Defend our Western ways

AS the anniversary of September 11 approaches, it's mea culpa time. The West was responsible for those terrorist attacks. But not in the way the Left told us. Our mistake was that, in awe of Multicultural Man, we tolerated the intolerant for too long.

With great irony, Multicultural Man taught us to see anti-Westernism as the last acceptable prejudice. "Western culture" was clamped by quotation marks to signal its distasteful colonising, imperialist past. Our self-loathing gave terrorists a licence to ratchet up their anti-west sentiment to murderous proportions. Many of us woke from our reverie on September 11. But not the Left. Bipartisan outrage lasted all of three weeks. After that, the Left resuscitated Multicultural Man who said America's sins caused those terrorist attacks.

Last week America's teachers union advised children to commemorate next week's anniversary by thinking about "diversity" and US sins. It sounds like sweet classroom talk but their weasel words suck the life out of a rage we should maintain towards those militant Islamist terrorists. Even President George W. Bush succumbed to cute labels. When he declared a "war on terror", the Left immediately began to speak of root causes, the West's guilt and America's search for a new red scare to boost its military budget.

We wanted to kill the bastards but as Muslim scholar Daniel Pipes said recently, Bush's war on "terror" was like declaring war on a trench or a submarine. A few, like Pipes, say the unsayable: "It's a war on a militant Islam." And by focusing on militant Islam we remember that the vast bulk of moderate Muslims are our allies.

That is too sophisticated for the Left. Expect condemnation if you put "militant" and "Islam" together. The Canadian Islamic Congress declared Canada's National Post a "benchmark of what a newspaper should not be" – code for offending Multicultural Man. Columnists earned the Post black marks for mentioning "radical Islam" and "Islamic militants." That miscreant, Mark Steyn, dared to juxtapose Western values with Islamic values. The "war on terror" is like a comfy jumper. Anyone can wear it – even the Saudis. It encourages creative sophistry. Our own Richard Neville, that human monument to the silliness of the 1960s, asked why wasn't America bombing itself? After all, America is home to many terrorists.

YET inadvertently, Neville was on to something without knowing it. The West's multiculturalism created conditions that encouraged the West's fanatical enemies. So busy were we being inclusive, denigrating our own culture, and plugging our ears to warnings from people like Pipes, the cult of diversity trumped our own culture. So Neville was right. September 11 was an act of self-mutilation for our multicultural sins. When John Pilger referred to the "terrorists of Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush", the writing was on the wall; Multicultural Man and his lazy cultural relativist thinking needs to be dismantled.

Still, September 11 has only cranked up our inclusiveness at home and abroad. African nations got to choose who chairs the UN Commission on Human Rights next year. Whom did they pick? Libya's Colonel Gaddafi. Talk about sleeping with the enemy.

Recent postcards from Europe suggest an urgency to topple Multicultural Man. The first, from Denmark, paints a stark picture. Although Muslims constitute only 4 per cent of Denmark's 4.5 million people, Muslims are disproportionately the country's convicted rapists and the victims are non-Muslim women. Muslims reject inter-marriage. Only 5 per cent are willing to marry a native Dane. And Muslim leaders want to introduce Islamic law into Denmark.

Australia's ethnic problems were as inevitable once the multicultural banner of "separate but equal" was raised. Research by sociologist Bob Birrell shows that Muslims are just as reluctant to intermix with native Australians. Their children are "second-generation immigrants," not Australians.

Norway's message is equally grim. Last year, just before September 11, Norway's Dagbladet reported 65 per cent of rapes were carried out by non-Western immigrants, mostly Muslims, on Norwegian women. And a Norwegian professor from Oslo University said "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men regard their dress as provocative.

Like Europe, we are loath to offend our own Multicultural Man. The parents of Sydney's gang rapists said the Australian girls "invited" the boys to have sex with them. Muslim leader Keysar Trad said these boys were screaming for help: "They feel discriminated against at school [and] in the job market."

