Don't Be One of the Fools

 

Multiculturalism Hoax

The word “multiculturalism,” still used today despite numerous criticisms and ridicule, represents yet another hoax that liberal democracy created and that turned out to be surprisingly effective. Both parts of the word misrepresent reality. Multiculturalism is not about culture but about politics. In fact, they should be “polit” (as in “politburo”) rather than “cultur,” and “mono” rather than “multi.”

Many ingredients of the multicultural cake are not ingredients any more but have become the cake itself. Feminism is not the “culture” of feminists or feminist parties or women, but the political platform espoused by governments, the European Union, and many international institutions; the ideology of homosexuality is no longer in the hands of homosexual activists and their organizations but is a major item in national and global agendas. A nation that would dare to entertain any misgivings in this regard or, for example, include wording in its Constitution—as was recently done by the Hungarians—that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, would be subjected to almost worldwide condemnation expressed in the rhetoric of rage and hatred.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.95-96

The Liberal Fraud of Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism, an idea that has become extremely popular in recent decades, is nothing more that a program to build a society in which there exist not many cultures, but many political identities attached to many real or, more often, imagined collectives. Multiculturalism encourages what is today called identity politics. This term may be misleading. It has little to do with a defense of the rich fabric of societies and their historically constituted communities, but should be rather seen as a program of politicization of certain groups that could radically change the fabric of society. …

Women, homosexuals, Muslims, ethnic groups are being perceived as, and transformed into, quasi-parties, organized from above by the political or ideological leadership and not possessing other characteristics than those resulting from the struggle for power against other groups and no other identity than that provided by this leadership, allowing no ideological dissent. Whoever is not a member of this quasi-party, even though for some reason—be it sex, birth, or color—he should be included, but stays outside its boundaries or sometimes even opposes it, is the enemy, a sellout, and a traitor. A black American who condemns the absurdity of African-Americanism, regardless of his virtues and achievements, is considered as much a traitor to his race. A woman who rejects feminism for its crude and destructive ideological content is a traitor to the sisterhood.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.95

The Multicultural Revolution

Under the new leftist dispensation, the study of English became the application of critical and literary theory to disparate texts so as to uncover the hidden power relations they concealed. The study of history became the study of social history or “people’s history,” the record of Western Civilization’s oppression of various groups. And popping up everywhere were new departments of “studies”: African-American Studies, Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, Chicano Studies, Gender Studies, and so on. “What these radicals blandly call multiculturalism,” wrote Irving Kristol,

“is as much a “war against the West” as Nazism and Stalinism ever were. Under the guise of multiculturalism, their ideas—whose radical substance often goes beyond the bounds of the political into sheer fantasy—are infiltrating our educational system at all levels.”

This revolution in American universities was accomplished swiftly and largely outside the public eye. What little resistance the radicals met was vanquished with accusations of racism.

Matthew Continetti, The Problem of Identity Politics and Its Solution

The Source Behind Multiculturalism

What's behind the current flavor of multiculturalism for some hardcore leftists is hatred of Judeo-Christianity and rejection of its God. This is evident not only in their treatment of observant Christians and Jews (especially their views on Israel,…), but in their attack on science and truth.  

In the absence of an absolute, there is no "truth"; there is only "power" and "personal narrative." Thus does good become bad, wrong become right, ugliness come to be hailed as beauty. A human baby in utero is "just a clump of cells." Killing it becomes a "human right." Teaching small children how to perform sex acts becomes "education." A man becomes a woman (and vice-versa) by proclaiming that (s)he feels like one.

Anyone who says otherwise -- first and foremost the God of Jews and Christians -- is the enemy.

Laura Hollis, What’s Behind ‘Multiculturalism’

Political Correctness Destroying Education

As it is, our schools give us a “multicultural” education that is just a cultural solvent and a cover for the stringent imposition of a rigid and oppressive orthodoxy. Public schools avoid religious questions at the cost of censoring the most human questions. The natural impulse for patriotism is snuffed out by self-righteous condemnation of our grandparents and the figures of the past. The stories composing our history are neglected in favor of whatever creed the child’s primary educators—the state—happen to favor. Our schools have become a “dead loss.”  

Higher education is no better off. In some cases, it is much worse. There, political correctness and identity politics dominate discourse. Learning is no more. … Your average state university is an expensive program in aggressive miseducation, and most Catholic universities are not much different.

Michael Bradley, “Out of the Ashes: Anthony Esolen's Clarion Call to Restore Culture, Faith, and Sanity”

Multiculturalism

The Multicultural Cult: Part II

Today, attempts to get black or Hispanic youngsters to speak the language of the society around them are decried by multiculturalists. And any attempt to get them to behave according to the cultural norms of the larger society is denounced as “cultural imperialism,” if not racism.

