The current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, has something to say about state multiculturalism. It has failed.
“Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism,” the prime minister said.
Building a stronger sense of national and local identity holds “the key to achieving true cohesion” by allowing people to say “I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am a Christian, but I am a Londoner… too”, he said.
In other words, he wants Great Britain to become more like the United States.
(Glenn gets a hat tip for the tip off.)
Britain has a long road back to being Britain again. If this policy would get the radical imams off the Dole, it would be worth it. It would be interesting to see what percentage of Muslims in Britain are on the Dole.
Getting rid of Islamic law is a good start. Many other things need to be done, but having two legal systems is only asking for conflict. And no one will be able to convince me that Islamic law is compatible with ANY Western legal system.
Example: Stoning ANYONE to death. What better way to start a war? If anyone attempts this in my country, I will show up and throw rocks. AT THE PEOPLE THROWING THE ROCKS! The knives will show up, followed quickly by firearms.
Of course, it does not start there. It starts on little things but make no mistake, Islamic law is heading there. Only way to stop it is to get rid of it, ALL OF IT!
“having two legal systems is only asking for conflict”
My libertarian pallys hold up ancient Iceland as a model of liberty because it had multiple legal systems. They like the idea of competition between governments. I expect their position presumes that none of the competing systems had intentions of becoming the single dominating system.
It worked on an isolated, monocultural island for a few centuries. Then they had to find a higher arbiter of conflicting claims, and became subjects of a foreign power.
With any sort of diversity comes conflict. Multiculturalism is a prelude to war.
“Multiculturalism” has been little more than a more earnest “separate but equal”. There seems to be a sort of cultural menagerie ideal around modern multiculturalism, which is very a-historical and also very unhealthy. No modern culture was created or has existed in a vacuum, preserved in glass in perpetuity.
Healthy cultures are fluid. Healthy cultures are promiscuous. Every culture borrows and donates elements with other cultures. Food. Music. Ideas and ideals. What would Italy be like without pasta and tomatoes (the former from the far east the latter from the Americas)? Without a healthy interplay of cross-cultural pollination and indeed of cross-cultural *criticism* the result is stagnation and balkanization. How anyone could possibly imagine that to be a healthy state of affairs is beyond me.