The language in this article is far less polite than in my other blogs.This is in response to the odious politically correct creeps who have ahabit of calling anyone who criticises multiculturalism a “racist”,“xenophobe”, “bigot” and so on. If you are not guilty of this abuse,the abuse below does not apply to you.
by Ralph Musgrave
Definition.
Multiculturalismhas several quite different definitions. About 99% of the time, theadvocates of multiculturalism do not bother with definitions. Startingwith a definition and sticking to it is a sign of logical thought, andyou wont find much of that in the ramblings of the politically correct.
Thedefinition adopted here is the most common one, which in turn is moreor less the Oxford dictionary definition. This is something like “theco-existence in a particular country of people from different national,ethnic or religious backgrounds”.
Multiculturalism promotes the spread of ideas?
Theonly full length book written and published in the UK that advocatesmulticulturalism as far as I know is Bhiku Parekh’s “RethinkingMulticulturalism”. The central claim made for multiculturalism (p. 167)is that it facilitates the transfer of culture from one national orreligious group to another.
No it doesn’t, and for the simplereason that the best ideas travel independent of people. For exampletwo or three hundred years ago (when the transmission of ideas was farmore difficult than today) the classical music composed by Bach,Mozart, Beethoven, etc immediately travelled round the rest of Europeand across the Atlantic on some amazing stuff called PAPER !!! (DOH!).
Moreover,the corollary of the above is that the ideas, customs etc that comewith multiculturalism are relatively low grade, and in some casespositively deplorable ideas. For example a third of young Muslims inthe UK think that anyone leaving their faith should be killed. The ideathat anyone quitting a religion should be killed had been abandoned inEurope centuries ago. Now it has been re-introduced, thanks to Muslimimmigrants. Wonderful! We have truely been “enriched”.
Multiculturalism “enriches” us?
Noit doesn’t. The total amount of culture available to us nowadays is soASTRONOMIC that no one has a CAT IN HELL’S CHANCE of getting to gripswith more than 1% of it during their lifetime. For example there areseveral million books available to everyone at minimum cost from theirlocal libraries and/or the British Library. No one can read even 1% ofthis lot in a lifetime.
And as to music, the total number ofpieces of music available is such that it would take ten years tolisten to all of it. In short, the arrival of people in the UK adheringto a different religion makes not one iota of difference to the“cultural richness” of the UK.
Its technology, stupid.
Andwhat has brought about the above astronomic increase in theavailability of culture compared to three hundred years ago? ITSTECHNOLOGY, STUPID. Not multiculturalism. This process of usingtechnology to speed the transmission of culture started with theinvention of the printing press several hundred years ago. The cost ofa book in terms of the amount of work required to produce it, is nowabout ONE HUNDREDTH of what it used to be.
But in addition tobooks and other form of literature, we have other forms oftechnological culture transmission:RADIO..and……T-E-L-E-V-I-S-I-O-N. And most recently the internet hasarrived.
Multiculturalism destroys culture.
Thesanctimonious knuckle draggers who write for The Guardian haven’ttumbled to it yet, but when two cultures merge, cultural destructiontakes place. That is, two cultures are destroyed and one hybrid cultureis created. For example seven hundred years ago the British Isles hadat least three languages: Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin. These have nowbeen merged into a hybrid language: modern English.
I am beingperfectly serious when I say that the knuckle draggers who write forThe Guardian haven’t tumbled to the above simple point: I have readthis left of centre newspaper regularly for thirty years. I have neverseen the above point made in The Guardian.
Finally – some quotes.
Multiculturalists…haveopened a new front in their assault on rationality. – AleksandrSolzhenitsyn (Literature Nobel laureate)
What do they call it – multi culti – it’s all absurd. ” – V S Naipaul (literature Nobel laureate)
Multiculturalists are not interested in culture. – Prof. Alvin J.Schmidt.
Themulticultural movement .. has so far failed to throw up a coherentphilosophical statement of its central principles. – Prof. BhikhuParekh.
Some (multicultural) conflicts are intractable, evenwhen the disputants are motivated by a sense of fairness and tolerance,which all too often is lacking. – Prof. Will Kymlicka.