Pesky Post Humans: Convert or Die!

Dave takes a nother look at some choice eliminationist crazy talk from the right (quoting Mark Steyn):

It’s getting harder not to conclude that parts of Europe are evolving into a kind of post-human society.

“Post-human”? The clear implication of this coinage is that these people are also sub-human, or in any event non-human — and by extension, fully worthy of extinction or elimination.

Mark Noonan continues the crazy talk:

And then Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush picked it up and ran with it, extending the reach of these “post humans” to America as well, and concluding thus:

There are two things which can stop this slide into barbarism and death: the conquest of the west by people who believe in something, or the revival of a west which has returned to its moral and intellectual roots. Those are the choices – be conquered by Moslems (who at least believe in something higher than themselves and their personal pleasures), or become Judeo-Christian. Death or conversion, take your pick.

It isn’t too hard to see the basic theme of palingenesis running through this analysis — which, combined with the ugly eliminationism, makes this meme possibly the most definitively fascist talking point to proceed from the “mainstream” right yet.

If you click through to Mark’s post, it just get’s worse:

We’ve been energetically going away from these roots for more than a century and a half, and our result of this is cannibalism, incest and infanticide. There’s a word for all that: barbarism.

Mark is placing the West’s “moral and intellectual roots” at opposition with the barbarism of ‘”modern” thinking’.  There are a host of problems with his rant:

1. During whatever “golden age” Mark is imagining,  does he really think that cannibalism, incest and infanticide did not exist?  Or is he faithfully pointing to the theocratic Dark Ages as a model of human decency?
2. The “moral and intellectual roots” Mark is pointing to is clearly religion, specifically Christianity.  That, in conjunction with his dictum “Convert or Die”, is bringing back the blood and the suffering of the inquisition and other forced conversions throughout history.  It is painting the shame of the West as its glory.
3. It assumes that a few violent cases represent the morality of an entire society.
4. It assumes a those accused in said crimes are not religious.
5. The forced conversion advocated is in no way compatible with the founding principles of this country.  I suppose this is to be expected from a “Blog for Bush”, but some pretense of care for the constitutional separation of Church and State would have been nice.

As a prescription for America, Mark’s advice would throw out our freedom in exchange for a bloodless past that never existed.  When Americans are called imperialists and crusaders, it is this kind of thinking that builds that perception.

This is an end we should all reject.