Main reason for seeing 'multiculturalism' as a failure

[BuckeyeJim]

As to law, no they don't.

Why not culture?

Because, to use the multiculturalists own terminology and verbiage so as to not cause mass confusion: "Tolerance has to be mutual."

So when someone prints a comic that you find offensive, you do not have the right to defy the culture and law of freedom of speech and go burn down your local embassy and violently protest because you are offended.

 

[Tee Kay]

Because, to use the multiculturalists own terminology and verbiage so as to not cause mass confusion: "Tolerance has to be mutual."

So when someone prints a comic that you find offensive, you do not have the right to defy the culture and law of freedom of speech and go burn down your local embassy and violently protest because you are offended.

At least you and I are in complete agreement on this particular case study.

 

[Arwon]

Man, people try so hard to draw a spurious link between culture and law but it just doesn't work.

 

[Camikaze]

Because, to use the multiculturalists own terminology and verbiage so as to not cause mass confusion: "Tolerance has to be mutual."

So when someone prints a comic that you find offensive, you do not have the right to defy the culture and law of freedom of speech and go burn down your local embassy and violently protest because you are offended.

You're yet again bringing 'law' into 'culture'. They are two separate things. There is no question that immigrants must obey the law.

The question is of whether they must abide by the local culture. I would agree that tolerance should be mutual, but where intolerance becomes a problem is where it breaks the law, in which case we all agree that it isn't acceptable. But shouldn't immigrants have just as much right to be lawfully intolerant of the local culture as locals?

 

[Arwon]

Also, we're talking about legal policy settings. Specifically saying the best one is a lack of restrictions on people as individuals - ie, paths to residency and citizenship, freedom to do one's own cultural things and have them supported with resources where practical, etc. Because those sorts of legal restrictions, with the aim of creating or maintaining a monoculture, are a bad idea and have bad results.

 

[Arwon]

(Except for mandatory beer and cricket, of course)

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Also, we're talking about legal policy settings. Specifically saying the best one is a lack of restrictions on people as individuals - ie, paths to residency and citizenship, freedom to do one's own cultural things and have them supported with resources where practical, etc. Because those sorts of legal restrictions, with the aim of creating or maintaining a monoculture, are a bad idea and have bad results.

This is silly. When your culture explicitly demands that you not make caricatures or images of your prophet, and someone legally prints that caricature in a country you immigrate to, the resulting violent protests are a direct result of your culture and multicultural policies that allowed you to immigrate there in the first place. If you have a quick road to citizenship but still culturally follow Islamist tradition that actively promotes jihad against the west, it is a cultural issue, not a legal one. And no policy that provides a fast road to citizenship is going to alter the framework of the culture to such an extent that they won't spit on your law regarding freedom of speech. Nor will laissez faire polcies that legally accommodate their intolerant viewpoints.

It takes a special kind of horsey blinder to not understand that culture has a direct relationship to law. Law in Saudi Arabia is based on Islamic culture. Somalia does not have laws against infibulation because their culture regards it as a common practice. My county was a dry county up until very recently because the culture did not believe in selling alcohol. Laicite is a product of French culture. Polygamy used to be legal because it was a cultural facet to Mormon life.

 

[Arwon]

This is silly. When your culture explicitly demands that you not make caricatures or images of your prophet, and someone legally prints that caricature in a country you immigrate to, the resulting violent protests are a direct result of your culture and multicultural policies that allowed you to immigrate there in the first place. If you have a quick road to citizenship but still culturally follow Islamist tradition that actively promotes jihad against the west, it is a cultural issue, not a legal one. And no policy that provides a fast road to citizenship is going to alter the framework of the culture to such an extent that they won't spit on your law regarding freedom of speech. Nor will laissez faire polcies that legally accommodate their intolerant viewpoints.

Property damage and assault are crimes, last time I checked. No invocation of culture required.

