Multiculturalism

My comment was not about Faith. It was about the person whose sermons she wanted me to listen to. Evidence shows my characterization of this guy, Ivan Foster, has merit.I did not curse Faith or attack Faith. As an admin it is incumbent that you understand the context of posts. If not maybe you should step aside and let others moderate.Faiths attack is not even in reference to my comment you posted above.

Multiculturalists put cultural sensitivities before individual liberties; elevate the radical beliefs of a backwards religion above the principles of freedom and democracy.

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Wikipedia on List of newspapers that reprinted Jyllands-Posten's Muhammad cartoons:

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The University of Prince Edward Island's student newspaper The Cadre was removed from circulation by university authorities after reprinting some of the cartoons. The issue was subsequently pulled and destroyed by the UPEI Student Union, who publishes the student paper.

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Staff of the New York Press walked out in protest after management disallowed them to reproduce the cartoons as part of their reporting. Two editors of the University of Illinois' student paper, the Daily Illini, were suspended (one later fired) after reprinting the cartoons.

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"Fears prompt withdrawal of Van Gogh film" from The Guardian:

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The Rotterdam international film festival has pulled the last contentious work by Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh at the eleventh hour, amid fears that the screening might trigger further acts of religious violence. The short film, Submission Part One, was due to form the centrepiece of a debate on freedom of speech on Sunday night. It will now not be shown.

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"Salman Rushdie: Fighting Words on a Knighthood" from The New York Times:

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But it's instructive to return to the fatwa period, when some important literary and political voices were critical of Rushdie.

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Among them was Jimmy Carter. In a March 1989 Op-Ed article in The New York Times titled "Rushdie's Book Is an Insult," Carter argued that "The Satanic Verses" was guilty of "vilifying" Muhammad and "defaming" the Koran. "The author, a well-versed analyst of Moslem beliefs, must have anticipated a horrified reaction throughout the Islamic world," Carter wrote. While condemning the death sentence and affirming Rushdie's right to free speech, the former president argued that "we have tended to promote him and his book with little acknowledgment that it is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated and are suffering in restrained silence the added embarrassment of the Ayatollah's irresponsibility."

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No, that's an extreme effect of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is simply accepting that people from different backgrounds - race, religion, langugae, economic development, education etc - have differring views on the world and, if we are to live together there has to be tolerance by both sides of those views.That only becomes a problem when one side is unable to tolerate - which is what is happening now. Some sectors of society on both sides of the argument are determined to push their positions to make their points and the real fundamentalists are exploiting it.There's no doubt at all that the extreme Islam position is not tolerable in our society, but we are not innocent of provocation and we are equally guilty of not explaining and enforcing our own values on immigrants wanting to enter our country, to the extent that we've actually encouraged practices that are against our own laws by ignoring them - FGM is an obvious example. We've been frightened of enforcing faster integration - or any integration at all.And then we had these stupid and unnecessary wars that made everything many, many times worse - what the hell were we thinking?.

But what you've failed to understand is that Multiculturalism is NOT simply the assimilation of different cultures, it's in fact the philosophical perspective that REQUIRES the attitude you are here objecting to, that we give up our own values to encourage those of foreign cultures entering western societies. Those who do this are not "guilty of provocation" they are doing exactly what Multiculturalism teaches, perhaps believing the nave PC ideology that pretends all cultures and religions are basically the same.Multiculturalism is NOT the proverbial "melting pot" by which foreign cultures adapt to the host culture's laws and values while retaining their own cultural expressions that don't conflict with those values, it's one of the tenets of Political Correctness which comes out of Cultural Marxism and is aimed at undermining Western Civilization. Not requiring that the foreign culture adapt IS Multiculturalism. It's aimed against Western Civilization. It's aimed against the very rights and freedoms that have historically attracted foreigners. If you give rights and freedoms to a tyrannical creed you destroy those rights and freedoms. Nobody expects Muslim countries to absorb western values but the west is expected to absorb all kinds of alien values including Islam. Since Islam's values promote the subjugation of other cultures to Allah this is a recipe for suicide of the West.It sounds like you have the melting pot in mind. That's a time-honored position of the West, but you are confusing it with Multiculturalism. If you really understood what MC is you would probably oppose it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sounds like a slippery slope argument

I'm sorry but could you possibly give us an example of a law or value that foreign cultures should adapt to but do not?

