Intelligent Multiculturalism – Survival and the Beauty of Openness
Saturday
If you've got someone pushing for special concessions regardless of fairness, and who have stated their intentions to usurp the legitimate government, you would think it a no-brainer to stop them.
The two things that prevent most Westerners from even knowing about this issue are political correctness and blind multiculturalism. These two cultural blots prevent politicians from speaking openly and directly about orthodox Islam. They prevent newspapers and television reporters from reporting openly and honestly about it, and they even prevent individual people talking about it among themselves out of fear of making a social blunder and being considered racist or bigoted.
Of the two, I would say blind multiculturalism is the more important one. If that's true, it means the single biggest barrier to being heard by a significant portion of the population of non-Muslims — the one thing stopping a widespread public education about Islam — is blind multiculturalism, so let's deal with it right now.
I thought William Bennett made a good point in Why We Fight: Multiculturalism simply says we might have something to learn from other cultures. For several centuries, Westerners have taken up multiculturalism with a passion, often driven by a reaction to the self-righteous snobbery of Europeans and Americans when they came into contact with "primitive" people.
The openness and willingness to look for value in other cultures is good, and the willingness to consider people from other cultures just as human as people in your own culture — that's good too.
But over time, this idea has streamlined. It simplified into merely: "My own culture stinks. Other cultures are worth respecting and appreciating. Except mine."
Maybe multiculturalism combined with the natural teenage rebellion against the "establishment," I don't know.
But however it morphed from something completely legitimate to something self-destructive, there is no doubt it has morphed, and this simplified, dumbed-down multicultural ethos has permeated two very influential positions: School teachers and journalists. The vast majority of teachers, from kindergarten to graduate school, are dyed-in-the-wool blind multiculturalists. And so are the majority of journalists in the mainstream media.
It's not really multiculturalism that is bad. The original idea is very good. But blind, oversimplified multiculturalism could be our downfall.
Trying to oppose one extreme position (ours is the only culture worth appreciating) with the opposite extreme position (ours is the only culture not worth appreciating) still misses the reality of the situation, which is that not all cultures are equal, not all cultures are the same, not all cultures allow equal amounts of freedom or human rights, not all cultures allow equal amounts of free speech and rights for women, and not all cultures allow for equal opportunity for economic abundance and creative pursuits.
Some cultures are better, in some respects, than others. We should appreciate and be open to other cultures, and here in the West, we are — and we are more open than probably any society has ever been in history, and that's one of the reasons this culture, our own culture, is superior to any other culture in at least this one respect (and there are others).
To take an example, do you think Saudi Arabian culture is more open to other cultural influences than we are?
No, they aren't. Not even close. Which means we are more open than they are. Which means when it comes to this particular value — openness to influence by other cultures — we measure higher. Our own culture is better. (Gasp!)
Our Western culture is not perfect, and we should never become so arrogant as to think so, but it has many fine qualities. So whenever multiculturalism devolves into hating Western culture, it is as limited and ignorant as loving Western culture and willfully finding nothing good in any other culture.
But even here, we have at least two variations within our own culture: One that hates its own culture but is open to other cultures, and one that loves its own culture but is not open to other cultures.
These two variations can also be judged. On the criteria for openness, the first one is better. But what about survival in the face of an aggressive competing culture? Islam is aggressively trying to encroach and ultimately replace our culture. Which of our two variations is better at surviving that kind of encroachment?
In other words, if you have two equal cultures and one hated itself but was open to other cultures, but the other culture loved itself but was closed to other cultures, wouldn't the self-loving culture be more likely to survive if they clashed? I think so.
That means that those who have adopted blind multiculturalism (and spread it in schools and the media) are accidentally (or not) making our culture — and all the freedom that goes along with it — vulnerable to invasion and subversion by orthodox Muslims.
Blind multiculturalists must be converted to multiculturalists who appreciate their own culture.
A culture (like ours) that is open to other cultures but also appreciates its own strengths and fine qualities would be the best one to live in and it would survive an invasion by orthodox Islam.
13 comments:
I think we need to understand and appreciate principles of freedom. We cannot allow the unfettered freedom of those who wish to deny us freedom - or we are advancing tyranny. I think we have to come back to understandings of what freedom is (requires responsibility) and what tyranny.
I think we need to understand that Islam seeks to enforce tyranny and take away our freedom. Tyranny and freedom cannot coexist peacefully. One or the other will "win out". None of the women in Islam have true freedom. Immediately, we should recognize that this culture fosters tyranny rather than freedom and is inconsistent with Western culture which provides freedom for women.
I well written and thought-out piece. Like what you wrote and agree totally. Trouble is, the powers that be don't listen. Even your careful language could be branded by some as offensive - even if it is the truth. I do not see a resolution to this for time yet.
