Ah, the old “foreigners are subhuman” routine.
And opposing bilingual education isn’t “brave”.
Subhuman foreigners right here!
That site has quite a bit of interesting background on all those Subhuman Foreigners…
Polls are fun! Gallup is good, but getting another mainstream pollster’s results is always edifiying. Zogby’s take (as published by Forbes):
Which is an interesting contrast to how a majority of Americians view them:
Still, a mixed bag. Those who actually know someone who is Muslim are much less likely to have such a negative view, and a majority do believe that most Muslim Americans are patriotic.
And this answers a question from earlier. You really should distrust any group that places being American behind their religious identity.
It’s been a couple of days, and I’ve provided a searchable online cite for God, Jews and History. A retraction or a quote would be nice.
Or my pony.
Its interesting, and nobody has answered that question yet. The impression that the Swiss are truly neutral takes a hit if true, but…hey, its their country.
Yes!
I haven’t read Roth’s book, but certainly different populations have different average traits http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7265/full/461726a.html. For instance, if you switched all the children in Singapore with the children in Jamaica, those countries would be radically different in 20 years. For starters, Singapore would produce a lot more top sprinters.
Well you can keep asking until you at least get a little hoarse. That’s almost a pony.
Sorry.
I’m trying to point out that in the long run your attitude is self-defeating. The survivability of a culture in which large numbers of people held attitudes similar to yours would be severely impaired, and would likely be shouldered aside by competing cultures. It is simply irrational to expect people not to prefer their own culture to others.
Well, you seem to be saying that all values are nothing but arbitrary prejudices instilled by culture, and yet at the same time you seem to believe that your values in this matter obviously should be preferred by everyone. That’s an awfully weak position to be preaching from.
(shrug) You hate poor whites. Not surprising. Lefties generally do.
Yeah, protecting one’s culture can be a lot of things besides beating up people, which we’ll all agree is unacceptable. I’m not a laissez-faire guy; while it’s tempting to say that cultures will persist or perish on their own merits, that’s not how it really works. And unlike Malthus who believes multiculturalism is the [post=13464736]default, laissez-faire state[/post] of diverse societies, I believe it’s possible to say that multiculturalist policies themselves often have the proactive goal of preserving cultural diversity.
I know Canadians tend to think their society is much more multicultural than the US (which in turn is supposedly more melting-pot-like), and take this to be a great source of pride in their country. But to my eyes, both countries are mostly similar in terms of their cultural diversity policies, and both of them have citizens who favour more diversity and others who favour more integration. Do you have examples that make you say the US is more of a melting pot?
I don’t have any problem at all with headscarves, which are just a cultural fashion accessory. On the other hand, burqas or other full-face veils are, in my opinion, incompatible with Western cultures. By their very nature, they are a separation between the wearer and outside society. Why should I have to accept the presence of someone who, by all their actions, rejects all aspects of being part of society?
This said, I don’t believe actually banning the burqa serves any positive purpose. Women who would have worn them outside will instead stay at home and be even more isolated from society. I just don’t think it should be seen as necessary to actively accommodate burqa-wearing women, say, by letting them vote without uncovering themselves in places where showing your face is required to vote, or by ensuring that if they ever have to remove their veil to identify themselves, they can always do it in front of a woman. This, in my mind, would be an unreasonable imposition on the host society.
As for sharia law, I believe the law should be the same for all residents of a jurisdiction. Even if we’re only speaking of theoretically voluntary binding arbitration, one society should have one law. And I extend this to all alternate law codes, not just sharia-based law.
I think Canon Law only affects private proceedings inside the Catholic Church, not cases that would otherwise be the purview of civil or criminal law. If Catholic priests accused of crimes were tried by ecclesiastic tribunals instead of criminal courts (this was the case in some places in the past), then of course I would condemn it.
But yet, they definitely don’t live in the same way in NYC than they would in this country you say they’re from. They may keep elements of the culture of their ancestors, but they’re New Yorkers first, culturally speaking.
