Mark:
You are of course right about Egypt. The progress of events there in fact tells us something large and horrible about the modern world, something I’ve been trying to get a handle on for a few years.
In particular regard to Egypt, I think I came away clutching a handful of the beast’s fur in the opening of my piece on Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet in the current issue of The New Criterion.
My piece includes this quote from Michael Haag’s 2004 book Alexandria, City of Memory, a survey of that city’s literary life in the first half of the 20th century. Durrell’sQuartet is set in the cosmopolitan — diverse! — Alexandria of the late 1930s and WW2 years. Here an older Durrell is revisiting the city in 1977 for a TV documentary:
The city seemed to him listless and spiritless, its harbor a mere cemetery, its famous cafés no longer twinkling with music and lights. “Foreign posters and advertisements have vanished, everything is in Arabic; in our time film posters were billed in several languages with Arabic subtitles, so to speak.” His favourite bookshop, Cité du Livre on the Rue Fuad, had gone, and in others he found a lamentable stock. All about him lay “Iskandariya,” the uncomprehended Arabic of its inhabitants translating only into emptiness.
Counterintuitively, for some reason I have not been able to figure out, modernity and diversity are antithetical. A few well-advertised horrors notwithstanding, it seems to have been easier in premodern times for different peoples to live together at close quarters, in large numbers. Or perhaps it’s just easier today for them to separate.
In defiance of which (supposing I am right), our cultural and political elites will go on believing that the U.S.A. can take in any numbers of people from anywhere at all without negative consequences.
I confidently predict, for example, that we shall soon be opening our arms in welcome to eight million Egyptian Copts.
I see more than a little irony in our affluent youth's mimicry of the Arab Spring. In the MidEast, a risky Spring was necessary to go against a dictatorial, militarized and autocratic system that did not allow for votes or a free voice. In America, our youth are so determined to copy that radical chic, they've forgotten they've already been blessed with the things young Arabs, Libyans and Iranians risked their lives for.
The occupiers of Wall Street already have freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to criticize their government, and the freedom to vote. They don't need an Arab Spring, they just need to roll up their sleeves, work, and take advantage of their abundant freedoms to organize politically to get their voice and influence heard in an already democratic system. They betray a deformed, innaccurate view of America in their signs and speeches that doesn't speak well of our educational system.
They've idealized the Arab Spring, even had a Tahrir Square protester speak to them, without a thought to the killings and questionable behavior of the rebels in Egypt and Libya. Ethnic and racial diversity is a permanent part of America. People of different colors coexist in America peacefully ALREADY. Yet, it's almost as if these occupying protesters resent that fact, or are in denial about it. Democrats are recklessly embracing them, thinking they can ride this tiger. Let them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA decline in acceptance of diversity is an entirely predictable outcome, for the simple reason that nationalism has, historically, been much less accepting of diversity than either imperialism or despotism.
It's not what the anti-globalization crowd wants to hear (nor the tiresome Columbus Day protesters), but imperialism is one of the most favorable systems for ethnic and religious minorities. The ancient world hit its height of acceptance of diversity under the Roman Empire (various isolated revolts notwithstanding); the medieval world under the Ottoman Empire; the Imperialist world under the British Empire; and the inter-war interregnum under the French and British domains. Empires are very good for diversity; and absolute monarchies are not far behind. Both have high levels of interconnectedness with other nations and peoples that require a certain acceptance of diversity in order to function.
Nationalism, on the other hand, is rule of the majority, and inwardly focused, typically on a single coherent ethnic/religious group. That is bad news for everyone else, and the periods of lowest tolerance for diversity have been under nationalist regimes.
So regardless of whether the Arab Uprising is a nationalist or Islamist movement (I think the former, but we shall see), the fact that it represents another step away from the imperialism of yesteryear is likely to bode ill for ethnic and religious minorities.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI hope I'm wrong, but I'm skeptical that we shall be allowing large-scale Coptic immigration. We don't have the political will to admit those who are persecuted for being Christians. Other kinds of persecution, sure, but Christians? We don't have a track record of compassion there.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree that the Copts are likely to end up here, but I bet they will assimilate reasonably well because they are Christians and they will not have an alternative focus of loyalty.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBrother Derb, I don't think your analysis that "modernity and diversity are antithetical" is counterintuitive at all.
My late father used to say (to any as cared to listen): "Brotherhood my *rse! -- the more different people get to know each other the less they like each other", which is a truism which I would have thought would be obvious to any sentient being with eyes to see and ears to hear.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Counterintuitively, for some reason I have not been able to figure out, modernity and diversity are antithetical."
