45 thoughts on ““A Total Failure””

  1. Maine has had lots of issues with their large influx of Somali immigrants. Maine is not a wealthy state but it has a strong moonbat political core. Upon consideration isn’t placing Somali immigrants in the Lewiston Maine area some sort of hate crime?

  2. The American fifth column (in the house, senate and media) will fight any rational solution. I really can’t believe how far this country has moved toward lunacy.

  4. “Democracy, immigration, multi-culturalism: pick any two.”

    You should explain your position on multi-culturalism to the Hmong in Minneapolis-St.Paul: http://visualstpaul.blogspot.com/2009/01/hmong-in-minnesota.html

    They weren’t quick to assimilate — consider this: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=usdafsfacpub&sei-redir=1#search=%22homong%20hunting%20park%22 — but it has worked out well. It wouldn’t surprise me if you prefer people who fought along side us in the Vietnam War to random Somalis, but that has no bearing on your beliefs about multi-culturalism.

  5. Lot’s of Hmong going overseas to wage war on America then? I read the first link and skimmed the second one, but I missed that part.

  6. Buzz, I don’t understand how your question follows from my criticism of Rand’s formulation “Democracy, immigration, multi-culturalism, pick any two.” The Hmong in St. Paul are an example of all three flourishing simultaneously. Plenty of other immigrant groups also adequately demonstrate “democracy and immigration and multi-culturalism”, but I picked the Hmong because they repopulated en masse in Minnesota, and because they lived a significantly different lifestyle from nearly all Minnesotans before they arrived.

  7. …I picked the Hmong because they repopulated en masse in Minnesota, and because they lived a significantly different lifestyle from nearly all Minnesotans before they arrived.

    Notice the last three words: “before they arrived.” The point is that the Hmong have integrated themselves into our society, and regard themselves as Americans. The Somalis have not and do not, and live a significantly different — and hateful — lifestyle from nearly all Minnesotans after they have arrived and lived in this country for years. Surely even you can see the difference.

    People here get pissed off at you because we don’t believe you’re really as stupid as your statements would indicate. The conclusion is that you’re an agent provocateur, otherwise kniown as a turd-flinging troll.

  8. My second link gave evidence that the Hmong did not assimilate quickly.

    Rand’s formulation, even if it was correct, could only apply to new arrivals. If you wait long enough (three generations max) all immigrant groups assimilate for the most part because the USA is inherently fun, wonderful, laden with opportunity, etc, and, of course, to a much lesser extent, Americans incorporate aspects of the immigrant groups’ culture and language as well. Since this is true of all arrivals to the USA, it only makes sense to evaluate multi-culturalism regarding immigrants who are new arrivals and don’t immediately assimilate. ( Instant assimilation is possible: I know immigrants who grew up abroad watching American TV and assimilated before they even arrived.) The Hmong didn’t assimilate quickly, and thus, they can be a test of multiculturalism. Again, look at my link: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=usdafsfacpub&sei-redir=1#search=%22homong%20hunting%20park%22

  10. Bob-1, just because many immigrant groups assimilate doesn’t mean all them will. Europe is on the third and fourth generation of Muslim immigrants and still waiting for the promised assimilation. For a long while they tried to claim that their issues were no different than the US faced assimilating Mexicans, ingoring the vast gulf between Muslim culture and European culture.

    Mexicans are conservative Spanish speaking Catholics whose values are almost indistinguishable from the 1940’s American mainstream. If Europe tried to assimilate Mexicans they’d be unable to distinguish them from Spanish, who are European, so the whole exercise would elude a logical definition.

    For decades each European country pulling in immigrants sought to blame failures on the particular immigrant pool they were drawing from. England felt their problems stemmed from the former control of Pakistan, Palestine, and Egypt. France blamed its assimilation problems on the French occupation of Syria, but especially Algeria. Italy’s plight was because they drew from Libya, formerly occupied. Germany’s massive immigrant problem was blamed on the fact that Germany had never had any experience with Muslims, having never occupied them. Likewise with Denmark, Sweden, and other countries who opened their doors to Muslim immigration.

    Eventually it became pretty obvious that European countries weren’t having problem assimilating Muslim immigrants because of their particular history with them, or lack thereof. The problem is that most Muslims can’t be assimilated easily because their culture forbids it. Until just after WW-II most Imams forbade Muslims from moving to the West, because Western governments didn’t enforce sharia.

    Unlike Westerners, who place national and state law above religious edicts, Muslims must support the Koran over any man-made law, because man’s intellect is flawed and limited whereas the Koran is the perfect law of God himself. The Constitutions grant of religious freedom is thus overruled by the Koran’s injunction to slay infidels and apostates, because God is the controlling authority and the Constitution wasn’t written by God, the Koran was.

    Pile up enough layers of this worldview and you have a not only a refuge(or ghetto) from secular law and governmental authority, you have a huge motivation to tear down those secular institutions which are man-made, and thus flawed, imperfect, an enemy of Islam, and a stench in the nostrils of God.

