Posted on 06/11/2006 7:35:31 AM PDT by Clive
Back when Yugoslavia fell into genocidal civil war, I worked with a young Croatian kid.
He was built like a full-sized pickup, but he was a sensitive soul, a painter in his spare time.
And what his lifelong friends had become was torturing him.
He told me these Canadian-born kids, barely into their 20s, mocked him because he refused to join their secular jihad to the fragmented Yugoslavia, to fight for the culture their parents or grandparents left behind.
They called his manhood into question.
They went. He stayed. When they returned, some were unalterably changed. They drank more.
Lots more. When the bottle got down to the bottom couple of inches, they talked of atrocity. Not the atrocities they witnessed.
The atrocities they committed.
Nice, decent, polite Canadian boys, raised on hockey rinks, maple syrup, Don Cherry, O Canada, the Tim Hortons double-double and the liberal culture of acceptance had placed the reticule of a telescopic rifle sight on civilian women and pulled the trigger. They had shot indiscriminately into occupied houses and burned villages. They hinted at darker secrets, such as mass rape.
Even after listening to these tales of soul-killing horror, my young friend felt guilty for remaining behind.
At the time, an eastern paper published a feature in which one "soldier" recounted how his Yugoslavia-born mother wept and begged him not to go, saying this was not his war.
His reply was if she didn't want him to feel such a strong connection to the old country, she should not have sent him to a cultural school several times a week, steeping him in the language, culture and, yes, resentments of the past.
Such is the ominous and hidden face of Canadian multiculturalism.
We confront it yet again today.
Only this time, 17 Canadian-born or Canadian-raised men and boys stand accused of plotting a terrorist attack on Canadian soil.
In the aftermath of the arrests, Canadian cops and politicians genuflected at the altar of political correctness and official multiculturalism in a ritual every bit as predictable as the old Roman Catholic Latin mass.
These attacks have nothing to do with Islam or its practitioners, they told us.
Well, to quote Sun columnist Peter Worthington: "Unlikely that many of those arrested were militant Quakers or radical Methodists."
There is room in this nation for people of all faiths and those of no faith at all.
But official multiculturalism sends two messages to newcomers.
One is: "Welcome! Don't change, we love you just the way you are!"
The other is: "You're coming to live in a country so confused and degenerate we've decided our culture isn't worth preserving, defending or extending. We've got nothing to offer you but jobs."
The latter is the nation that raises children who hate it.
We are, by and large, a secular culture, materialistic, spiritually shallow, sexually obsessed, and devoted to the pursuit of personal pleasure and satisfaction.
Frankly, that's pretty much the way I like it.
It's called freedom and it's the only thing we've come up with on the planet that actually works for human beings.
For all its faults, Western civilization creates economic prosperity without parallel, pushes the envelope of the human lifespan, and in which people on welfare live better than medieval kings.
We've cracked open secrets of the universe and linked the world via communications links that mere decades ago were the stuff of science fiction.
I suspect the very essence of our culture -- unbridled freedom and the right to be left alone -- is the thing that most offends the devout and, I believe, leads some on the fringes to plot against their adopted homeland.
My eldest kid -- who hails from a Romanian orphanage -- has met a couple of people from that part of the world. True products of Canadian multiculturalism, they professed shock she has no interest in learning about the culture that produced her.
Her answer: "If that culture was worth anything, it wouldn't have abandoned me and starved me for three years."
She first articulated that thought when she was 9, at a time when my wife and I were encouraging her to learn about the culture into which she was born.
Kid's smarter than her parents and the architects of national social policy.
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Yes, the finger of guilt points straight into the faces of Canadian and American multiculturalists. They keep alive the old hatreds by remembering the terrible deeds done in the old world.
North America was a far better place when it was a melting pot. Up until 1970 or thereabouts everyone was expected to become a North American and leave the old world behind.
Then the liberals and Democrats discovered identity politics, ethnic studies, homosexual rights, and feminism. It may finish us off yet.
I feel for what you are saying. The prospect of MC is horrible. It's nothing but destructive. We Americans are seeing a similar horror coming over our horizon.
They've started hacking away at the Unity of the United States by trying to compartmentalize (Balkanize) the State of Hawaii. This in addition to trying to meld darkest Mexico, a country of oppression, poverty and superstition into our culture, which is none of the above.
Something there is that does not like freedom and prosperity for the majority.
I propose we start a movement to celebrate our Commonality (love for the USA)instead of our Diversity. Fly the flag, sing patriotic songs and just generally thank God for our good fortune to live in freedom in the USA. Not just on the 4th of July but all the time. Anybody with me?
Multiculturalism = Divided We Fall.
It is Flag Day soon. That would be a good time to do what you proposed. Also, storm the editorial pages and letters to the ed. on this situation. Grass roots people can start something like this. To balkanize America is just a sin. And yes, we should be questioning the values of all anti-Americans. And not be ashamed of doing it. Tolerating hate and sin and separation in our nation does not produce love or community. It is not diversity that has made America great, it is freedom and liberty and the chance to succeed on one's own potential and skill.
"Basically, Canada is grand central station -- no inherent virtues, just a dropping off and meeting place for people in transit."
Isn't the U.S. in danger of becoming New Canada?
I see multiculturism as a profoundly evil thing. That the left touts it and sings it's praises, and uses political intimidation to enforce and enshrine it is exactly, mathematically, the absolutely opposite thing that should be done.
I talked to my Dr. during a check-up a few days ago and we discussed Zimbabwe. He did some medical missionary work there. His opinion was that their largest problem was the existence of some 12 different languages (this in a population of 12 million) and enduring tribal divides. They can't even talk to each other. They cannot be united when the most basic measure, communicatrion, cannot even be advanced without jerk-liberals decrying a loss of "culture". Most cultures need to pass into history.
Canada ping!
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this ping list.
Ian Robinson wrote: "We are, by and large, a secular culture, materialistic, spiritually shallow, sexually obsessed, and devoted to the pursuit of personal pleasure and satisfaction....Frankly, that's pretty much the way I like it....It's called freedom and it's the only thing we've come up with on the planet that actually works for human beings."
But that's the (urp) "culture" that the Canadian jihadis were born and raised in, and it didn't "work" for them. I generally like Ian Robinson, but he's seemingly forgotten that Western Civilization grew from Judeo-Christian cultural roots. Canada has already gone much farther than the USA has in cutting off the roots and trying to live on the fruits.
But not many people will struggle and sacrifice, give their "blood, sweat, and tears," strive, fight, or die for a "secular, materialistic, spiritually shallow" culture. It cannot fight to defend itself; it doesn't even care to have enough children to guarantee another generation.
The Canuck-jihadis believed in their Allah-Fubar, and that's a horror, but it's a strong and demanding horror: one that calls people out of their driveling secular pleasures into something (hellaciously) greater.
It's "something." And you can't fight something with nothing.
I do not have the numbers, but my personal observation at the Kroger tells me that the immigration is mostly male. And absent that, the crap American culture / crime life is where a lot of these unconnected Mexican males will end up. Not Sunday Mass.
Are you guys going at it again? :)
Until the 1960s that's the way America worked. Since I predate the 60s, I've been with you all along. There are lots of us old-timers out here wondering what the hell ever happened to America.
Does one really have to look beyond the Tower of Babel to figure out how this ends?
Me, too. But I don't think of myself as an old-timer!
Well...maybe I predate the 60s a little more than you do!
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