Friday, February 22, 2013

Why the asymptoticism (if not outright PC MC) of Voegelinians matters

I was reminded of this recently by stumbling across yet another disheartening Voegelinian who shows signs of PC MC with regard to the problem of Islam.  And it's not just that it's an individual scholar with PC MC, but also that he is unproblematically inducted into the scholarly society of Voegelinians without any apparent challenge from his colleagues to his PC MC with regard to the problem of Islam.  In addition, this is not merely a flaw I've found in one scholar, but as many of my essays on The Hesperado have pointed out, seems to reflect the learned opinions of at least three luminaries among the Voegelinians -- Barry Cooper, Fritz Wagner, and Eugene Webb.  And to remind the reader, Voegelinians as a sociological and intellectual subset of our Western culture represent probably the least "Leftist", least "Marxist" people on the planet.  So we cannot blame their PC MC with regard to the problem of Islam on those particular modern pathologies.  It's maddening, but it needs to be understood, because it's probably the most important aspect of the Problem of the Problem -- which is, that our Western myopia of the problem of Islam is not principally a "Leftist" problem, but a deeper and broader problem that is not caused by greed or some nefarious cabal, but reflects a change in the hearts and minds of millions of otherwise relatively intelligent and decent Westerners whose benighted sincerity recoils from anything they fear might smack of bigotry against Muslims -- where their fear is not rational.  Indeed, it is they who have a phobia, not us: in their case, it may be termed, with acute precision, Islamo"phobia"phobia.

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