Mihir Bose has a very interesting and though provoking article in the Telegraph about why many of the lessons of the American ‘melting pot’ have little resonance or even relevance to Britain.
The difference is simple but profound: America can impose a coherent historical narrative on immigrants because the countries they come from had no previous involvement with America. Settlers are able and encouraged to discard their native histories and accept the American version.
But the vast majority of non-white immigrants to Britain have come from our former colonies, and bring not only their own cultures but also their own versions of our shared history. So, in trying to construct a single coherent narrative for this island, we are faced with trying to marry two historical streams: the “home” version and the “export” version.
I am not sure I agree with the entire thrust of the article but it certainly provides considerable food for thought. Certainly I have always found it curious how, at least in my experience, race relations in Britain have been (generally) far better compared to the USA (and I only speak from my personal observations) and with far less government intervention forcing that state of affairs to be the norm, at least until quite recently. Perhaps Mihir Bose’s article contains some of the reasons underpinning that. That could be worth pondering.
Couldn’t get the link to work. I think that
this is the correct link.
Certainly I have always found it curious how, at least in my experience, race relations in Britain have been (generally) far better compared to the USA…
Perry, you’ve been had. The reason that you have that impression is that we’ve been facing our problem and trying to deal with it, which means it hits the newspapers a lot.
You see news reports about racial problems because we know it’s a problem and are working to fix it. And since I was a kid (1950’s) it’s improved one hell of a lot.
You’re mistaking news coverage for reality. (As someone else put it one time, “the chart is not the patient.”) And you’re assuming that European news sources are covering the US fairly. It isn’t true.
Let’s try another one: Who is more likely to be a victim of armed robbery or burglary, someone who lives in London or someone who lives in NYC? Virtually everyone in Europe has the impression that America is a hotbed of violent crime, but the reality is that right now London is a lot more dangerous than any American city which isn’t a slum (e.g. East St. Louis, IL).
In the last couple of years a lot of us over here in America are increasingly becoming aware that Europeans have an extraordinary misconception of what things are actually like here. IIRC you were actually born in the US and are a citizen. Have you considered coming home to live for a couple of years? I think you might find it an eye-opening experience.
On the history of US race relations, you may want to check out what Stanley Crouch has to say about the 1965 Watts Riots in “The Birth of the Hustle”. He does not let anyone, black or white off the hook.
http://www.nydailynews.com
Steven – Your comments are well taken, but nevertheless I think Bose had some fair points. When the W Indians and the Indians came to Britain, they were already long familiar with our culture, and we were familiar with theirs and where they fitted into our own history. And we owed them a debt of settlement because many of their countrymen and members of their families had a history in their countries’ militaries which sent troops to help us during two world wars.
And the first (after Rome) and sanest multiculturalist entity was the British Empire. They carried British passports.
American immigrants did not have that – advantage. So it’s chalk and cheese.
It is the “multicultural” meme which is at fault, not our attitude to immigration. The entire British Empire was multicultural in that all were British subjects (now citizens). No one thought of miniaturizing it to importing masses of cultures and hammering them into Britain against the will of the indigenes. This was done viciously and destructively and it will fail. If not soon, then disastrously later.
The only way, Steven, that I think it has to do with crime levels in the streets and cities is, “multiculturalism” has destroyed the cohesiveness of British society (which includes many waves of immigrants who integrated and prospered) – as it was intended to do. I think this is a temporary situation. I hope I’m right.
As someone who has come from the UK to live in America, I can tell you that Steven has hit the nail on the head. From what I’ve seen, America is much safer and more peaceful on average than Britain. Passing street-corners full of threatening, hooded teens smoking dope on the sidewalks of London has become the norm, and feeling powerless/frightened (as many do) by such experiences has, unfortunately, also. As part of my job in local media, I review police arrest reports…. my estimation is that 90% of those arrests are made for non-violent crimes (such as Failure to Appear, DUI or Possession of Drug Paraphenalia). I haven’t seen any similar figures in Britain, but I’d put money on the result.
The vast majority of “immigrants” (they’re mostly illegal aliens) these days come from Mexico or other Central American countries. They weren’t colonies of the US but they’ve had plenty of experience with their northern neighbour. Needless to say most Mexicans are very anti-Gringo. Many other nationalities well represented in the immigrant stats (eg Filippinos) have had historical experiences with the Americans.
Rubbish. The US press goes to extraordinary lengths to shield Americans from information regarding black on white crime. Even when they do mention racial violence it’s entirely one-sided: the poor black man or immigrant lashing out at his big bad racist capitalist oppresser. The US may not have the oppressive hate speech laws that Europe has but there is a lot more self-censorship in the “Land of the Free”.
Taylor;
John McWhorter has thoughts on the same subject in this Washington Post op-ed.
Oops.. I should say this editorial (the previous was a link to an online discussion with McWhorter)
I can’t speak knowledgeably to any of Mihir Bose’s statements or opinions of Britain’s history with immigrants.
I can deeply disagree with both his facts and interpretations regarding United States history. I will try to avoid doing a fisking.
Mr Bose says “Unlike America, Britain is not a country that has tended to import people “ and “The Americans had a racial wall, first erected by the US constitution…”.
At that point in our history, we had been condemned to our troubled future by the “execrable commerce” of slavery that was rammed down our gullets by every ploy a tyrannical king and an apathetic parliament could employ. If you want to know more about this seldom discussed piece of history, read Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence. The United States Library of Congress has it available at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html
Look through the litany of grievances. Look at the one he saved for last, for the linch pin. It was that “assemblage of horrors” – slavery. By then it was too successfully embedded into the southern economy and that core statement was removed from the final draft to keep the slave states with the rebellion. We have lived with the heritage of this curse ever since.
/rant=off
That said, I also disagree with his interpretation of assimilation in America. While my mother’s ancestors started arriving in the colonies in the 1620s, my father’s parents immigrated and were married here. They arrived with a determination to assimilate already in place. Occasionally, they would speak their native language at home when they did not want my then 2 or 3 year old dad to understand them. When he once made a comment in that language, they quit speaking it entirely.
But in spite of his family’s total assimilation, my dad and all of us (grand) children have thoroughly enjoyed and celebrated our ancestry.
What the Mr Bose doesn’t understand is that in the US, we retain and celebrate all of our diverse heritages for as many generations as we can remember them. In Chicago, where I was born, on St. Patrick’s day, they have a big parade and dye the Chicago River green. For one day, Everyone is Irish.
So what is it that is going wrong now after centuries of immigrating people being fully “American” by the 2nd and 3rd generations?
Language. Language is the warp of our societal fabric, The weft is our agreement to a common set of laws. We retain all of the myriad colors of our heritages but we are woven tightly into the tapestry founded on laws and language.
This is now breaking down in the US. We have begun to teach school, hold court hearings, print public announcements, and post signs, etc in multiple languages, primarily Spanish. I receive several pieces of Spanish language junk mail a week because my last name can also be a Spanish name.
If you live in a cultural and linguistic ghetto, you will always be a 2nd class citizen. If you are a 2nd class citizen, you will always be disaffected. A fraction of disaffected citizens will always attack the “1st class” society. We are learning this is the US, you in Britain are also learning this.
Mr. Bose asserts that immigrants arrive in the US tabla rasta. It’s difficult to imagine any country of origin for the last hundred years that didn’t have interactions and opinions of the United States. And almost certainly, anyone who decides to transplant themselves and their families to a foreign country will have very clear opinions and beliefs about that country before packing up and leaving home. In almost every case, those expectations will need to adjust to reality after arrival.
An exception to our history of assimilation has been with the descendants of the involuntary immigrants. I frequent a major university campus and have noticed a clear pattern. Africans and West Indians and Central Americans of African ancestry fit in well with everyone. American Blacks relate differently. Regrettably, even after one hundred and forty years, we are still to some degree, two nations in one country. I agree with Steven Den Beste that things have gotten much better but there is frequently, still, a subterranean tension in many interactions between American Whites and Blacks.
I don’t think these problems are cultural. I don’t think they’re linguistic. I don’t think they are fundamentally racist. I think they are the memory of violation of one people by another. The theft was not just of their life and liberty, but of their very history and heritage itself. The memory of this is not going away with generations. Regardless of liberal claims, no “just” solution is possible. In this matter, full peace will only come when our government can successfully enforce true equality of treatment under the law, and the aggrieved are then willing and able to let the past go.
I’ll stop now. My apologies for the long post.
Midwestern reports with apparent pride: “For one day a year, everyone is Irish.” How ghastly.
That is not what immigration and assimilation are about. And nor does it have a thing to do with the shared histories of immigrants, which is what Bose is discussing and what was posted here at Samizdata.
I did pick out of Midwestern’s endless post this: “Language. Language is the warp of our societal fabric, The weft is our agreement to a common set of laws. We retain all of the myriad colors of our heritages but we are woven tightly into the tapestry founded on laws and language.”
Quite.
What Mr Bose was saying – before everyone ran off yapping and barking about crime statistics – is, most immigrants to Britain were already fluent in our language and fluent in our culture.
Most.
USA = a majority of immigrants willing and eager to integrate. The whole forming a colourful, vibrant tapestry. If they don’t, they fail…
UK = a majority of immigrants reluctant and unwillng to integrate. The whole forming a shredded, worthless rag. If they don’t, who cares? there’s always the Welfare…
Simplistic and probably a trifle unfair, but largely true…
Midwestern reports with apparent pride: “For one day a year, everyone is Irish.” How ghastly.
Verity,
Our nation was not founded on genetic or culteral “purity”. We are founded on fair laws, fairly applied.
With our 230? million people and 230 year history we’ve had our failures, but for the most part, we arrive here, are accepted, and accept others. You are even welcome here, Verity. In spite of your George III’s appalling vandalism of us.
Come here. Accept and be accepted. If you won’t, then leave.
That said, I do enjoy your posts. I kind of thought you might be the first reply.
