The Dark Side of Diversity (visa, 9/11, NAFTA, illegal)

[bily4]

macmeal, you bring up some points but let me call you out on some things...

- you bring up a lot about the "guilt" we have in this country about how we treat others in the world. I don't see a whole lot of people lining up to partake in this guilt you bring up, first off. Certainly not in this forum, as a sample representation. And let's be honest - because we have been so powerful we do tend to meddle much more than any other country in the rest of the world's affairs. Sometimes for good as in World War 2, other times for bad as in Vietnam, areas in Latin America and the Middle East (Iraq war, anyone??), etc. So maybe a bit of guilt is warranted.

- yes we can be "nice" but we are also very practical, especially when it comes to government policies and procedures. The "give me your poor" of the statue of Liberty is nice, but that ain't real. We bring people in because we need them, either for their manual labor or their brains, and we have done this throughout our history. (Yes, these people want to live here because we have a good thing going here.) Why is our border so porous today? Because we need the labor and the government knows this. Poor people can't get in to our country legally today, so we definitely need to get another form of work program established.

- you also like to insist a multi-racial society is fine, while a multi-cultural society is not. You have also shared you personal family is multi-racial. I have tried in other posts to get you to define this a bit more clearly when you say multi-culturalism cannot work. In my view so long as people of other cultures obey our laws and are being productive members of society (not dependent on the state), they can enjoy whatever their cultural tastes relating to food, music, clothing permit. Do you agree with this, or if you are disagreeing with this, where? What are the parts of the "American culture" where you are suggesting conformity is required?"

appreciate the discussion...

[MexicanGuy]

Originally Posted by MOHIllbillyWoman

I am glad that you can see the dark side of what diversity is doing to this country. In all actuality, it happens to be your brethen that have decided to not assimilate and to just take what does not beloong to them and to literally creat nothing but havoc everywhere they go. How about telling them to come here legally and then become real Americans?

This doesn’t mean that I’m against diversity or multiculturalism—it means I’m against unchecked immigration. Personally, I believe that the United States does need the cheaper labor these immigrants offer, and that immigration law should be modified to include guest worker programs and other controls, including obligatory knowledge of basic English for anyone aspiring to immigrate to America, even if it’s only for a predetermined period of time.

Just so it’s perfectly clear to you, I’m completely in favor of multiculturalism and diversity.

[macmeal]

BILY 4-- Thought you'd never ask---First off, I stand by the "guilt" thing, and I say it's a quality unique to Western Christian Protestant cultures, and ours in particular. The UK and France feel guilty enough about their colonial pasts that their nations are now brimming with millions of new residents from their former colonies. Whatever else it means, this sure looks to me like an attempt to "reach out" and atone for past wrongs. Maybe too little, too late--but I still say it's pretty rare in the world for nations to display guilt like that.
Germany wasn't a great colonial power, but certainly suffers guilt about its Nazi past, to the extent that most mentions of naziism or Hitler are considered "hate crimes". Compare that with the non-western Japanese take on its own World War II war crimes--no comparison.
The US wrote the book on this. We have been in a veritable orgy of self-recrimination for 40 years about ALL our past sins, seeking to make up for everything bad we've done, from instituting affirmative action, fair housing laws, cash reparations for WWII internees, special fishing rights for Indians, and every manner of qoutas and set-asides too numerous to mention. Not satisfied with our historical debt to blacks (they suffered under slavery), and Mexicans (we took a lot of their land), and Indians (no comment needed here), we've gone on to feel guilty toward the whole world, and affirmative action now covers ALL non-whites, regardless of their historical ties to the US. It's hard to imagine the "debt" America owes to Pakistanis, or Egyptians, or Sudanese. But ALL these folks are entitled to the benefits of affirmative action once here in the US. Sounds pretty "guilty" to me.
Your "we brought them here, now we have to take care of them" is debatable...I won't argue over this, but I feel it's on very "shaky ground" as an argument--makes people sound like helpless children, or unwilling indentured servants....I think it's a stretch to say we "made" them come..but I'll let that one go --for now
Lastly, the "multiculturalism won't work" part. I just finished a long rant on this on another thread--multiculturalism isn't eating at a Thai restaurant, or watching the Russian Ballet. Multiculturalism is giving the quality of "negotiability" to cultural standards that are just not negotiable. The very fact that the "illegals" are fuming about their situation now, shows that their cultural understanding of "rights" and "entitlements" is different from the gringos'. And that's a rather BENIGN cultural divide- Mexico and the US do share many commonalities, and a good many family ties. But just wait until millions of Chechnyans or Iraqis arrive here. They'll be just as "angry" as the Mexicans, and they won't be hesitant to let us know about it. And they'll probably be a lot less polite than the Mexicans, as well.
As I said before, most of us won't experience "suicide bombers"- but the little everyday things in incompatible cultures could well "do us in".
How do you live in a culture where your loyalty is to the law of the land, if your next door neighbor only recognizes family or tribal loyalties? What happens when the 35-year old guy across the street sends overseas for a 14 year-old bride? What do we do whena man wants to excercise his God-given right to beat his wife? What if his idea of justice is not calling the police (whom he mistrusts), but a revenge killing? What if a girl shames her family and they feel the need to kill her to clear their name? Do we "step in"--because, believe me, the minute we do, we'll be accused of "stepping into their private affairs" You're probably saying now, "Oh, macmeal, that's silly..of COURSE they'll change their ways when they get here"...but will they? Why should they?...who's going to insist?--and, if no one insists, will they just do it on their own?...you have more faith than I do, I guess. Ever hear of the ACLU?.....
In earlier waves of migration, immigrants were told, in no uncertain terms, "conform to our laws and standards, or ELSE." "Or else" might mean only ostracism, but could mean outright harassment or other peer pressures-- the newcomers shaped up ASAP.
That's all gone now. We DO NOT demand assimilation-anyone who wants to assimilate is free to do so--if not, though, that's cool too.
No one, certainly not me, is advocating dictating food, clothing, or music styles. However, culture is far more than these. Culture includes ethics, the duties of a citizen, the intricacies of family relationships, the relative importance of obeying the law, even something so mundane as the treatment of animals. And in today's climate of NOBODY has the right to tell ANYBODY how to live, and with the ACLU always looking for new "conquests", I simply can not see how multiculturalism could possibly work. Without some sort of insistence on OUR part, that there are things EVERYONE MUST do, period, no matter what you say your "culture" is, there would simply be chaos for a few years, after which the most aggressive culture would simply "bully" the others into submission....and presto, no more multiculturalism. It's like the old adage "If you won't take responsibility for your own situation, someone will step in and do it for you". We can be as "nice" as we want, but we MUST step up to the plate and INSIST on certain cultural "absolutes". And if these aren't acceptable, no one has to come here, The choice is yours...
Hope this answers your questions...waiting for your comments...

[MexicanGuy]

Excellent post, Macmeal.

[MexicanGuy]

Originally Posted by bily4

Why is our border so porous today? Because we need the labor and the government knows this. Poor people can't get in to our country legally today, so we definitely need to get another form of work program established.

I think the same.

[bily4]

macmeal,

Relating to the illegals fuming...first off, most of those people in these demonstrations you see are in fact legal. As for the illegals, they probably are irritated that they do a lot of work no one else cares to do for next to nothing and then get treated like trash. They get blamed for not paying taxes and then are not given an avenue to pay taxes. They are forced to go to an emergency room only when they are seriously sick because they can't just go to a doctor, and then they are yelled at for that. They may get a little tired of it after a while. I'll bet macmeal you might feel the same way.

How are millions of Chechnyans and Iraqis going to get here? Have you read how hard it is to immigrate into our country today by some of the people from England and Canada trying to get in here? This does not hold up because you present an inplausible scenario.

You pose that - Culture includes ethics, the duties of a citizen, the intricacies of family relationships, the relative importance of obeying the law, even something so mundane as the treatment of animals.

