Muticultural Madness 1

Multicultural Madness Pt1

Multicultural-ism has been in recent decades, the sacred cow of the “new” Western countries. The “old” European countries now seem to be taking this madness to its limit with uncontrolled borders.

Multicultural-ism is the doctrine whereby you have high immigration but instead of promoting integration of these new arrivals into the dominant culture you encourage them to maintain their old ways. In essence it is the end point of cultural cringe – you are in effect telling the new arrivals that they are coming to a land devoid of any customary ways of working together, devoid of a world view about what is right and wrong, and devoid of social customs and mores. It is for all parties a cruel lie!

Let me stress here “culture” is so much more than food and folk dancing! You can dress up in tartan kilts and do Scottish Country dancing, Irish feet-only dancing, put on a ten gallon hat and do American Country & Western, be a fan of the Waltz, or saucy South American dances and so on and still belong to the dominant culture. In fact these just become “add-ons” of choice. You can cook in exotic food styles, and still belong to the dominant culture – in fact you will find all these food styles just go mainline and even get improved. When I tried pizza in Italy I was quite disappointed! I kept thinking: “They should come to Australia and learn how to do a real pizza.”

When we allow ourselves to think of these things as “culture” we are only scratching the surface. We are also making a huge mistake. These superficial things have spread through the entire country – regardless of actual ethnic origin. They have been a real boon. But it is a very different story if we look deeper into what “culture” actually entails.

Culture proper consists of things like the ways of thinking which are built in to our language, our view of the rule of law, how we value human life, “manners” - that social lubricant of day to day dealings with other people, and the actual rules (written and unwritten) which have evolved to make our particular society function as well as it does.

People want to come to live ion our country presumably because they think it is better than their own. One reason for this is that our society functions better. (Another of course could be – as in the case of an invasion – because they want to plunder it!) But let's stick with first one for now.

If the people in our own country who have been so loudly advocating multiculturalism have not understood the implications one can hardly expect the immigrants to. So, unlike the immigrant waves of the past who integrated and took on our culture (in the true sense) and worked hard to give their children a start in the land of opportunity, these modern immigrants hear us saying that they should carry on just as they did in the old country, there are no new customs, ideals or rules here, and will destroy rather than build up our countries.

The old way of integration worked.

In one parish I had there was a very large Italian population. Often there were four generations. The old grandmother who had been brought out by her family – dressed in black and probably didn't speak English. The the ones who had come as adults, Italian names, dark skinned, still had an accent. Their children probably born here, still Italian given name, no accent, often risen the ladder through education and enterprise and as likely as not married a non-Italian. Then their children, with the currently popular Aussie names and indistinguishable from other European origin people. Sure in the early post WWII times there were real racial tensions. The “Dagos” used knives in fights which then was un-Australian. Italian boys were violently protective of their sisters, but conversely mis-understood Australian female fashions as indicating loose morals. But they learned to fit in over time. Melbourne is said to have a Greek population second only to Athens, but they are all thoroughly Australianised.

There is a gorgeous scene in the film “Kindergarten Cop” where the very young class of children are at the festival picnic and all reciting the Gettysburg address: “Four-score and seven years ago our fathers …..” and then when the camera scans the group you see an incredibly diverse ethnic mix! Every time I have seen that film it has struck me that it illustrates the proper way to treat immigrants : “You are one of us now, and this is our shared heritage, and this is how we behave”

More next time