Part of the reason that immigrants do not integrate as easily into the UK as they do into the US is the lack of a clear, defined path to integration. Being an American, at least according to the official version given to new immigrants like me, is about being patriotic, participating in civic life, learning about and respecting the constitution. It’s all set out in a guide made available to all new permanent residents (Green Card holders.) People given Permanent Residence in the UK get a stamp in their passports and nothing else. The US is a country which was established on the basis of a strong founding ideology which was untainted by ideas of sectarian, ethnic or linguistic identity. You become an American by being law abiding, waiting your time and accepting that ideology. What it means to be the citizen of a European country is harder to pin down since European states were generally founded on the basis of ethnic, linguistic or sectarian differences.
race relations in Britain have been (generally) far better compared to the USA (and I only speak from my personal observations) and with far less government intervention forcing that state of affairs to be the norm, at least until quite recently
Well, there was no large-scale immigration to the UK for about a thousand years prior to the 1950s, so the recent experience counts most – especially the very recent. The choice of Muslims in Britain to elect men like George Galloway and the revelation that the terrorist attacks of July were all the work of British Muslims rather embarrasses the claim you have made so often here that Islamic extremism is going to fade like dust in the face of the awesome persuasive power of Western hedonism and internet porn.
How much of “Britishness” is stamped on Britain? I’m not sure most British citizens really know what being British is, in contrast to the United States where being ‘American’ is something very distinctive, something that everyone wants to get behind, something that everyone knows the benefit of and is thankful for. I find that most Americans are markedly more grateful for the fact that they are American (an aspect of US culture that, viewed from the other side of the pond, I always found slightly hokey).
But when people from other cultures immigrate to the United States, they do so largely in order to replace those cultures with and embrace the culture and ideaology of America. In the UK, I’m not sure that’s the case.
A puzzling argument. If America has a tradition of integration and Britain not, howcome there’s so much more de facto racial and religious segregation in domestic life there than here?
At the end of the Thanksgiving-set movie What’s Cooking? the camera pulls back to reveal that the four ethnically diverse families live on the four corners of the same suburban intersection, transforming it from plausible drama into a heavy-handed allegory in a few seconds. The American friend I saw it with turned to me and said, “You know that could never happen, right?” But set in London it would not be so implausible; it would just be a dramatic flourish to tie the thing together. The writer/director is a Kenyan-born Englishwoman, Gurinder Chadha, whose previous work has been largely about the rapid hybridisation of Indian cultures in Britain.
It’s 3 generations since FDR declared, in a neat encapsulation of the melting-pot ideal, “Let us have no more hyphenated Americans”, but hyphenation seems to have become more popular than ever, as PC reinforces the desire to categorise and self-categorise.
The choice of Muslims in Britain to elect men like George Galloway and the revelation that the terrorist attacks of July were all the work of British Muslims rather embarrasses […]
No it doesn’t. They are essentially trivial incidents.
“Muslims” have not elected “men like George Galloway”. There is only one George Galloway, and he took advantage of a very peculiar situation in a very odd place. George Galloway benefited as much from the disciplined support of the Trotskyist SWP organisation getting out a white socialist vote, and the delight of non-left voters in getting rid of a New Labour placewoman as from purloining part of the Muslim vote. Even though I find his opponent Oona King personally more attractive (and politically no less), I would have been mighty tempted to vote for him myself, just to put Tony’s nose out of joint.
That a handful of disaffected young men decided to try to demonstrate their own significance by mass murder, tells one no more about the trend among British Muslims than Timothy McVey’s example tells one about right-wing Americans.
Something rather more serious would still not necessarily betoken much. The Gordon Riots were not followed by pogroms, but a century of steadily increasing toleration of Catholics in mainland Britain, to the point where virtually no-one cares, or is much interested in everyday life, what brand of Christian you are, or whether you are a Christian at all. (Tony Blair, in another contrast with US culture, is regarded with some suspicion by a lot of nominally Christian Brits–never mind our largest religious group, the atheists–because he makes a fuss about being a Christian.)
Steven: I don’t think I have been ‘had’ as I have spent more than 1/3rd of my life in the USA. My mother was American. My notions of America are not the product of what the media feeds me.
Whilst I agree that Britain is a place you are far more likely to get mugged in than the USA on balance, I stand by my statement that race relations here are better than in the USA and have been for a long time.
I also base my views on what people really say about each other, not in the media, but in private conversations everyday. I would argue that the racial attitudes that Hollywood would have think is the norm is not at all the case. I base it on the fact miscegination is visibly far more common in the UK. Although I do not doubt things have changed somewhat, at least in public and at least amongst the educated middle classes, I was shocked at how otherwise decent people I knew would react (privately) to seeing a mixed race couple on the street.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not think race relations in the USA are poisonous or for that matter doing anything less than improving, but as the article says, Britain’s experience is different and in some ways better.
No, I don’t think I have been had at all.
Except that is utterly untrue. The majority have integrated just fine and are running corner shops and working in offices and have done so for quite some time.
A muslim minority of immigrants are in stark contrast to most other immigrants.
To the extent that the USA has worse race relations than Britain, it reinforces Bose’s point.
The USA absorbs immigrants better than Britain. However, it has serious race-relations problems with the large black minority. After all, if the descendants of British colonial subjects have a separate version of a shared history, how much more so would the descendants of imported slaves?
” we had been condemned to our troubled future by the “execrable commerce” of slavery that was rammed down our gullets by every ploy a tyrannical king and an apathetic parliament could employ.” No doubt every nation needs a foundation myth, but that one seems batty to me. ‘Buy a slave, Sirrah, or I’ll bash your head in.’ Please.
“Let’s try another one: Who is more likely to be a victim of armed robbery or burglary, someone who lives in London or someone who lives in NYC? Virtually everyone in Europe has the impression that America is a hotbed of violent crime, but the reality is that right now London is a lot more dangerous than any American city which isn’t a slum (e.g. East St. Louis, IL).”
The price paid for greater public order in the US is that around 1% of their adult population is in prison, roughly five times the British rate, and hardly something of which libertarians can approve. I’m not saying that America is necessarily “wrong”, or that Britain is, just that both countries have made defensible tradeoffs.
The relevant comparator for public order in Great Britain today is not its kindred nation to the west, but public order in Britain forty years ago, or even ten years ago. And on that, Bliar and his “tough on crime, tough on the causes …” stand condemned.
First generation black and brown immigrants were indeed proBritish.
However, (as I think Bose would admit) the modern “education” system and the broadcasting media (with their endless output of antiBritish disinformation), mean that the young tend to be antiBritish – full of ideas that all interactions between the British and their own ancestors were one long list of British crimes.
This is not the fault of the young (or anything to do with their having black or brown skin), it is just the ways things are.
I was under the impression that the integration of Latino comunities (originating from Mexico and Central America) in California, is going into reverse.
Without doubt, language remains the largest barrier to integration. The UK must encourage immigrants to learn the local language, namely by only communicating in English. The trade-off could be free English lessons for recent immigrants.
No doubt every nation needs a foundation myth, but that one seems batty to me. ‘Buy a slave, Sirrah, or I’ll bash your head in.’ Please.
Dearieme, did you read Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Indendence? Do you doubt it? Is there other history you find uncomfortable and choose not to believe?
To all the British on this thread, you may want to copy it, make a few changes, and mail it to Downing Street.
The United States Library of Congress has it available at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html
Pommygranate, you are exactly right. It has gone into reverse. Language is the biggest barrier to integration. Followed closely by different laws (or enforcement) for different communities.
English lessons, yes. But also, conducting all government in english and making translators available, instead of making other language units of government available. Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to reconsile different language versions of a law in a court of law?
MidWesterner, the accusations Jefferson levelled against George III included henious acts like allowing the Catholic Church to operate too freely.
You should read the opening to P. J. O’Rourke’s ‘Parliament of Whores’. He goes through the Declaration of Independence line by line and examines how much better each accusation of expanding state power and loss of freedoms applies to every modern President than to the King they were levelled against.
Back on topic, I don’t think either Britain or the US can claim superiority in integration and race relations. Insofar as mass immigration has passed off peacefully, it has been in the face of silent opposition from the great majority in both societies (check any opinion poll). In that sense, this whole debate is about how well food agrees with the stomach of two men who had no appetite anyway. The question of whether it’s wise to go on force-feeding either of them matters far more than which one has coped better.
America is an idea. It has had the luxury of creating itself pretty much from scratch, from a rump of fairly homogenous people who generally spoke English.
Britain, on the other hand, is an evolution. We’ve been working on it since before the Romans arrived, and we’re still working on it.
The glue that holds The idea together are all the things that we Britons have been systematically taught to sneer at (in my opinion by socialism, which teaches allegiance to a “Class” not a country). Things like flying the flag , The oath of allegiance , pride in their country.You try flying a Union Jack outside you house or business in Britain and see how fast the council comes round and tells you to take it down in case you offend forigners. Fly a Welsh, Scottish, hell even a PLO flag and they wont bat an eyelid.
I agree with Perry, from having not been asked whether we wanted any immigration at all (we the people that is) I think we have coped pretty well.
The main fly in the ointment is the Muslim community.I have travelled quite extensively over the years and It’s just not in Britain, Islam always isolates itself if it cannot take over entirely.
Peter, I found no reference to “Catholic” anywhere in the draft thought there may have been an oblique reference I didn’t get. The reference to slavery emphatic and unmistakable.
You said “the Declaration of Independence … applies to every modern President than to the King they were levelled against.
Totally true. I think that every day. We seem to have seem to have slipped our moorings.
On topic, every new mass immigration is the outsider until the next one comes along or several generations have passed. As long as we were tied together by language and equal enforcement of laws, we integrate. Abandoning those, we form ghettos and hostilities grow rather than wither.
I think you can’t compare race relations in Britain and the US at all. In Britain, balck and brown skinned people immigrated quite recently, from the colonies, fully aquainted with British language and customs, and coming mostly from the upper classes of their native societies.
In the US, the slaves and their descendants are an entirely different class of people, and their initial relation with the local people (slavery) was entirely different. Race relations are much more affected by the experience of slavery that that of immigration.