More broadly: those sorts of silly cultrually-based laws are axactly the sort of monocultural guff that shouldn't exist. Laws enforcing religious precepts on everyone? Banning the consumption of certain substances because some people have a problem with them? Insisting people not be religious in public places? Laws subjugating women to inferior status based on someone else's individual beliefs? Pah.

There's no inconsistency here. Multiculturalism is ultimately about liberalism and individuality, and everyone being able to do their own thing within a common framework of laws which uphold individual rights. Those sorts of oppressive monocultural things, enforced as laws by a state, are clear violations of those principles. Monoculturalism sucks, yo.

 

[Arwon]

(Except everyone should be forced by law to drink beer and watch cricket. That's just common sense)

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Property damage and assault are crimes, last time I checked. No invocation of culture required.

More broadly: those sorts of silly cultrually-based laws are axactly the sort of monocultural guff that shouldn't exist. Laws enforcing religious precepts on everyone? Banning the consumption of certain substances because some people have a problem with them? Insisting people not be religious in public places? Laws subjugating women to inferior status based on someone else's individual beliefs? Pah.

There's no inconsistency here. Multiculturalism is ultimately about liberalism and individuality, and everyone being able to do their own thing within a common framework of laws which uphold individual rights. Those sorts of oppressive monocultural things, enforced as laws by a state, are clear violations of those principles. Monoculturalism sucks, yo.

Whoa now. Let's go back to our root cause analysis.

Problem statement: Property damage happened in violation of the law, people died.

Why was there property damage and why did people die?

Because a group of people were extremely angry

Why were they angry? Because cartoons were posted that insulted their culture.

And just like before, we can rid around down to other causes that may go back before Islam was brain fart in Mohamed's head. But one fact is that the violence occurred because a significant immigrant group (or cultural group) was insulted by the simple expression of values that we culturally value. It was a clash of cultures and nothing to do with law.

You and I function on a different cultural wavelength to a modest level. However, the both of us function on a cultural level that is far removed from the one that leads to violence over the publication of cartoons. It is another example of culture trumping law in the eyes of a certain group of people. You will not see this go away with what you propose. Citizenship is clearly not as important to this subset of immigrants as their prophet is. Faith matters. The strength and potency matters. It's a cultural divergence between us where you and I value our rule of law more than our culture, but they tend to ignore law if it violates the core tenets of their culture.

Furthermore, since culture is linked to law, and since adherence to law is predicated on cultural viewpoints, it is impossible to draw lines in the sand and declare that one culturally based law promotes monoculture and that others must be abided by regardless of your culture. If we are not supposed to push monoculture, then we can't have laws against infibulation. If a culture prioritizes the prophet over property, then we cannot erect laws that protect property in lieu of culture, lest we end up in the trap of metamorphosing into a monoculture. I have a difficult time delineating between a policy such as Laicite and laws that ban infibulation. In both cases it is western culture of western nations driving western law that contradicts the cultural precepts of vast majority of the people living in the Muslim world.

I understand that multiculturalism is ab out liberalism and respecting culture. You don't have to tell me that. You need to project this onto the tens of thousands of people that were busy burning down embassies and destroying property because their culture was insulted, and trumped our own culture and values. And due to the protracted pattern of certain immigrant groups, ranging from Roma to Muslim, this leads people to think that the multicultural viewpoint of respecting other cultures has, to a certain extent, failed.

 

[Arwon]

Hey, we never had riots over the cartoons. I guess people here understand liberalism and multiculturalism better than those silly Europeans. That said, I've seen fourth-generation locals (and several-thousand-generation locals for that matter) put on riots here, so maybe we need less locals and more migrants. The migrants don't tend to get drunk and violent on a Saturday night, either. I wonder if that means they respect our culture more than the locals do.

Look, don't impose this weird reverso relativism strawman on me. I'm not the one claiming all practices are valid or that liberalism is just a narrow cultural value as opposed to being rooted in universal notions of human rights, or that all laws derive from mere subjective cultural beliefs. You're the one attempting to force that position onto my arguments, which is why you're failing so hard.

