The Owl of Minerva, part 2...

In my first post on this subtopic, I wrote:

One of the subtler, yet most searing, signs of a civilization's imminent demise is when its better & brighter succumb to the disease of the Age.

And I went on to say:

One example out of thousands one could cite in this regard, marking the knell of the latest and greatest civilization in human history (our dear old West):  Matt Ridley...

Another example out of thousands one could cite is conservative columnist & analyst Dennis Prager.  Neither Ridley nor Prager are geniuses on a par with Shakespeare, Dante, or Einstein, of course; but they represent what ought to be the talented cutting edge of a culture -- which makes their failure in hitting the mark on the problem of Islam that much more regrettable.  And symptomatic of a dying civilization.

Even worse -- and more telling -- Prager, rarely in the Mainstream, has made a point of criticizing Islam.  Yet for all that, he hasn't graduated on the LCPOI (the Learning Curve on the Problem of Islam) to the point of abandoning specious terms such as "Islamism" along with an anxious taxonomy of Muslims whereby some (many? a majority? even a vast majority? or just enough to provide a powerful incentive to allowing innumerable minions to settle deeply and permanently within our societies?) are exempt from his critical analysis of "Islamism".  As if the normative, mainstream, garden-variety Islam of ordinary Muslims is any different from this artificial construct Western analysts have developed, "Islamism".

For my more detailed analysis of a recent Prager essay -- in which, among other egregious howlers, he refers positively to a viable demographic of "decent Muslims" -- see here.  Prager's essay is published in that increasingly central Counter-Jihad forum, FrontPage Mag, which I've noticed over the years often tends to promote a soft, nougaty approach riddled with such specious distinctions as "Islamism" and "radical extremism", etc.

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So many other owls come to mind, hooting in our benighted dusk:  Frank Gaffney's trust in the pseudo-reformer Zuhdi Jasser (and Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom refusing to condemn him); Sam Harris holding hands with pseudo-reformer Maajid Nawaz (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Douglas Murray treating him as a respectable ally); Bill Maher fawning over pseudo-moderates Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani; et cetera, ad Islamonauseam...

When even the Canaries in the Coalmine are blind as bats, the Owl of Minerva is on the wing, and we're in deep guano...