So, it’s comparing apples and stones.
Midwesterner: I did glance at Jefferson’s ranting but I’d put no weight on it. He was a slave-owner, who did not even free his slaves when he died, remember. What a prize ass he was. The Constitution is a fine document, no doubt partly because the prize ass was away in Paris when it was written. The Constitution is a serious business plan: the Declaration is a salesman’s pitch; to treat it as historical evidence is silly.
Like Guy Herbert, I too found presenting the election of “people like George Galloway” self-defeating. There are some unscrupulous, disloyal creatures in Parliament, but none of them is cut from the same cloth as George Galloway. And I too deduced from everything I read, that the electorate had a high degree of of interest in getting rid of lazy,slef-promoting NuLabour placewoman Oona King. (Did you know her father was an American Viet Nam deserter, by the way? He fled to Britain.)
Peter and several others have made the point that the British were a cohesive society with no need of immigration. America, of course, could not have become America without the immigration of tens of millions. That said, the earlier immigrants from the Empire/Commonwealth were imbued with Britishness when they arrived. They were fluent, as I said above, in not just our language, but our culture and our history (of which they were an honourable part). They were accepted, after some initial fuss, because they were not, other than their skin colour, too alien.
Like other countries around the world, we hit the wall when we started letting Islamics in. They are deeply alien, hostile and expectant of being treated with special consideration from the start, in every country in which they have been allowed in. My heart goes out to the British and Europeans who are forced by their economic circumstances, to live in their ghettoes.
Dearieme –
“I did glance at Jefferson’s ranting but I’d put no weight on it.” “… the Declaration is a salesman’s pitch; to treat it as historical evidence is silly.”
I can’t think of any answer to this. No one will ever understand America without understand the foundry it came from.
Yes, Jefferson did everything he could to bring down an institution he profited from. No, he did not unilaterally withdraw from that institution or the economy it was founded on. Doing so would have certainly meant immediate bankruptcy so there was probably a financial motive.
So your reaction to this is that the Declaration of Independence is historically irrelevant, Jefferson was a “prize ass” and therefore also historically irrelevant, the constitution is a “fine document” apparently in spite of Jefferson’s remotely based campaign to get the Bill of Rights incorporated into it.
I also have no answer for your characterization of the Constitution as a mere “business plan”. It is a binding contract on all citizens and even the government itself. It is the highest law of the land. While it found it’s roots in English precedent, it was a novel and unprecedented concept that all branches of government could be held to a set of written rules.
Reminder, this thread is a discussion of British v American assimilation of immigrants based on the original article by Mihir Bose. Why the slaves arrived and how both the slaves, and the people who were compelled to accept that institution of slavery, felt about it is relevant. Maybe you should have done more than glance.
Can any of the Americans reading this thread offer any suggestions as to why the Muslim community in the US has integrated with its host country far better than its European counterpart?
Are there any lessons for Europe?
Pommygranate,
I’m not sure that we have. While we have our successes, I’m sure Britain does, to. If there is a difference it is probably because we, as a rule treat any act of Sharia to be a criminal act. I know of a Muslim girl who got pregnant out of wedlock in her teens.
Her treatment was bad but any attempt at Sharia law would have put the practioners in prison in a state with a death penalty. The family ended up shunning her and everyone who helped her. She is probably fairly well assimilated by this time ~10 years later.
A Sharia murder was recorded live on a 911 police call some years ago. The girl was pleading for her life but was killed anyway. It was broadcast on the news and rather reduced our tolerance.
Midwesterner’s mythology is so egregiously preposterous that I did not think anyone would feel it worth commenting on. But they have.
King George gave his royal assent to an act abolishing the slave trade just after the turn of the century. It took the Americans another 75 years to get there presumably because of the weight of opinion of midwesterners, Ku Klux Klansmen, holy rolling southern baptists, segregationists, lynch mobs and other rednecks to stop it. It certainly was not King George whose Royal Navy was ordered to stop the trade and made a good fist of doing so.
Does midwesterner think that prolonging slavery so long, the tens of thousands of lynchings continuing until quite recently, the apartheid – up to the 1960s – the intimidation to prevent voting rights being exercised etc etc had no effect on the relationship between whites and black Americans. Or were the Klan and all those others just agents of King George and his successors??
The first significant black immigration to Britain was from the Caribbean which is where virtually all slaves in the British Empire were used. (None were ever allowed in the UK itself). These people integrated very easily with none of the smouldering resentment you find in the similar relationship in America. It seems clear to me that the difference is in the treatment these people had compared with their brothers in independent America in the 200 years since King George abolished the trade.
The rest of midwesterners post seems concerned only with European immigrants. I really don’t want to get started on the treatment of Mexican and Oriental immigrants particularly to the west coast who suffered the most appalling abuse of human rights. They were treated as sub human right up to quite recent times.
Pommygranate asks: “Can any of the Americans reading this thread offer any suggestions as to why the Muslim community in the US has integrated with its host country far better than its European counterpart?”
Yes. It’s been addressed many times before. The crucial point is, most of the people from the Middle East who immigrated to the US are not Muslim. They are Christian and were only too glad to get out.
Lately, there has been an “influx” – meaning around 2m in a country of 300m – and they are already making trouble, with CAIR as their spokesorganisation. In Deareborne, MI, where they have mainly congregated, they have managed to get an ordinance allowing them to broadcast their “call to prayers” (what’s wrong with an alarm clock?) five times a day in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity”. The ones gathered in upstate – I think it’s MA, but it may be NH – the Somalis, are already causing problems.
The Christians integrated. The Islamics behaved with typical arrogance, dull ignorance and lack of gratitude for being allowed in. They are, as ever, determined to subvert the host society to changing its mores to become more Islamic.
Oh John, John, John… I give ya books, I give ya books and all ya do is chew the pages.
By your own arithmatic it took King George another 25 years to abolish slavery in his remaining colonies. It took us the deadliest civil war in history, second deadliest of all time (after WWII) to excise this disease we could have removed with much less damage and pain if he would have consented to let us do it 35 or forty years sooner than he finally allowed the rest of the empire to ban it.
You said “the Caribbean which is where virtually all slaves in the British Empire were used. (None were ever allowed in the UK itself)”
Not dirty you own bed? Apparently GIII & Co. didn’t want the good people of England to understand where a substantial portion of their wealth and comfort came from.
In any case, it is nice that about forty years into his reign he saw fit to change his mind and allow the abolishment of slavery.
The rest of your tirade appears to be an “everybody in one box” rant without enough facts to even dispute.
Verity, I think your assessment is correct. I fear if we go down the multi-culti path rather than one language-one law, we will have substantial trouble. As long as fundamentalist Christians insist on governmentalizing fundamentalist Christianity, Muslim fundamentalists will be able to do the same thing. Very dangerous.
The slave trade abolition and later the act forcing of slave owners to free their slaves were of course acts of parliament which KG had no option but to sign.
Either America was independent and democratic from 1776 or it wasn’t. I suspect midwesterner thinks it was in which case the entire responsiblity resides with the American people and its representatives.
The ‘Land of the Free’ is in fact a gross lie.
The prevention of slavery in the UK was nothing to do with the executive but was by the judiciary. When someone imported a slave to Britain someone applied for a writ of ‘habeas corpus’ which the judge granted.
The ideas of justice and freedom by and large worked in Britain but although the idea of the Land of the Free was constantly trumpeted about America it in fact signally failed to live up to the high ideals formulated by the Englishmen who drafted its constitution.
Midwesterner do you deny the thousands of lynchings or the existence of the KKK? Why do you need chapter and verse about this? Isn’t it a fact that a president as recent as Lyndon Johnson had to enforce desegregation? Don’t these things have ANY bearing on race relations.
Oh, I did not realise you were Chinese. The T’ai-P’ing rebellion… that was the bloodiest civil war in history 🙂
John. Slavery was embedded like a spear in our society. Unlike your judges, ours we’re prohibited from banning it and it existed a long time before we won our independence. GIII & Co greatly forcibly increased it in the years prior to 1776 for mercantile reasons.
And yes, just like any reallocation of wealth, whether that wealth is one’s property or one’s person, profiteers were unwilling to let it go. Being a disgusting sort of person in the first place, they resorted to any violence or terror to try and preserve their privilege. They and their legacy still exist. We try and mostly succeed in suppressing them. What do you expect us to do? Assign death squads to find and kill racists?
Strict and fair applications of the law are all that will work. We are endeavoring. When necessary, we even send federal troops to over rule state decisions.
We are taught in America to believe it was George III who was the villain. Would you rather we thought that our English cousins did this personally? I’ve seen nothing to support a verdict of any more than inattentiveness. Something we here certainly can’t fault anyone for. We’ve mastered that trait. I often think that our own George II (W.) and his associates may be very much like your George III and his.
Midwesterner-
Yes, I have always been astounded that fundamentalist christians do not realise that the powers they wish to give government to legislate christian ideals may someday be used against them by a future muslim (or whatever) majority. Its why LIBERTY is the only basis of law – not that poisonous, destructive idea called “multiculturalism”.
Snide,
You may be right. I was in school during the height of China’s isolationism and consequently we weren’t taught much of China’s history.
I apologise if I said something untrue.
Woops. I just realized, W. is our George III not II. I think.
Midwesterner says “We were taught to believe that it was George 111 that was the villain”
Then it is about time you woke up and admitted the facts and accepted some responsibility. The idea that all that is great and good is American and all the faults and problems were King Georges is infantile.
Democracy was working in Britain even in the 18th/19th century. According to Midwesterner it did not work in the US the ‘Land of the Free’.
Slave owners including that arch phoney Thomas Jefferson just controlled the system too tightly.
Nothing still about the lynchings and KKK, segregation.
No responsibility again I suppose.
New post and I promise not to dignify Midwesterner with any more rejoinders.
One rather amusing and quite telling sign of complete integration was on the BBC World Sat TV.