Like you said, we shouldn't replace one form of extremism with another, but we should close our borders, we should actively deport those that should not be here, and we should root out any persons who have asked to come and live in this country but who then use their time to either negatively effect our culture, society or security, or even that of other countries (such as all those terrorists we have allowed in that are wanted by Jordan, Egypt, etc).
Aloha, CW!
The graphic is SUPERB! If a picture paints a thousand words...
What a great bumper sticker it would make with the words:
WAKE UP, AMERICA!
next to it.
Where did you find the graphic?
Thank you so much for such a readable, creative, information-packed, educational website, CW!
Tana-Lee
One way that Judeo-Christian civilisation can be shown to be superior to Islam, is that when examined closely Islamic culture is shown to be nothing other than an impoverished subset of Judeo-Christian culture. Consequently, Islamic culture cannot add anything to ours, it can only subtract and destroy.
Every aspect of present-day Islamic culture that appears to be different from our own is in fact already contained within our culture, it's just part of the subset marked 'history'. Tribalism, theocracy, punishment by amputations, repression of women, honor kilings, blasphemy laws etc - we've been there and done that and given it up centuries ago.
As with adolescent vandals, those who lack creativity can only express themselves by destruction, and Muslims are very good at destroying the products of other civilisations (known as 'Jahiliyya') . Remember the Buddhas of Bamiyan!
If you look carefully at the process of Islamification in Europe, you'll see that nothing is being added (apart from babies and mosques), but much is being taken away. Almost every Muslim demand is culturally 'subtractive' rather than 'additive'. They want to remove pig statues, ban alcohol, curb free speech, stop teaching art, music, drama, biology and other 'un-Islamic' subjects in schools. And the mere presence of Muslims in the West reduces the quality of life, with security restrictions on travel, and kaffir women and children in Muslim-infested cities unable to move and play freely for fear of sexual predators.
In contrast to the subtractive impacts of Muslims on Western civilisation, Muslim clerics in in Dar al-Islam are paranoid about the addition of aspects of Western culture such as fashion, music, toys, cinema, art, science etc to their own, which they refer to as 'Westoxication'
So, no matter what the multiculturalists tell us, Islam cannot bring 'cultural enrichment' to the West - it can only bring cultural impoverishment.
To say that Muslim immigrants are worthless is to overvalue them. In fact they have a negative cultural worth, because their attempts to Islamify the West are an attempt to reduce the rich culture of a superior civilisation to a depleted and restricted subset.
POSTMODERNISM - THE CRAP BEING TAUGHT IN OUR UNIVERSITIES
"All narratives are of equal worth"
- this is the malevolent dogma of Postmodernism in our (taxpayer-funded) universities.
Postmodernism is the anti-rational, anti-Western, culturally self-loathing pseudo-philosophy which permeates academia.
Postmodernism is a self-induced cancer which allows the alien virus of Islam to spread like a secondary infection throughout body of Western Civilization.
Postmodernist leftards regard Mo's barbaric dark-age death-cult as a 'narrative' of equal value to the products of Judeo-Christian culture . In fact Islam may be a superior narrative because it is the product of victimhood.
I would strongly advise Kuffars who wish to understand the threat that Islam poses to our civilization not only to study and critique Islam itself, but to understand and work against the suicidal and culturicidal self-loathing of Postmodernism.
"All narratives are of equal worth" - the PoMo dogma that dominates university arts, humanities and social studies departments. All narratives are socially constructed by dominant power groups - dead white males and Joooooooz being the usual suspects.
Postmodernism hasn't made much headway in science, engineering or mathematics departments, for reasons I'll come to in a moment.
Neither is postmodernism taken seriously by most philosophers, because it is in effect self-contradictory. "All narratives are of equal worth" So, optimistically all narratives should be equally true.
Unfortunately for the leftards, diverse narratives contradict each other, so to maintain equality we must conclude that all narratives are equally false. However postmodernism is itself a narrative, so "all narratives are of equal worth" is as equally true/false as "some narratives are better than others". This is a variant of the old Cretan Paradox - 'Everything I say is a lie'. Pursue this line of reasoning far enough and the result will be insanity and/or left-wing politics. This spoof site (a postmodern essay generator) really hits the bullseye
Some years ago there was an attempt by PoMo leftard Marxist sociologists to protray science as a socially constructed narrative (constructed by all those Joooooooish Nobel prize winners with the poor old Muslim-victims being so underrepresented ) . The logical outcome of this was if your culture said it was possible to float in the air then the socially-constructed Joooodeo-Christian (Newton and Einstein) laws of gravity would not apply to you as you stepped out of a sixth floor window.