Language is definitely an important part of integration. It’s not really possible to be part of a society if you cannot communicate with members of this society in their language. But what your professor might not realise is that this common ground does not require “fluency in one of the two official languages (preferably English)”, as you say, but fluency in the main common language in the part of Canada that is under consideration. In theory, this could even be a non-official language.
Thanks.
Well, it’s certainly immigration that brings into contact different and sometimes incompatible cultures, so of course this is what will bring about discussions of multiculturalism. The US and Canada are not immune to these debates either.
I’d agree that this is what happens in Toronto in most cases, which is why Torontonians tend not to see multiculturalism as a concern. For them it “works” and it eventually leads to integration. But in other cases more proactive integrationist policies may be required.
There’s a lot of talk in this thread about how people have no right to expect their culture to be protected or preserved. I think it’s usually those people whose culture is not threatened who hold this kind of talk. They do not fear because they have nothing to fear.
Consider as an example the Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia for example. While they were part of the Soviet Union, many Russians moved there, and since independence these countries have tried to promote their national language and identity, with many ethnic Russian residents even losing their citizenship because of these policies. It seems harsh, and perhaps it is, but I cannot fault the Latvians and Estonians for taking matters in their own hands and trying to keep their identity alive in their countries against a much more powerful neighbour. As I’ve said at the beginning of this post, I’m not a laissez-faire guy.
See, that is where I disagree.
Admittedly, Stalin (and other Communist leaders, but he was the worst) moved ethnic folk about, specifically for the purpose of breaking up ethnic nationalities and making things easier for his empire.
However, that does not mean that the people so moved ought to be deprived of their civil and human rights, decades later after Stalin and even the empire he committed his crimes for are history. They were generally unwilling victims of Stalinist policies as well.
[As an aside, my wife’s Ukrainian relations were both victim and participant of Stalin’s schemes - they survived the Ukranian famines by a miracle, and WW2, only to be moved, on Stalin’s orders, into what is now part of Poland to replace displaced Ethnic Germans … it would seem to lack justice to deprive them of citizenship decades later for not being ‘ethnically correct’]
Seems to me that lands don’t have, or should not have, rights - people do. Imposing retroactive ethnic purity on a country to restore it to some kind of historic norm is the sort of attitude that started much of the whole WW2 mess in the first place.
Well, I have news for you. It’s only happening in western countries. Millions of Americans and Europeans are not flooding legally and illegally into third world countries. Countries like Mexico, India and China are very, very strict about controlling immigration. Only western nations are expected to share their homelands with alien races and cultures from all around the world and to be indifferent to their own survival. You mean to say that doesn’t seem even a little strange to you?
Human nature places some very severe restraints on what can reasonably be expected of human beings. Try all you might, you can only repress such instincts as ethnocentrism, tribalism and territoriality for so long. Sooner or later, one way or another, they will always re-emerge. It is foolish to believe that you can somehow train people never to have such thoughts and feelings, and laughably foolish to believe that you are yourself somehow immune to them.
I already work with people from all sorts of backgrounds and get along with them quite nicely, thank you.
Do you maintain the same scorn for your run of the mill agoraphobic who avoid being out in public?
How do you know any given person “rejects all aspects of being part of society?” Again, there are absolutely no restriction on what veiled women do in single-sex environments. That woman in a burqa may well be doing a number of civic activities that you know nothing about. There is more to society than just walking around outside.
You really think Germany, France, and the US are in danger of perishing? You think the US is in somehow in peril because the DMV prints pamphlets in Chinese? You think people are moving to these places because they want to destroy western culture, or because they want to be part of it?
Have a little faith in the culture you claim to love. It’ll be just fine.
Have you ever been outside the country?!? In Mexico, India and China you can eat at McDonalds, watch Hollywood movies in the major theaters, listen to Lady Gaga at every other dance club and attend English-language universities.
Do you know where you can grab a sandwich at Dicos? Does Harvard run engineering classes in Spanish? Do you have a favorite Shahrukh Kahn movie? Do you know where to dance the night away to J Cheo hits?