Every week there is a discussion program of journalists like (say) Melanie Phillips and others, about 6 in all. One of them is frequently a BBC staffer from
the African service. He comes from Zimbabwe. The program took place just after 7/7. The Zimbabwean speaks cultured English with a local accent. He recounted how he received a phone call from his Indian friend just after the news of the bombings. The Indian friend said “It was the f***ing Pakis what done it”. When you think about it there could be no greater sign of total integration on many planes.
As one of the Indian diapsora living in the US, I’ve heard conflicting reports from Indian-Americans and British-Indians about who treats whom better, although as a child growing up in the states my parents always taught me that the British were more racist to South Asians than Americans were. Dunno if that’s true.
Oh, and for some reason this post make me think of another anecdote: I have a friend who was born in Italy, raised in Belgium, and now living in the states. He said what he liked about the states was that you didn’t have to have your parents or their parents or their parents be American to feel that you are one. He said in Belgium he would never really be considered a native, even though he grew up there.
Yes, I know we are talking about Britain and not Belgium. My British-Indian friends seem very at home in Britain (well, they should) and British first and foremost, so perhaps we are more similar than than different.
MD – your second post highlights the points made by Mr Bose in his article. Indians would feel alien in Belgium, but in Britain, there is a familial sense.
Strange then that they kept going to the US despite this supposedly poor treatment!
BTW there were not “tens of thousands of lynchings” of blacks in the US. If I’m not mistaken there were three and a half thousand lynchings of blacks. There were also numerous black on black and even black on white lynching in the Old South – many of which resulted in acquittals by all white juries.
The Founding Fathers would be surprised to learn that the US is merely an idea. So would virtually every generation of Americans up until half way through the last century. In those pre-multicultural days it was taken for granted that the US was a product of its British founders. The “proposition nation” is just more politically correct nonsense from the left and the neocon imperialists. It’s moronic to think that parts of America made up of non-Europeans will adhere to the British and European values of those who built the country as the proposition nation crowd believes. They seem to think the Chinese, Africans, Mexicans and others bring no identity or values with them or that they are just dying to give up these things to worship the now largely symbolic US Constitution!
Those who want to understand why the US developed as it did should forget the mythology and read Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer. It was the folk cultures of several British subgroups in pre-Revolutionary War America that gave the US its identity, including its political culture. Even the mostly non-British European immigrants of the late 19th century radically changed the US political culture (particularly in the cities) even though the ethnic British hegemony remained. With that hegemony pretty much gone it’s ludicrous to expect a full-fledged multicultural America to have more than a passing resemblance to the original nation. With new ethnic majorities forming at local, and soon regional, levels, new mythologies will be pushed into the political realm and the proposition nation myth will be a thing of the past.
Verity – thanks.
And how embarrassing – pretty clear I didn’t read the linked to article. Oops.
I did not expect to find revisionist history on Samizdata. Hopefully it’s just things people didn’t know or didn’t remember.
John is right about King George signing acts of Parliament. There was no USA prior to July 4, 1776. We were indeed in an awful mess already at that point. What John is denying is that we were subjects of a King AND parliament of which we were denied any part. Remember the Boston Tea Party slogan “No taxation without representation.”
We were subject to parliaments rule but denied any participation in that body. Further, all of our efforts to set up any form of our own government under the crown were vigorously prevented. Our history prior to 1776 is a shared one with the caveat that we had no vote and no voice. All control was held by and from Great Britain.
We are alone accountable for our history since that time but not prior. Can anyone name any entitlement program the size of slavery in the southern economy that was ever ended, peacefully or otherwise, without a complete change of the system of government.
Slavery was one of the most extreme forms of redistribution of wealth conceivable. It took the intentional destruction all of the governments of the southern states and the unintentional destruction of all of the remaining state governments when we replaced our federation of states into one nation. We still, 140 years later, live with the consequences both of slavery and of what it took to end it.
I don’t deny any of our very large history in this area. Please don’t deny the role of parliament and the crown.
I don’t know how it is now, but back when I was in grade school and high school our US history started in 1066 and spent an inordinate amount of time on the magna charta. There was only about one hundred years (~1815 to ~1915) of English history missing from our own history. While our dna may come from all corners of the world, our government and your’s are one almost continuous thread still woven more closely than any others. Even our present paths to probable failure are in close step.
When Mr. Bose makes the claim that this black/white racial wall suddenly materialized at the time of our constitution, his base facts are already wrong. When John R. states that the former slaves from the Imperial East Indies arrived in UK without resentment right from the very start, I’ll have to trust his veracity. I do, however find that particular piece of history remarkable to say the least.
Who was it that said “those that forget the past are condemned to repeat it?”
Midwesterner. It was Santayana. Incessantly.
Darn. Maybe this time I’ll remember.
Thanks.
I think this debate isn’t complete without French and Lebanese comments : ie practice. France, with its 10% official Muslim population (and maybe one third of the birth, but racial and religious statistics are illegal here) could give other countries good predictions about their future, if French news were not made by the AFP (Agence France Presse, thanks for last week’s very good post about it). The second “Muslim rate” in Europe is less than half of that.
For the moment, let’s just watch forests and cars burn in France, canadair pilots and firemen dying, with their “badly maintained” vehicles. Enquiries have only just begun.
I wish the Dissident Frogman had time to comment on this question.
Like many visitors, I think the States are safe, in 2005, thanks to its active policemen, employees and armed military men everywhere giving orders, and because the population is very outspoken and is openly defending its Occidental way of life, no matter how “small” the question (small habit or small theft). I wish American people to enjoy their lifestyle for a long time and to be proud of it, even if they are still reaching for improvements. I wish them not to waste their energy on justifications towards newcomers or foreigners as the Europeans do.
Alice – I for one am delighted to hear from you – and would love to hear from the Diss as well – but that is not to take away from your interesting post.
You have hit the nail on the head: what on earth are Europeans and Brits doing trying to justify their nations to people from extremely inferior cultures? Their opinions about things they don’t understand (enlightened Western culture) are irrelevant. Alice, when I lived in France, it was outstanding how everyone loathed the Muslim immigrants, especially the Algerians, yet the government imposed its agenda regardless of the French electorate. Les deux rives de la Mediterranée crap.
The question, as always, has to be, what are the British and European lawmakers getting out of this? It just doesn’t jibe. What is Chirac getting out of it? De Villepin? Blair? What are your thoughts, Alice?
No Matra I didn’t mean that America was “merely” an Idea. It is a country and a continuance, which, like everywhere else, changes.What I meant was,
It was the idea of a new start that attracted everyone in the first place Whatever you were before, your an American now, with clear rules as to what that is. I worry that if the glue that I talked about earlier begins to loosen, the whole world will be the sorrier for it.
Running a corner shop, or being a clerk in a government office is not a sign of integration, indeed, in the light of recent events, it would seem to be an excellent cover for all sorts of mayhem.
To see, so-called integration, I would suggest a visit to the western suburbs of London. Places such as Ealing, Hounslow, Feltham, Uxbridge, and others, not forgetting that model of racial harmony – Wembley, the place resembles downtown Calcutta.
To be sure, you do not get much of an idea of just what the new concept of integration really entails, when travelling between Belgravia and Heathrow.
John Rippengal;
the Englishmen who drafted its [America’s] constitution.
You idiot.
A.J.A doesn’t really deserve to be dignified with any response but ….
Of course they were Englishmen living in America importing the ideas of political freedom developed in Britain including those of Locke. Hume, Adam Smith, etc. You don’t think the themes of the constitution were dreamt up in a vacuum do you.
They were rife in English political and judicial circles too and what’s more were also implemented with much greater success than in America where it took over 200 years after independence to get any semblance of equal treatment for non white citizens. As for the poor native Americans unfortunately most did not survive the genocide. In most of the Empire native people populations increased greatly under colonial rule. In America once free of the restraint of central government the natives were virtually wiped out.
Britons, John, Britons. Midwesterner, you should recall that the Boston Tea Party was staged by the tea smugglers, enraged that a reduction in duty resulted in licit imports undercutting their prices. Try http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/BTSI/abs_bostea.html, which is a little mealy-mouthed but doesn’t try to hide the truth. You really should put your elementary school indoctrination behind you; American history is far more interesting than the myths.
ernest young: […] – Wembley, the place resembles downtown Calcutta.
And assuming that were true–having never been to Calcutta, it is hard for me to tell, though I’d be surprised if, for example, such a large and obvious majority of its inhabitants were white–why would that be such a bad thing?
(Wasn’t Calcutta founded by an Englishman in any case? I’m sure the Mughals regarded it as an untidy place full of barbarous immigrants.)
As an American living in a few foreign countries I sum it all up with this: In other countries I could dream of what I wanted to achieve, in American I could live my dream.
We dont not give up our heritage once immigrate, however, we do speak English as our first language. Imperative. We celebrate our heritage with the idea that this is what made American great. Immigrants.
I resided in the UK at one point and time. The biggest issue I see now, in regards to dealing with immigrants is not allowing this segregation to begin. Isolated immigrants, are in essence still residents of another country. So, they are in your country to gain benifits not available back home, yet show no love or appreciation for your graciousness.
If one can reap all the benefits of the country you choose to live in, then one must also show an allegience to the said country. Be grateful to the country for opening their doors. Do not bash it, but integrate into it, for by bashing it, one would presume you love your former country enough to return to it.
Ditto for the religions. Practice yours, however do not expect special favours, or try to drown others in your beliefs.
My grandparents on both sides spoke to us in English, using their native language for themselves. Why should a country translate one languge into 15 to appease you?
For the one who inquired as to why the US has integrated so well (and we need more, actually) is our firm belief that we have a right to display our flag, a right to speak of liberty for all, and you, the visitor, or new Citizen has the right to go home anytime these beliefs do not coincide with yours!
This is our country, love it or leave it. We call it tough love.
🙂
I must stick up for John here too.
I was taught that the only reason that America was being taxed at all, was to help pay their bit towards the cost of defeating the French in Canada which secured America’s border and saved them from French invasion. George Washington didn’t come out of that conflict covered in glory did he?