People that come to immigrate here today and manage to be allowed in do so precisely because of the opportunities our country presents for them and their families. The people that uphold our laws are composed of all the cultures that make up our society. In England the Muslim radicals that were planning bombs got turned in by their own Muslim communities, the other vast majority that just want to progress for themselves and their families. Michael Vick (allegedly) killed dogs for sport -he is a U.S. citizen. Ever see to catch a Predator? There are pedophiles of all stripes and colors caught on that show. Plenty of wife beaters, gamblers, prostitute purchasers, embezzlers that are US citizens also. Or should I say whites? Whatever... lots of bad apples anywhere you go. Our law enforcers will deal with them as appropriate. Point being that you seem to envision a scenario where we are all overrun by some as yet unnamed foreign culture that by force takes over the country from within. I suggest this is not remotely possible, even with the help of the ACLU.

[MexicanGuy]

Originally Posted by bily4

most of those people in these demonstrations you see are in fact legal. As for the illegals, they probably are irritated that they do a lot of work no one else cares to do for next to nothing and then get treated like trash. They get blamed for not paying taxes and then are not given an avenue to pay taxes. They are forced to go to an emergency room only when they are seriously sick because they can't just go to a doctor, and then they are yelled at for that. They may get a little tired of it after a while.

For every action there is a reaction; many of the negative things being said about illegal immigrants are true—or partially true—but the abovementioned points are seldom brought up here.

Originally Posted by bily4

In England the Muslim radicals that were planning bombs got turned in by their own Muslim communities, the other vast majority that just want to progress for themselves and their families. Michael Vick (allegedly) killed dogs for sport -he is a U.S. citizen. Ever see to catch a Predator? There are pedophiles of all stripes and colors caught on that show. Plenty of wife beaters, gamblers, prostitute purchasers, embezzlers that are US citizens also. Or should I say whites? Whatever... lots of bad apples anywhere you go.

This is very true, MacMeal. Besides, Latin American culture isn’t all that different from American culture; in fact, it’s very similar to other Latin cultures, like those of Spain or Italy, to name a few, and I see Italian-Americans are doing just fine in the U.S.

[MOHIllbillyWoman]

Originally Posted by MexicanGuy

This doesn’t mean that I’m against diversity or multiculturalism—it means I’m against unchecked immigration. Personally, I believe that the United States does need the cheaper labor these immigrants offer, and that immigration law should be modified to include guest worker programs and other controls, including obligatory knowledge of basic English for anyone aspiring to immigrate to America, even if it’s only for a predetermined period of time.

Just so it’s perfectly clear to you, I’m completely in favor of multiculturalism and diversity.

Fine but in all reality, true multiculturalism and diversity would be when people have assimilated and that it really would not be considered multiculturalism and/or diversity because it would have happened without much notice. That is fine but that is not how it is happening. The American people are being pushed kicking and screaming into it and that means it is not good, not is it needed.

I am against uncontrolled immigrations also but yet, you seem to think it would not be ok for us to deport all of the illegal criminals in this country. And YES, they are criminals. The break the law coming into the country illegally and then they continue to break all kinds of laws, felonies so many of them, to stay in the coun try and work illegally. So YES, they most certainly are criminals and because of that they do not show thse wonderful family values that everyone in this country tries to tell us that Mexicans are known for. If they had good family values then children would not be left in the desert to die of heat and dehydration as so many are every year. I could go on but you would probably disagree with everything I post anyway.

[Kele]

Let me make something perfectly clear. I am not against diversity in the least. If we were all completely the same, what kind of paper plate existence would that be? What I am against however, is the non-assimilation into the country and society in which a person has chosen to make their home. I am against retaining all of those things about one's homeland that made it impossible to stay there to begin with.

This article sums it up pretty well.

A Culture of Lies

The always excellent writer Theodore Dalrymple, one of the most astute observers of Britain and indeed of the Western world today, has assessed the ten years under the leadership of former PM Tony Blair. According to Dalrymple, “Many in Britain believe that he has been the worst prime minister in recent British history, morally and possibly financially corrupt, shallow and egotistical.” One of the reasons for this negative view is the rapid growth of insecurity, ironically combined with the even more rapid growth of surveillance: “The typical Briton finds himself recorded by security cameras 300 times a day does not secure him in the slightest from crime or antisocial behavior, which remain prevalent in Britain, so no one feels any safer from the terrorist threat despite the ever-increasing government surveillance.”

