A few thoughts on western multiculturalism

With the country having a bit of slow news week, I thought I might give my two cents worth on the modern western penchant for multiculturalism.

While a number of European conservatives, such as Fjordman, have argued that western enthusiasm for multiculturalism is based on secularized Christian ideas of universal compassion and support for the underdog, few seem to consider the possibility that support for multiculturalism may be based on overconfidence due to early success, rather than ideology.

The Christianity theory assumes ideology is the driving factor behind multiculturalism, rather than actual events and conditions experienced by westerners, which in my view is putting too much emphasis on ideas at the expense of concrete factors like history and evolution.

Ideology, such as liberal autonomy theory, is very influential, but it is also heavily influenced by material and historical factors, which are ultimately the main influences on human behaviour. The dogmatically ideological Soviet Union collapsed in part, because it's leaders could not point to successful working examples of Marxist states which would help lend empirical support to their ideological claims (intellectuals often forget that most people are more impressed by concrete achievement that elegant rational argument).

Looking at the racial and cultural history of Continental Europe, it's noticeable that while Europeans are essentially all of the same race, they are made up of numerous sub-races that to a certain extent, look and act quite differently.

Thanks to the Continent's varied topography and wide range of climates, there is considerable variety in the builds, appearances and temperaments of the various people's of Europe. Added to this is the fact that Europe has developed a large number of distinctive cultures, each with its own language. But despite all this potentially divisive diversity, the continent has become, to a certain extent, a showpiece for the potential of liberal multiculturalism.

Over the last 500 years Europe may have had its fair share of bloody wars, and even the occasional genocide, but overall, the benefits of inter-cultural competition and rivalry have played a vital part in helping Europe overtake the less dynamic civilisations of China and India, and lay the template for North American growth and development. Intense competition between states and city states has meant European countries have had to maximise their national advantages, such as French flair and German efficiency, and this in turn has speeded up the economic and cultural development of the continent as a whole.

Arguably this growth-through-competition experience has helped give rise to the liberal idea that the tension in ethnic diversity provides stimulus for economic and cultural development. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, America is, in many respects, what the contemporary EU wants to be, a large pan- European superstate with enormous economies-of-scale advantages, and a political system that is a greatest hits package of European enlightenment thinking.

Add to the mix Australia, and you suddenly have three successful examples of pan-European cultures operating on a continental scale.

However, while modern Europe, North America, and Australasia are now successful pan-European continents, they are still mono-continental cultural entities, and this is what contemporary multiculturalism fails to take into account.

Buoyed up by their success in developing not one, but three economically successful continents that have provided a model for global economic development westerners have fallen into the trap of believing that peoples from non-European backgrounds can be successfully assimilated into western countries in the same way that non-English speaking Europeans from Eastern and Southern Europe have been integrated into the United States and Australia over the last century.

Liberal diversity theory also fails to take into account that it was only after Europe was freed of non-European powers like the Mongols and the Ottoman Empire that it really begin to take-off culturally and economically - a point probably taken into account by Al-Qaeda in its scheduling of the 9-11 attack to coincide with the 12th of September 1683, the date the Ottomans were repulsed during the Battle of Vienna, which marked the high-water mark of Muslim incursions into Europe.

So far, phase one of the West's audacious multi-cultural experiment hasn't gone to badly, The immigrants from the 1950s to 1970s have, on the whole, been successfully integrated without too many difficulties, and western economies are still keeping most middle-class westerners in the material affluence to which they have become accustomed. Crime rates and economic inequality have increased, but the economies and infrastructure of most western countries have so far survived remarkably well.

The West as a civilisation may be suffering a serious crisis of confidence, but among the managerial class, multiculturalism, like deindustrialisation, is regarded as just another challenge that can be overcome by reason and creativity. Even the increasingly worrying pattern of different races voting according to ethnic interest does not seem to be raising much concern among western elites.

Meanwhile a different set of attitudes has developed in the Far East.

The relatively monocultural Chinese and Japanese civilisations, have maintained a suspicion of foreigners throughout their long histories, but at the same time have had a relatively open to many foreign ideas.

Being more concrete and pragmatic thinkers, the East Asians have felt less threatened by imported religions and philosophies than more idelogically minded westerners and this can be seen with the arrival of Buddhism and Communism in China. However, the example of communism shows that although orientals do have a penchant for imported ideas, their enthusiasm for such imports rapidly fades if the idea or ideology in question proves to be impractical. Nor are East Asians very interested in ideas like globalism and open borders, since these threaten to undermine the blood and soil foundations of their civilisation itself.

Given enough time, the West might swing against multiculturalism through ideological change bought about by intellectuals as part of the wider reaction against liberal ideology. However, the speed with which immigration and divergent reproduction rates are transforming the ethnic composition of most western countries, suggests that it's pragmatic necessity and political agitation which are most likely to lead to a swing against multiculturalism, and towards some kind of post-liberal amalgam of conservatism and nationalism.

This process is already beginning in France, Britain and the United States, where the sheer number of immigrants is putting pressure on politicians to start introducing measures to significantly curtail immigration and take account of majority opinion.