Pace Inimitable Ibbitson of the Globe (a fellow who truly loathes non-metropolitan Canada, must be a reaction to growing up in small-town Gravenhurst, Ontario), Publius destroys multiculti in a superb essay–a few excerpts, do read it all (hint: Pierre Trudeau was not the fons et origo of all our woes):
As regular readers will have noticed, this blog has dedicate a fair number of electrons in recent weeks to multiculturalism. We are at the beginning stages in Canada of a cultural war, between those seeking to maintain the Big Lie of multiculturalism, and those seeking to defend Canadian culture and tradition. The former is – at best – a dangerously naive idea that all cultures are of equal objective value. The latter is a system of values that upholds individual rights, separation of church and state, free speech, rule of law and a basic market economy.
What is going on in Canada is only one small episode in a wider struggle across the western world. It is as if, on its deathbed, the nations of Europe and North America began to question the path that had lead them hence. In Germany, France and Britain there have been official rebukes to multiculturalism. So far these have only been pro forma declarations of what the general public had already come to understand, but was often afraid to say openly.
It will take decades of fighting to remove multiculturalism, and its fountainhead moral relativism, from the sinews of western nations…
What began as a plea for those most western of values, equality before the law and objectivity, is now ending, decades later, in the quagmire of affirmative action, and calls for Sharia law being supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury. There was a subtle shift in the justification for our immigration policies. Instead of trying to seek out the best immigrants for Canada, our policies transformed themselves into a quest to remake Canadian society. There was nothing special about Canada or the Canadian way. We were just another country. Our values were not better than anyone else’s values. Discrimination on the basis of cultural values, then, was no different than discrimination on racial grounds.
The philosophical idea at the heart of multiculturalism is relativism. It is a complete rejection of objectivity. There is no truth in this view. No right and wrong…
Once enough of the western ruling class had accepted the idea that objectivity was impossible, that all values were subjective to the individual or perhaps a particular group, the West became deaf and dumb. It could not object to barbarism abroad (a foreign policy based on appeasement), or barbarism at home (immigrants from primitive cultures unwilling to integrate). Faced with crises after crises, the West’s response has been apology and retreat…
…It’s easy enough to say that all cultures are equal, if you live in an area surrounded by civilized men and women. Just like it’s easier to be a socialist if you’re rich [that means you, Jack and Olivia]. You don’t pay the price. Someone else does, usually the poor and the middle class, or the generations that follow…
Update: More from Publius along similar lines:
The WASP Suicides
“Discrimination on the basis of cultural values, then, was no different than discrimination on racial grounds.”
Bingo.
Victor Hugo famously declared that there was nothing so powerful as an idea whose time had come. True. But where do ideas come from? How do they propagate? Who decides when the time has “come” for an idea to go from periphery to power. As a class these are the intellectuals.
~Publius
Pierre Trudeau, member of the Club of Rome and signatory of the 1973 Humanist Manifesto II was one of those powerful intellectuals, Brian Mulroney was not.
Mulroney’s Multiculturalism Act reads like an old hippie’s treasure chest of feel-good verbiage,that can be interpreted however the most aggressive person wants.
Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, both Paul Desmerais’ boys,and what a goddamned mess those two bastards left us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Multiculturalism_Act
Read it and gnash your teeth.
“Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, both Paul Desmerais’ boys”
Don’t forget Chretien and Martin
Politicians support multicultural policies because it ensures that Canada is segregated based on ethnic origins and exotic religions, if they can pit us against each other in gives the Feds the power to grant superior status to the most aggressive and violent ethnic culture or religion. England has granted Islam superior status over all other faiths, and I have no faith that the Feds in Canada won’t do the same. Look at liberal Ontario, for decades they degraded the Christian faith and removed every trace of it from the educational system and schools and now those self same geniuses are going to construct prayer room in schools. Prayer rooms is liberal loopy speakeze for Mosque in every school. Out goes our the faith that built this nation, in comes the left’s new love Islam in our educational system.
“official rebukes to multiculturalism”
Sadly, these are just mere words. Actions count.
Mark
Thanks for posting this. Very informative. What shocks me is politicians did this to our Nation without admitting to what they where doing. We had no vote, no choice, but where bushwhacked by Governments with a real hidden agenda. No wonder the Liberals screamed this at Harper for so long till this day. Its them that had a real agenda to change the composition & very soul of Canada . Its family structure, values, Religion, all in the name of Trudopian Marxism.
What Liberals fear is that its unraveling, with the ghouls who set this up shown for what they truly are & where after. Power plus money for an established Elite.
