I’m a little curious as why the OP, who IIRC is Swedish and lives in that country, is citing a right wing American think tank. According to the Wikipedia article, on a scale of 1 to 8 ranging from left to right respectively, the Hudson Institute ranks 7. I’m trying to look at the Dutch government’s “covering letter”, as the Hudson writer puts it, but for some reason Starbucks’ wi-fi isn’t allowing me to pull up any of the links in the article.
I thought it’s been several years since The Netherlands set forth a policy of encouraging immigrants to integrate into the prevailing Dutch culture, among other things requiring newcomers to learn Dutch, and advising them to stay away if they could not reconcile themselves to the free-ranging cultural environment of the country. Today’s statement seems to be little more than a reconfirming of that statement.
Canada has “two separate cultures” . . . permanently . . . and despite the occasional Gallic fussing, it works amazingly, at least seen from down here; against all odds, there does seem to be a Canadian national identity that transcends the divide. Not saying that’s a model for all to copy, only that anyone who tries to scare us with the prospect should bear in mind that that is the shape of the boogeyman.
If this was true, and if it was as simple, Sweden would have gone down the drain a long time ago; for decades Sweden has been extremely generous to immigrants, from the early '70 and still is. But instead, Sweden is going like a freight train. And with a population growing older and older, Sweden will probably thanks to its immigration do much much better than for instance Finland, who has virtually none. But naturally this demands that immigrants get work, and that is the great challange. – Personally I think that Sweden needs to limit the numbers right now, simply because of the risks you are describing; I recognize the risks. But that is one thing, what the Swedish Democrats or the bloke with the blog quoted to earlier, is fundamentally another.
So you may not have intended it Sam but you threw out the RCMP/Sikh issue (resolved 21 years ago) as a failure of multiculturalism.
What is highlights in my opinion is the exact opposite. It’s an example of integration and adaptation of traditions into a new things. The RCMP headgear tradition excluded Canadians from serving. The tradition adapted, became more inclusive and we moved on. This strikes me a substantially different from the European experience where it seems to have been built around either segregating groups or excluding them due to tradition and the weight of history.
From a high level you could say America opted for assimilation, Europe for segregation and Canada for adaptation.
And the sharia law issue was hashed out years ago as a simple expansion of faith-based arbitration. The Sharia panic was a post 9/11 over reaction wrapped inside a concern for “subjected women”. Instead of wailing over Sharia law creeping into our lives we’d be better off debating the validity of free agents agreeing to arbitration within a religious framework or whether or not the state has any place in that discussion out side the rights all citizens have as Canadians.
A viewpoint that conflicts with being a “Western Cultural supremacist”. Among other things, that means hating everyone who isn’t a white male Christian.
:rolleyes: