Debate on Culture continued from Ren's Place

This is the continuation from an ongoing debate at Renegade Evolution's blog.

Anthony Kennerson: Still having that racist moment, are you??

"Racist moment"? This baseless ad hom is no different than the accusations of being sexist radfems hurl at you for your defense of sex work. You can do better than that.

AK: And you didn't even bother to answer my question: how is our "Western culture" -- you know, the one who slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved Black Africans, stole Hispanic and Native American land, and dropped nuclear weapons on Asians -- any more qualified to judge anyone else on who's "superior"??

As VirtueAndVice admitted Anglo-American culture has "its faults" just as every culture throughout history has had. But if no cultures were superior to one another there would be no asylum seekers or refugees. Immigrants, yes, but not people looking to escape from the places where they were born. The greatest tragedy of at least the more extreme forms of multiculturalism is that it encourages people coming from dangerous, oppressive places to re-create the dysfunctional situations from which they came. When my ancestors came from Ireland and Italy, they brought some of their traditions with them but they did not pretend for a minute that things were better back home, or demand the right to continue traditions that would undermine the foundations of American liberty.

AK: First off, like most conservative critics of "multiculturalism', they are so desperate to take an isolated act of cruelty and make it representative of a whole culture or race or "civilization", and therefore declare their favored "Anglo-American" (read that to mean "White Western Christian civilization") to be not only superior to all but to be imposed on all others

These would be isolated acts of cruelty, except that the people engaging in them are using "culture" as an excuse. And some (not all but too many) western leftists are backing up these excuses. As for "be[ing] imposed on all others" V&V said (and I agree), "That's not to say that we should go out and bomb other countries when they don't see things our way."

AK: But I wonder, VaV...would you have gone into such histronics if the perpetrators had been fundamentalist White American Christians?? After all, it's not as if they haven't done such things themselves. Oh, wait...

Who is defending the preacher in that article? Probably not even most of his fellow Evangelicals. Certainly not any groups that have the numbers of the multi-culti defenders of similar behavior by so called victim groups.

AK: Secondly...I'm not much of a fan of the Nation of Islam for many reasons...but to compare them to the KKK is sheer madness. Not even Louis Farrakhan, for all his alleged anti-Semitic smack and belief in numerology, has ever burned a cross in a White neighborhood, or lynched a White man, or intimidated a single White person out of voting.

Farrakhan is too smart to get his own hands dirty by personally participating in acts of violence. Same with most Klan wizards (when was the last time David Duke was arrested). It doesn't mean that Farrakhan's rhetoric is any less responsible for black-on-white violence than the identical rhetoric in reverse by Klan leaders is for white-on-black violence. Similarly, as far as we know, Mary Daly has never directly committed an act of violence against a man (or a boy). It does not mean that her anti-male views are any less hateful than the Nazi's anti-Semitic views, just that she apparently has not yet had a chance to act on them.

SnowdropExplodes: The term "rape culture" has a real meaning in describing Western European cultures - so the culture isn't all that great towards women (whatever the law tries to do about it).

Rape culture is mostly a feminist invention. To the extent that it exists, it refers to a very small subset of western men. Like V&V, "I was 17 once, and 0% of the guys I knew were talking about planning violent sexual assaults."

Cassandra: VirtueandVice - I don't think you understand what multiculturalism is. It can be what you're describing in the hands of a few fools, but that is not in principle what the idea is all about, nor how it's commonly expressed.

Multiculturalism may be all sweetness and light in principle, but not in practice. All to often it is exactly as V&V described. Those fools aren't so few.

Cassandra: OK, reading VirtueandVice again further down...you're not even making a real argument, you're just a zenophobic racist. Never mind, not worth the time.

I see no evidence of racism or xenophobia on the part of V&V. If anyone is acting like a closed-minded bigot it is you. So maybe V&V's opinions (and mine) are not worth your time. Fine if you want to only associate with people who already agree with you 95% of the time. But these opinions are held by a large number of people throughout the western world - close to a majority, if not an outright majority. Furthermore, they are gaining wider acceptance in some places, particularly those - such as The Netherlands - where the damage from extreme multiculturalism has been most obvious. Given that, if you really believe we are wrong you should at least try to make a convincing argument why.

Immigration

I recently responded to a post on immigration on Womanist Musings. I wanted to flesh out my position but thought it would wind up being too long to put on someone else's blog. So I decided to put it here.

I generally believe in open immigration, one of the few things I disagree with Ron Paul about. I think only violent or larcenous criminals should be stopped from entering the country. I don't want people coming here to live on welfare (if they want to be supported by the taxpayers they should demand it of their own governments, we have enough of a dependency class of our own, and even the poorest nations have some wealthy people who could support their compatriots if need be). However, I think denying all non-emergency benefits to non-citizens and making the welfare state less generous in general could solve this problem without harassing and threatening the vast majority of people who come here to earn an honest living.

I do agree with Paul and other immigration opponents that we should repeal the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship for everyone born in the United States. To be born a citizen one should be required to have at least one parent who is a citizen. Hardly any other nation grants citizenship on the basis of birth alone. Some countries, such as Germany, have families who have lived there for several generations without being citizens.

I understand that the 14th Amendment was passed to insure citizenship for children of former slaves. It was a noble cause and it served an important purpose at the time, but now that no one who was legally enslaved in the United States is currently alive, this is mainly used by people looking to game the system. If a woman gives birth to a child inside of the U.S. whether she is here legally or illegally, working here married to someone working here, or even a tourist that child is automatically a citizen. And even if both parents and any other relatives of that child are deported, when the child reaches adulthood, he or she can move back to the U.S. and petition for citizenship for his or her previously deported family members. This hurts efforts at assimilation and makes it easier for people with no respect for our Constitution and traditions to influence our politics, undermining our liberty and making our country more like the ones they fled.

Lack of assimilation and allegiance to the Constitution are the main problems with immigration. True there are plenty of native born people who don't respect the Constitution, though there is nothing we can do about them. We can however avoid adding to their numbers, and can choose to naturalize new citizens who will help us restore our liberty and our commitment to free markets and self-sufficiency. As for those who claim that crime and even terrorism are the main problems with immigration, I would argue that almost all (if not all) terrorist acts on U.S. soil were by those here legally. And border guards could focus on terrorists and other criminal threats if they weren't so busy harassing people coming here to work. There is no reason why any government should stand between a willing employer and a willing employee, unless the government is obligated by its own laws to grant the employees additional rights. Eliminate any such laws, focus border patrols on real security threats, and you eliminate such problems.

There is still the problem of native born people being unwilling to engage in fair competition for jobs. The situation in the U.S. is not perfectly fair, of course, since American workers cannot as easily become eligible to work abroad. However, by allowing a free circulation of labor into the country, the U.S. would be in a better position to negotiate American workers' rights to work wherever they choose as part of Free Trade Agreements. This still wouldn't please workers who feel entitled to what has in the past been the American wage for a particular job, when the prevailing global wage is much lower, but it would allow proponents of free markets to support guest worker programs unambiguously.