I embrace all cultures. If the Irish want to drink green beer and have a St. Patrick’s Day parade — let them. Likewise, I support Cinco de Mayo festivals, and have no problem with the Scots’ Tartan Day (April 6). I have no more problem with Muslims fasting during Ramadan than I have with Christians giving up meat for Lent. Moreover, I feel no more threatened by a group of Arab men sitting in a Brooklyn café smoking their hookah pipes than I do by a group of Italian men playing bocce ball in a Brooklyn park.
People who choose to live in America should be welcome to keep many of the attributes of the culture they or their ancestors left behind. It adds to the color and vibrancy that make America a wonderful and interesting place in which to live. By all means, bring your culture — your art, your songs, your literature, your food. America will take it all and integrate it into a greater and ever more distinctively American culture.
But leave your civilization behind.
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Although the terms culture and civilization are often used interchangeably, there is a distinct difference. Within Western Europe, for instance, there are dozens of distinct cultures (Italian, French, Irish, etc.), but all of them reside within a single Western civilization. Similarly, the vast American melting pot is home to hundreds of intermingled cultures. What allows these myriad cultures to coexist on generally peaceful terms is that most of their adherents accept the basic tenets of Western civilization. When this is lost, everything else goes.
Foremost among these tenets is respect for the rights, freedoms, and property of all individuals. Although last week’s riots in Britain were not blamed on any one cultural group, they did represent a general fraying of civilization’s social compact. I am not going to try to explain what caused Britain’s riots. There are thousands of sociologists only too eager to offer explanations for the indefensible behavior of thousands of British youths. What is obvious, however, is that the spread of multiculturalism has weakened the governing classes’ ability to cope with attacks on the very underpinnings of our civilization. Convinced that no culture is superior to another, they are equally convinced that no civilization is better than any other. It is but a short step from this point to seeing nothing worth defending in the civilization that has nourished us to greatness.
The British rioters were not possessed of any noble goals. Rather, their fixed purpose was to destroy or take the property of others. And they were prepared to use violence, up to and including murder, to accomplish that. But what is truly troubling is the fact that Britain’s political leaders allowed them to get away with it for five full days. Worse, many commentators, while condemning the violence, told us in the very next sentence that, given the socioeconomic conditions of the rioters, their anger was understandable. No, it was not. And even if their anger were understandable, their actions would still be wrong.
In any viable civilization the state has one function that supersedes all others: to protect the rights, property, and lives of its citizens. If it cannot accomplish that task, it has no reason to exist. The British government, which spends about half of the nation’s entire GDP, appears ready to undertake every task except the one for which it was created. It now does so much of the trivial that it is incapable of accomplishing the most basic task of any government: to defend its citizens. In some regards we in America are not far behind. Our government is willing to regulate the minutest details of our daily lives, but is incapable of producing a budget that will not bankrupt the nation.
In a just society the state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence. Although Americans are generally permitted to arm themselves for self-defense, the assumption is that the need to use their weapons will remain rare. Of course, if the U.S. government abdicates its raison d’être, the average American is much better prepared to defend his life and property than the average Briton. For the most part, though, Americans count on the state to protect them from violence, even if it has to meet violence with violence.
Mark Twain said that America was the only country you could come to shed old prejudices and develop a new set of intolerances.
My forbears were dirty redskin savages and red hairy transvestites wearing dresses. Ye Kennot Be No Scots ere ye Got the Brogue Mon. Ye seen any gut DonneyBrooks Lately Laddie?
I basically agree with most of what you say with some qualifications. You say that:
“In its place must be substituted a strong belief in unfettered democracy (of the people, by the people, and for the people), human dignity, equal rights, and the freedom of the individual.” Yes, and it sure would help if they extended all these beliefs to people beyond their tribe, beyond their immediate-in group; i.e., that they believed in loving their enemies, like Judaism & Christianity teaches; and agreed that there is a realm of conscience and a right to speak that the State has no business interfering in. Because the problem with Islam is that they want all those things for the followers of Mohammed, but not for anyone else. In fact, it would help if those people who choose to come to America converted to Judaism or Christianity. Because the track record of other cultures is that they rarely if ever extend those beliefs to people outside of their tribe.
“I feel no more threatened by a group of Arab men sitting in a Brooklyn café smoking their hookah pipes than I do by a group of Italian men playing bocce ball.” Really? After 9/11 and the videos showing its celebration, thousands of lone-wolf attacks across the globe with hundreds in the US, the blood-curdling oppressive passages in the Koran, the hundreds of churches, cities and countries sacked by Islam for 1,000 years after Mohammed – and those Italian boys at the bocce court worry you about the same?
“None of them required a basic Western Civ course, not even for history majors.” It was all too easy for the book-scholars who should have known better to be cowed by the guilt thrown at them by liberals. And so the intellectuals have given up their birthright and left it to the People to safeguard.
