress. Will they succeed?
 
There are no problems in the House, since the Democrats have a comfortable majority in that legislative body. For the time being they give the impression to have big problems with the compromise text not to raise taxes during the next two years. But, this is only a big show for their union constituents. When you read this text, it is quite possible they already voted for the new law. The Senate accepted the compromise a few days ago. The Republicans convinced Obama to go along with the new deal. This was a first big victory for the Republicans.
 

Between the ages of 16 and 19, virtually all Norwegians attend upper secondary school – an optional, three-year add-on to a decade of compulsory elementary education. Most opt for public schools over private ones, and a goodly chunk of that group chooses a course plan whose emphasis is on history, social science, and the humanities. As our educators admit, though, Norwegian students would be remiss to expect to actually learn anything about those subjects. This is not an accident caused by the quality of the school system, which the international body PISA has repeatedly found to be among the worst in the developed world – it is a consequence of design. The bureaucrats and intellectuals who create the curriculum for Norway's State schools, most of whom attended university during the 1960s and 1970s and partook of that era's student radicalism, agree that the goal of education is not the transmission of knowledge, but the propagation of soixante-huitardisme, relativism, and a bellyfeel hatred of white Europeans.