The multicultural dogma is that we are to “celebrate” all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing — but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don’t have better results in the future, it is society’s fault.

Thomas Sowell, “The Multicultural Cult: Part II”

The Multicultural Cult: Part I

Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the multicultural cultists.

Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values of the larger society around them is "cultural imperialism" according to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.

Multiculturalists condemn people's objections to transplanting hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.

The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere biased "perceptions" or "stereotypes," if not outright "racism." But some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant ghetto life back into their midst.

Thomas Sowell, “The Multicultural Cult”

An Anti-God Culture Is Full of Problems

Today knowledge of God is one of the most conspicuous Berlin Walls dividing our cultural landscape.  In religious schools and universities, in traditional synagogues and churches, and in the hearts and minds of the majority of Americans, knowledge of God is considered crucial to proper education.  On the other end of the tug-of-war rope is found the educational bureaucracy that expects the state to accommodate every possible bizarre cultural mutation and lifestyle, but finds prayer at graduation an intolerable and fatal compromise of state neutrality toward religion. . . .

The problems we encounter invariably result from the switch in policy over the past three decades from pro-God to secular.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.160, 161

America is Dying

This country has held a unique position in the world as a place where all could worship freely, while becoming complete Americans.  Ironically, that is only because America had a strong sense of who she was.  Immigrants learned the language and the culture, and in doing so integrated themselves into American society.  When we dictate that American society must fit itself into each citizen's culture and religion so as to offend no one, we have signed the death certificate for this country.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.117

Multiculturalism

[M]ulticulturalism is a new form of racism because it reduces a matter of the intellect to a matter of racial or ethnic membership.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” p.95

Multicultural Nonsense

Intellectuals have romanticized cultures that have left people mired in poverty, ignorance, violence, disease and chaos, while trashing cultures that have led the world in prosperity, education, medical advances and law and order.  In doing so, the intelligentsia have often degraded, or even filtered out, the fact that masses of people were fleeing the societies intellectuals romanticized to go to the societies they condemned.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.543

Lord Deliver Us From This Culture!

From the Liberality that says that everybody is right;
From the Charity that forbids us to say that anybody is wrong;
From the Peace that is bought as the expense of Truth —
May the good Lord deliver us.

J.C. Ryle, cited in “Quotable,” The Berean Call, June 2003.

The Harm of Psychologizing Deviance

The continued attempts to psychologize and “understand” deviance — even in the face of evil such as that which appeared in America on September 11 — show the distance some will go to avoid applying moral categories of judgment.  Sociologists Peter Conrad and Joseph Schneider cautioned us more than three decades ago that the medicalization of deviance would eventually “shroud conditions, events and people and prevent them from being confronted as evil.”  Said’s suggestion that the terrorists who tried to blow up America were deranged but not evil demonstrates how prophetic they were.  Although medicalizing deviance does not automatically render evil consequences good, the assumption that behavior is the product of a “sick” mind or body gives it a status similar to that of “accidents.”  Removing intent or motive hinders us from comprehending the human element in the decisions we make, the actions we take and the social structure we create.

The reluctance of sociologists to acknowledge that there are moral judgments  to be made when discussing a subject like deviance shows how far this discipline has strayed from its origins. …

Today the most influential definers of deviance are not moral figures but political advocates whose efforts often involve defending those previously regarded as deviant and attacking those previously regarded as normal.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.155-157

All Cultures Are NOT Equal

Most women’s studies, racial and ethnic studies, and gay and lesbian studies are intellectual hoaxes, programs of propaganda an mutual support. It is hardly surprising that denials of the possibility of rationality should come from groups whose excuse for existence is threatened by rational inquiry.  The knowledge that science produces, moreover, often results in a picture of the world that is anathema to the more rabid egalitarians, for that knowledge may demonstrate there there is a hard, concrete reality blocking the egalitarians’ path forward.  Radical feminism is put in peril by scientific proof that some sex-role differences are inherent and cannot be dismissed as mere social constructs.  To multiculturalists, empirical investigation is dangerous because it will demonstrate that not all cultures are equal in their capacity to equip their members for success in the modern world.  Contrary to the claims of the multiculturalists, there are not different ways of knowing.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, p.267

Multiculturalism Is a Failure

Multiculturalists argue that different cultural values are morally equivalent. That's nonsense. Western culture and values are superior. For those who'd accuse me of Eurocentrism, I'd ask: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?

Walter E. Williams, “Multiculturalism Is a Failure,” 17 Sep 2014, townhall.com