Plus the fact that many colonists wanted to push west and the British Govt wouldn’t let them, out of respect for native american tribes, many of whom had fought alongside the British against the French.
Midwesterner:
Agree with you here 100%.
It has gone into reverse. Language is the biggest barrier to integration. Followed closely by different laws (or enforcement) for different communities.
Verity:
Yes. It’s been addressed many times before. The crucial point is, most of the people from the Middle East who immigrated to the US are not Muslim. They are Christian and were only too glad to get out.
A good question posted, and I’m not positive on Christian Vs Muslim immigration facts, but that aside, why are the Muslims in the UK in the UK? One would have to assume for a better life.
Which leads me to MidW’s post. Learn the language, accept the culture, and expect the same laws to apply to you.
Assimilate.
Divine Mercy – Your contribution has completely missed the entire point about the Islamics in Britain: The fellow travelling British left. There are other agendas in European countries. For example, France’s dream of the glory of les deux rives de la Méditerranée. But by far the most dangerous and destructive is Britain’s fellow travellers.
Dearieme, Thank you for the excellent link(s). I’ll link them again to make them easier to read. While brief, they contained some useful facts. http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/BTSI/abs_bostea.html(Link)
Once again, it’s the small business people leading the attack against government intervention and manipulation in the marketplace.
Your page also contain a link relevant to RAB’s interesting comments. RAB, you said “I was taught that the only reason that America was being taxed at all, was to help pay their bit towards the cost of defeating the French in Canada which secured America’s border and saved them from French invasion.” I wonder how the Quebec Act of 1774 bears on that. Link courtesy Dearieme’s link http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/BTSI/abs_coer.html(Link)
I admit it’s not something I’m familiar with. I was taught something not incompatible with what you were taught. The colonies argument was not with taxing for defense. It was with tax and law manipulation for the benefit of quasi-government agencies like East India & Hudson’s Bay and especially about the denial of any representation to colonial citizens. We were being run as a corporation with the directors all in Great Britain. Anything in the interest of EI & HB got taken care of immediately, everything else of importance to the safety and wellbeing of the colonies was neglected of prevented. There is no way the colonies were consuming all of the products of the slaves plantations. They were necessary for Imperial trade.
Also, RAB, regarding the move west, we do have an undeniably messy history of western annexation. Remember, though, Canada does reach the Pacific and does give allegiance to the Crown.
My speculation about the relative difference of Native Americans fates in Canada and the US does not attribute it to any unilateral benevolence and altruism on the part of the English in Canada v the former English in the US but rather that Canada was geographically far less suitable for farming and ranching. My guess is that wherever in Canada significant natural resources are found, particularly farmland, you will find a dearth of Native Americans owning any of it. Maybe some of our Canadian participants have facts on this demographic.
Guy Herbert,
From your comment – I would also doubt that you have ever been to Wembley. Here are a few more West London, names to delight you integrationists – Hanwell, Southall, (now there’s a wonderful area), Uxbridge and High Wycombe.
Your chance to try the Bangladesh experience – without leaving the UK!
If the problem is the lack of integration by immigrants, with the indigenous population, then surely there is the other side of the coin, where the indigenes do not wish to integrate with the immigrants.
Visit any of the areas I have named, and many other ‘immigrant’ areas such as Bradford, and then, with hand on heart, say that you would not object to, and would feel comfortable, living there.
Visiting some of the hinterland of Hounslow, etc. would put paid to all the nonsense about immigrants being from the better levels of their ‘home’ society. To be sure, a minority are ‘professionals’, but they are just that – a minority.
Midwesterner “Once again, it’s the small business people leading the attack against government intervention and manipulation in the marketplace.”
Touche.
Perry, Adriana, & Dale (& Dearieme)
I love this forum. So many times in the months that I’ve lurked this site I’ve seen facts that I thought couldn’t be. Scurried off to Google and come back enlightened and with many new things to think about. It appears others have done that with my posts. Whatever you’re doing, please continue.
You’ve assembled a community of people whose first loyalty is to truth of fact and truth of interpretation. As a by product of the debates here I’ve realized that we products of the English history of laws have more in common than even the most philic of us realize.
I hope to learn much more in the future and maybe not wait until my safety valve is whistling to work up nerve to post.
I’m all tingly now that Rippengal has chosen to dignify my undeserving self.
Of course they were Englishmen living in America
Of course you’re wrong, and making yourself look even more like an idiot.
This expresses one of two stupid ideas: they were English, even though they had specifically separated themselves from Britain and the British government had officially accepted the separation in 1782 (IIRC) when the war ended, but only while doing good things, becoming Americans whenever they did bad things like own slaves; or that we commissioned resident aliens who were Crown subjects to write our Constitution for us.
importing the ideas of political freedom developed in Britain including those of Locke. Hume, Adam Smith, etc. You don’t think the themes of the constitution were dreamt up in a vacuum do you.
You’ve let me down. I expected this, of course, but I expected a stronger version to get to knock down. So let me make an observation in your favor you failed to: the United States government bears a strong resemblance to the British government of the day. And the answer: it bears an even stronger resemblance to the state governments of the day.
But what’s this “ideas of political freedom” mean? The Bill of Rights? States already had bills of rights. The most proximate British model was way back in the Glorious Revolution. North America itself was no vacuum — the people were already political enough to make a revolution.
They were rife in English political and judicial circles too and what’s more were also implemented with much greater success than in America where it took over 200 years after independence to get any semblance of equal treatment for non white citizens. As for the poor native Americans unfortunately most did not survive the genocide. In most of the Empire native people populations increased greatly under colonial rule. In America once free of the restraint of central government the natives were virtually wiped out.
Because, of course, the people who did the exact same thing to the Australian natives were Australians rather than English even though they actually were still Crown subjects (unlike James Madison), unless they happened to be setting up political institutions you would approve of. Then they were English.
Speaking of Rippingal, did anyone else have a moment of incredulity when he made this statement.
The Indian friend said “It was the f***ing Pakis what done it”. When you think about it there could be no greater sign of total integration on many planes.
John, it was Saudi financed, Saudi led, and predominately Saudi staffed. And you see this East Indians knee jerk blaming of Pakistan as positive proof that he’s left his old culture and joined the English one? Someone should explain to you some South Asia politics. Perhaps you propose the Indian/Pakistan conflict should be imported to Britain.
Verity:
Perhaps I did miss the point. I do that occasionally.
I believe the UK and Europe have an “unspoken” tolerance with Islamists trusting their passive silence will protect them from any actual physical crimes of these extremists. They assumed wrong.
Surely those who spew this rhetoric are not speaking in jest, or why don’t the countries they originate from take them back? Some do want them, for crimes in their respective countries. Their words are not taken lightly back home, or tolerated.
It’s wonderful to be tolerant, however when this tolerance leads to the death of others you need to consider the collective whole.
It’s time for all of our countries to decipher from the moderate Muslim (and their are many) and the extreme Islamists who bask in the glory of our freedoms, whilst preaching the utopia lifestyle of living in a country based on their religion. Once we decipher, we act accordingly, and responsibly.
I pray the UK takes this more seriously now. Collective opinion and protection overides the entire issue, since silence has obviously not worked.
See todays court verdict in Germany. Deportation, or leave voluntarily by choice. They have until Sept. Quick and decisive move. For the record, they did not act on the hate filled ideology. For those who will shout about their rights to freedom of speech–it’s called preventative medicine.
ernest young:
It’s not colour, language, or cooking taste. I wouldn’t want to live in Basildon or Leigh-on-Sea or Telford either. (Southall would be vastly better than any of them, especially for food.) Frankly, tube zone 2 is a bit grubby and suburban, though I’ve lived in and visited many different parts of the country without great discomfort.
But I am perfectly happy for other people to live as they choose, and a bit of variety ensures that should my tastes change I can change my environment with ease. Integration and assimilation mean to me that any individual can choose how to live within a common public tradition: that the culture of their childhood home need not limit them, still less the colour of their skin. But I’m not about to tell them what to do, any more than I’d accept them doing it to me.
You see, though I’m not insulted to be thought one, I’m not an “integrationist” any more than I am a multiculturalist. I’m a pluralist. I’m really not threatened by people from abroad being a bit foreign. I don’t think foreign habits are intrinsically virtuous because they are foreign, but neither do I think they are necessarily bad.
Cultural differences can be interesting or amusing, on occasion. They might conceivably be annoying or problematic on others. But really cultural mixture is not that big a deal.
The exchange of culture and people, like the exchange of goods and services, is a big deal. And a Good Thing. It’s a common feature of civilization throughout the ages. The high metropolis was always a cosmopolis.
This is an interesting topic which, unsurprisingly, turned into a “Britain is Better than US” and a “No, US is better than Britain” discussion. Sometimes I like following those type of debates just for fun. They always end up with one side “reminding” the other about the “genocide” of the Native Americans and slavery and the other cursing King George and reliving the Boston Tea Party!
I enjoy studying history. I love discussing history, especially with someone more knowledgable. It’s fascinating and I always learn something new. I understand the relevence of history when discussing modern problems. However, I don’t see how slavery (a shameful part of American history) has anything to do with modern race relations and the assimilation of immigrants unless we are discussing reparations. Usually it’s brought up in debate simply to make the other person feel uncomfortable. What does it have to do with modern problems concerning immigration? What ON EARTH can a modern American (like me) do about black slavery that has been dealt with over 100 years ago?
Maybe it does have something to do with this topic as the blacks were “forced” to assimilate. No nation or society is pure. The US isn’t the only country that is guilty of bad behavior in the past and there’s not a lot we can do about it now. There, i got that off my chest. my chest. (I hate cheap shots)
The article and main topic of discussion was the differences in race relations and immigration assimilation between our two countries. The basic question was, “Why doesn’t America have problems with “home grown” terrorists like we do when we are far more tolerant of other people than Americans?”