That's complete nonsense. The vast majority of immigrants to this country are from other Western Civilizations. Even Westerners have practices that people here complain about and express hatred towards. However it is primarily certain Western immigration that people are up in arms about.If anything, much of the fear about the change in culture I hear expressed, even from you is regards to the dilution of Anglo-Saxon Culture and not just Western culture. Actually the time honored position of the United States is to treat newcomers with fear and loathing when they come here, so that initially the newcomers stay to themselves and practice their own ways. At some future point some immigrants are able to assimilate, maybe in about the third generation.Multiculturalism is not even limited to immigrants. The citizens of the United States are quite diverse and they don't give up all of their historical practices and ways to become citizens. Multiculturalism is the way we tolerate those differences.The "melting pot" where the host society does not change is a complete myth anyway. The host inevitably does change much to the chagrin of reactionaries. In a way, the white supremacists of the late 19th century had a point. The country they loved could not possibly stay the same after their slaves were freed and were granted citizenship and full rights. Name some Islamic values you've had to tolerate? I want actual examples of stuff you are forced to comply with because of the 2-3 million or so Muslims that live in this country.

As usual Faith you've got pretty much all of this wrong.There are important differences between multiculturalism, melting pots and assimilation - in fact all three are quite different ideas. There is absolutely no requirement to give up our values for multiculturalism - that's just your usual bigotry.

Not all 'views on the world' are equal, and not allin fact very few of themshould be tolerated. Well yeah. To say we are 'equally guilty of not explaining and enforcing our own values on immigrants wanting to enter our country, to the extent that we've actually encouraged practices that are against our own laws by ignoring them' is to say we are guilty of Multiculturalism. What's the alternative?

The value of non-tribalism:

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"Somali-Americans who Fled Civil War Confront Tribalism in New Home" from Minnesota Public Radio News:

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When Somalis fled their war-torn homeland over the last two decades, many took with them the seeds of discord underlying the conflict.

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Following the collapse of the dictatorship that ruled Somalia in the early 1990s, a renewed focus on tribalism fueled civil war, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

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"We have seen parents, youngsters get raped in front of us by other tribe, killed by other tribe," said Shacido Shaie, a 29-year-old Somali activist in the Twin Cities. "They killed someone you loved. They destroyed the entire country. You can never forget that."

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Many Somalis found new homes in Europe and the United States. Like immigrants from other countries, they often became targets of racism. But in the last five years, they've focused on a different kind of prejudice how some in the Somali community discriminate against other Somalis from different tribes.

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Then I guess you should watch your step.

What Anglo-Saxon culture? The majority of European people in the U.S. are of German heritage. They speak a language descendant from a long-dead Anglo-Saxon dialect. They practice forms of government founded in Greece and Rome. Their religious beliefs have their origins in the Middle East with a long-haired, hippy Jew.The notion that we live in an Anglo-Saxon (or to use the pop-culture term WASP) culture is just sociologist buzzwording meant to sound intellectual and deep but in reality void of all meaning and usefulnessnot to mention false.Our culture is Western. And that's really the only sensible way to describe it.

'Guilty of multiculturalism' is a strange thing to say. Our countries have always allowed people from other countries to live in them - that's how they function and because we're liberal democracies we tolerate differing beliefs and practices - so long as those practices are legal. We've been naive in thinking that other cultures will adopt to our laws if we don't educate a enforce them. There isn't one. The only way would have been to close our borders at some arbitrary point in our histories and sink into obscurity.

Those number comes from the ethnic origins reported by people who even identify with a European group during the census. People who simply report themselves as American don't get counted.White Americans - Wikipedia

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However, the population of Americans of English or other British ancestry is thought to be larger than that reported to the census, as some families of this origin that have resided in the United States for many generations prefer to identify themselves as simply 'American

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In any event, the exact count or label is not all that important. We can find examples of minority culture, and particularly black and Latino culture stamped all over the current culture. (Happy Martin Luther King day by the way). The idea that our melting pot only works by having people adapt when they get here is hogwash. This country has never worked that way. Nor should it. More importantly, our culture reflects an amalgam of inputs from people who have immigrated here at various times. I'm not stuck on the label Anglo-Saxon, or WASP, but in the past, many people have been.ABE:In fact, the distinction between Western and Anglo-Saxon is more revealing of exactly how much this country has changed. Clearly the beginnings of our country were dominated by British influence. But we are not all that much like England anymore.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

All of those factors were filtered through a little place called "the British Isles".