This irrationalist obscurantist attack on science was debunked by the famous Sokal hoax, and the leftards have not been back since...
However the university faculties where logical thinking may be more of a handicap than a help greatly outnumber the science/philosophy/engineering faculties. There has been a vast proliferation of Departments of Indefinite Studies, Post-Colonialist Awareness, Multicultural Assertion, etc etc.
Western culture is 'despised' because some aspects of it ARE DIFFICULT TO MASTER. Thus sneering cultural self-loathing is used as a cover for intellectual inadequacy.
In this dumbed down 'academic' environment, is it any wonder that Islam, which would have been laughed to scorn by previous generations, is now regarded as a subject worthy of study in its own right as a valid narrative, rather than being seen as a primitive cult of interest primarily to the anthropologist and historian? Of course Edward Said has a lot to answer for, coming along at just the right time to exploit the rise in postmodernism and post-colonial guilt.
Postmodernism is the fatal crack in the intellectual structure of Western civilisation through which the virus of Islam enters.
You are right that "blind multiculturalism" is a severe problem. However, there is a bigger picture that is most sobering here. "Blind Multiculturalism" as you call it, is the current guiding principle of secular progressives. Another crucial fact we must realize is that most governments in the West are NOT true democracies, but shadow oligarchies. They are oligarchies because they are ruled by a loosely connected, but extremely well organized group of the "elite class", mainly composed of the well-educated and well-to-do. Through empowering the bureaucracy and the judicial system with wide policy-making powers, which they largely control, they largely control the government, and it is very difficult for the common people to reverse policies that this "elite class" wants (due to much lower organization). When asked, why is multiculturalism the policy of governments even though common people didn't vote it in,I suggest to look at the concept of hiearchy of needs for an answer.
Physiologial and safety needs (survival) are at the bottom of the list, while "self-actualization" is at the top. Even in wealthy countries, the common people have some level of struggle for survival, so they will understand and accept reality. However, an "elite class" has very little sense of a struggle for survival in such wealthy societies, and thus the drive for "self-actualization" can diverge from reality. If the elite's quest for "self-actualization" conflicts with the realities of the struggle for survival, the common people will feel it first and hardest, but the elite will not notice until it is too late. Under a real democracy, bad policies that threaten a society's survival are stopped, because the common people will feel the negative socioeconomic effects first. In an oligarchy, however, bad policies tend to remain in place if supported by the "elite class", well after a democratic majority opposes them. It appears that this is what has happened in Western societies.
"Multiculturalism" has several basic assumptions which are FALSE. 1)linear progress-- things do NOT automatically get better with time, history is much more cycical than westerners realize, there are periods of regression as well as progress [visible regressions often come rapidly, while progress tends to be slower. 2)Ethnocentrism-- all cultures and peoples have basically the same motivations, goals, and views as we Westerners do (they do NOT--some cultures [such as Islam] are very different from the modern West in motivations, goals, and view 3) Ideological Racism-- people have different levels of psychologial advancement based on their belief systems (secularists are "more psychologically advanced", while religious people are "more psychologically primitive")-- This is SS Nazi Racism that substitutes ideology for genetics!! 4)Western culture can NEVER FALL to another culture, because it is guided by "psychologically advanced" people (secular progressives) while other cultures are more backward and "psychologically primitive" [religious]-- See the "logic"? 5)The West is so "advanced" that it has progressed beyond the struggle for survival with other cultures, and will wipe out other cultures if not CONTROLLED-- the West is not invincible. 6)The West has racist, oppresive, imperialist, bigoted,(ROIB) tendencies that define it, which other cultures do not have.-- NOT TRUE 7)all NON-WESTERN cultures lag behind the West SOLELY because the WEST (by reason of its innate ROIB nature) has brutally oppresed non-western culture--NOT TRUE 8)Auschwitz shows the horrific result of innate uniquely WESTERN ROIB tendencies not being suppressed, and if they are not suppressed, Western-caused genocide will happen before we know it-- Westerners are NOT innately genocidal!9)If WESTERN OPPRESION (caused by innate ROIB tendencies) is eliminated, all of humanity will SUDDENLY CATAPULT into tremendous progress resulting in imminent utopia-- they actually BELIEVE this. 10)To end WESTERN OPPRESSION, we westerners MUST prevent suppression of or OFFENSE TO anything non-western or anti-western (with "tolerance",
"diversity",etc.)--They also believe THIS. 11)Thus, we WESTERNERS MUST make CONCESSIONS to all things anti-western (or better yet, NON-WESTERN) whenever non-westerners are OFFENDED OR "OPPRESSED" [We must, after all, prevent the innate ROIB monster from rearing its ugly head, and only CONCESSIONS to non-westerners (misunderstood minorities)can suppress the innate ROIB monster. And finally, 12) we must feel very grateful when oppressed non-westerners point out CONCESSIONS we can make to allivate their oppresion, and we must give them the CONCESSIONS THEY POINT OUT.
