But the Greatest of These Is Freedom, The Consequences of Immigration in Europe, By Hege Storhaug
Introduction By Bruce Bawer (translator from the Norwegian edition.)
In recent decades, as Hege Storhaug notes in these pages, those of us fortunate enough to live in the Western world have enjoyed a degree of freedom unparalleled in human history. This freedom did not come easily. It is the product of centuries of struggle — a product of the Renaissance, of the Protestant Reformation, of the seventeenth-century Enlightenment, and of a long series of hard-won reforms in various countries, of which the most notable and influential were probably the American Revolution and American Declaration of Independence, which in 1776 affirmed the then remarkable notion that human beings — every last one of them — had a right to the pursuit of happiness.
Among the things that freedom frees up are human creativity and innovation. Thus freedom has brought with it a remarkable array of technological developments and cultural achievements as well as unprecedented levels of prosperity.
But freedom, alas, also leads to complacency. People who are born into a free society, and who never know anything else, can all too easily come to think of freedom as the natural order of things, the default situation of humankind. Many of them can even be taught to mock the idea that they are free, and to look up to totalitarian heroes such as Mao Tse Tung or Che Guevara. It can be terribly difficult for free people to imagine what it is like not to be free; terribly difficult for them to conceive of the ordeal undergone by millions who, in living memory, have inhabited Communist Gulags and “re-education camps”; terribly difficult for them to recognize the heroism of such men and women as Vaclav Havel and rung San Suu Kvi, who at extraordinary personal risk stood up to tyranny; terribly difficult for them to recognize that the freedom they fail even to appreciate is, in fact, an extremely rare and precious exception to the state of affairs throughout virtually the entire history of human civilization. This ignorance and indifference result in an alarming shortage of the very vigilance that is necessary to keep freedom alive and well. So it is that freedom, in the freest of times and places, rests upon exceedingly fragile pillars.
In the last century, Western freedom faced threats in the form of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism and Soviet Communism. Today it is once again threatened — this time not only by ideological enemies beyond our borders but by the steady accumulation and empowering of ideological enemies in our very midst.
Let there be no confusion about one thing: immigration, in and of itself, is not an enemy of freedom. On the contrary, immigration played a crucial role in renewing, generation after generation, the promise and reality of American freedom. Over the last two centuries, millions of people from every corner of the globe have been drawn to America by its freedom and opportunity and have contributed to it their energy and imagination, their hard work, and a diversity of skills and talents. They made American science and technology, and the American economy, the marvels of the world — all the while helping American liberty to flower ever more abundantly.
But the immigrant wave that is sweeping over Europe today, and that is poised to do the same, in time, to America, differs drastically from the immigrant waves of the past. The existence of Muslim enclaves in Europe — enclaves governed not according to democratic principles but according to illiberal Islamic law — testify to the fact that all too many of those who have come to the West in recent decades have come here not to enjoy Western freedoms but to exempt themselves from them, to exploit them, and ultimately to undo them. The burgeoning welfare rolls that seem destined to bankrupt one European country after another, moreover, reflect the fact that all too many of the Muslims who have established residences in Europe have done so not with the intention of working hard but with the intention of coolly and systematically draining dry social-services systems that were designed to be used by native populations only in cases of catastrophe or desperate need.
Rather than being built up by these new immigrants, then (many of whom are, properly speaking, not immigrants, since they still spend much if not most of their time in their homelands), Europe is being torn down by them. The true nature of this situation is still insufficiently understood by many in the United States, and the seriousness of the problem appreciated by only a few. Even highly placed individuals in the American government and the media — people whose job descriptions, one might think, would require that they have a clear sense of what is going on in Europe — don’t get it, or don’t want to. For many of them, to speak the unvarnished truth about the present crisis (and a crisis is assuredly what it is) is to express prejudice. On the contrary, to face up to the unpleasant reality now afflicting Europe is a matter of social responsibility, pure and simple — and to turn away from it in discomfort or confusion, or out of a sense of hopelessness or helplessness or fear of being called a bigot, is a grave abdication of that responsibility.
The simple fact is that no one in the U.S. understands the reality of today’s Europe as well as a few well-placed observers in Europe do — if only for, the simple reason that the latter have experienced that reality firsthand and on a daily basis for a number of years. And in all of Europe, Norway — which is Hege Storhaug’s turf, and the main focus of this book — occupies a special position. In terms of population, this mountainous northern kingdom is tiny, with only four and a half million residents. While in the larger countries of Western Europe there are significant Muslim communities in a number of cities, in Norway the Muslim community as such is largely confined to a single city, Oslo. Norway and its capital thus represent a very handy microcosm of the European crisis.
In the larger Western European nations, such as Britain and France and Germany, the sheer scale of the immigrant communities makes it impossible for any one person to have a detailed familiarity with those communities and their problems. In little Norway, however, it is still possible for a single tireless individual to have a handle on everything having to do with Islam, immigration, and integration, and to be personally acquainted with all the major players — the politicians, the imams, the community spokespeople, and so forth.
In Norway, that single tireless individual is Hege Storhaug.
Hege is, let it be understood from the outset, no defender of white against black, no standard bearer for ethnic or cultural purity. On the contrary, she was led to her concern for immigration and integration policy and the challenge of Islam by the noblest of motives:’ a passion for secular democracy, an unwavering insistence upon the equal rights of women, and a fervent dedication to the respectful treatment and responsible upbringing of children. She came to this issue, in short, not as a basher of immigrants or Muslims but as a critic of policies and ideologies that oppress individuals who, she fervently believes, should enjoy the same rights she does — no matter what community, religion, or ethnic group they may happen to have been born into. Hege wears many hats: she is a writer and journalist, a researcher and formulator of policies, and a lobbyist and activist on behalf of those policies’ implementation; she is also a brilliant debater who has passionately championed the causes of freedom and human rights on countless Scandinavian television and radio debates, in talks and lectures and colloquia. She has made enemies among sundry imams and Islamist community leaders and their variously naive and spineless defenders in the media, government, and academic and literary intelligentsia, and won devoted admirers among ordinary Norwegians of every religious and ethnic background who recognize her as a stalwart advocate for the freedoms of all. For like Jefferson and Adams and Franklin, Hege believes, quite simply, that liberty belongs to everyone, and that no country that calls itself democratic can afford to allow tyranny in the name of any ideology to exist within its borders. No one in Europe can surpass Hege as a sheer witness to the consequences of Europe’s disastrous immigration policies both on the largest and the most intimate of scales; no one has given more thought to, or understands better than she does, the reasons for those policies’ colossal failure; and no one has addressed the situation with deeper insight, fuller humanity, or greater eloquence and courage. For those of us who wish to grasp what is going on – and it is important, for the sake of our civilization and our children’s futures, for all of us to grasp what is going on — she is an indispensable resource, and this book an essential starting point.