“Americans count on the state to protect them from violence.” I agree that there’s a generalized belief that the cops may contain and possibly put the hammer down on the sections of a town or city where crime is rampant, i.e., where the young men are feral, having been raised only by mothers, without fathers to curb their behavior. But as to personal protection, I don’t think they do. A majority I believe count on the cops to arrive 10 minutes late; and know that you can’t sue the cops if they fail to stop a thug from hurting you. Adults who’ve paid any attention know that they’re on their own – most people just assume it won’t happen to them if they’re not in the wrong places at the wrong times.
'As I see it, the reason the British elites and the country’s ruling class failed to act was that too many of them are convinced that their civilization is no longer worth defending'
I appreciate your passionate position but it may be a bit too harsh. England, and the EU countries have only recently had to address the problems of immigration, thus multiculturalism on a larger scale (excepting the extraordinary wartime experience) unlike the USA which was founded on and lived this reality. If I may suggest, they assumed (tragically) that somehow it would all sort itself out. A belief in the tenets of western civilization (as you briefly outlined) have not been forsaken, but a reinvigoration of those beliefs will be much anticipated,
I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but what can be said about ending the study of Western Civilization in our schools of higher learning- even for History majors? Surely, you cringe at this PC-driven erosion of the study of the foundation of our civilization. Is there any wonder that most, including our federal government, have no real understanding of our Constitution? And we know what has replaced the study of Western Civ... When viewed in that context, it really is not surprising that we are living in an antisocial culture. If there is no sense of shared heritage (even as to our civilization)and no leadership to encourage this knowledge,then chaos rules. Thomas Jefferson said it best- The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. In the present day, it is hard to determine what our citizenry believes or understands "liberty" to mean. And sadly, no wonder.
I don't think we can blame the recent aversion to Western Civ that some in our elite class have developed on immigrants.
This is self-hatred pure and simple.
It is pernicious and it needs to be driven out of the public discourse.
If you want to hate your civilization, that's fine. But we must no longer let the self-haters determine the course for society.
This will work in the USA, where many people still love our country, our traditional values, and our civilization.
I don't know what's to be done about Britain, however. Any land that has put as much effort into empowering its criminal class, and disempowering its law abiding citizens, even punishing them for defending their own lives and property; well, I am starting to think they may be doomed.
Maybe the Queen can do something about this, otherwise I don't know.
Western civilization has been under assault politically since Woodrow Wilson, but it's full frontal now with a true Alinskyite at the controls. The road back will cover many generations, so we either fight the tyranny of the elites or slowly submit to serfdom.
The ruling class hasn't necessarily given up on their percieved underlings. They have simply become so morally bankrupt that sharia seems like a viable strategy for ultimate power.
"Though we acknowledge that Affirmative Action exists in opposition to the U.S. Constitution; we do not believe the American citizenry can handle the U.S. Constitution as it is written at this time."
Sandra Day O'Connor
Simply put; the loyal opposition as been protected from our values by individual’s embedded into seats of power by like minded opponents of the American experience.
Circumstances led me to a same-sex marriage in California a few years back where I discovered that 60% of the judges working that Saturday were same-sex enthusiasts. The powers that be are tirelessly working to destroy us from the inside; cancer perpetuates itself.
When the land goes back to the Native Americans, then I'll believe all the pep talk about property rights. When involuntary servitude (otherwise known as Selective Service) is abolished, then I'll believe the pep talk about individuals rights (and maybe even gender equality, too).
Until then, the last time I checked the foundation of Western Civilizaton was based on organized religion, that is, Christianity in its high-church manifestations. Maybe that time has passed. But a foundation based on rights? Only to the extent that (until about the late 19th century) when the Europeans wanted to fight, they claimed it was their right.
Gosh, even the Norman Conquest of England was asserted as a right.
The concepts of isonomia (equality before the law) and isogoria (freedom of assembly) were established in Athenian Greece, arguably the bedrock polity of Western Civilization.
Multiculturalism goes hand in hand with political correctness, and both were created by Marxists from the Frankfurt School as a way to instill communism/Marxism in America where they weren't able to use the poor as their route to power. Cultural Marxism is a plague throughout Western Civilization, and we are seeing its results on the streets of London, Philadelphia and most recently Milwaukee. I believe these warnings of things to come should be a part of the 2012 election. Let's see if any candidate has the gumption to ask the USA if that's the future we want.
If enslavement to politically correct overlords is Western Civilization's inevitable telos, then the answer is, no, Western Civilization shouldn't survive. Moreover, it cannot survive. However, I'm unconvinced that this slavery is inevitable. We have experienced a better way. The task is to recoup it.
Simply demand that all muslim women wear full burqas. Pass a law to that effect. The burqa will become an unpopular symbol of English civilization's oppression of muslim women and they will march down the street without burqas in open defiance of the law.