  11. Oh look, here comes Bob-1 to school us all by bringing up some other ethnic groups with a completely different culture from another part of the globe than the one we’re having the problem with. What’s the matter, Bob-1, can’t you tell one foreign culture from another? Are all foreigners alike to you? You do know that Vietnam is in Asia, not Africa, don’t you?

  12. The interesting response from George and the rude response from Andrea share something in common: they don’t acknowledge that Rand was making a claim about multiculturalism, not any one particular immigrant group.

    PS Not that it is relevant to my point, but the Hmong in question were from Laos.

    For Titus:

    Hank Hill: So are you Chinese or Japanese?
    Minh Souphanousinphone: No, we are Laotian.
    Bill Dauterive: The ocean? What ocean?
    Kahn Souphanousinphone: From Laos, stupid! It’s a landlocked country in South East Asia between Vietnam and Thailand, population approximately 4.7 million!
    Hank ponders this for a few seconds.
    Hank Hill: So are you Chinese or Japanese?

  13. Bob, the point about multi-culti isn’t that no two cultures are capable of being compatible with each other, but that we can’t automatically expect them to be.

  15. George, one difference between Germany and the USA is that in Germany, babies don’t receive German citizenship simply for being born on German soil. This has led to a permanent underclass of people in Germany who have no country: they are considered Turks in Germany, but since they were born in Germany, speak German, were educated in Germany, root for German sports teams, and generally don’t identify with Turkey nor have citizenship there, they are people without a country, and this creates a problem. As a Jew, I find this situation in Germany to be particularly worrisome, but something of the same situation occurs in many European countries. I have Hungarian friends in Switzerland who report that not only are they and their children treated as outsiders, but that if the family remains in Switzerland, their children’s children will continue to be treated as outsiders.

    One reason I’m proud to be American is that in the USA, as a matter of both law and shared national culture, people born in the USA are as American as apple pie, even their ethnic group doesn’t specialize in apple pies. The Tea Party’s efforts to overturn the citizenship aspect of the 14th amendment is seriously misguided – we don’t want to become Germany – and I’m glad they haven’t made much headway.

  16. Oh dear, Bob-1, from his lair at the corner of Smug Street and Sanctimonious Avenue, thinks I am rude. You know, I’m not the one who doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong with calling people who point out reality prejudiced bigots who want to turn the US into Nazi Germany. In short, I consider being called “rude” by people like Bob-1 a distinct honor.

  18. Just to be clear: I think the attack on the 14th amendment only threatens to turn the USA into a country like modern-day Germany. I’m not suggesting that Germany’s current problem will necessarily lead to a 1930s-state of affairs, or even that it is likely, but it is a reason for vigilance. Revising the citizenship laws so as to encourage assimilation would help in today’s Germany, and preserving citizenship laws in America will continue to be helpful here.

  19. Rand, we appear to disagree on what constitutes “multiculturalism”. I don’t think it implies the acceptance of every culture, just the acceptance of multiple cultures.

  20. In a nutshell: I think accepting multiple cultures is the best way for Americans to encourage the eventual assimilation of immigrants, whereas rejecting multiculturalism, as Rand does, creates a reactionary standoffish subgroup which slows assimilation.

  21. I don’t think it implies the acceptance of every culture, just the acceptance of multiple cultures.

    It doesn’t matter what you think it means. What matters is that the multi-culti-cultists think it means the former. That’s what “cultural relativism” is all about.

  22. I think you are arguing with a strawman. What person in the position to do something about it (and thus would be worth criticizing on your blog) actually thinks this?

  24. For Titus:

    Whatup? I thought we beat this multi-cultural vs. sub-cultural issue to death previous on TTM, but it’s like Groundhog Day with your comments here.

  25. Yes, yes, the Royal Marines demonstrates its acceptance of the Taliban’s totalitarian culture every day in Afghanistan.

  27. If I may, Mr. Simberg’s “pick any two” point may not be, “_All_ immigrant groups will damage the indigenous culture in a multicultural environment,” but that, eventually, _one_ group will.

  29. Usually, this site is good for insight into the mind of Islamophobics, who see terrorists steaming out of every mosque. But this time, we see a defense of general xenophobia. And yet, on this very blog, you can find impassioned criticism for “the precautionary principle”, at least when it is applied to anthropogenic climate change. I suggest you heed your own advice on blanket applications of the precautionary principle when it comes to something as basic to the American experience as an immigrant’s freedom to express his or her own culture.

    Or to make a simpler point: you overgeneralized. You meant to be Islamophobic but overshot the mark and came off as hostile to all your neighbors who are not exactly like you.

  30. I’ll just toss out a logical failing of cultural relativism. If the views of all cultures are equally valid (and therefore correct), then relativism requires the acceptance of a culture that views all other cultures as invalid. Since that view must also be valid, the initial proposition is falsified.

  31. George, I think you hit the nail right on the head, except that I would come to the opposite conclusion. People who preach tolerance are typically intolerant of intolerance, but that doesn’t invalidate their basic position, even though it sounds silly when you express things the way we are.

  33. To bring it back to Earth: show me a proponent of cultural relativism that thinks that Nazism is just as valid as (well, name something you hold dear: Christianity, liberal democracy, whatever — I trust that you aren’t a Nazi or anything like one).