Modernity's political has significantly entailed the concentration of an increasingly large amount of power in a constantly expanding centralized government over ever larger amounts of territory. A natural outcome of this process is that local variety gets flattened out as the same bureaucracy takes hold everywhere, and a homogenization of strongly held individual beliefs is encouraged in order to make the populace more governable. Differences in behavior and beliefs are still permitted provided they amount to only matters of private taste, which is why you can maintain superficial gestures toward diversity such as multicultural fairs. Truly organic, culturally embedded diversity of the sort that precedes the state, though, is too messy, unpredictable, and disloyal for Leviathan.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell put!
Progressivism, for all its talk of diversity and tolerance and "speaking truth to power", heavily favors concentration of power ruling over a generally uniform and submissive population. It makes implementation of progressive policies so much easier than, say, a democratic process presiding over a diverse and contentious group of peoples. Hence the left's fascination with the so-called global youth culture, with international bureaucracies, with the use of the educational system for ensuring that teaching of orthodox progressive doctrine is both universal and mandatory.
Hence also the left's utilization of a veritable army of self-appointed inquisitors who relentlessly hunt enemies of the movement in both social and virtual settings, including the comments sections of any number of websites.
Diversity in skin color and sexual orientation will be tolerated and even promoted; diversity in viewpoints, political and religious, will receive no such support.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOddly enough, Progressives desperately paper over differences--even grotesque differences--between us and the New Americans.
In Minneapolis it is well known in social worker circles that over 90% of young Somali girls have their privates chopped off by their mothers, aunts and cousins in secret family ceremonies.
Yet the mandatory reporters (doctors, nurses, social workers) refuse to notify the police, the newspapers or any other institution.
Genital butchery is looked at as a problem to be solved by "education".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think democracy is a massive complicating factor here. When nobody could vote, there was less concern that the neighbors could end up bossing you around. You knew the king was the only one bossing anybody around.
Now all the sudden your neighbors with different ethnic backgrounds actually have a say in making the laws you live under. Much bigger concern.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"we shall soon be opening our arms in welcome to eight million Egyptian Copts."
On the upside, they're a natural Republican constituency.
(My Captcha: "Protect Your Stuff." Words of wisdom in these days of the London riots and the OWT protests....)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMigdal Bavel - the Tower of Babylon.
Diversity was visited upon the architects of that massive public works project as a terrible punishment. Babble, babble, couldn't understand one another. A setback on the path to modernity.
Diversity is expense, not income. It's overhead. It's a pain in the neck.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDerb,
For once, your pessimism fails you. You believe that the Obama administration will act to receive Egyptian Copts? I suspect that Obama will stand by as they are slaughtered. I suspect that Israel would be more willing to accept Coptic refugees. Now, that would be a sight....
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"that we shall soon be opening our arms in welcome to eight million Egyptian Copts."
I'm not so sure about that. I have no idea if any polling or some other kind of scientific study on the political leanings of Eqyptian Copts has ever been done, but my own anecdotal experience tells me that they're a pretty (socially) conservative and entrepreneurial bunch of people. Those aren't the kinds of immigrants that American Democrats generally welcome to the country with open arms.
With respect to your question/statement about "modernity and diversity are antithetical", I think that this is true - but only for non-Western societies.
Look at China, it's transition from antiquity to contemporary is happening at breakneck speed - and it's unfolding right before our very eyes. However, despite the best hopes of the Nixon administration, trade and economic development and a full embrace of modernity certainly hasn't broght ANY substantive human rights reforms, at least not how we Westerners think about human rights.
Western societies are built on a Hellenistic/Judeo-Christian foundation. Our egalitarian principles are literally thousands of years old - and it's taken us thousands of years to get where we are today. Those foundations don't exist in the Middle East, or the Far East. To me I think it's patently clear that it has been fanciful for us to believe that as these other cultures move into modernity that their records on human rights and/or diversity will improve as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"modernity and diversity are antithetical"
Yet if you read about ancient "cosmopolitan" cities, like Rome, Byzantium, or Alexandria, evidence of ethnic and religious riots abounds.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis was a big subject during the Bosnian events. The mix of multiple monolingual TV news stations and other technological wonderments were good kindling amidst that cosmopolitan Sarajevo situation over there. Remember Tom Friedman's Golden Arches theory? So much for that. I forget the name but there's an entire academic subdivision for studying this kind of splintering and global village strife... And everywhere, from Kansas to Karachi, they want to blast Lady Gaga songs and play Farmville all day. It's almost as if "The World Is Flat," hmmm.
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