British citizens pay obscenely large amounts of taxes, but get less and less in return for this, except an increasingly hostile state: “The National Health Service, where bureaucracies have hugely expanded and entwined their interests so closely with those of private suppliers and consultancies that it is difficult to distinguish public from private any longer. Spending on the NHS has increased by two and a half times in the space of 10 years; yet it is hard to see any corresponding improvement in the service, other than in the standard of living of those who work in it.”

He believes the inadequacies of the state are hidden beneath a web of lies of half-truths, and by confusing the public through corrupting official statistics. Unemployment rates are artificially kept down by classifying people as sick rather than unemployed, “and thus, by a single lie, is the population, the medical profession and the government corrupted.” Likewise, crime rates are kept down by encouraging the police not to record crimes. Through such measures, “the whole of society finds itself corrupted and infantilized by its inability to talk straight.”

Dalrymple states that “We have come to expect dishonesty – of which this little lie was an example – at every level of society. The dishonesty is intellectual, moral and financial, and its root is self-interest conceived in the narrowest possible way. In modern Britain, probity is foolishness or, worse still, naivety.” He believes this corrupts the entire fabric of society: “When dignity requires illegality, there is something rotten in the state.”

The media and the authorities have been deceiving the public for decades about Multiculturalism, EU integration and the true cost of Muslim immigration. Thus a culture of lies and moral and financial corruption is cultivated. It starts at the top and spreads downwards. If the state lies, cheats and collects money for services it fails to provide, why can't average citizens do the same thing?

According to Dalrymple, “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

Polish writer Nina Witoszek warns that people who have lived under Communist regimes are struck by a strange feeling of dejá vu regarding the censorship autopilot in Western Europe: “Soon we shall all write in a decaffeinated language: We shall obediently repeat all the benign mantras such as ‘dialogue,’ ‘pluralism,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘equality.’ […] We prefer safety above freedom. This is the first step towards a voluntary bondage.”

She quotes Polish writer Czesław Miłosz, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for books such as The Captive Mind, where he explained the seductiveness of totalitarian ideology. One essay by Miłosz is titled “Ketman,” an Islamic term brought to Miłosz's attention by Arthur Gobineau, who had noticed that the dissidents in Persia had evolved a strategy of dissimulation, which involved not just keeping your mouth shut, but actively lying in every way necessary. According to Miłosz, a very similar strategy was used in Communist countries. Those practicing dissimulation felt a sense of superiority towards those who were stupid enough to state their real opinions openly.

When people who grew up in Communist societies are asked about what they hated the most about their situation, many of them will answer: The lies. This practice of systematically lying every single day, of placing no importance on the value of truth and of despising those who are stupid enough to tell their real opinions is the hallmark of totalitarian societies, and it is now spreading in the supposedly free West. This suits Muslims, accustomed to living in authoritarian societies where only fools state their true intentions, very well, but it is detrimental to any free society.

One could claim that serving the occasional lie or half-truth is the very nature of politics, since human beings frequently prefer to hear pleasant lies over unpleasant truths. Perhaps, but it becomes a serious problem when such lies have become endemic, when every political statement and media report is steeped in them and when the very structure of society will collapse if these lies are not upheld. By then, reality has been reduced to a mirage, faithfully reproduced and projected by the servants of the state on a daily basis.

Swedish journalist Kurt Lundgren wants to know the cost of mass immigration, thought by many observers to be considerable, potentially enough to unravel their famous welfare state. He asks the authorities about this, and gets the reply that no such calculations exist, although the elaborate Swedish bureaucracy has statistics readily available for just about anything else. Lundgren concludes that this is because the authorities don’t want people to know the truth.

He recalls reading a book about the GDR, the former Communist dictatorship of East Germany, and recognizes many similarities between the lies served there and the lies served in Sweden. The endemic lies in Communist countries resulted in that very few citizens believed anything they were told by the authorities, which eventually resulted in the collapse of the state. Lundgren fears something similar is about to happen in Multicultural Sweden.