I don’t know if we don’t have problems with this. You never know what’s going to get blown up tomorrow or next month. If we don’t have the same problems as the Brits, its only a matter of time. Sooner or later we will. Our societies have become infected with a sickness called “Political Correctness”. Immigrants are no longer urged to assimilate. Our permissive and generous societies welcome immigrants with little or no requirements to become a contributing members. One can come to America (or Britain) and enjoy the quality of life made possible by Western Civilation while at the same time hating it. Our elites and government types (while basking in the benefits of Western Civ) constantly remind us of how evil it is and strive to reconstruct it.
Governments have adopted this politically correct attitude in which we must all comply for fear of being accused of (God forbid) RACISM.
Look, it’s not difficult to adapt and assimilate into a “host” society without losing your cultural identity and there’s always going to be biggoted jerks, that’s part of life.
Western civilization is “supreme” over other civilizations, even with all its faults and yes, it could use some improvement. This IS NOT white supremacy. It’s a success story. People used to immigrate to our society because of the opportunities and freedom offered. It was natural (and expected) for them to assimilate, make something of themselves and most importantly to become an Americans (or British).
Now we have a huge influx of people that disdain our way of life and hate our society. They wall themselves up in ghettos and do little to become part of the host country. Instead of learning our language, we have to adapt to their language…make everything from school to street signs bilingual. Our children require “reprogramming” in school so that they can be more tolerant. Police have to be reprogrammed so they don’t accidently upset the criminal they’re after by going into a religious building incorrectly. And, after all this effort of tolerance and acceptance they still want to blow us up. Go figure.
Sorry for going on and on. I rarely comment because sooner or later someone says it for me. Also, I’m a bit shy as there are a lot of bright people that comment on this blog (I could never come up with the word “philic”??). I hope someone understood what I was trying to say!
Cheers 🙂
As a British Indian I’m not certain at all about the idea that it’s because there my parents came from a former colony that helped them to integrate.
I think it’s because they came as part of a defined need. I.e. My parents were , in effect, asked to come to the UK to help fill a shortage of doctors.
Once here they quickly became part of a greater community of Britain whilst retaining their essential Indianness. This I think was largely because
a) it was too difficult to do otherwise in the 60’s when they came here &
b) they felt it was the right thing to do.
Personally I think the problem today is not people who are immigrants or children of immigrants who tend to socially be closer to other immigrants;
( i.e it’s not a problem if a group of Indians would rather celebrate diwali than Christmas)… the problem is those who have thoughout their life been brought up to belive that the UK is bad because of it’s colonial past instead of appreciating the country as a whole (mostly good but with some bad aspects).
The main blame for this , in my opinion, lies with the British who have been unable to show pride in their country & history & thus have allowed this other narrative to flourish.
This is probably all been off topic but I’ve had it in my head for a while so here it is
Since you are British, Rajesh, has it crossed your mind that it is you, amongst others, who should be supplying the alternative narrative?
I am afraid Matra is right.
Re blacks: I see that the main and most crucial difference is that the UK slaves were employed as such in their native countries, and they willingly immigrated only after their slavery was abolished, while the US slaves were forcibly brought in, and only later their slavery was abolished.
Hi KCB, You ask what on earth a modern American can do about slavery that was dealt over 100 years ago short of reparations. I agree with your inference that reparation is a non-starter. Far from resolving anything it would only expand the realm of wrongs done.
I didn’t bring up slavery to make anyone uncomfortable. I brought it up because when discussing assimilation in the US, it’s unavoidable. I think you would agree that there is still racial tension in America. It doesn’t take too long to find overwhelming statistical evidence that blacks are still treated differently in our police, prosecutorial and judicial system. Even corrected for other factors. The only but very important thing we can do is to make our government function in a completely color blind way. A big part of this is decriminalizing the huge number of laws that are selectively enforced. Either that or fully enforcing them to all races equally. i.e. A white male is far less likely to be stopped for a burned out taillight than a black male or the forms cocaine carrying different penalties coincidently corresponding to the color of the people that prefer it. Another step is to eliminate quotas of all kinds, they’re just a variation of reparations and steal the credibility of every minority who met “white” qualifications. Our education system is very flawed and is based on flawed premises. School choice is a step in the right direction. If one school is too much worse than another students can change schools. Tacit separate but equal doesn’t cut it. There’s more we can do but this is a start.
The rest of your post is perfect. I wouldn’t change a word. And I think you said it more clearly than I’ve been able to.
I’m sorry that even ever used the word’s “tea party”. It distracted from my point which was that we were without any voice in the government that lead up to our rebellion. The apparent unwillingless of many present day British to acknowledge any role at all in our “execrable commerce” as personified by John Rippengal, suggest to me an answer to the continuous lament on Samizdata about why there is no pride in English history and tradition.
Rajesh most recently noted it. “The main blame for this , in my opinion, lies with the British who have been unable to show pride in their country & history & thus have allowed this other narrative to flourish.”
Any pride in one’s history is impossible if one is vulnerable to contradictory facts from attackers. To withstand these assaults we have to admit, understand, and address these parts of history first, before we have them thrown back in our face by our opponents. Only then are we prepared. I site for example Matra’s refutation of John R’s “10,000 lynchings” statement. S/he dispassionately set the record straight without denying the blight on our history. When we acknowledge uncomfortable facts, we can then be prepared to relate accurately what we did, how we stopped it, and how we repair it in those rare cases it’s possible and prevent it from happening again.
I sense, even on this site, a strong reluctance to face up to the bad bits by many British. It’s a shame because in turn, that prevents them from effectively bragging (err, feeling justifiably proud) about 1000 years of developing, testing, and ever improving the most productive, most tolerant, most flexible and certainly the most just systems of government ever established in the history of earth.
Midwesterner – you are way too simplistic. The firepower ranged against traditional Americans and Brits is way too great. You’ve got CAIR.
In Britain there is the Pakistani apologist community, the special pleading for immigrants community, the (state-funded so with a real interest) translator/interpreter community, the joke “Muslim Parliament” community, the “community leader spokesman community”, the reasoned TV panel appearancer, the Muslim schoolgirl costume community, the Muslim blah blah blah blah community. All of them crouched in their chadors and other crap outfits in hospital corridors awaiting treatment they have never paid for.
In the socialist/communist terms of British town councils, the British community of indigenes and integrated immigrants of 58m people is severely under- represented and this is against the law.
‘a strong reluctance to face up to the bad bits by many British’
Although God is an Englishman, I agree with you Midwesterner that it is healthy not to view British history as one long series of truimphs!
If however you pay attention to what Rajesh is saying – and he probably knows more about life in Britain than you do – he is saying that there has been an tendency in Britain in recent years to focus upon the [very real] negative aspects of British history and culture – or at least on those historical events that serve a Leftist agenda – at the expense of the achievements.
If you are in any way representative of the USA this does not seem to be the case in your country.
Tempting though it is to go through American history pointing out the myths – a history I hasten to add of which there is a great deal to be proud – I will limit myself to suggesting that what irritates John Rippengal is your evident tendency to make assertions on the basis of a quite laughably inadequate understanding of the history of your own country.
P.S. I have just come back from the US of A – from the Mid-West in fact! – and have had a quite wonderful time with some American academics. I do not regard myself as the slightest bit anti-American. I suppose what I am saying is that you are doing your country – of which you are rightly proud – a disservice when you come out with such nationalist tosh – all it succeeds in generating is irritation.
of a quite laughably inadequate understanding of the history of your own country.
Chris, this is a pretty sweeping statement. What part of my country’s history have I denied? What am I inadequately understanding?
I come here to be enlightened. Please, widen my knowledge.
And that “nationalist tosh” is not nationalist tosh. It is a justifiable pride in 1000 years of governmental refinement that has given the many nations who claim it as their own governments history the best and most …. oh bother.
I think that the blame Rajesh, lies not with the British people per se. We want to feel proud of ourselves but the left wing chattering classes have been beating up on our Nation since before the second world war, and the rest of us are too British and polite to complain.
Our history is not taught as a matter of pride (and thank you midwesterner, we have a lot to be proud of) but of shame. It is no longer even skimmed through chronologically, so as to get some perspective on things. Now it is “Modules” and empathy questions.
Which other Nation do you know that would make major epic movies out of such defeats as “Dunkirk” or Arnhem in ” A bridge too far “? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; Nobody beats up better or faster on Britain than an Islington or Hampstead socialist.
No wonder Rajesh is confused. How can he love this country , if most of the people in it arn’t allowed to. Our most famous traitors Burgess and Mclean were as British as could possibly be, with every privilege of their (very high) class, but still they sold us down the river for a fantasy ideal of what ” we should be” according to the overlord classes, rather than what we could achieve for ourselves, if someone was’nt sneering at us all the time for wearing the wrong clothes or using the wrong cutlery.
Class in Britain is another factor in all this, and would take me another hour or so to articulate. Suffice it to say it’s the working class that get’s the sharp end of immigration (and some recent arrivals are as digruntled with the next wave as the long term population) while the Guardianistas have happily patted it on the head these 40 years or so.
Verity, Simplistic? Or optimistic? In the 80’s we had the might of the Soviet empire aimed at us. Lined up behind the Iron Curtain from the Pacific to the heart of Germany, from the far north to the borders of Iran and Turkey. Don’t say “They were a hollow shell and would have failed eventually.” Governments that don’t have to respond to their citizens can do as they please. Look at North Korea. Or for that matter, China’s cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward. The Soviets could have stood as long as they had any international credibility.
Then Ronald Reagan called their bluff. First he offered to outspend their military into oblivion. Then, he stood at the Berlin wall and, with a single sentence, gave history a slap shot in another direction. “Mr. Gorbachev, if your system is so good, tear down this wall.” East Germans and Westerners tore it down WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!! The might of the Soviet Empire stood by, paralyzed by truth.
How does this apply to militant Islam? It also cannot withstand an onslaught of truth.
We need to have the confidence and authority of honest rational people with a firm grasp of facts and truth. Then we need to directly confront our Neville Chamberlains’ and our Amb Joseph Kennedys’ and thoroughly discredit them. As Rajesh made so clear, the problem is US!
