In Japan, relatives may “facilitate” a future marriage to be agreed on some time before it can legally be consummated, and the young person may feel some degree of pressure, which we may have a hard time relating to here. But it is still pretty mild compared to some other places, and almost all other times.

Don’t read this if you are a child. Seriously, it is not good for you. It is hard enough for grown-ups.

During the Cold war, Sting famously sang “Russians love their children too”. Which is probably true, and even with a fairly similar love to what we expect around here. But this is not so everywhere, and was not so for most of our history. That is not to say that mothers did not love their children, but it was often a twisted and broken love, like the one they had received themselves. We see echoes of this when a Palestinian mother beams proudly in the background as her schoolboy earnestly tells the reporter that he wants to become a “martyr” (suicide bomber).

I don’t say this to demonize them. For one thing, they are indeed in hell, but as tortured souls rather than demons. Worse than the desperation of their outer circumstances is the desperation of the twisted and broken structures of their mind, as they were raised with the same madness as they exhibit today, if not more so.

Nor is this unique to them – this was the shared fate of mankind for a long, long time. Indeed, it was worse than pretty much any place on the globe today. In ancient Greece, at the time when they invented philosophy and democracy, it was still not only possible but actually practiced to kill babies by throwing them down off a cliff. This was the father’s privilege, admittedly. But it obviously does something to a mother as well to know that her child may be here today, gone tomorrow. Due to infant mortality, this was actually a common attitude until less than two centuries ago. Mothers were advised against getting too attached to children, as most of them would die anyway.

The notion that one should not have sex with children is also fairly new. Perhaps that is why it causes so intense feelings in our society, where the mere suspicion of pedophilia is enough to strip a man of any human rights, including the right to be considered innocent until guilty. (I refer you again to the trial in Kristiansand, the city where I work, where the suspect was depicted with photographs in the newspaper well before the trial, and as a consequence sentenced despite no evidence of guilt and some evidence of innocence.) The exceptionally intense fear and loathing is, I believe, caused by the fact that sexual abuse of children is still secretly practiced by many and remembered by many more, directly or indirectly by the irrational agitation of their own parents at the sight of potentially erotic play by the small child.

Geography is to some extent history, and returning to our Arab relatives, today we can celebrate the news that an 8 year old Saudi girl is granted a divorce from her 50 year old husband. If it sticks this time. Again I am not demonizing the Arabs – there is no need. A society in which such a thing can even happen, much less be endorsed by the courts until diplomatic relations are at stake, is already pretty demonic enough, at least for small girls. It may be paradisical for 50 year old pedophiles, perhaps, but I’m not sure that counts. Again, this is not because they happen to be Arabs, it is the original human culture.

See, this is why multiculturalists need to be put out of their misery, or at least kept away from small girls. No, all cultures are not equally valid. Even the best of today’s cultures have only come this far by millennia of painful climbing toward the light, and our foothold is tenuous even today.

If you have a strong stomach, you may peruse the Psychohistory website and see what child abuse of all kinds have done and may still be doing to society. Lloyd deMause is a rabid leftist, unfortunately, but still reasonably sane when writing about things outside his own country and century. Not recommended for pregnant readers. OK, actually not recommended for anyone but the most hardened and cynical misanthrope who expect every human to be a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling until proven otherwise by a trial of fire. If you have children or have memories of having been a child, don’t read it, or at least not past the front page. Any link you click will take you on a tour of Hell proper.