I'm perfectly comfortable defining "infringing on others' rights and bodily autonomy" as the boundary that legal acceptance of cultural practices shouldn't cross (which rules out banning alcohol, infibulation, and other such oppressive practices, not to mention a whole truckload of repressive guff from our own cultural baggage like banning abortion or adultery) and enforcing those limits through a legal system built on liberal values of individual autonomy. I'm also perfectly comfortable with reconciling that with multiculturalism. It's really not hard. Here's the trick: There's plenty of people in those cultures who also oppose those practices, because they likewise value individual choice and freedom. All cultures are diverse and contain different viewpoints within them.

Also: Did you just describe Roma as a migrant group?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

subset

Keyword

this leads people to think that the multicultural viewpoint of respecting other cultures has, to a certain extent, failed.

What hasn't failed "to a certain" extent? You could say that about many political, social and economical mindsets, if not all of them.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Again, you're attempting to analyze the wrong group. Why is it your fault, or the Europeans fault that, an immigrant group responded in a particular manner to a certain impulse? It seems to me that we should be looking at the composition of the immigrants themselves, examine the reasons why they protested, and then determine where the next root cause goes. If you are going to blame the native populace, and it's culture, and it's laws (which you admittedly say that immigrants should abide and follow dutifully anyway), then you must first show some mild form of evidence that a quick route citizenship and cushy social benefits are the ticket to avoiding culturally opposed violence. There's simply no logical connection between your policy prescriptions and the ability to assuage violence, extremism, non-adherence to law, and terrorism. For some reason I think we would have seen pointed violent protests if all countries mirrored Australia's policies.

I really don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it isn't my logic that is inconsistent. It is yours. You are the one trying to play two sides of a coin where in one situation we can't have laws, but in the other we can. And I happen to believe it stems from your inability to understand the importance of religious faith, and culture (which can be independent of faith) within certain cultures. This is hardly a relativist strawman. Strawmanning is deflection. I'm not deflecting your arguments. I'm - more or less - stuffing your own reasoning back down your throat, because it does not stand up to any sense of rational scrutiny.

What is the functional difference from the perspective of a Somali Muslim between Laicite and banning infibulation? I'm not talking about our perspective which you seem to always want to hone in on. I'm talking about theirs. If you're going to draw lines in the sand justifying an imposition on culture in one respect, then you must justify it for the other. You can't draw a line in the sand and say, "I'm putting my foot down on bodily harm!" when the culture you're imposing this relative viewpoint doesn't give two bloody hoots about what you value in the first place! They value their girls infibulated. They value wearing their veils in public places. They value outward expressions of religion. They value not practicing blasphemy. These are their rules, their values, and their culture. Drawing your line in the sand at bodily harm doesn't matter because that cultural conflict still exists and is bubbling just underneath the surface anyway. All it takes is just a simple expression of freedom of speech to unearth the divide. You have outwardly complained about Laicite, but this does not stand in contra-distinction to western values. You say you want autonomy, well Laicite exists to promote individual autonomy! Don't you see that by trying to make everything black and white: Australia right, Europe wrong, bodily harm bad, individual rights good, you end ignoring a thousand shades of grey that ultimately end up contradicting one another?

You really get to the heart of what the naysayers complain about in your last two sentences. All cultures are diverse and contain different viewpoints within them. Europe has incorporated hundreds of thousands of moderate, liberal, secular immigrants since WWII. But along with them in the diverse potpourri that is Islamic culture, they have also incorporated hundreds of thousands of illiberal Muslims with extremist viewpoints that do not conform or adhere or mesh with western liberal democracy or our pre-existing laws which they are SUPPOSED to abide by and agree to before they come here in the first place.

