Why Don’t Liberals Demand Assimilation from Those Immigrating to America?
Assimilation is a good thing. It’s a shame liberals have done as they often do and stolen this word, then re-defined it as something it isn’t. Were assimilation practiced, chances are Europe wouldn’t be suffering the brunt of terror attacks from its unassimilated Muslim population.
In the liberal mind, it’s wrong to judge one culture against another – unless white, western, or Juedo-Christian culture is being assessed in which case liberals are quick to disparage. An extension of this is the liberal knee-jerk stance against assimilation. Who are we to expect someone moving to Paris from Khartoum adopt the culture of the former, at the expense of the latter? Fallacious argument of course, but that’s what the left does. Just look at all those “co-exist” bumper stickers.
No one would suggest that someone moving to the west from the middle east – or anywhere else – give up his or her cultural traditions wholesale. Indeed, American society is richer because immigrants brought the best aspects of their cultures with them when they assimilated into the broader American culture. But thanks to modern liberalism, these days immigrants bring all aspects of their cultures and then foster them in segregated communities while assimilation is at best discouraged, at worst denounced as evidence of “structural racism”. To do otherwise would give credit to western culture, and liberals can’t have that. Instead we must achieve co-existence.
What if an American family from Indiana decided to move to Yemen. Indiana and Yemen have vastly different cultures. Would:
– Liberals support the Indiana family if they decided to live in a walled off compound, practicing American cultural traditions?
– Or would liberals insist the Indiana family adopt all aspects of Yemeni culture at the expense of their American culture?
In places like Yemen there are many cultural practices that would shake even the most strident moral relativist to the core:
– Genital mutilation.
– Death penalty for homosexuality, transgender, and any other perceived sexual deviance.
– Intimate man-boy contact.
– Prohibitions against alcohol.
– Denial of women’s basic rights?
– Public corporal punishment.
– Denial of free speech and the right to worship as one wishes.
If the Indiana family moved to Yemen, the expectation would be that they adopt all aspects of Yemeni culture as their own. There are no “co-exist” bumper stickers in a place like Yemen nor are there vast social movements afoot to treat all cultures as equal. Co-existence just doesn’t happen.
Once in Yemen, the teenage daughter would need to endure female circumcision and heaven help her if she was found to be a non-virgin during the process. The older brother who thought he might be gay might as well forget about it, or keep it on the down low. Dad would need to forget about a six-pack while watching the game on Friday night. Especially on Friday night. Mom need not worry about doing much outside the home other than veil herself head to toe if venturing outside. Fail to do any of that and undoubtedly there would be a trip to the village square to receive lashes for the offense – unless stoning or decapitation was called for.
As for all the Christmas decorations, those might as well stay in Indiana including the heirlooms passed down when Great -Great Grandma Heidi arrived in America back in 1898 from Germany. Along with whatever sarcastic or boundary-pushing Facebook posts, Tweets, pics, or videos anyone in the household might have thought of posting. Rest assured at some level some official somewhere would be watching and waiting for them – once found, a quick trip to the public square for a lashing would be in order. That lashing would apply whether someone in the household put the offending thing on the internet, or merely surfed to it and viewed it.
If the Indiana family felt they were being unfairly singled out, or mistakenly accused of these things, there aren’t any real avenues for redress in Yemen. Sure, they could take it up with local officials. Or with the Imam at the nearest mosque. Neither of which would be compelled to do a whole lot of anything about their complaint. Pressing the complaint further might constitute an offense in and of itself necessitating a punitive response from the powers that be.
A family moving from Yemen to Indiana wouldn’t have to endure any of these things. If they did, there are multiple ways their complaint could be resolved. It’s on these two points that American culture and Yemeni culture are unequal – one is clearly superior to the other. While Yemen is used as an example, dozens of other cultures from around the globe can be substituted in it’s place. The condition of a great many people around the world is existence in subjugated, iniquitous, earthly hells.
Liberals don’t understand that. Instead, they are comfortable with unassimilated hives of co-existence where subjugated immigrants continue the iniquitous hells found in the places they come from. For liberals, this represents one more step towards utopia. Any shortfall in attaining utopia must be directed against opponents of the liberal agenda.
For new arrivals into such communities, it must appear as if all the allure that brought them to give up all they had ever known for a chance at a better life in Paris, Boston, Brussels, or where ever else were lies. Is it any wonder first and second generation young men in these populations are socially disaffected? The shortfalls between what they hoped life in the west would be like, and what it actually is day to day, serve to deepen the social divide between their communities and the broader culture of their new home country. The deeper that divide, the greater the likelihood of conflict between the two.
There need not be any conflict between the two. If assimilation, in the truest sense of the word, was the expectation, then the social divide would be lessened and ties between immigrant communities and their new home countries strengthened. Young men don’t blow up communities in which they are socially invested.
Instead, liberals insist upon co-existence. We’ll co-exist ourselves into ever more fractious nests of cultural extremism in the name of multi-culturalism; in the name of being non-judgemental.
Image: Women and children first! via photopin (license)