Multiculturalism, Islam, and the Canary in the Coal Mine

If these two are, as was suggested in some reports, swearing fealty to ISIS, then charges and convictions of treason are in order, as is the appropriate punishment.

The thing is, it’s not as if this is anything new, either to us or to the rest of the Western world.

As I was reading Catherine’s piece, a light went on in the back of my brain. I started digging through the sizable collection of things I’ve written over the years and found a number of bits that apply to the current situation. The time machine takes us back to 2017 and not-so-jolly old England, where Kate Hopkins of the Daily Mail wrote about an incident there:

They stood in the centre of Brussels. Row on row.

Hands held high, making hearts to the heavens. Showing the slaughtered they were not forgotten. Reminding themselves they were here with love. Looking to show humanity wins. That love conquers all.

They lay in the centre of London, face down where they fell. Stabbed by a knife, rammed with a car, flung, broken, into the Thames, life bleeding out on the curb.

And the news came thick and fast.
 
 A car rammed deliberately into pedestrians on the bridge. Ten innocents down.

A police officer stabbed at the House of Commons. Confirmed dead.

Another woman now, dead at the scene.

Shots fired. An Asian man rushed to hospital.

A woman, plucked from the water.

And I grew colder. And more tiny.

No anger for me this time. No rage like I’ve felt before. No desperate urge to get out there and scream at the idiots who refused to see this coming.

Not even a nod for the glib idiots who say this will not defeat us, that we will never be broken, that cowardice and terror will not get the better of Britain.

Because, as loyal as I am, as patriotic as I am, as much as my whole younger life was about joining the British military and fighting for my country — I fear we are broken.

Not because of this ghoulish spectacle outside our own Parliament. Not because of the lives rammed apart on the pavement, even as they thought about what was for tea. Or what train home they might make.

As the last life-blood of a police officer ran out across the cobbles, the attacker was being stretchered away in an attempt to save his life.

London is a city so desperate to be seen as tolerant, no news of the injured was released. No clue about who was safe or not.

Liberals convince themselves multiculturalism works because we all die together, too.

The point of my quoting this particular piece from 2017 is to show how long the problems have been obvious. This isn’t a new thing. Alas, for England, not much has changed since those days. Indeed, it has gotten worse, and it has long since started to appear that the politics are not there to reverse the alarming trends. As I said in my own comments section yesterday:

The political reality is that Muslim politics weighs heavy on the UK these days. Based on the most recent census data, approximately 6.5% of the UK's total population — around 3.9 million people, are Islamic. Any move against Iran would cost dearly at the next election,

To put some framework around this;The Muslim population of Britain has increased by 44% in a decade In practical terms unrestricted immigration. And given the drive to populate, nearly 10% of children under the age of five in England and Wales are Muslim.

Not only has the coal mine canary keeled over, but it’s now giving off an easily identifiable odor.

Then I found notes from a favorite blogger of mine from the same period: Bruce McQuain of the old Q&O blog, now (quite regrettably) long gone. Said Bruce, correctly:

The point to be made here is, even as the UK slowly comes to the realization that it has been duped and endangered on a massive scale by liberals, the same sort of movement has roots here.  For eight years, our leadership wouldn’t even acknowledge Islamic terrorism.  It claimed that “refugees” from extremist areas posed no threat to us even while terrorist organizations openly used refugee status to infiltrate western countries.  We get the same pious nonsense pushed at us about “diversity”, “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”.  And if you don’t buy into those concepts and have the temerity to speak out against them, why the left will attempt to shout you down and shut you down.  If you express a common sense view that attacks the narrative that “all diverse cultures are created equal and must be tolerated”, you’re a fascist and deserving of being stripped of your right to free speech and expression.

We’re talking about Islam, of course. 

It has come to the point everywhere in the West that has been embracing multiculturalism that the wheels have long since started wobbling off in their own directions. We are now refusing to identify evil as such for fear of offending the people raping and killing us and, in reality, destroying our societies. We keep being "nice" at the expense of everything we are and everything we have, including our very lives.

