Ever since they invented it back in the Nineties, I’ve thought Australia’s “Harmony Day” was one of the most creepily totalitarian names for a public holiday in a free society. In The Australian, an old China hand, Dan Ryan, offers his own view of where all this “harmony” is leading:
Attempts by the government to try to build its idea of harmony will almost always trend towards restricting freedom of speech or narrowing the parameters of debate. Increasingly governments in the West seem to believe the need to preserve some ill-defined sense of harmony trumps any individual right to forthrightly discuss controversial subject matter.
From Ottawa (Mark Steyn), and Vienna (Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff) to Amsterdam (Geerts Wilders) and Melbourne (Andrew Bolt), prominent journalists and politicians are put on trial not because they have breached any traditional, narrowly defined limits on free speech (defamation, incitement to violence, breach of national security) but because they have criticised or drawn unwelcome attention to some important cultural, religious or ethnic problem that should rightfully be subject to debate.
In the interests of a specious social “harmony”, the state in Britain, Canada, Australia, and Europe has grown increasingly comfortable with restraining and shriveling core western values: As Anthony Daniels wrote the other day, “Everyone must conform in the name of diversity.“
I used to think the land of the First Amendment would prove immune to this trend. But, given the way every other bad idea from the Rest of the West – multiculturalism, government health care – has taken root here, I’m no longer so sanguine.
MyKu:
Harmony cannot
work if everybody is
singing the same note.
----------------------
There are times to keep the peace at all costs. For example, when I get home from work, I fully expect about 15-30 minutes of decompression time. During that period, I don't want to hear about stuff like insurance claims that were denied, my daughter getting bit in daycare, or the latest drama about my wife's idiotic sisters.
It just makes good sense. However, if we were to operate in that mode 24/7, a family we would not be.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, unless we do amend the constitution (who knows, really?), I'm thinking of anti-smoking as a metaphor. You don't have to outlaw the thing itself, just attack it on every other level. Which brings us to "civility" and community policing. Those flags have already been planted on that soil, including a Supreme Court justice who supports considering other nation's laws and publicly speculates on the possible propriety of restricting speech here to avoid enraging lunatics 10,000 miles away in Pakistan. Kind of like third-hand smoke (which is a term being used these days).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI give a hearty "Seig Heil!" to efforts to enforce harmony.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSince the founding, America has always been a lagging indicator in the West. The trouble is our rulers have convinced us we are cutting edge. As a consequence we embrace stupid, self-defeating fads just when the rest of the West is discovering the stupidity of those fads.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Everyone must conform in the name of diversity."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOn another comment thread this morning, someone recalled the words of Churchill regarding Chamberlain's administration: "decided not to decide, resolved to be irresolute.." It is remarkable how often lefty memes seem to invoke violoation of the Principle of Non-Contradiction. It is also evidence of the contradiction at its core, which is, of course, that of moral relativism. Whenever one posits that there is no Truth, he should be asked this: is what he just said true?
Game, set, match.
Question: Is racial/religious/cultural diversity, and the felt need to prevent criticism of it, so powerful that it could drive an essentially free and pluralistic society all the way to totalitarianism? If so, then said diversity is the death watch beetle of liberal democracy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think we exported "multiculturalism", but other than that I agree on everything.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseContradiction indeed -- the enforcers of multiculti can rarely decide whether they are a) summarily leveling the stature of all discrete identity groups or b) choosing certain favored groups to be "more equal" than others.
Since the former is so impractical as to be impossible (as the American Founders knew, saying as much in their debates on how to control factions), multiculti very rapidly degenerates into the latter: group A is free to hurl vicious invective, group B must sit down and shut up.
Thus does the enforcer frequently look up from his work and state "it's good to be the king."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's beyond my comprehension how some people believe speech they don't want to hear is evil while simultaneously not realizing the true evil in restricting speech. Furthermore, many also seem to believe in some sort of superstition where if they hear no evil then there will be no evil, like it just magically disappears.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Ever since they invented it back in the Nineties, I’ve thought Australia’s 'Harmony Day' was one of the most creepily totalitarian names for a public holiday in a free society."
-try "Department of Homeland Security"; posterized it would include a braided blond jungfrau in a laced-bodice peasant dress strolling amid the edelweiss.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, as long as we have a Left we will import dopey ideas from other western countries. Our left is the breach in our firewall.
It really is too bad that we don't have agreement on basic principles in this country, because then the whole conservative-liberal paradigm would be a healthy thing. Like it would be nice to have agreement that our traditional melting pot is the right approach to integrating other cultures: then we could work towards tweaking that approach to perfection. But no, the lefties want multiculturalism, which can't work and which is irreconcilable with the melting pot, so we have to have this battle. And it's going to be tough to hold the line because Americans - like most westerners - are basically nice people, and at the superficial level the melting pot does not seem nice while multiculti does.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrom Yevgenii Zamyatin's "We":
Record Two
Keywords: Ballet. Quadratic Harmony. X.
[...]
And then I thought to myself: why? Is this beautiful? Why is this dance beautiful? The answer: because it is non-free movement, because the whole profound point of this dance lies precisely in its absolute, aesthetic subordination, its perfect non-freedom. If indeed our our ancestors were prone to dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then all this can only mean one thing: the instinct for non-freedom.
(Natasha Randall translation)
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,"
A little melodramatic? Tell that to those who have lost loved ones to sudden jihad syndrome.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"try 'Department of Homeland Security'; posterized it would include a braided blond jungfrau in a laced-bodice peasant dress strolling amid the edelweiss."
Now that's propaganda I can get behind.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not 'diversity'. It's divisity.
Never use the enemy's language.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt works this way: Freedom of speech and of assembly is protected when idiots burn the flag, or picket a fallen hero's funeral. Not protected when you disagree with The Left's pet beliefs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRight up there with Lord Summerisle's Harvest Festival Day.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe most current form of this nonsense floating around the U.S. are the anti-bullying laws that are proposed and in some cases passed into law. New Jersey's new anti-bullying law creates penalties for schools that fail to stop bullying (most of which is name calling). So now when one child calls another an unkind name, the target of this name calling can run to their teacher or principal and start the wheels of justice. In time any form of criticism of our precious children will be viewed as bullying. And like other PC measures that restrict speech in the name of harmony or diversity, everyone is afraid to say that these laws are just plain stupid. Hell, even Chris Christy signed the law into effect.
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