Eradicating the middle class while making infantile a whole population though stealing tax money to create even more control. Stopping enterprising new comers.
They hid it well under Canadian content & cheap money with a bought Media.
JMO
Bruce..dmorris Can we add Murice Strong to that crew of Desmerais bastard? I think he was part of that crew and had something to do with the founding of CEDA…….Not quite sure.
Just like it’s easier to be a socialist if you’re rich
Ah…. sooo true(doh!)
I notice today that only the rich are socialists. Funny how that is.
Bruce, also Bob Rae, another Desmarais familly compact guy
I went to university with the crowd who framed our post-modernist culture. Would not say I was friends with either Rae or Iggy, but I met them and can recall in a lot of detail the actual cultural atmosphere of Toronto in 1968 to 1972 (my years in the academic gulag).
Of course the overwhelming themes were Vietnam and Trudeau. I talk about this time in my soon-to-be-published novel “Living Waters” as the time of red posters and cat piss. Sons and daughters of the middle class diving to their deaths off the top of Rochdale College on Bloor Street in the perhaps mistaken belief that they were spirit beings. The likes of Iggy and Rae, from a higher stratum, talking the talk but probably not walking the walk of hippie culture (if you’re under forty, forget about understanding it, just think of the 2004 tsunami, it appeared in the distance, looked like nothing, and swept everything away). A conservative student in those days would be anyone whose eyes you could see. Voting patterns on campus were about 90% left and 10% centre-right. Robert Stanfield was considered quaint and Diefenbaker, a dinosaur.
I think it may have been because Vietnam was so vastly unpopular that we lost touch with our heritage, it made all war seem wrong (at that time) to almost all young people and probably many of their elders. The wymyn were of course swept away in the other tsunami, the sexuality of Trudeau. God only knows how many of your mothers wanted to (well that’s enough of that, Pierre).
And God only knows how many did too.
Anyway, this led to multiculturalism because our elites, looking around at the sad spectacle of our middle class hoser youth disappearing into a pre-Wayne’s world black hole of perpetual stoned out bliss, began to think that authentic people must come from elsewhere, and besides, they were malleable. It’s an urban myth of gen-Xers and such that our elites smoked dope. In reality, they just inhaled. They were too busy (somewhat lethargically) getting their ducks in a row to take over conformist fathers’ affairs. Oh there may have been a “pot party” and a trip through Europe, which only increased the desire to have our country “spiced up” (remember, this was when Bobby Orr and Tim Horton were at their peak, and Bill Davis was running Ontario — hoser blandness was almost a bad joke in the 1970s).
And to complete my little story (fable? no) the universities were nicely augmented with the sons and daughters of ambassadors and consuls, the sort of multicults who gave the impression that if you Anglicized any given culture, it did nothing bad and contributed both variety and delight to the gene pool. The idea that millions of such persons would turn on us and want to live by themselves speaking Urdu, or bring in their grannies, never occurred to our brain trust.
Everyone else was stoned and trying to avoid disco dancing.
The weather, on the other hand, was more interesting then.
Want to know more? Too bad, I am about to electro-shock myself into a coma.
Indeed it is a cancer which has infected the West, or rather only the free world. I do not let Trudeau off the hook that easily, knowing of his love affair with communism and for the heavily centralised government of France. He even copied the French in merging all three of our armed forces into one. He had a profound hatred for our British heritage and did everything possible to server it.
From each’s ability to each’s need.
Who decides what an individual’s ability is and who decides what an individual needs. That is the absolute crux of socialism. That is why socialism can never exist successfully and why it will always lead to corruption. There is no one on this Earth capable of deciding those 2 factors – there is not one ounce of equality or fairness in those words. Those words essentially mean that the vast majority will become slaves for those who are priveledged enough to “decide” who has what ability and who needs what (always they, themselves, need a lot of money and assets at the expense of everyone else). This happens each and every time that this social experiment is trotted out. How about lets learn our lessons, right people? History has taught us but are we good students?
I can only react to multi-culture in a rather ribald working class way. I will make no pious statement about “some of my best friends are…..”
I simply go with the old country adage. “Speak as you find”. This would apply to my occasional meeting with the newer immigrants. I do warm to the polite person.
Now the British soldier was seemingly as a teenage conscript rather a crude fellow. Good hearted nontheless. There they were in sunny Egypt. The Suez Canal no less. King Farouk was not very popular. He was arousing the population against the British.