On of his blog readers comments that Sweden is still decisively different from East Germany in several respects, above all that the GDR had much more police in the streets. What the two states have in common is that the authorities are enemies of their citizens. The fact that they hide the true cost of immigration is a result of this, not the cause. The reader also wonders how citizens should behave in a country where the state has become the enemy of the very people it is supposed to serve.

That is an excellent question, and one that is not limited to Britain or Sweden. It is applicable throughout Western Europe. If you are a native European, the major problem isn’t that the state is powerless; it is that the state is now actively hostile to your interests. This didn’t happen overnight, it happened gradually over many years, with Multiculturalism, mass immigration and the EU.

Why is complicated to answer. Maybe it’s because the post-national elites want to break down existing nation states through mass immigration in favor of a pan-European superstate with themselves on top, ruling disjointed nations as an authoritarian oligarchy. Maybe it’s because our media, academia and state apparatus are heavily dominated by left-wingers and Multiculturalists who hate Western civilization. Maybe it’s because we as a culture suffer from a crisis of confidence following our declining influence in the world. Or maybe it’s because the state, initially created to serve a specific people such as the Dutch, the Swedes, the British etc. has now decided that these nations no longer exist.

Consequently, the state now exists purely to maintain itself and to serve abstract, Utopian principles.

At the end of the day, the cause matters less than the result: The state is now an enemy. Giving more money to the state isn’t going to solve any problems since it’s is no longer willing or able to serve you. It is merely interested in extracting more money from you for doing less and less, and for sustaining its bureaucratic machinery through projecting the illusion that it is still there to protect the interests of its citizens. How are we going to deal with this culture of lies and a hostile state? I don’t know. But Western Europeans will have to find the answer to that question soon.

More....

A Culture of Lies | The Brussels Journal

More food for thought.

Left Illusions- David Horowitz

In his new book, "Left Illusions," David Horowitz, a former leftist who resides in the state often referred to as Mexifornia, outlines how the left has sold a multicultural bill of goods to Americans.

Attack on America’s national culture

It is a culture that is the crucial factor in shaping the American identity, not an ethnicity or race. An American identity cannot exist outside an American culture. … The left’s multicultural offensive is an attack on America’s national culture, not on its racial or ethnic composition. "Inclusion" and "diversity" are not the real agendas of the left - America has always honored both principles, however imperfectly. The idea of the melting pot is an American idea. The left, however, has never been interested in a “melting pot” that would assimilate diversity ethnicities into an American culture.

The Ugly Anti-American

As an example, America is the only nation whose P.C.-minded citizens and media regularly malign their own nation. Though the French, Germans and others have no problem with proclaiming their countries’ superiority over everyone else, Americans who do so are labeled as bigoted, arrogant, ugly Americans. Europeans take pride in their countries and in viewing them as superior; politically correct Americans heap contempt upon ours and agree with the Europeans.

More:

'Left Illusions,' Part Three: How Multiculturalism Is Devouring America

[happyappy]

Originally Posted by Kele

Let me make something perfectly clear. I am not against diversity in the least. If we were all completely the same, what kind of paper plate existence would that be? What I am against however, is the non-assimilation into the country and society in which a person has chosen to make their home. I am against retaining all of those things about one's homeland that made it impossible to stay there to begin with.

This article sums it up pretty well.

A Culture of Lies

[snip]

In America it’s the far right (neoconservatives) that would be “post-national elites [who] want to break down existing nation states through mass immigration in favor of a [North American Union] superstate with themselves on top, ruling disjointed nations [such as Canada, America, and Mexico] as an authoritarian oligarchy.” And they have designs that go much further and farther than North America.

I wish you hadn’t mentioned David Horowitz, in my opinion the only slightly less caustic version of Ann Coulter. What a team of “liberal” haters. Neither of them bothers to clearly specify a differentiation between far-lefters and moderates. They don’t bother to do it because they are far-righters and they don’t want anyone to notice that they are—different, in my opinion.

The immigration issue is political in the minds of the extremists of both the left and right. In the middle are those of us who understand the damage that will be done to America by massive immigration, legal or illegal, and it goes FAR beyond any political issue.

Diversity good. Multi-culturalism bad. Overpopulation deadly.