 

[JollyRoger]

1But along with them in the diverse potpourri that is Islamic culture, they have also incorporated hundreds of thousands of illiberal Muslims with extremist viewpoints that do not conform or adhere or mesh with western liberal democracy or our pre-existing laws which they are SUPPOSED to abide by and agree to before they come here in the first place.

Can we just transfer them to Ireland where they will fit in better?

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Can we just transfer them to Ireland where they will fit in better?

I was more or less thinking Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, but this would work just as well.

 

[aelf]

Again, you're attempting to analyze the wrong group. Why is it your fault, or the Europeans fault that, an immigrant group responded in a particular manner to a certain impulse? It seems to me that we should be looking at the composition of the immigrants themselves, examine the reasons why they protested, and then determine where the next root cause goes. If you are going to blame the native populace, and it's culture, and it's laws (which you admittedly say that immigrants should abide and follow dutifully anyway), then you must first show some mild form of evidence that a quick route citizenship and cushy social benefits are the ticket to avoiding culturally opposed violence. There's simply no logical connection between your policy prescriptions and the ability to assuage violence, extremism, non-adherence to law, and terrorism. For some reason I think we would have seen pointed violent protests if all countries mirrored Australia's policies.

I really don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it isn't my logic that is inconsistent. It is yours. You are the one trying to play two sides of a coin where in one situation we can't have laws, but in the other we can. And I happen to believe it stems from your inability to understand the importance of religious faith, and culture (which can be independent of faith) within certain cultures. This is hardly a relativist strawman. Strawmanning is deflection. I'm not deflecting your arguments. I'm - more or less - stuffing your own reasoning back down your throat, because it does not stand up to any sense of rational scrutiny.

What is the functional difference from the perspective of a Somali Muslim between Laicite and banning infibulation? I'm not talking about our perspective which you seem to always want to hone in on. I'm talking about theirs. If you're going to draw lines in the sand justifying an imposition on culture in one respect, then you must justify it for the other. You can't draw a line in the sand and say, "I'm putting my foot down on bodily harm!" when the culture you're imposing this relative viewpoint doesn't give two bloody hoots about what you value in the first place! They value their girls infibulated. They value wearing their veils in public places. They value outward expressions of religion. They value not practicing blasphemy. These are their rules, their values, and their culture. Drawing your line in the sand at bodily harm doesn't matter because that cultural conflict still exists and is bubbling just underneath the surface anyway. All it takes is just a simple expression of freedom of speech to unearth the divide. You have outwardly complained about Laicite, but this does not stand in contra-distinction to western values. You say you want autonomy, well Laicite exists to promote individual autonomy! Don't you see that by trying to make everything black and white: Australia right, Europe wrong, bodily harm bad, individual rights good, you end ignoring a thousand shades of grey that ultimately end up contradicting one another?

You really get to the heart of what the naysayers complain about in your last two sentences. All cultures are diverse and contain different viewpoints within them. Europe has incorporated hundreds of thousands of moderate, liberal, secular immigrants since WWII. But along with them in the diverse potpourri that is Islamic culture, they have also incorporated hundreds of thousands of illiberal Muslims with extremist viewpoints that do not conform or adhere or mesh with western liberal democracy or our pre-existing laws which they are SUPPOSED to abide by and agree to before they come here in the first place.

But bodily harm is especially significant. Unless you happen to be a disembodied intelligence (I'm being generous here) talking.

Perhaps the anti-multicultural struggle can also be framed as a struggle to keep liberalism Western, to assert it as some kind of fundamentally Western system of values that others do not subscribe to without making themselves Western. Funny how they seem to be in agreement with anti-Western extremists here. Ever considered some kind of an alliance with the likes of the Taliban? "Keep the darkies where they can put their backward illiberal values into practice."