So they put words to the Egyptian national anthem. “King Farouk, King Farouk hang yer (personal parts) on a hook. Staniswire, pull yer wire, King Farouk barden. Queen Farida’s gone away cos she’s in the family way. Staniswire pull yer wire, King Farouk barden.
I muse about the whole situation and the tune comes back to mind. My words.
“Multi-culture, Multi-culture, you can stick yer multi-culture. Staniswire pull yer wire, Multi-culture barden.”
After reading the comments following Mr. I’s article it seems Canadians do want a debate. What you say now John?
Seems to me that the phrase ‘what Canadians want’ joins the list of other lefty straw men (sorry ladies) like ‘for our children’. They serve as icing on a rather duplicitous cake of wrong headed liberal ideas. If we saw the inside of the cake (sorry for stretching a metaphor) we would not eat it. Good thing is I think most Canadians are starting to catch on.
” … it’s easier to be a socialist if you’re rich.”
Think Trudeau, Rae, Martin, Ignatieff, Lewis, and, latterly, Mulroney, Chretien, Layton, et al.: give away the middle and lower-middle class’s money for social programs that will bankrupt the country, while living in Mount Royal, Baby Point, Rockliffe, Forest Hill, Palm Beach, etc.
Ain’t it great to throw other people’s money at social problems … until it runs out? Hard-working, responsible, accountable people aren’t socialists: They know how hard you have to work to make a dime and they sure as hell don’t want to have to split it with hangers-on who have no intention of working for a living when the gubment will give them handouts — for their votes, of course.
From the “Not that anyone really cares” file…
I remember growing up in the 70s and learning all about multiculturalism and how wonderful it is. My ancestry is half French, quarter Scottish, quarter English. My family antecedents are both long-term and recent immigrants. I am, in one sense, what Canada is, or was. (Wow, does that come across as arrogant…but hopefully, you get my point.)
I’d always been proud of being Canadian, for various reasons. I’ve always been a little offended that we don’t show more nationalistic, patriotic pride, lest we appear too “American”. I used to think–probably because I was taught to–that multiculturalism trumped America’s “melting pot”. But then, I used to think that meant that the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. That has turned out to be a false proposition.
I remember that first Sikh RCMP recruit that demanded his “rights”, as that most Canadian of symbols was…modified, let’s say, to be polite. I think this was one of the first events where I started to realise the joke of “multiculturalism” versus being Canadian.
In my younger days I would have laughed you off, had you tried to tell me that anyone would’ve deliberately tried to ruin Canada, especially by this method. Now, I just shake my head and hope it’s only misguided idiots, instead of a concerted plan, because it’s easier to fix that way. Not much, maybe, but still…
Socialism is not really an ideology: it’s the velvet glove over the iron fist of fascism/statism. Its only purpose is to enable control of the masses by giving them what you want them to think they want. It’s the magician’s distraction hand.
Read it and gnash your teeth.
Posted by: dmorris at February 16, 2011 5:32 PM”
gee oz, what do you say to that?
but naturally *I’m* the leftist despite the fact I spell it ‘turdeau’ and support the military.
I think you Canadians have forgotten your past history as an Colony of the British Empire. England (The British Empire) and Canada have always been a Social Class System with inherited rights, couple that with Quebec and thier French pecking order.. What you have is a mixture.
You don’t have REAL Individual Rights ( per recent comments by Canadian SC Justice) and Multi culturism (Group Rights) fits into the continuation of a class System… I don’t think its Communism per see…Just Smoke & Mirrors to hide the privileged few..
The UN third world Countries have the same problem between Individual rights VS the established Colinial privilaged class…
JMHO
dmorris at February 16, 2011 5:32 PM said:
Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, both Paul Desmerais’ boys,and what a goddamned mess those two bastards left us.
Actually, there were quite a few whores in that whorehouse and as I recall they set up the Kyoto pact:
JOHN RAE: leading strategist for Prime Minister Chretien’s election campaign. Was Executive Vice- President of Power Corp. and Paul Desmarais’ right- hand man. His brother is….
BOB RAE: ex-NDP [Socialist] Premier of Ontario, who appointed….
MAURICE STRONG (his godfather) to the chairmanship of Ontario Hydro, which he proceeded to dramatically cut in both skilled human resources and generating capacity [to provide a future need for power from James Bay] Past CEO of Desmarais’ Power Corp., Strong received an appointment to the UN as senior environmental advisor to the UN Secretary-General and Chairman of the Earth Council. HE was responsible for the Kyoto accords.