The idea that the West has some special burden of absorbing other cultures is obscenely inaccurate. Our culture, language and media permeates every single corner of this earth outside of Sentinel island.
If you decided you wanted to spend the rest of your life in Delhi, Shanghai or Merida you would have no problem once you secured a job. Your average Indian, Chinese or Mexican can make no such claim about the US. Their chances of getting here even with employable skills are actually quite literally like winning the lottery,
If you think that countries like Mexico & India have effective border controls, you’re living in some strange universe.
Did I not read, in any case, that most Central Americans emigrating to the USA are Guatemalans, Hondurans, etc. passing through this supposed fearsome strict control?
Alien races and cultures? Alien?!?
My what a phrase. Unfortunately there are only a few words for this kind of thinking.
I’m not excluding the middle at all. Rather, I’m illustrating the point with extremes, while acknowledging the middle. The point is that we should make objectionable behaviors themselves illegal, without bringing culture into it. Beating your wife is objectionable; we should outlaw that without mentioning Sharia law in the process. Celebrating a holiday, however corny or commercialized, is unobjectionable; we should keep that legal, unlike those cultural preservationist thugs in Saudi Arabia.
That principle suffices, I think, for everything in the middle. Is speaking Spanish inherently objectionable–that is, does it hurt anyone? No, so it’s legal. Does wearing nose rings, Nazi tattoos, t-shirts that mock gay people, leather jackets with flaming skulls, or burqas hurt people? No, so it’s legal. Does severely beating a child as a form of discipline hurt people? Yes, so it’s illegal. We don’t need to talk about whether the person beating their child is doing so because of some proverb in the Bible, or whether the person wearing a Nazi tattoo is doing so because of an adoration for Hitler. All we need to know is whether the act is causing harm.
Some types of cultural preservation are a little subtler, namely, when we’re talking about putting limits on government behavior, e.g., whether the government should limit transactions to one language. In such cases, we should consider the point of the government behavior, and the point of the proposed limit.
I can certainly see deciding that my hometown won’t keep a full-time Greek translator on staff: the expense of this endeavor wouldn’t be justified by the payoff, given the miniscule Greek immigrant population in my town. It makes total sense to have some folks fluent in Spanish, Ukrainian, and Moldovan on staff, though, sense we have such large immigrant populations from those areas: the expense of keeping those folks on staff would be justified by the government’s ability to conduct business with those communities.
And yes, the immigrants could struggle to learn English. A lot of them would fail, but we could make their lives miserable for failing. To what end?
If the end is to make them drop their own culture, that’s absurd: such policies never work, and anyway making people drop their own culture isn’t a legitimate government interest, as I said above.
Yes. Although, not quite as bad. Canon Law has modernised significantly with Vatican II and aligned itself more with secular humanist values. In contrast to Sharia, for instance, the testimony of a woman is worth more than half that of a man’s. In it’s current incarnation it doesn’t pose the threat to civil liberties that Sharia does. Still, I don’t consider it beneficial and if it didn’t exist I wouldn’t invent it, and I’d try to stop anyone who did.
Well this gets a big W.T.F. Do you really not see the distinction between people working voluntarily on their own time to improve the lot of others and working professionally to establish a parallel legal system? Here’s a hint: One of them emphatically doesn’t violate anyone’s civil rights and doesn’t infringe on people’s property or liberty just because they were foolish enough to have been born a woman.
Yes. The existence of organisations like the Beth Din are uncomfortable reminders that a minority of Jews refuse to fully integrate with British society. I genuinely don’t understand your reasoning. Just because we are unfortunate enough to have found ourselves encumbered with one legislative body which effectively facilitates the self-segregation of a minority group within British society, we ought to allow for the establishment of more?
We shouldn’t be saying “Oh well, the Jews have their Beth Din so let the Muslims have their Sharia”. We should be saying “Hell no!” to Sharia and also “While we’re at it, let’s dismantle the Beth Din as well, and let those people who don’t like it vote with their feet and resettle somewhere more accommodating of their religious foibles”.
