Posted on 10/19/2010 4:13:55 AM PDT by Kaslin
Somebody eventually had to say it -- and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed."
Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity," without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.
"We kidded ourselves for a while," Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could "live side-by-side" and "enjoy each other" has "failed, utterly failed."
This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.
Even the tragedies and atrocities associated with racial differences in racist countries have been exceeded by the tragedies and atrocities among people with clashing cultures who are physically indistinguishable from one another, as in the Balkans or Rwanda.
Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the multicultural cultists.
Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values of the larger society around them is "cultural imperialism" according to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.
Multiculturalists condemn people's objections to transplanting hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.
The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere biased "perceptions" or "stereotypes," if not outright "racism." But some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant ghetto life back into their midst.
The absorption of millions of immigrants from Europe into American society may be cited as an example of the success of multiculturalism. But, in fact, they were absorbed in ways that were the direct opposite of what the multicultural cult is recommending today.
Before these immigrants were culturally assimilated to the norms of American society, they were by no means scattered at random among the population at large. On New York's lower east side, Hungarian Jews lived clustered together in different neighborhoods from Romanian Jews or Polish Jews -- and German Jews lived away from the lower east side.
When someone suggested relieving the overcrowding in the lower east side schools by transferring some of the children to a school in an Irish neighborhood that had space, both the Irish and the Jews objected.
None of this was peculiar to America. When immigrants from southern Italy to Australia moved into neighborhoods where people from northern Italy lived, the northern Italians moved out. Such scenarios could be found in countries around the world.
It was in later generations, after the children and grandchildren of the immigrants to America were speaking English and living lives more like the lives of other Americans, that they spread out to live and work where other
Ping
....multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about “diversity,” without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
Once again, the “heavy lifting” is falling to .......
the girls.
:)
It seems odd to have to criticize Sowell since I generally love his columns, but he fails to see the elephant in the room here. Multiculturalism doesn’t merely promote mindless diversity. It also proffers the notion that all cultures are created equal. This is complete and utter rubbish. Any cursory glance at history shows that Western Culture, founded on reason, embracing freedom and free markets simply rocketed ahead of the rest of the world by any measure of human progress. It created more human benefit in prosperity and knowledge than the rest of the world combined. Without an acknowledgment of this key point, mindless drivel like Multiculturalism will continue to plague us.
Rights of Immigrants
“Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Hugh White, 1801. ME 10:258
Too Rapid Growth by Immigration
“[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible... founded in good policy?... They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass... If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.”
—Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:118
“Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience. They differ from us little but in their principles of government, and most of those (merchants excepted) who come here, are sufficiently disposed to adopt ours.”
—Thomas Jefferson to George Flower, 1817. ME 15:140
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1280.htm
In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Jefferson reflects:
“It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possi- ble in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.
“Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English Constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of abso- lute monarchies. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of emi- grants.” (3)
Jefferson warns, nearly prophetically:
“They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an un- bounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In pro- portion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, in- coherent, distracted mass.” (4)
There is theory; and then there is reality. Jefferson was schooled in both. He knew that, to every liberal law, there were some reasonable limits.
We need artisans, he admitted, but not enemies. We want true freedom seekers to come, but without “extraordinary encouragements.” (5)
What would Thomas Jefferson, therefore, think of an immigration policy today that, with flashing lights invites the non-working masses of the world to come—to come from countries that hate us, to a feast of “free” food, “free” health care, “free” education, “free” social security benefits, and free and instant voter registration cards? It is hard to see Jefferson calling it anything but extraordinarily unwise, and extraordinarily rev- olutionary. Jefferson would have proposed something better—a policy liberal in its ex- tension of the blessings of liberty to those who desired it, and conservative in its eco- nomic and political common sense.
Footnotes:
1. Bergh, Albert Ellery, Editor. “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Volume 3, p. 338.
2. Ibid., pgs. 338-339.
3. Bergh, Volume 2, p. 120.
4. Ibid., p. 121. 5. Ibid.
http://www.proconservative.net/PCVol5Is272FarrellImmigrationInsecurity.shtml
*
But that is precisely the purpose of multiculturalism, to build a mountain of nonsense to be used in denying that Western culture has been vastly superior for 500 or more years.
I don’t have a problem with this viewpoint. Being Jewish, it is my preference to live among my own people. That doesn’t mean I hate others, it means I PREFER to live with people who share my belief system, cultural values and overall way of life. I ENJOY other cultures, but I PREFER to ENJOY those cultures by CHOICE and not by FORCE.
I have no desire to randomly harm people who are different from me, but maybe I don’t want to invite them to dinner. There is a difference between treating someone with respect and feeling as if you are FORCED to accept everything that a person does just because they are ethnically different.
As a Jew, I am basically expected to feel hostile towards the German people, I do not feel that way. I lived in Germany and I loved it there. But loving Germany does not take away from my desire for Israel’s continued existence. I love Italian food, and I might want to visit Italy and ENJOY their culture, I have no desire to force them to change who they are. All this FORCED multiculturalism is less about acceptance and more about power.
Slavery should never have happened, it was wrong. It also ended before I was born. I don’t like hip-hop, that doesn’t mean I want to kill anyone, or even treat them as less than anyone else or “hate” them because they are different. But I get very angry and resentful when I feel PUSHED into ACTING like I accept things that I do not find acceptable. That feeling makes me less likely to comply. That feeling makes me more hostile.
That is certainly true. But without people willing to explain, in public, why multiculturalism really is utter drivel, it will never be properly defeated. When even Sowell isn’t willing to point out why it is rubbish, you know we have an issue.
“Ping”
Somebody check Ms Merkel’s birth certificate. If she should by remote chance was born here in the U.S. maybe we could persuade her to run for president in 2010...
Yeah, she is someone we sure could use here
That puts things in proper perspective. And currently a radio station I sometimes listen to is running government PSAs about the "benefits of diversity" and how deprived anyone is if they live in neighborhoods where everyone looks just like them. It even gives a phone number to call "to learn more about the benefits of diversity".
I've been tempted to call, just to see what they're saying, but it might prove to be a very unpleasant experience.
I hate that ad. The voiceover about I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone was the same with a hangdog tremor in the voice expressing such regret to have lived without theft, drugs, vandalism, and other crime. This is also how they justify the disgusting section 8 policies.
Thomas Sowell has covered your issue in his books and in other columns. He can’t make every point every time.
Well said!
It is in a locked vault in Hawaii. But I presume one of our document experts could “find” a copy somewhere on the internet.
Thomas Sowell is a girl?
Democratic Party political pandering disguised as an idea.
"I AM ..... a MAN ...." (etc., repeat as necessary).
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