Every 200 to 300 years Western civilization goes from decay to rebirth. A civilization riddled with stupidity, arrogance, and corruption turns on its heel, brushes off its feathers, and rises from the ashes. As the phoenix, the West shines once again, bringing reason, science and freedom to shores far away.
I believe the eternal developmental wheel of western civilization is at such a point right now - we have all been corrupted with ideas of no intrinsic value, and our societies are crumbling under the burden of megalomaniacal welfare states or bureaucratic socialist rule. It is time to find our roots once again.
It is an act we have seen numerous times; Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo in the Italian renaissance, Rembrandt and Descartes in the Dutch renaissance, and most recently Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Napoleon in the French renaissance.
And it all comes back the rebirth of ancient Athens: Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. Politics, art, science and philosophy are reinvented — reason descends upon us once again.
And here I enter; the philosopher Yggdrasil — somehow caught in these world-changing events.
Where do I come from? I come from an ancient family of philosophers. My great-great grandfather was a philosopher of some renown, and it has been a tradition in my family to defend Western civilization, and especially democracy. The torch of philosophy has been handed down through the generations from farther or mother to son or daughter. We have lived lives of obscurity for the last thirty or forty years — socialism has been all the rage in Denmark, and there has been no use for us. But now things seem to have changed, all of a sudden people show interest in our ideas again.
What is the main focus of a modern philosopher?
There is one central battle that we have to win, and that is the fight for freedom. Not only freedom in an abstract sense, within the economy or the bureaucracy of the state — but in an unyielding support of freedom of speech, the essence of democracy and science. This is the first and most important barricade of a western state. As soon as we are overwhelmed by the glossocrats, the politically correct, or the Islamists, we are finished — democracy and science will not function any longer.
Secondly, and combined with the fight for freedom of speech, we fight for our physical freedom, the right to remain free from slavery in our own countries. The Islamists have a long tradition of slavery in their culture. It has even been institutionalized, in the organizations such as the Ottoman Janissaries. This is a very real danger, already in effect in many ghettos around Europe. It will continue its development if we do not stop it.
Thirdly, we fight for Roman Law, an ancient Western institution, inspired by the Athenians but with roots going as deep as the pharaohs of Egypt. It includes a faith in justice, given to us by judges, persons with rationality as their prime tool.
The rule of law has so far freed us from the rule of the strongest, the rule of the mob. This institution is threatened by the Islamic legal institution known as Sharia. If we do not defend Roman Law, it will cease to function wherever Islamists are in charge. It is already out of effect in numerous ghettoes around the world, in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland, England, France, Germany, Belgium and so on. Roman Law has been swapped for Sharia , a system of law based on the Koran. This will not do.
So what brought a philosopher to the Gates of Vienna?
Well, actually it has been quite a journey, through many a landscape, with choices hard to make.
It all started with the Mohammed Cartoon Crisis — as with many other people around the world, a drama of surrealistic proportions and implications unfolded right in front of my eyes. It seemed weird, and the daily life of most Danes just kept on as it used to. I tried to defend my country the best I could, but at that time I was even more unknown than I am now. So it all came down to a few articles on central Danish blogs. It made me think, however, and I started checking things out on the internet — implications started to dawn upon me, and I realized that this danger of Islamism was for real. Many other things dawned upon me as well: the socialist control of the MSM, academia and government. You all know the drill.
I felt an obligation to do something, I am a philosopher — and freedom of speech was at stake, but I couldn’t really decide what to do. I the summer of 2006 I went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella — the Camino. For three weeks I walked through dense forests, over plains — I climbed mountains and saw eagles soaring over the beautiful plains of Galicia . When you are on a pilgrimage, you are alone with your own thoughts. And my thoughts kept coming back to the issue of Mohammed and his depiction in Jyllands Posten. I had brought a book of Aristotle with me, the “Politics”; I read through it, and discussed it with myself. And at a certain point, I do not really remember when, I decided to join the Counterjihad when I returned home.
Dangerous work, but my duty as a Danish philosopher.
Now the good Baron Bodissey has invited me to write at Gates of Vienna, a great honor I will try to repay the best I can. Baron once asked me; how would you want to fight Islamism? And I answered him: Through inspiration. This is my task, as I see it — I will try to inspire you; to explain, in simple words, the beauty of Western culture, the elegance of its ideas. To give you all my enthusiasm for Socrates and Aristotle, to renew what was taken away from us by naďve socialists.