These 12 ideas are the core assumptions of "blind multiculturalism". It is basically a form of cultural marxism, but the 'elite class' believes this as articles of faith. Thus, we can understand that concessions are a kind of goodwill sacred OFFERING that should be made to SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, anti-western or non-western.
The Jihadis have soft of figured this out, and so they are shouting "We are NON-WESTERN and Oppressed" , and they are getting concessions left and right. When jihadis define jihad as "STRUGGLE OF THE MASSES OF MUSLIM PEOPLE AGAINST THE OPPRESSION OF WESTERN IMPERIALISM" you will be SHOCKED at the concessions the 'elite class' will give jihadis. (How COULD THEY POSSIBLY SUPPORT WESTERN IMPERIALISM). Heaven help us the jihadis ever figure out that incessantly crying "western imperialism" is much more effective at "terrorizing the kafirs" than nuclear weapons!!!
The 'elite class" doesn't really care about facts, they just want to continue enforcing the views according to their fantasy view of the world. The only way to save our society is to dethrone this "elite class" and repudiate their whole way of "thinking". Only then can concessions to Islam be stopped.
Although I think it is a worthy project to dethrone the elite class, I don't think it's a necessary prerequisite for changes to be made in curbing concessions to Islam. Many changes have been forced by public will that the elite class actively resisted. Although they have the positions, any one of them can be removed from office, and they know it. So the public is not entirely powerless.
What you say in your intelligent article is what I have often thought when I've read other writers cursing multiculturalism as the source of our surrender to Islamic supremacism. I always reply that it is a mistake to curse multiculturalism wholesale, especially when one might be able to make allies on the left by pointing out that the problem with Islamic supremacism is precisely that it will destroy multiculturalism and substitute a monoculture. Multiculturalism, so long as it doesn't become so extreme as to become suicidal, is what plenty of centrists or conservatives used to call pluralism. It's part of being a free people. We need to protect it, and that means resisting the spread of Islam and the supremacism of Muhammad.
THANK YOU for posting this, it's high time we had an eloquent and well-reasoned explanation of exactly what multiculturalism, political correctness, and freedom do and do not entail.
As an aside, it's "dyed in the wool" (as in 'I dyed my hair blonde" or "let's dye some Easter eggs"), not "died in the wool," but otherwise you're spot-on and I can only hope the rest of the Western world, including the academic Left, will eventually come around.
Amalie, thank you. I will fix the "died" mistake right now.
Citizen Warrior, you excel in lucidity! Your finger is on the pulse, and the Enemy is mostly us - dhimwits, useful idiots, leftards, or the simply ignorant with ostrich heads in the sand hoping that all will be well (what a wonderful graphic indeed as someone else posted!) I do not know how you cope with all the comments workload but just keep doing it however you are doing it!
Thank you for that. Keeping up with the comments is one of the things I most enjoy about having a blog.
I was just reading Victor Davis Hanson's book, The Father of Us All, and he gave me an insight into why people are so strongly against learning simple, basic, factual information about Islam. He said something I've never thought about before. Namely, that people in the West are aware that there are inequalities in the world, that we in the West enjoy a material quality of life far better than billions of other people, and we have a need to feel guilty about it because we don't like the inequality, but we don't want to give up the high quality of life.
In other words, we need to have a way to keep enjoying the material riches, but still rectify the guilt we feel about others being so poor. Our solutions include making our own culture wrong in every way possible (for exploiting other cultures, for example, or for having a powerful military, etc.), and thinking of other cultures with undeserved reverence.
This explains the strange phenomenon we have all run into: We try to simply share new information we have learned, and we find ourselves unable to share it. Our listeners do backflips trying to invalidate the information.
They contort themselves into impossible cognitive pretzels in order to reject this simple, factual information you are trying to share. It has been baffling to many of us. We write them off as idiots, but we know many of them are not stupid, so what's the deal? This is at least part of the answer: It is an underlying guilt many people in the West rely on that allows them to enjoy their iPads and nice cars and cell phones even in a world of terrible inequities. The simple, factual information you're trying to share threatens to undermine that guilt, which threatens a linchpin in their emotional harmony and ethical congruence. They can't let it in.
Islam has never contributed anything to the history, heritage, and culture of the United States, except to change the New York City skyline forever and gouge a hole 3,000 souls deep in the heart of America.
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