SM1957 wrote: ↑
CaptainFluffyBunny wrote: ↑
This is the beauty of the American constitution. Our legal immigrants have a clear set of laws that, on the whole, they actively embrace.
As long as our immigrants adhere to our laws, learn English and contribute, I don't give a flying fuck if Americans in 20 years are eating with chopsticks, worshipping Buddha or even eating Indian-style curries (Thai is empirically better.) I'd rather have a huge racially, culturally mixed population than a bunch of white people rejecting the enlightenment values of the Constitution.
If you want people to convert to Enlightenment values, you have to have a bit of salesmanship.
The regressive Left feel nothing but disgust towards the past of America and Western Europe. This attitude hardly sells America and Western Europe to newcomers.
This is true, and that's one of the reasons why I'm so against the Regressive Left. Immigrants should be
encouraged to take part in the "western" culture, to adopt Enlightenment values, to acknowledge the good things about the past of the host country. "Westerners" should be rightfully proud of having values that are better than the values of more "traditional" countries. There should be a common social message that you're welcome, but you have to learn how to fit in and mix (maybe we can call it "civic nationalism"?)
Instead I see a lot of collective guilt about the past, a lot of pandering to segregationist agendas with the idiotic "cultural appropriation" scandals, a lot of sobbing and whining that the "west" is So Evil for "imposing its values" on immigrants, a lot of cultural relativism and defense of barbaric aspects of certain cultures because "it's their culture and who are we to judge".
The "west" HAS grown better from its past. It's far from perfect, and it needs many reforms (to bring back some Keynesian economics and curb the power of lobbies and private investment firms, for example), but the liberal democratic model IS the best societal model in the world. Human development indexes, childhood mortality indexes, literacy indexes, health and lifespan indexes, they all show that the "west" (Europe and especially Western Europe, the US, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) is the best place to live. Indeed this is why immigrants want to come to the "west", after all.
As with everything in life there has to be a compromise. Do you come from a "non-western" country and want to enjoy the perks of living in the "west"? Good, but then you need to respect its rules, acknowledge its values, and mix within its culture (not by shedding yours, but by accepting cross-pollination and integration instead of holing up in your ghettos). It's a fair trade: better economic prospects and better institutions than in the country you left in exchange for you adopting the mindset that made those things possible.
At the same time the host country should accept that if they want to sell their culture and their laws they must actively fight against double standards, open discrimination and marginalization, and calls for violence. Again, a fair trade.
The problems come when for some reasons (too many arrivals in too little time, failures of integration) immigrants end up forming closed off ghettos where they live in a "state within a state", with a parallel, isolated culture, their own institutions, their own messages, while still enjoying the perks of living with a pluralistic liberal democracy. This isn't something that should be encouraged.
The way I see it the biggest problem today in Europe is with islam. There are forces which seeks to keep muslims from integrating: most of these forces are financed by Gulf theocracies, and by people who studied in those Gulf theocracies. The SocJus indirectly supports these forces by claiming that they're "resisting imperialism" (LOL, they're a tool of Gulf theocracy imperialism), by saying that islam is fine the way it is and that it doesn't need to change and adapt because it's already "feminist" and "progressive" (LOL again), and by seeding mistrust for liberal democratic institutions by claiming that they're actually a tool of "patriarchy" and "white supremacy".
But the alt-right is ALSO undermining assimilation and integration by putting the "ethnic interests" up-front, as an explicit requirement for liberal democracies to function, by propping up the idea that assimilation isn't possible, by insisting on looking at skin color, by wanting an EXPLICIT codification of "culture" instead of an IMPLICIT process of integration through requirements.
The SocJus and the alt-right are also feeding each other. Thanks to the existence of the alt-right the SocJus can easily claim that liberal democracy, its values and the history of "western" countries are "white supremacy". Thanks to the existence of the SocJus and its cultural relativistic ways the alt-right can easily build up a narrative about the impossibility of integration, about the "fall of the west",etc.