http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/books/review/Ajami-t.html

Yes. They also published another review in the same issue of a book about Israel which the reviewer said was fair, except perhaps to the Arabs.

I think you’ve picked the right target. Matt Carr by contrast complains about the equivalent British response, and has far less of a case. The review by David Goodhart that he complains about explicitly criticises Caldwell for “recycling a mild version of the neoconservative Eurabia thesis”. It’s a polite review, containing more than a few compliments, but it’s clear about what’s wrong: “the book is really two essays – one an insightful probing of Europe’s confusion about postwar immigration; the other a rather cartoonish polemic about the potential Islamic takeover of Europe.”

The polemic is tailor-made for an ideologically precommitted American audience. It’s pandering to a market. The rationalisation Caldwell and others have hit upon for explaining why the Eurabia industry has had less success in the European marketplace is interesting. Self-censorship, driven by political correctness and cowardly self-preservation, is trumping free speech. That’s the kind of thinking Karl Popper used to call unfalsifiable.

Unlike Carr, I think the balance of Goodhart’s review is about right. If in fact Caldwell is getting comparatively gentle treatment from the bastions of British liberalism, as Carr suggests, it may be largely as a result of his having arrived at the FT shortly after the departure of Amity Shlaes. Sure he’s an American right winger, goes the reasoning, but at least he ’s not a horn-honking halfwit.

Interview with DF’s #2 Kristian Thulesen Dahl

Ralf Pittelkow about Islamic Ireland. (Much could be said about Mr. P, but in a way he’s Danish Neo-Conservatism light – started out as a revolutionary socialist in the 1960s, moved right, and right, and these days he’s an op-ed writer in Jyllands-Posten).

Perhaps you could remind us what office Geert Wilders currently holds? (Were you thinking of Danmark’s Pia Kjærsgaard?)

You are so right. Americans have projected Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom’s success in the Netherlands. Projected them right into office.

My intuition is that (some) Americans actually feel a sense of decline in their country and communities (not so much because of the lack of economic growth in my view, but rather because the balance between public and private goods is so tilted that an increase of the latter leads to only marginal improvements in quality of life), but prefer to project that feeling on Europeans rather than facing it…

Give that man a cigar. American conservatives are all about projection. In domestic politics, you can be sure that anything they accuse their opponents of doing is something they want to do or actually have done. Naturally they carry their projection habit over to their “thinking” about international affairs.

My intuition is that (some) Americans actually feel a sense of decline in their country and communities (not so much because of the lack of economic growth in my view, but rather because the balance between public and private goods is so tilted that an increase of the latter leads to only marginal improvements in quality of life), but prefer to project that feeling on Europeans rather than facing it: all what they don’t have, and maybe secretly long for, (affordable health care and education, less violent crimes, social mobility, a relatively relaxed attitude towards gays and minorities), they turn in the reason of our imminent descent into chaos.

Gosh, I wonder how that could have happened. No doubt some monkey just sat down at a typewriter, and before you know it, this obviously-wrong-and-all-right-thinking-people-know-it stuff just sort of “moved” from the margins to the mainstream. Like a turd floating into the middle of the river.

It certainly could not have been because actual people “thought” about what was going on around them. Nor could it have been that people who always thought this were marginalized and censored, but now more and more people are beginning to think: Gee, maybe they have a point. And I’m sure it couldn’t be because what moving to the mainstream means is more people thinking what only a few used to.

As we know, when right-thinking people have opinions, it’s because of their thoughts. Other people, well, it’s just sort of random noise, isn’t it. That’s the best way to dismiss opinions with which you cannot engage: label them “uncritical” or describe them as mere detritus in the unconscious flow.