Monday, August 28
(UPDATED) Multiculturalism: When winning takes decades...
"A 'racist' is a conservative who's winning an argument with a liberal" -- and we need to remember that winning can take a very, very long time. And there will be casualties...
And probably, neither will you.
If you only raise your voice because you expect to see results in your lifetime, let alone get a big "we're so sorry" from your enemies, you will be sorely disappointed.
No conservative in England will now be awarded the You Were Right All Along Award, and get to make an unforgettable "Oscar" type speech to an audience of millions, not to mention a knighthood.
So don't blog/campaign/argue because you expect to be hailed as a hero tomorrow or next year. Accept the fact that you may not be around to celebrate victory. Look at the big picture, and towards a better future. The popular warblogger quip, "Faster, please" is actually a recipe for personal disillusionment. Instead, you'll be surprised at how oddly invigorating realistic resignation can be.
And now: blasphemy! Hopeless lefty monk Thomas Merton penned a letter that's come to be known as "Advice to a Young Activst", addressed to fellow lefty anti-war guy Jim Forest, back in 1966. It began: "Do not depend on the hope of results," and provided me with an invaluable perspective during my stint on the Left. The letter remains pertinent, whatever your political persuasion.
Forest writes:
Some 22 years ago Ray Honeyford, the previously obscure headmaster of Drummond middle school in Bradford, suggested, in the low-circulation right-wing periodical The Salisbury Review, that his Asian pupils should really be better integrated into British society. (...)Alas, Enoch Powell didn't live to see himself vindicated.
For these mild contentions, Honeyford was investigated by the government, vilified as a racist by the press, ridiculed every day by leftie demonstrators outside his office and was eventually hounded from his job. He has not worked since.
(...)
"To give you an example of the lunacy that prevailed back in Honeyford's time: then, the Commission for Racial Equality was happy to instruct Britain's journalists that Chinese people were henceforth to be described as 'black' because that, objectively, was their subjective political experience at the hands of the oppressive white hegemony.
(...)
This is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain's Muslims in February this year revealed that some 40% (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Sir Trevor Phillips's exact words were these: 'If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.'
My guess is this: if such a statement had been made by a member of the Tory party's Monday Club in 1984 - or, for that matter, 1994 - he would have been excoriated and quite probably would have been kicked out of the party.
(...)
The news that the bombers of July 7 last year and those who allegedly plotted to blow up a whole bunch of aeroplanes were British born apparently came as a shock to the government. Well, it did not come as a shock to those of us who viewed multiculturalism as both dangerous and inherently racist.
It seemed, to people like Honeyford, a simple case of cause and effect. In the end, it is not the mad mullahs at whom we should direct our wrath, but the white liberals who enabled them to prosper. That the creed has now been binned should be a cause for celebration; but don't for a moment expect an admission that they got it wrong in the first place.
And probably, neither will you.
If you only raise your voice because you expect to see results in your lifetime, let alone get a big "we're so sorry" from your enemies, you will be sorely disappointed.
No conservative in England will now be awarded the You Were Right All Along Award, and get to make an unforgettable "Oscar" type speech to an audience of millions, not to mention a knighthood.
So don't blog/campaign/argue because you expect to be hailed as a hero tomorrow or next year. Accept the fact that you may not be around to celebrate victory. Look at the big picture, and towards a better future. The popular warblogger quip, "Faster, please" is actually a recipe for personal disillusionment. Instead, you'll be surprised at how oddly invigorating realistic resignation can be.
And now: blasphemy! Hopeless lefty monk Thomas Merton penned a letter that's come to be known as "Advice to a Young Activst", addressed to fellow lefty anti-war guy Jim Forest, back in 1966. It began: "Do not depend on the hope of results," and provided me with an invaluable perspective during my stint on the Left. The letter remains pertinent, whatever your political persuasion.
Forest writes:
Merton among the most prolific and gifted of writers, a man of words if ever there was one warns us not to lose our way in words, rhetoric and slogans. Social movements, whatever their particular agenda, tend to be environments in which words are constantly on the boil, and where ideologies and slogans become a substitute for thought and the silent activity of conscience. Movements of dissent, within themselves, rarely appreciate dissent...UPDATE: Mark Steyn writes:
Kathy Shaidle's post is very sobering but very true. It's not the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning, but only the early stages of a long struggle to eradicate a self-injected virus from the bloodstream.