We’ve discovered the power of the internet. Dan Rather was only the most visible victim of truth. There have been many and there will be uncountable more. Instead of reacting, let’s go on search and destroy missions.
I believe that Islamic terrorism is a tactical problem and not a philosophical one. It’s moral and logical inconsistencies are so all encompassing it’s hard to find anything substantial enough to warrant serious consideration. It is merely an anchor in a world of moral relativism.
WE hold the moral high ground! Not those relativist apologists that currently have the ear of voters. It’s time we claimed it.
In the socialist/communist terms of British town councils, the British community of indigenes and integrated immigrants of 58m people is severely under- represented and this is against the law.
Verity, I don’t understand your system of councils and don’t really know what this means.
Guy,
Rather neat piece of evasive footwork, you never did manage to answer the question of your comfort or safety if you had no choice, but were required to reside in one of the areas that I mentioned. In a truly integrated society answering such a question in a straightforward manner would not be a problem. The variety of the eating places available, is not a sufficient reason to tolerate the near slum conditions to which large parts of the boroughs mentioned have succumbed.
Of course you have travelled and visited many parts of the country – haven’t we all? – but have you ever visited, and spent time in, an area where the immigrant population is in the majority, if you had, I am sure you would be anything but a ‘pluralist’, and you would have a more reasoned and mature attitude to the mismanagement of immigration to the UK. Heaven forbid that, as an indigene, that you would expect an immigrant to make any attempt to integrate – after all, that is what we are discussing here, is it not?
Neither do I feel threatened by folk being different, other than that there are rather too many of them, and their culture is rather primitive for my taste. Unlike yourself, I do not find the great unwashed very intriguing, or, as you quaintly put it – ‘amusing’. If I required ‘amusement’, I would rather make a booking at Cook’s, and go visit them in their natural environment.
I think that we all expect to live and work in an improving environment, what we have at this time is fragmentation and degeneration.
From the immigrant ‘first stop’ area being confined to the poorer parts of the East end of London, it now extends to a large part of the capital, and hardly represents a picture of a modern era capital city.
A modest cultural exchange, (what a wonderfully socialist phrase that is), is possibly of some benefit – dependent on many factors, but this has not been a cultural exchange, with little by way of anything resembling ‘exchange’, this has been an invasion. Hence the very real problems, which ‘pluralists’ seem keen on ignoring, or otherwise camoflaging.
Forced cultural mixing is a big deal, particularly when done for reasons of political social engineering, how can it possibly be right for the main centres of society to bear little resemblance to the rest of that society. That is what a failure to integrate is creating, that and a festering future problem.
“an area where the immigrant population is in the majority”
Where?
Your rather broader definition of “immigrant” than mine seems to include not only the first generation, but the children and perhaps the grandchildren of immigrants–so surely also the blessed editors of Samizdata. It leads me to suspect you really mean black and brown people. Even so, it takes a bit of gerrymandering to identify a significant sized area in which “immigrants” form a majority.
My terrace might count. Perhaps I’ll give you–on your definitions not mine–one small part of the London borough of Brent, Harlesden, and, just possibly, Southall (which for US readers is part of a London borough close to Heathrow airport, and thus historically had low house prices.)
People who might take e.y’s assertions to be accurate really should look at the figures.
KCB–you made some valid points, and as for slavery in our country (yes, a big shame) other than reparitions which would not include us on an individual basis, it’s difficult to change history, except NOT to repeat it. BUT—-I do feel strongly as a white American, a formal apology of some sort should have been offered by our Govt at some point and time.
Other than the Watts Riots and Riots of 1992, the first I witnessed, the African Americans who have felt oppression the most, did not use this as an excuse to blow up innocents. The violence was contained mostly in their own area.
Interesting analogy to what is presently going on. Most still take pride in America for what it stands for, instead of tearing it apart.
Rajesh—You’re very right on the British not showing enough pride, and granted we Americans can and do go overboard, the British have much to be proud of and need to emphasize this to the new flux of immigrants. How can they instill national pride if they don’t feel it? While residing in the UK, I found the people incredibly polite, yet lacking in the fight it takes to deal with their grievances.
Midwesterner—-YEP, we hold the moral ground. Back to basics, don’t count on Govts to speak for your beliefs. WE, the people, FOR the people, BY the people.
PEOPLE make countries, not governments.
Ernest, why don’t you switch “immigrant” for “non-assimilated”. If it’s appropriate. Reading from over here, it seems like that is what you are really saying.
Guy, fascinating stats. I bookmarked it. But it doesn’t seem to be presented in a way to indentify if ghettos exist within a larger community.
“don’t count on Govts to speak for your beliefs.”
Devine Mercy, my frustration with the republicrats and demicans is probably matched by a few tens or hundreds of millions of other Americans. I have some thoughts on bringing power back into the reach of mere citizens, but they are WAY off topic for this thread.
Guy,
No, I do not mean people ‘of colour’, I mean immigrants, the non- assimilted variety, (thank you MW, I tend to forget the wide variety of folk who read this blog, and get a bit colloquial at times).
Of course there are indigenes still living in the Boroughs mentioned, but said Boroughs also contain large areas of ghetto style communities.
You really are disingenuous, – in this medium it is difficult not to paint with a fairly wide brush, which of course lays any comment open to a slippery reply. Which, it seems you are particularly good at!
Your assumptions re my meaning, are incorrect, it just happens that the majority of non-assimilated immigrants, are ‘of colour’, even you must have noticed that. That does not give you any reason to suggest – by innuendo- that I may be motivated by ‘racism’ in my comments, you would be very wrong about that as well!
Your chart shows that 30% of the population is neither white, nor Christian, it does not show how well the 30% of non-white, non-christians have assimilated – which is what this discussion is ostensibly about.
Keep to the topic, and please don’t try to make everything a racial issue.
Mid W—-Okay, well I shall await the “WAY out there topic”
ernest–great defense on slippery replies.
(slams gavel)
Thanks to you all, I’m learning a lot.
To Verity: I’m delighted to read you too. Why more immigrants that very few people like?
– for President Chirac and a handful of others : corruption in cash.
– for millions of elitist people (as I told you, each Frenchman is an upper-class in himself with a unique aristocratic and philosophic touch) : wanting for inferior domestics in conservative households or in leftist public services (one quarter of the working forces) through subsidiaries. Feeling that, at last, contrary to their bad humoured pretentious fellow countrymen, someone will serve them and shut up, and even vote like them, or for them, as soon as Frenchified. I’m sad to see that in the last ten years many Frenchmen have taken the worst colonial habit : they’ve got used to being served by people (cleaning their offices, working in groceries, restaurants etc.) who sometimes can’t even understand simple orders and are always unable to answer. What a relief! Of course, these employees can’t be as productive, but they allow for massive fraud on social charges (an additional 100% on top of a French net salary for the employer). They require massive public spending, four years of minimum wage for a single worker according to the Nobel Price of economy Maurice Allais, ten years with “one” wife and “three” children (it’s only a model). But the media brainwash us with these “younger” people paying our “charges sociales” and retirement pensions (in France the social premium are distributed immediately, they are no compulsory pension funds (except the 100% deductible lumpsum for the civil servants who wish to build a capital). The immigrants justify the existence of public services, leasure, movies etc. just for them, that are in fact uncontrolled public expenditures and life employment jobs (directors of a public service and movie-shooters would hardly be clerks in a liberal economy) or subsidies to association fighting white racists, that have very few pageant members, lobbying for more mosques, public housing, jobs, leisures. This year, they’ve even gained engineers’ degrees and numerous exemptions of entrance competitive exams to civil services.
The illusion is maintained that any inhabitant (not citizen) of France gets its fare share of the social money according to its – declared – income. Of course, the one working for companies cheating on social charges can also cheat on their declared income to the point that they receive social allowances while working. These new kind of bosses, Chinese or African, who came to rescue our social funds can now buy a house in three years. To keep the French quiet, the State keeps giving them little presents. This week, the yearly “allocation de rentrée scolaire” as been increased by a few euros and reached 263 euros per child, even for an only child! There are other ridiculous allowances like this, but I think that doesn’t compensate for the corresponding premium: 12% of our net salary stolen all year long by the Caisse d’Allocation Familiale. Obviously the money is gone somewhere else… But in France, the ignorance is such, that even the conservatives are willing to contribute to this.
I guess other economies work the same way on a smaller scale, and therefore have fewer immigrants.
It seems to me that a good-sized portion of the American success in assimilating immigrants comes from the way the federal government has traditionally helped immigrants, which is to say, not at all. America has traditionally been a sink or swim society, with numerous immigrants going back to where they came from after living here for a few years. While they were here, though, they had to learn at least some English if they were to get a job and deal with the larger society. And immigrants did have to work; there were no welfare rolls for them to go on. The demands of work and family left little time to plot mischief against the United States or anyone else, although there were always exceptions to that rule, like the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1867. But, by and large, the model worked. What won’t work is setting up religious and ethnic ghettoes and then trying to buy off the inhabitants of these ghettoes with a generous dole check. It’s easy for that sheik to go around denouncing Britain—what is Britain to him except an enormous teat to be squeezed for every farthing he can get out of it? Now, if he actually had to work to support his polygamous lifestyle then my guess is he’d have a different outlook on life, or at least his present one would be much toned down.
Ernest: You went awfully quiet for awhile. I was starting to worry. Good to see you are alive and kicking.
Chris Goodman: The thing about history is that, for what is ostensibly a study of facts and figures largely concerning violent land and power grabs, it is incredibly subjective. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is the pinnacle of the European experience for one historian and an ill conceived shame for another. Banastre Tarleton is considered a homicidal nutcase by many American historians, but he returned to England and they made him an MP. (BTW, John R., interesting to note how Tarleton’s father made his money – he must have been a secret Yank.)
That being the case, don’t you think it’s rather arrogant to accuse someone else of having a “laughably inadequate understanding” of the history of his own country? What makes you think yours is any better?
