Tolerance is ok, multiculturalism is not
I don’t care what colour you are, but I do care what creed.
David Horne was right when he said that tolerance doesn’t mean you have to love people, or even like them. However, he went on to say that it means you must accept that they are entitled to live in their own way.
Sure they are. But not in my backyard.
Many foreign cultures are aggressive meme-plexes very much inclined to cultural imperialism. It is not safe to tolerate them, for exactly the same reason that you do not allow lantana to establish a foothold on your property. Lantana is not evil, but if you don’t stamp it out it will take over and choke the life out of everything else. You don’t let it get established, and if if is established you remove it.
Australia has been very fortunate in doing all the right things until very recently. Horne was right that we did these things for appalling and sometimes absurd reasons, but doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing. Forced assimilation, colloquially known as “fit in or *** off” resulted in (for example) a million Greeks in Melbourne who think of themselves as Australians with Greek heritage, rather than Greeks surrounded by Australians. In Sydney we have in Leichardt the Italian version of the same thing. All these people are proud of their heritage while being quite certain they are Australian. They are absolutely not ghettos.
Small numbers of immigrants from any of the more benign cultures are fine; the parents may have an uncomfortable time but their children are soon thoroughly Australian, which greatly eases things for the parent by providing them with a cultural bridge.
Large numbers are another matter, especially when those large numbers arrive after the law changes to prohibit the general public from using social sanctions to enforce assimilation. If you don’t believe me I suggest you demonstrate the strength of your convictions by walking around Cabramatta after dark on your own. I for one have had enough of political correctness to the point where I will cheerfully vote for anybody who refuses to toe the politically correct line.
OK, a couple of facts:
- Australia is already overpopulated. It doesn’t matter what colour or creed you are are, we’re full, go away. We apologise for the idiocy of our government in encouraging you to come here.
- Contrary to Horne’s rather offensive assertion, Australians do have a culture. It’s a culture of privacy and quiet mateship, of looking after your friends and never telling tales out of school. It’s our traditional way, it’s our heritage.
- Some people think god wants them to wear a towel round their head. If these people think this is more important than our law that you have to wear a helmet on a motorcycle, they have an option. They can go live in a country that doesn’t have safety laws.
So what about tolerance? You don’t have to be mean to these people on their way out, and your traditional Aussie will go a long way to help someone who’s trying to fit in. It’s such a theme there was a whole string of funny books celebrating this scenario, by John O’Grady, starting with They’re a Weird Mob.