“Triumph of the Will” was the title of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film about Hitler’s 1934 Nuremberg Rally. The title probably refers to the victory of Hitler and his supporters over the Weimar Republic: Hitler had a strong will; the supporters of the Weimar Republic did not. Evil vanquished.
Riefenstahl was illustrating a historical fact: a highly motivated group of people who believe that victory is their destiny will triumph over another group, even a larger group, if that other group has no will. If there’s a will, there’s a way; if there isn’t, there isn’t.
Applying this principle to today’s Germany does not bode well for German culture. In the last month or so, almost half a million migrants from the Middle East, mostly men, almost all Muslims, poured into that country. This massive wave of people is still less than one percent of the population, but it is a group that has already pushed paying riders out of first-class cabins in trains, demanded housing and food, and placed their cultural and religious beliefs over those of their host country. When some migrants were given housing in a church, the crosses were removed so as not to offend them. Christian-sounding holidays like St. Martin’s Day now pass uncelebrated or are given new names like the “Festival of Light,” again so as not to offend this group of newcomers. In some villages and towns where the migrants have settled down, they are the absolute majority or a large minority; big enough, so that they can still live like back-home and keep out that offensive, Western, Judeo-Christian culture that some Germans want to cling to.
It is widely believed that another half million migrants is on the way. What will happen then? Germany is likely to become more Middle Eastern. The Land of Poets and Thinkers will become the Land of Minarets and Headscarfs. The migrants are energetic, motivated, and have a goal. The Germans have ennui, a guilt complex that goes back to World War II, and an idiotic philosophy called multi-culturalism. The migrants have a will. The Germans have long vacations.
We can see something similar in the US with our domestic policy. The EPA makes thousands of laws and Americans sheepishly obey them, even though there is nothing in the Constitution giving the EPA authority to make laws. The Congress passes Obamacare with dubious methods, no debate, and no public scrutiny, and the Supreme Court upholds it, forcing everyone except a few elite in Washington to submit to government-run health care or pay a fine. Yet, the effort to repeal Obamacare in Congress has been half-hearted and among the states sporatic.
The American Left, like the migrants in Germany, is always full of energy, relentless, and demanding. It has taken up the cause of the illegal alien in order to change the demographics and the voting patterns in the US, and thirty million illegals have poured across the border from Mexico in the last twenty years. Republican politicians have done almost nothing to reverse this tsunami. Instead, they sit quietly, timidly, vacillating, shaking, worrried that someone may peg them as racist. A few of them complain about the terrible things happening, aware that the US is turning into “a third-world hellhole”—to use the words of Ann Coulter—but they do nothing beyond complain. Meanwhile, everything we loved about the country—freedom, the free market, the rule of law, Western civilization, Judeo-Christian morality—are all dying.
Similarly, external threats fester and grow. The Islamic State sets up a caliphate, beheads Christians, and threatens the world. Ordinarily, the US could defeat something like ISIS in a matter of days or weeks. The flat, open desert of Syria and Iraq is an ideal fighting ground for our tanks; and our superior airpower can bomb the daylights out of their strongholds with minimal effort. So, why don’t we do it? Answer: There’s no will.
To unleash the mighty US military in a victorious effort would mean believing in the righteousness of our cause and our civilization—a belief that is scarcely held among today’s Washington elite. To defeat ISIS, you have to want to defeat ISIS, and the current administration does not want to do that.
Evil wins most of the time. History is not a story of constant progress. It is a story of a few oases of freedom, civilization, and prosperity along a trek across an unforgiving desert of ignorance, oppression, and barbarity.
And so Germany and the US are dying, not from a quick, sudden blow, but from a slow suicide. Most of us can probably ride out the last days of Western civilization, but our children and grandchildren won’t be so lucky. It’s as Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” And our generation has no will.