Obviously, facts are facts; however, considered interpretation of historical events is always subject to a certain amount of educated opinion and personal prejudice. No one has a direct, infallible link to the God of Historical Truth; although some educated Britons act as if they have, which attitude is at least as irritating to Americans as is the “nationalistic tosh” of Americans to Brits.
I am not a relativist about truth.
There are good and bad historians.
There are many fine British historians.
There are many fine American historians.
The assumption that I am using nationality to distinguish their quality is entirely yours.
Chris,
I went back and read your posts. I only found three unequivocal factual statements. The rest where either opinions or subjective interpretations of unnamed or unsubstantiable “facts”.
You first unequivocal statement is the presumably humorous “God is an Englishman”.
The second one, “…there is a great deal to be proud” (in American history), was crouched between two sweepingly opinionated, totally subjective and amazingly condescending comments that don’t have anything approaching enough substance to be able to challenge.
And, last statement, you’ve been to the midwest.
You’ve yet to bring anything but your opinions and your opinion of other people’s opinions. There is a great quote, I’ve forgotten the author,
“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”
I fear you are practicing a historical religion.
Alice—I’ve also learned much on the social systems in Europe on this blog. Thank you for the low down on France.
Social allowances, while working. Merde! Interesting perks for immigrants. For those bursting in their “I may get deported” britches in the UK or Europe, it’s certainly no wonder.
Let me give you a brief run down on M.E. benefits for immigrants in the Gulf countries. For the other Arab nationalities, they work for survival only, the only Govt perks being free medical. They are now slowly being ousted from the private sector due to new laws stating a percentage of jobs “must” be filled by those born here. Most are here on 2 year contracts, which may or may not be renewed. Even if they marry a local, up until recently it was a 15 year wait to acquire citizenship.
The main theme over here is now realizing for long term prosperity, they must take care of their own. I foresee many of the immigrants gone in a few years, as they are “guest workers” meaning, welcome, now go home.
Also, nobody tolerates ranters, those who are anti Govt screaming in the streets, or any hate filled ideology. Those folks get deported, or jailed. Cruel isn’t it?
For the 3rd world workers, which now constitute more than the native population (ridiculous!) they literally work for below standard wages, send most home, then promptly leave after the 2 years. Medical is provided, no other perks. Yes, they love earning the income, however they know they are guests. Also, they must earn a required salary “before” bringing in wives and children! They, not the Govt, must support their dependants. Hard and fast rule.
Knowing what I know of the US, the UK, and Europe now, I would say we are in the midst of drowning in our own ridiculous charity system which should be a dream come true for most, yet not appreciated at all.
The 2005 social ills we are now facing is a direct result of years of encouraging the “Gimme People” which considering what our country was based on, hard work, ethics, and any entreprenuer’s dream come true, a total failure.
Just say No to the gimme people.
MidWest—
Loved your comments thus far, can you please elaborate on the fundamentalist Christians? I for one, do not want extreme anything, however America was founded, one nation under God. Thumpers give me a major headache in any case.
Was just wondering what your greatest fear is in having more God based emphasis as long as secularism exists. And, yes I do have respect for all religions and beliefs, as long as the goal is to exist peacefully with those sharing your planet.
I do not believe any Christian in the West would forcefully implement a “no pork law” based on Old Testament teachings. That would be based on personal conviction.
On the other hand, Islamists instituting Sharia’ah law would be a total rewrite on history as we know it.
Canada recently voted down a law to use Islamic law in Family courts, and my head spun. Ask yourself why this was even considered.
The Gulf Arab countries do not even use many of these laws, with the exception of marriage/divorce laws, with French laws also intermingled, much to the disgust of some more than eager to change that.
Turkey is another example. Tunisia, which is Muslim majority, now uses democratic Western laws, even for divorce cases.
My point and question to you is: If our country dropped the word “God” from their vocabulary tomorrow, do you honestly think the Islamists will drop their inherent belief that their laws are the best for mankind?
Divine Mercy, I’ll try to address your points as best I can. If the PTB want to stop this as off topic, they have a point, but I actually think the institutionalization of religion is the root of all of our present assimilation problems. Hopefully, since it’s at the end of an otherwise dieing thread, they’ll be tolerant.
There is a continuous argument that America was founded on a belief in God that is put forth by the predominately Evangelical fundamentalists. I believe they are “cherry picking” statements and phrases from during the founding to make this case. Many if not most of the founders appear to have been either closet or outed Deists. Deists do not believe in Divine Intervention. (No offense to your nom de plume intended!)
Some statements suggest that it was the institution of religion rather than religion itself they were endorsing. In any case, I think the Declaration and Constitution speak the most clearly on what we were founded on. I believe it to be more or less individualism and emphatically it was fair laws, fairly applied.
Most religions including the three “of the book” say God is unknowable. Followed immediately with claims of knowledge. How do you incorporate something that is by definition “unknowable” into government without counting on people who “know” about it.
Fundamentalists, as a general definition, believe their religious documents to be infallible.
In the case of Christianity, the very first words of the Bible are “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” A fair interpretation to me seems to be that creation is God’s first “word” in the first person. From that point on, the Bible becomes, literally, second hand news and therefore subject to the disqualification of any contradiction with creation.
Most fundamentalists are full of rules that God has to follow when he created the heavens and the earth. One of the more absurd ones is that God had to do it in 168 hours (including rest). Another one was that the earth had to be in the middle and everything else is rotating around it. Poor Galileo.
For those of you who believe God “might have” created everything in 168 hours, that suggests that either God is a lier and slipped dinosaurs and progressive development into the geological record to deceive us or that “the deceiver” put them there. Neither of those views is tenable in the context of the rest of scripture. Maybe you believe that there are just some things we don’t understand. BIN-GO! But please let me qualify, when I say “things we don’t understand”, I don’t mean things that are irrational. With validation from Einstein, I’m uncomfortable with uncertainty. “God does not throw dice.” To summarize, the world around us is the movie, and “infallible” scriptures are the movie critic telling us what the movie is “really” about. Another question, why does “intelligent design” forbid that intelligent designer from programming the initial algorithm and watching? More telling God how to do his business, I suppose.
If you truly believe Genesis 1:1, then everything in the Bible is second hand news. To believe in infallibility requires you to believe first in your own interpretations, then those of the paraphrasers and/or translators, then the original writers. Most fundamentalists avoid the use of the word “authors” because it implies human participation. They say God wrote the bible with the help of transcribers. They believe that God protected it at every step. Why? “Because the Bible tells us so.” and because they have faith.
If you would know the God of Genesis 1:1, study his first word not “his” second hand word. Your saints should be people like Einstein, Curie, Newton, Hawkings, and the more “New Testament” types like the research biologists, research chemists and anyone else who discovers, not decides, facts.
I digressed. My point was how can you “prove” a religion? If you can’t prove it, how can you rationally incorporate it into government and get a predictable outcome? To remind you, Christians are New Testament. Except for prophecy, they consider the Old Testament to be a proven historical document. While they would not ban pork, Jewish governments would and have.
Religious opinion is always the paramount qualifier in everyones life. Agnostic or atheist, Baptist or Buddhist, in all of our decisions, we first qualify all of our choices against our religious beliefs. How can all these opinions of something that can only be known by personal or second hand revelation, ever have ANY place in an assembly of individuals. It can’t. The only way it can is to standardize it. To do that you must eliminate the individual. (side bar – fundamentalist Christians believe man was made in the image of God. Do they believe God belongs to a collective? Or that God IS a collective? Or that God gets answers from other peoples “knowledge”? Can’t God observe and think?)
To cut away to your last question which was “If our country dropped the word “God” from their vocabulary tomorrow, do you honestly think the Islamists will drop their inherent belief that their laws are the best for mankind?”, not in a million years.
As long as anyone, whether it’s in Wahhabist (in particular) Islam, Hasidic Judaism, or Fundamentalist Christianity, believes that they know the “one way” they will install it in government if allowed. This happens even when their documents state otherwise. Case in point, the New Testament clearly states “By grace are ye saved through faith…” and yet this sure didn’t stop Christianity from sword based conversions. How much faith is at work with a sword at your throat? And while we’re on faith, have you ever wondered why fundamentalists of all kinds make a loss of faith the greatest crises imaginable? In some Christian circles, they actually stand around the person, lay hands on them and pray for their healing. In Islam they just kill them and be done with it. Is it any wonder people in both are unwilling to disclose and discuss doubts?
Hope this helps.
MidWest—Yes you helped. Not a topic I like to get into much, I just noted all the blog replies on assimilation (and yes, I also think religion is a major issue here) led me to point blank ask questions. Sorry if this was a off the blog question. Yikes.
Your points were all very valid, hence my belief in secular goverments, and your belief on why you’re on the planet is personal.
You’re a very enlightened person, good points.
Oh, nothing divine about me, and the nom de plume has more to do with mercy. And that’s not a bad thing.
Thanks MW
MidWest—Yes you helped. Not a topic I like to get into much, I just noted all the blog replies on assimilation and religious rights (and yes, I also think religion is a major issue here) led me to point blank ask questions. Sorry if this was a off the blog question. Yikes.
Your points were all very valid, hence my belief in secular goverments, and your belief on why you’re on the planet is personal.
You’re a very enlightened person, good points.
Oh, nothing divine about me, and the nom de plume has more to do with mercy. And that’s not a bad thing.
Thanks MW
Devine Mercy,
“You’re a very … ” I wish, but thanks for the thought.
Something about that thing “Mercy”. Only a wronged person can be merciful to a wrongdoer. When judges show mercy, it goes by another name. Injustice.
If by “Mercy” you practice benevolent generosity to those without our advantages, yes. Good.
If you are pleading for mercy from a unknowable deity, well, you can guess where I think that leads.
I reread you posts and enjoyed and learned from them. Thank you.
Nancy,
Thank you for your concern. Doing a lot of travelling at the moment, hence, I cannot always get to a keyboard as much as I would like. Thank you!