As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right.
Patrick Buchanan
The emerging faces and the stories of the victims from the massacre at Oslo highlight how this tragedy has robbed Norway, and the world, a part of its future. Blame is being assigned broadly and, sadly, is being used for political posturing.
When I read Pat Buchanan’s essay “A fire bell in the night for Norway,” I was profoundly disappointed and then outraged. His commentary can be insightful at times but this is a stark example of provocative rhetoric for some inscrutable purpose – or is it all too apparent?
Here’s some excerpts from Mr. Buchanan’s essay:
Breivik is evil – a cold-blooded, calculating killer – though a deluded man of some intelligence, who in his 1,500-page manifesto reveals a knowledge of the history, culture and politics of Europe.
…But, awful as this atrocity was, native-born and homegrown terrorism is not the macro-threat to the continent.
That threat comes from a burgeoning Muslim presence in a Europe that has never known mass immigration, its failure to assimilate, its growing alienation, and its sometime sympathy for Islamic militants and terrorists.
With her native-born populations aging, shrinking and dying, Europe’s nations have not discovered how to maintain their prosperity without immigrants. Yet the immigrants who have come – from the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia – have been slow to learn the language and have failed to attain the educational and occupational levels of Europeans. And the welfare states of Europe are breaking under the burden.
Then he concludes:
As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right.
Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.
Watch the brief video here describing some of the victim’s stories.
Details have begun to emerge of some of the 68 victims who were killed by Anders Breivik during his shooting spree on the Norwegian Island of Utoya.
The names of the dead were revealed as an estimated 150,000 people gathered to mourn them and the eight others who died in the Oslo bombing.