Not since Russian President Boris Yeltsin officially pronounced
Soviet Communism dead in December 1991 (“The Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical
reality, is ceasing its existence”) has Europe gotten into such a
bother over the demise of a cherished idea. This time the god that
failed is multiculturalism and the latest to pronounce it DOA is Germany’s leading thinker Arnulf
Baring.
Multiculturalism has been, for the past four decades, Europe’s
principal therapy for assuaging its vast and profound guilt, as
well as a convenient pretext for ignoring its minority immigrant
populations. Whatever its original intent, the word has come to
signify an uncritical respect and toleration for differences,
regardless of how intolerable those differences are. Thomas Sowell
said it boiled down to this: “[Y]ou can praise any culture in the
world except Western culture — and you cannot blame any culture in
the world except Western culture.” Obviously any such celebration
of diversity and cultural differences was bound to place an
emphasis on factors that separate people, not those shared by
society at large.
There were two reasons multiculturalism became so important to
European thinkers. Subsequent to a half century of forced
decolonization, two world wars, and a Holocaust, many in the West
had lost confidence in their cultural superiority and traditions.
Europeans no longer believed they had a right to judge other
cultures. Thus, if Europe’s immigrants wanted to hold onto their
uncivilized traditions — whether it be polygamy, honor killings or
misogyny — who were we to judge? Naturally the New Left, which
detested old-style Western civilization and its bourgeois
trappings, was only to happy to facilitate its demise. The best way
to accomplish this — it was seen — was through the proliferation
of the multiculturalist idea.
Multiculturalism also came in handy as the need increased for
foreign (read Arab and Turkish) guest workers to take on Europe’s
many unfilled jobs, itself a result of cultural euthanasia and
liberated Dutch and French and Italian women’s reluctance to be
mere baby factories. Muslims’ high birth rates and subsequent
payroll taxes were supposed to replenish the cash-strapped welfare
system. But as jobs moved to China or Mexico or Eastern Europe, few
employers relished hiring the dusky foreigners, due in part to the
noxious labor laws French students are currently demanding be
saved, laws that prevent employers from firing ne’er-do-wells.
Despite its pretensions as a multiculturalist promised land,
Europe remains a rather xenophobic place. States like Germany have
kept their blood laws — vestiges of its old ethnic purity days —
on the books, thereby preventing the children of immigrants from
becoming citizens. In Germany, foreign-born “workers” are today
twice as likely as native Germans to be unemployed. Not
surprisingly, many guest workers and their offspring end up on
welfare, languishing in public housing in suburban ghettos. Left to
their own devices many immigrants do not bother to learn the native
tongue. Some judge it wrong to send their children to the infidel’s
schools. Naturally these kids, locked outside the mainstream
culture, have been easy prey for drug gangs and radical imams.
Second and third generation guest workers fill Europe’s prisons,
which, as everyone knows, are popular centers for radical Wahabbist
proselytizing.
IN CONTRAST AMERICA, for two-plus centuries, has largely been
getting it right. The great metaphor for America has been the
“Melting Pot,” with its stress on unity, assimilation and
integration. The U.S. hasn’t the same ethnic purity hang-ups found
in Europe. Yes, there has been a history of bigotry toward
non-Protestant non-Anglo-Saxons, which to some extent persists
today, here as elsewhere. However, in the U.S. an illegal immigrant
born in an Arizona dry creek bed automatically becomes an American
citizen. Until recently, everyone was encouraged to learn English,
the first rung on the ladder to success. Those groups that
assimilated well, Jews, Chinese, Koreans, and Hindus, were
successful beyond their dreams. Those that resisted naturally fared
less well.
The U.S., however, seems not to have learned much from Europe’s
missteps. The President is now talking up a guest worker program,
with foreigners to do the jobs American employers are unwilling to
pay Americans to do. As in Europe these guest workers will become
permanent residents; some will end up not working at all, but
sucking on the public teat. A number will come from Arab and Muslim
countries, which means the need for assimilation will be even
greater in order to avoid the dangerous Islamic fundamentalism so
prevalent in Europe. Breedy Hispanic immigrants are still
encouraged to celebrate their diversity and language rather than
adopt the dominant culture, so the poorest and often least educated
learn only an unintelligible barrio Spanish, and are thus unable to
advance beyond grade school. Welfare, despair, and drug gangs
await.
Is it racist to tell Nicaraguans and Hondurans that they must
become English-speaking Americans (not Anglos, mind you, but
Americans), that they must integrate or else? Only if it is racist
to resist a failed idea that has proven highly destructive to
Western society.
Americans would do well to recall the words of President Woodrow
Wilson: “You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of
yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who
thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in
America has not yet become an American.” It is the duty of every
immigrant who arrives on these shores to become a thorough
American. The alternative is the mess Europe currently finds itself
in, and trust me, nobody wants that.
