Left and Right Meet on Scary Street
Michael Moynihan wrote here yesterday on the left/right anti-market convergence. I stumbled across a pretty hideous example of it, alas not online anywhere I could find: a "visual essay" by noted culture jammer Kalle Lasn in the March/April issue of the Canadian edition of Adbusters.
It's called "The Existential Divide," and the general tone is: we are all self-indulgent libertine scum who deserve to die. A specific quote or two:
Lately….freedom has taken a perverse, hyper-individualistic turn….
When a modest, pious man living in a poor village a world away looks at us, what does he see?…
We in the affluent west are now experiencing negative popuation growth….an unconscious collective suicide?….
In our eyes, the islamist suicide bomber has come to epitomize "the terrorist", a modern savage…..yet in fact, this "other" is a man whose life revolves around the mosque, daily prayer, restrained dress, moderate fasting, a tight-knit family and community. When pushed to the limit, a committed muslim may decide to sacrifice his own life…for what he sees as a greater social and spiritual good. Which one of us in the west will do this now?
Lasn, meet Buchanan and D'Souza, and Virginia Postrel , our former editor, is not surprised.
A reason review by Jacob Sullum of Lasn's book Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America.