PAUL MARTIN: current federal Finance Minister. Rose through the ranks at Power Corp., mentored by Paul Desmarais. Bought Canada Steamship Lines from him. Ran against Chretien for Liberal Party leadership.
JEAN CHRETIEN: Prime Minister. Daughter, France, is married to Andre Desmarais, son of Paul Desmarais, chairman of Power Corporation. Chretien’s “advisor, counsellor and strategist” for the past 30 years has been …
MITCHELL SHARP, who brought Chretien into politics when he was Finance Minister. Sharp has been, since 1981, Vice-Chairman for North America of the corporate globalist Tri-Lateral Commission.
DANIEL JOHNSON: Liberal [and Opposition] leader in Quebec Rose through the ranks of Power Corp. Key in delivering federal spending to Quebec based Power Corp. and other corporate welfare cases in the province.
BRIAN MULRONEY: ex-Conservative Prime Minister. Now a lawyer and lobbyist for Power Corporation which, together with Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec, has just formed the Hong Kong-based ASIA POWER CORP., to help China to develop its energy potential. Power Corp.’s legal interests in Asia will be handled by a Hong Kong branch of Mulroney’s Montreal law firm, Olgilvy, Renault.
PIERRE TRUDEAU: past PM and former Power Corp. lawyer. Introduced into the company by his father who had business connections to Desmarais. PET signed over millions to Power Corp. under federal grant programs. Desmarais funded his election campaign.
So…we have the CONSERVATIVE party [via Mulroney], the LIBERAL party [via Trudeau and Chretien], and the NDP [via Rae] all tightly connected to….Paul Desmarais and Power Corp. And we have the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, and the Prime Minister’s key aide all tightly connected to….Paul Desmarais and Power Corp.
We now see the Power Corp. key alumnus in the UN Kyoto deal which so coincidentally benefits the (largely unpublicized) business interests of Desmarais alumnus. Maurice Strong has now joined Brian Mulroney and Paul Desmarais in investing in the Asia Power Group’s $100 million venture capital in “small coal-fired power plants being built in the south of China”. They are also looking at “larger projects in northern China, as well as in Malaysia, the Philippines and India.” The Asian economies are expected to spend $1 trillion [US] on essential infrastructure, of which an estimated $400 billion [US] will be on power generation. Chinese and Asian labour costs are low – as low, in China, as $45 per month – and potential profits are enormous.
The Nov/Dec. 1993 issue of Council on Foreign Relations’ publication FOREIGN RELATIONS contains an article, THE RISE OF CHINA, in which we are warned that China will begin to use more energy than the United States within a few decades, massively straining the world’s energy supplies. If you were a power company investment magnet where would you place your future fortunes? In a nation wracked with environmental paranoia or a developing, unregulated energy hungry industrial giant? China is gearing up to be the world’s dominant manufacturing power. Most of China’s energy comes from the burning of soft, high-sulphur, highly- polluting coal. In 1991 alone, 11 trillion cubic meters of waste gases and sixteen million tons of soot were emitted into the atmosphere over China – and it has only just begun its long process of increased energy generation! The sulphur in this coal causes acid rain. The burning of the coal releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the most efficient “greenhouse gas” in the global warming process.
There are indications that Strong , Desmarais and their cronies (under ghost corporate affiliates) are behind the current rash of buying of low grade coal mines in depressed nations to fuel these projects. But this is yet to be fully substantiated. Who would invest so massively in low grade coal when it was targeted as Kyoto taboo commodity?
Maybe someone who knew in advance they would be able to burn it with out regulation in China? Green house fears bottomed out the price of these coal purchases. If it can be used for power generating fuel, you stand to have a very inexpensive fuel source. China continues to burn coal in it’s power production unregulated by Kyoto.
Now the real hook. You remember Maurice Strong? Desmarais’ familiar and corporate confidante, ex Power boss, major investor in 3rd world coal fired energy enterprise? Well Maurice ended up appointed to the UN as head advisor to the UN Secretary-General on environmental affairs Is this irony? He was campaigned for that position by Canada’s PM’s and diplomats. As such, he called a little multi national conference called Kyoto! Maurice and his friend Jean Chretien wrote and signed an agreement which effectively will destroy their pal Desmarais’ chief energy competitor (Alberta Nat Gas) and gave Power Corp investment in China coal/energy an enormous competitive advantage.
Anyone who thinks this as mere coincidence is unaware of the networking of international corporate elites. This revelation makes it clear the Kyoto earth summit was a vehicle used by corporate (Strong/Chretien) bag men to create a huge global shift in power generation profits. They were backed by one of the world’s most devious businessmen.