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Why would I do that? That would be illiberal. I've clearly articulated a position of filtering out illiberal individuals from the immigration process, that way we end up with individuals who are compatible with western liberal democracy. I want the best people from these diverse cultures. I understand the value they represent to culture, and like Arwon, I don't want a mono-culture. I grew up in a mono-culture, and now I live in a multi-cultural atmosphere and have grown to prefer it over time. But I'm not going to take an absolutist stance and repress an observable reality that not all people can be transformed into western liberals with the right policies. If policies and law don't mean squat to people, if they place their priorities elsewhere, then it doesn't matter what your policies and laws are.

It's like guns. Go ahead and take my guns away. It will not measurably impact crime rates because the people who commit crime have no respect for pre-existing law anyway.

 

[aelf]

Why would I do that? That would be illiberal. I've clearly articulated a position of filtering out illiberal individuals from the immigration process, that way we end up with individuals who are compatible with western liberal democracy. I want the best people from these diverse cultures. I understand the value they represent to culture, and like Arwon, I don't want a mono-culture. I grew up in a mono-culture, and now I live in a multi-cultural atmosphere and have grown to prefer it over time. But I'm not going to take an absolutist stance and repress an observable reality that not all people can be transformed into western liberals with the right policies. If policies and law don't mean squat to people, if they place their priorities elsewhere, then it doesn't matter what your policies and laws are.

It's like guns. Go ahead and take my guns away. It will not measurably impact crime rates because the people who commit crime have no respect for pre-existing law anyway.

There you go, evidence for what I said earlier:

Perhaps the anti-multicultural struggle can also be framed as a struggle to keep liberalism Western, to assert it as some kind of fundamentally Western system of values that others do not subscribe to without making themselves Western. Funny how they seem to be in agreement with anti-Western extremists here. Ever considered some kind of an alliance with the likes of the Taliban? "Keep the darkies where they can put their backward illiberal values into practice."

 

[innonimatu]

I know I'm going to get flamed by this, but I'll say it anyway: I'd really like to see how long the fondness for multiculturalism shown by some people would last if people with a really unpleasant culture moved next to their homes.

On one level, I understand the "anti-anti-multiculturalism" here. If anti-multiculturalism means "no immigrants", it fails. There are immigrants who have distinct habits, "cultures" if you will, and are still perfectly good neighbors. But there are also those who are not. Those are the ones feeding the "anti-multiculturalism" reaction. And I also understand that reaction.

People have been arguing here for over 30 pages because they are using different definitions of "multiculturalism", and are now so deep into the argument that none will back off to review what "multiculturalism" really means! Instead we're having increasingly contorted attempts at defining "multiculturalism" in a way which supports each side of the argument over... multiculturalism! This is a waste of time. Words and concepts are tools for discussion, when people keep changing its meaning the discussion becomes void. Multiculturalism, liberalism, freedom of speech... intellectual masturbation!Any of these are weasel terms.

 

[Arwon]

I really don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it isn't my logic that is inconsistent. It is yours. You are the one trying to play two sides of a coin where in one situation we can't have laws, but in the other we can.

Yeah, no. There's a pretty consistent basis for the delineation, actually: Victimless, culture-enforcing laws shouldn't exist. It sucks that some other countries have them. But they shouldn't exist here. If people want to personally live an illiberal lifestyle, that's their prerogative inasmuch as it doesn't conflict with others' rights. It shouldn't be enforced on everyone else. If people want to wear head coverings, or not, that's their business, but the state shouldn't bloody well be telling them they either must or can't. Stunning, I know.

All you're telling me is that it sucks when people from illiberal cultures move to liberal places. But so what? That's a collective judgement based on some crude half-cocked cultural essentialism, which simply does not recognise the two-way influence cultures have when they interact. I mean christ, if that was true, the Italians and Greeks here would still be enclaves of superstitious peasants. For this to actually be a problem, you'd have to show me that the children of migrants and even most migrants themselves don't, essentially, turn out like everyone else, as individuals, containing various hybrid permutations of their own background and the culture(s) they have contact with (if given the chance). Aside from delusional Eurabia mumblings, nobody has ever managed to demonstrate an actual problem.