Death Wish

In 1974, at a time of severe economic distress, a political crisis of major proportions, with America's preeminence in question, a losing war in Vietnam winding down, and rampant crime, Charles Bronson appeared in the movie Death Wish:

Paul Kersey [Charles Bronson] is an architect, who is a peaceful man. But when his wife and daughter are attacked in their apartment, his world changes. His wife is killed and his daughter is in catatonic state. His boss decides that Paul needs to get out of New York so he sends him to Arizona to meet with a client. While their the client, a gun enthusiast gets Paul interested in guns and even gives him one. When Paul returns, he brings the gun with him when he goes out and when a mugger tries to hit him Paul shoots and kills him. After that he goes on killing spree. The police of course are investigating it, but the public feels thankful that someone out there is taking a stand.

In civilized societies, the balance between activity and passivity shifts.  The more complex the society, the more people, of necessity, much accept and tolerate a passive stance.  (I offer for your consideration the act of flying on a commercial plane.)  When the citizens of a polity begin to feel that their interests are no longer being served by their governing classes, and that the basic functions of the government are failing (ie, keeping the people safe) fantasies of citizens "talking the law into their own hands" can become ubiquitous. 

The reaction to Death Wish in New York City presented an interesting mix.  The movie did offer obeisance to nascent political correctness.  Mostof the muggers and thugs Paul Kersey shoots in the movie are white, which was at the time belied by statistics which showed that crime was disproportionately visited by minorities upon their own communities; however, the feelings expressed through the movie, of taking action to "get back at" the thugs and bullies who were making life unbearable in our largest cities, resonated.  This left the typical New York liberal in a peculiar position.  Having been raised to believe that guns are bad and that aggressive self-defense aka vigilantism, was the province of reactionary yahoos and bigots, New York liberals often took a disparaging attitude toward the movie whileinvoluntarily feeling some triumph when Paul Kersey, who started out as one of them in the movie, blew away the bad guys.  The idea that "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" became popular at about that time.

Psychoanalysis and its related fields, psychiatry and psychology, have long known that we lack an adequate theory of action. 

We know that thought is often trial action; our fantasies ofteninvolve taking actions that we know we would not take in reality.  Yet we have noway of predicting when a particular person will shift from passivity to activity.  This is one of the reasons Psychiatrists are not much better than anyone else at predicting dangerousness. 

[When a patient is actively psychotic, especially if they have paranoid delusions, and they exhibit suicidal or homicidal ideation, it is clear they must be admitted against their will.  More often, however, the questions of dangerousness are more difficult.  There are many paranoids, and others, who have homicidal ideation from time to time, but no intent or plan for bringing their fantasies to fruition.  In such a case, the best predictor of future violence remains a history of past violence, whatever the current personality disorder or psychotic symptoms.]

Just as it is not usually possible to predict when an individual will turn from a passive position to an active position, it is not possible to predict when a population will turn from passive acceptance of an uncomfortable status quo to active attempts to change or attack that status quo.

Last week I wrote about the upcoming trial of Geert Wilders and suggested his trial should be welcome to those of us who care about freedom:

Geert Wilders should go on trial.  If he wins the case, it may well represent the beginning of a slow turn by the European ship(s) of state.  If he loses in court, Europe as a member of Western civilization will be finished.  This could well become the most important political trial since  the Nuremberg trials.  And, make no mistake, there are those in the United States who would like nothing more than to silence people in the name of controlling "hate speech."  If they succeed, we will have surrendered our freedom for an illusion of peace and will guarantee ourselves neither peace nor freedom.

My comment was a bit of an overstatement.  If Wilders loses in court, it will not be the end of Europe as a member of Western Civilization but will certainly be another step in that direction.  However, the Wilders trial could be an opportunity for Europe to move from a passive response to the bullying of the radical Islamists in their midst to a more active and appropriate confrontation with them in the arena of ideas. 

The great danger, should Wilders be silenced is that the anger that he has channeled will be forced to remain covert.  Like a nation and continent of Paul Kerseys, liberal Europeans will one by one find themselves forced to remain passive in the face of hate filled provocations until one by one they reach an unknowable threshold and prepare to respond.  The longer the elites keep the lid on, the greater the explosion when, and if, it finally occurs.

In America, the feelings that were encapsulated by Death Wish, especially the refusal to remain passive and accept our decline, began to shift with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Europe is much further along on the road to passivity (which is a hallmark of the "nanny state" so much more developed on the continent than here).  As a result, the turn frompassivity to activity may never arrive and Europe will descend into dhimmitude; when/if the zeitgeist finally turns, the reaction will be frighteningly powerful.