More on "Christian Wilsonianism"

In my previous essay on the anti-Islam variant on Wilsonianism which I term Wildersianism, I mentioned in passing the seeming problem of ascribing the term "Christian Wilsonianism" to Geert Wilders -- the problem residing more in the "Christian" part, rather than the "Wilsonian" part, in the sense that Wilders has shown no signs of pushing anything remotely like a Christian agenda (indeed, he may even be an agnostic or atheist, more or less along the lines of an Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Pim Fortuyn).

I realize now, after re-reading an older essay by me on Spencer's Wilsonian tendencies, Robert Spencer: From Wilsonianism to Glazovianism, the key to resolving this problem: In a nutshell, Christian universalism has become PC MC, which means it has become secularized. I.e., Christian universalism has become virtually indistinguishable from Western secularism -- with the eschaton of the former either immanentized according to the eschatology of the latter, or any rough spots in what might be their divergent eschatologies ironed over with platitudinarian New Agey incoherencies.

This process has been going on in the West for over a century, but has only really solidified into the Christian mainstream in the past 50 years or so. It is thus not much of a problem for a modern Western secularist who promotes Wilsonianism to accomodate himself to Christian universalism (nor vice versa), since they hardly differ from each other. An atheist Geert Wilders or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, then, can without any problems at all support the nominally Christian universalist idealism of an orthodox Christian Robert Spencer.

And again, to reiterate what I argued in my preceding essay, the only significant difference between these Wildersians and the more conventional Wilsonians is the degree of wariness and literacy the former have about the problem of Islam. This difference in degree reflects the fact that conventional Wilsonianists are PC MC, while Wildersianists, being anti-Islam (more or less), are asymptotic. Both Wilsonianists and Wildersianists want to help Muslims: the former differ from the latter only in being willing to embrace the vast majority of Muslims as harmless beneficiaries of Western generosity, while the latter vaguely articulate problems with a more disquietingly broad swath of Muslims, even as they try to obfuscate those problems with an incoherent distinction between "Islam" and "Muslims".

Nevertheless, this difference in degree does not compromise the underlying idealism behind the universalist epiphany both Isms share about the humanity of Muslims; and so whatever tough measures the Wildersian might adopt to protect our societies against Muslims, they will tend to be softened by an anxious concern to avoid violating the natural rights that flow from that humanity.

Generally speaking, such a concern is loath even to hypothetically consider all Muslims collectively, let alone take any measures against them as such. More specifically, such a concern either tends to avoid the subject of deportation -- and its logical corollary, total deportation (with, in turn, its logical corollary, a global quarantine of Muslims), or tends to step gingerly around it with plenty of talk about "restricting immigration" of Muslims and measures of selective surveillance of Islamic institutions (including mosques) that show signs of "extremism". Nothing stronger beyond such limpwristed ideas are ever expressed.