It seems that the very idea of our moral framework is offensive and should not be spoken of in polite company. It apparently should be sacrificed so that we might seem to be ‘open-minded.’ Our ability to recognize evil has been sacrificed along with it. And dare I say this: we have sacrificed our cultural values, our very identity, to accommodate people who consider the 14th century an advancement.

What to do? I suppose that we should start with a question.

What is the definition of evil? It’s a question we used to know the answer to. We see its product everyday, at least those of us who still allow ourselves to identify it when we see it. But what is the definition of evil? What causes all this product?

We know what the dictionary tells us on the matter. But notice, please, that every single definition the dictionary offers is labeled judgmental, outdated, racist, homophobic, etc., by those seeking to separate themselves from a moral framework so that other cultures that don’t agree with our take on what is evil can “co-exist” with us. Can we identify evil as such and counter it absent the moral framework by which we identify it?

For my part the answer is no. That should frighten everyone in the West and cause a quick and radical reaction.

My search on this topic began some years ago while rereading an old—and now offline—New York Times article on evil, ironically placed in the lifestyle section.

I was intrigued that the article suggested, among other things, that the psychiatric community was loath to call something evil for fear of being judgmental and, supposedly, thereby losing their clinical objectivity—their detachment. Yet even the article itself noted that occasionally psychiatrists are forced to use the label for lack of anything else they could conceivably attach to an action or behavior. Interesting how reality keeps getting in the way, isn’t it?

I regard this as, if nothing else, a tacit admission that evil objectively exists. I also take from it, somewhat less implicitly, that there is such a thing as an objective good. After all, you can’t have a definition of one without having a definition of the other.

Let’s take this to the extreme so that the difference is easily noted. I personally consider Western society, Western culture, and the values that inform it to be the pinnacle of mankind thus far.

But one of the things I noted in that article—and have often noted since—is the “educated” being reluctant to regard it as such, and I believe this reluctance is a step on the path to our own destruction. Particularly, if you can’t allow yourself to identify good when you see it, you’re clearly not going to recognize its counterpart.

Europe, including the United Kingdom, is certainly the coal mine canary.

What was once a moral certitude—even in the UK, Germany, and here in the U.S.—has been regulated out of business, and its passing hasn’t even been noticed by the citizens of the West, who until recently couldn’t have cared less. Now the invading army—and I don’t think it should be regarded as less—is within the walls.

There are some who do observe it, for example the scramble for firearms in Germany, which, like other countries, is being overrun by Muslim invaders masquerading as refugees. But as with England, I fear it is too late to stop the destruction. There is far too much law created specifically to separate the people from that moral certitude, too much cultural damage for it to survive long without rapid—and what some would call heavy-handed—governmental action.

Part of the problem here in the States is the First Amendment, which would pose significant challenges should we take the paths of Angola, Uzbekistan, or Poland as examples, banning or at least limiting Islam.

Look, I have no problem whatsoever with immigration. But the very word assumes that the process involves assimilation. One assumes that the immigrant actually wants to become part of American culture. Unfortunately, for too long we have had a government that doesn’t believe in American culture and therefore refuses to defend it, reinforce it, or demand that immigrants be assimilated into those cultural values.

I have been saying for decades now (and this line is also going into my project piece “Eric’s Axioms pt2”) that the original purpose of government is to protect, nurture, defend, and, if possible, expand the influence of the culture that gave it life.

So, then, what we are seeing is a failure of government in its primary task. The Brits are an example of what happens when government intentionally chooses not to fulfill that responsibility. The thing is, we're not far behind them.

Barring any action that is both serious and radical—such as demanding the cultural assimilation of immigrants, which I don’t see on the horizon—we won't be able to save ourselves.

So, with the canary lying at the bottom of its cage, the question becomes what I can honestly, and without exaggeration, say is the biggest issue of our lifetimes: Will we have the courage to demand the cultural assimilation of people wanting to come to this country before we lose ourselves in the multicultural mess we've allowed?

I wonder.