Blaming the victim is dangerous. But as if to prove his contempt for his fellow Westerners, Multicultural Man parroted that theme after September 11 to explain why those terrorists hate us so. It was the West's success, some said. Close, but no cigar. The West's self-loathing was too successful.

As Americans wake next Wednesday to the words of Lincoln's sombre Gettysburg address, they will ask what those lost lives count for. If they count for anything, it is the right to be proud of and defend to the death the West's achievements. If that truth offends Multicultural Man, that is all to the good.

"We wanted to kill the bastards..." You personally Janet? Who in particular do you want to kill? Everyone involved in so-called militant Islam? Would you hold the gun?

You've taken Polly Toynbee in The Guardian's argument one step further. She asked us to consider defending liberal values – you're asking us to defend and destroy them at the same time.

Some in the Left raised the issue of the perils of being an ascendant imperial power. Such an horrendous act as September 11 does open up questions as to why someone would hate the US enough to do what they did.

It doesn't take away from the US' right to track down the perpetrators of the act. But you need to think before you do something that could conceivably kill more innocent people – and Afghanistan and possibly Iraq are testimony to the problems inherent in not thinking.

Why is the focus on the US? Surely the US has done more for decolonialism than any other power? It was one of the first countries to shake of the yoke of colonialism!

Three cheers for Jane Albrechtsen! The Lefty-academic Multicultural Industry should be dumped like the pile of malodorous garbage it is.

Both blind and deaf, he sees nothing but his own vision and hears nothing but his own voice. Intolerant and strident himself, he demands silence and tolerance when it suits him. In building his new world, he has consigned the shared culture and values of all those around him and all those who went before, to Year Zero. Any personal discomfort can be immediately remedied by a dose of blame shifting. He doesn't ask anyone because he doesn't think he has to. That Janet, is Multicultural Man.

The major failing of our multicultural policies is its encouragement of the development of separate societies. We must stop giving special treatment to minority groups and we must put an end to the notion of "white guilt".

Yet another column that identifies the problem without daring to suggest the "final solution".

What an excellent article. With due regard for the trouble makers (gang rapists, shootings, etc) in Sydney's western suburbs, the absolute denial of any wrongdoing by families of the criminals, and excuses offered by their community leaders who have even gone as far as blaming Australians and Australia's laws for their community member's criminal behaviour, it is past time for the majority to stand up and state very clearly that enough is enough.

Multicultural is not just about going out for Chinese, Thai or a kebab. Its about realising people have their cultural background too, in which they follow tradition and abide with pride. Blaming multiculturalism and linking crime is just a plain cheap shot. The past wrongdoings and "acts of terror" of the westerm powers such as France, US and the UK will come to haunt them soon. For their evil over centuries, people in the world will not forget or forgive.

Janet Albrechtsen's timely piece revealing the great myth of multiculturalism and in defence of our western way of doing things was right on target. She will, no doubt, receive much criticism for her views from those that don't recognise, acknowledge or simply wish to dismantle the institutions which continue to be, albeit shakily, the foundation stones of our highly successful Australian society.

Her article also reflected on how we have become very much a nation of apologists - largely due to those great Australian traits of cultural inferiority and trying to make the newcomer feel at ease. We have some maturing to do as a nation, and I for one can't wait for us to grow up.

This article is incoherent and demeans the memory of those who died in 9/11. It trivialises a truly terrible event and exploits those deaths and the suffering of those people for cheap polemical ends. She should be ashamed. Is she serious in trying to put the blame for 9/11 on some sort of Western self-loathing? Does she really believe that the West is self-loathing? Does she really believe that militant Islam is caused and nourished by Western policies of inclusiveness and diversity? If so, all she is saying is that she has no confidence in the resilience of the culture she claims to defend. Her rhetoric is sentimental, and therefore a lie, and she demonstrates the moral obtuseness she so gleefully points to in the straw man she erects.

Thank you, Janet Albrechtsen, for your view. I am glad to see someone stand up for our 'western culture'. Furthermore, I am sick of excuses made for criminals on the basis of their ethnicity.

Amen Janet.

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