Oh, and Paul Desmarais? In September, 1993, he joined the Tri-lateral Commission. He spearheaded the Tri-lat initiative of promoting a Kyoto-like conference over concerns for the planet from carbon emissions produced by the DEVELOPED NATIONS.
And you thought it was all about saving the planet? For whom?
Reading between the lines here in the UK, David Cameron’s end to multiculturalism seems to be that everyone should adopt his socially liberal ideas.
Speaking for myself, I prefer to have standards
Thanks, Whorehouse piano player, for putting all of these devious connections together in one post. The whole story of Power Corporation and its connections to the Liberal Party of Canada and international power cartels, the UN, China, etc. would make for a doozie of a novel or a blockbuster of a movie … what category, I wonder? Suspense? Epic? Crime and Gangster? Thriller?. Who would believe it? ‘Fiction, right?
Can you imagine if the Conservative Party of Canada, always accused of being the party of big business, had similar connections, what a heyday the media would have with it? They’d be unmercifully hounding them; there’d be front-page headlines, the CBC’s Fifth Estate would do a yearly series on it; Stevie Cameron would be writing a book about it. “Funny” thing, though, this story is protected and under wraps by our intrepid “investigative” [sic] reporters in the Canadian media. If not for Conrad Black, now conveniently in jail, hmmmm, most Canadians would still be in the dark about this epic: ‘biggest story never told in Canada.
Yes, thanks be to Whorehouse piano player for summarizing the list of the members of that cabal. It never was about the environment.
Batb, I suspect that the crime and gangster category would be appropriate.
Paul – Nottingham, we have the same problem here what with the continual escalation of the social degradation of our society.
From Publius’s The Wasp Suicides:
The WASPs are perhaps the first group in human history to call for their own cultural suicide. Having spearheaded the development of parliamentary democracy, individual rights, the industrial revolution, capitalism and played a large role in the history of science, sometime after 1960 the WASPs – or at least their elite – lost the will to defend their values. The self-perception of their history and culture went from glorious, to irremediably wicked, in little more than a generation. The transformation was stunning.
Most definitive: ” … [WASPs] lost the will to defend their values.”
They sure did, and it had everything to do with their having lost their religious faith, the Christian faith of their forebears. The ’60s was a time of societal turmoil and upheaval and one of its tenets — if you were going to be cool, with it, progressive — was to chuck any acknowledgment of or need for faith in the Judeo-Christian God.
The founding principles of our faith are the foundations upon which our parliamentary democracies, individual rights, and capitalism were built, but having been set adrift from our spiritual roots — and told that they were a sham and a fairytale — we, soon, had no reason to defend them, or ourselves, and our generous, freedom-for-all, way of life.
Without a vision the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).
That’s us. That’s the cause of the WASP suicides.
We need to snap out of it. We need to re-appropriate our Judeo-Christian faith; if we did, the Leftards would be quaking in their boots. So would the Islamists.
As it is, we’re fodder for their illiberal and ungodly agendas. What faithless, sad and sorry, useful idiots and dupes we’ve become.
Kyrie Eleison.
Amen, batb, and kyrie eleison.
BTW, great articles by Publius. Much obliged, Publius. I wish you were writing for one of our major media outlets.
But here’s our dilemma in Canada: If you get it, you’re relegated to having a blog, because you’re pretty much assured of not getting a sinecure in the MSM. Litmus test is, you’ve got to be a politically correct, anti-Christian Leftard and feminist-, gay-, visible-minority positive or no go. You’ve also got to have absolutely no sense of Canada’s history — her actual history. You’ve got to believe in the airbrushed version taught in our educational (sic) institutions, where all DWEMS (Dead White English/European Males) are bad and there’s nothing good at all about the British, nothing — even if they’re your ancestors.
‘Talk about suicide.
BTW, great articles by Publius. Much obliged, Publius. I wish you were writing for one of our major media outlets.
But here’s our dilemma in Canada: If you get it, you’re relegated to having a blog, because you’re pretty much assured of not getting a sinecure in the MSM. Litmus test is, you’ve got to be a politically correct, anti-Christian Leftard and feminist-, gay-, visible-minority positive or no go. You’ve also got to have absolutely no sense of Canada’s history — her actual history. You’ve got to believe in the airbrushed version taught in our educational (sic) institutions, where all DWEMS (Dead White English/European Males) are bad and there’s nothing good at all about the British, nothing — even if they’re your ancestors.
‘Talk about suicide.