That said, it should be noted that there are only about 250,000 Jews in Britain, and only a very small minority are orthodox to the point where they would consider utilising the Beth Din for the purposes of arbitration. There are, by contrast, over three million Muslims in Britain and we know from the ISIS poll cited earlier that 40% of them support the introduction of Sharia. The impact of Sharia would be much, much larger.
And you wear this all the time? In all weathers? Every single time you leave the house? And there are no potential consequences if you choose to take it off? No? Didn’t think so.
Besides, it’s not the general act of covering up which is the problem. It’s the specific message imparted by the Niqab which you so helpfully outlined in your previous post. Your hoodie doesn’t imply that I’m intellectually or spiritually unfit to look at you.
Now you’re just being silly. People get tinted windows because they think they look good. They’re wrong, but that’s generally why they do it. As misguided as they may be, they’re not trying to imply anything about one’s spiritual health or ability to control one’s impulses.
Agoraphobics are unwell. I feel sorry for them.
Hey, cover yourself as much as you want. I don’t give a shit. Just make sure you do it in such a way that it doesn’t imply I’m a lascivious sex fiend who needs protecting from myself and we’ll be cool. Of course, as we all know, some Muslim women don’t have a choice in the matter. Which is an even greater problem.
In other words, the Niqab sends a stark and unfriendly message. I’m glad to see we agree on this point.
The point you consistently miss is that the Niqab is a strictly utilitarian garment. The function, as it turns out, is to remind everyone in sight of the crucial importance of adhering to Allah’s edicts on modesty and sexual ettiquette, whether they’re Muslim or not. Can you really not see how this might rub people the wrong way?
I agree. It is a non-issue, especially compared to the far more serious issue indicated in the poll I cited earlier. In the post where I brought it up, I did so only as a side issue. That 40% of British born Muslims want to establish a bigoted parallel legal system is a far more pressing problem than whether some women want to wear the Niqab or not.
Well, firstly, I live in the Whitechapel area of central London, so I see Niqabs every day. Secondly, although I view the Niqab as a barrier to smooth integration into British society, I never said that it couldn’t be overcome. The problem, as I see it, is that while Muslim women who wear the Niqab may still be able to successfully integrate in British society, they will do in spite of it.
I didn’t make up a life story for anybody. All I did was explain what I thought the Niqab represented. Your helpful correction notwithstanding, the central point remains. To wear a niqab in 21st century secular Britain is to make several very unflattering assumptions about one’s fellow citizens.
I flat out don’t care. You’ve already explained that the niqab’s purpose is to prevent women from arousing lustful thoughts in men. Now, in Britain, where a guiding principle is that everyone deserves to be treated equally, a garment which specifically communicates a belief that women are temptresses and men can’t be trusted around them is bound to cause offence. Such offence is bound to present a barrier to integration.
That’s absolutely correct. Communities who don’t want to integrate do get derided. This is not something that anybody wants, least of all me. But it is incumbent on the minority to integrate, even if that means sacrificing some ideals that are unacceptable to the host culture. In the case of the undeniably sexist Sharia, it’s unreasonable to expect fair minded Britons to turn a blind eye and allow such antidiluvian practises in their midst.
The shock and horror many appear to experience when learning of private religious arbitration gets a big “WTF?” from me, and always did.
Outside of areas of law where private arbitration may be inherently dubious for equitable reasons (like family law), it is an absolute non-issue. Who cares what system of dispute resolution some people build into their contracts?
Private arbitration has been around for years in various forms, and the “religious” variety is really no different from any other.
“Protecting your culture” in this context is just a noble sounding way of saying “force everyone else to live like we do”. If you are going to force people to live according to your culture, then it does mean beating people up (or worse) or threatening to do so. Otherwise they won’t do it. You need force and lots of it.
Really, all this terror in places like Britain or America of the (impoverished and minority) Evil Muslims relentlessly forcing their culture on everyone is an example of psychological projection at its finest. It’s something feared by people who themselves are obsessed with forcing everyone else to live and speak as they do, so they convince themselves that the funny talking guy working at the local fast food joint is trying to do the same to them.