    The Queen of England is a proponent of cultural relativism, and of course, she does not tolerate Nazism.

  34. Substitute “Islamofacism” for “Nazism” if you wish — the point is, proponents of cultural relativism do not think ALL cultures are equally valid, just as libertarians don’t really want to get rid of ALL government. Stop arguing with strawmen.

  35. Ignoring the fact that Nazism isn’t a “culture” (it’s a political ideology), that’s mostly because people have been brainwashed into thinking that it’s “right wing.” The same people have no problems with (international, as opposed to national) socialism, or communism.

    But perhaps that’s actually a good example, because Islam isn’t a culture either–it’s a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion.

  36. To bring it back to Earth: show me a proponent of cultural relativism that thinks that Nazism is just as valid as (well, name something you hold dear: Christianity, liberal democracy, whatever — I trust that you aren’t a Nazi or anything like one).

    Okay, I’ll bite. How about Martin Heidegger, who founded modern Cultural Relativism and was the primary influence on the French philosophers of the 1960’s student revolution? He was also, oddly, the chief philosopher of the Nazi party. He came up with the idea that nobody was fit to judge another culture to make sure nobody judged the Nazis. He went to his grave maintaining that his work proved the right and truth of the Nazi cause.

  37. I don’t think the Queen has much tolerance for communism either, particularly as it has been practiced. On the other hand, she chooses to demonstrate considerable tolerance for Islam as whole, even as her country’s military fights violent Islamic extremists.

    I’m still not sure if we are even talking about the same thing when we use the word “multiculturalism”, but I think the Queen’s website is a very nice instance of it: http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/QueenandChurch/Queenandotherfaiths.aspx

  39. He’s a strange dude, famous for writing “Being and Time” or some such thing. Then he joined the Nazi party and started purging Jews from universities. Apparently the philosophy community (insert names of famous post-modernist French philosphers) that regarded him so highly didn’t advertise his Nazi views, and now many philosphers are pretty uncomfortable with his existence. As for me, I’m not sure what a philosopher does, much less how they convince anyone to pay them.

  40. I don’t think the Queen has much tolerance for communism either, particularly as it has been practiced. On the other hand, she chooses to demonstrate considerable tolerance for Islam as whole, even as her country’s military fights violent Islamic extremists.

    Thank you for making my point. The Royal Marines aren’t at war with the Taliban’s “totalitarian culture,” which is perfectly at home in Londonistan, and crowding out the native one in many towns and neighborhoods, with ongoing demands for sharia law. They are simply killing Taliban.

  42. Cultural relativism holds that there are no universal criteria by which to judge the goodness/badness or superiority/inferiority of a culture and that cultures can only be judged by their own self-defined criteria. This is tautological nonsense. If culture A finds it’s just Jim Dandy to kidnap, kill, barbecue and consume the infant children of culture B, we xenophobic Westerners can’t be getting our knickers all in a twist about it because, after all, aggressive cannibalism has a long and honored history in culture A and we can’t be imposing our racist, imperialist, Judeo-Christian hangups on people far away just because theyre a little different.

    Right.

    The Western leftists who peddle this twaddle would be a bit more convincing if they didn’t routinely abjure their own allegedly cultural relativist principles when commenting on, say, Southern Baptist theology or the quaint folkways of NRA life members. That’d be you Bob-1, among others.

    Multiculturalism is a sort of lemma of cultural relativism. If no culture is better or worse than any other, then no particular culture – especially ours (American) – can morally claim that immigrants from other cultures should assimilate to American norms or give up their noisome and vicious cultural baggage just because they’ve chosen to favor us with their presence. The culture one is born with is the culture one must reflect throughout one’s life and pass on to one’s children. Native culture is, in essence, sacred and should be seen as barely more mutable than one’s genetics, in this view. Birth is destiny. You can only be what your parents were. It’s a sin against multiculturalism to do otherwise. America must not only accommodate cannibal hottentots of all stripes, but must allow their descendants to continue being cannibal hottentots unto the N-th generation even – or perhaps especially – if doing so discomfits the uptight Caucasian burghers of, say, New Rochelle.

    As Orwell is alleged to have put it, there are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual would seriously entertain them.

  43. As I would put it, no philosophy of multiculturalism or cultural relativism survives an encounter with the Aztecs.

    You can’t get along with them peacefully because the first time there’s a drought they’ll invade, take you captive, and carve out your beating heart to make the sun happy again. You can’t live under them in quiet submission because they’ll carve out your beating heart to keep the sun burning. You can join them, but then you just become part of the problem. The only good option is to extinguish their violent religion, one that believes mountains of human hearts are required to keep the sun burning.

    Are these Somali jihadists like Aztecs? Well, not exactly. Somali jihadists don’t really care what happens to your heart as long as it quits beating if you don’t join them.

  44. Wow, Bob-1 didn’t know about Heidegger? I mean, even I knew about Heidegger. Well, at least he doesn’t have to go far to get literature on Heidegger. All he has to do he ask the Nazis hiding under his bed — they’ll be sure to have a few copies of Sein und Zeit.

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