“But you must understand,” implored a well-intentioned woman in the audience, “multiculturalism is Canada’s gift to the world.”
I used to like guacamole, too.
“But you must understand,” implored a well-intentioned woman in the audience, “multiculturalism is Canada’s gift to the world.”
I used to like guacamole, too.
I don’t think she means yogurt.
So, we really CAN blame Canada this time.
Refreshingly, Alan Borovoy, general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the chap who helped found these commissions in the 1960s and ’70s, was equally appalled. Writing in the Calgary Herald, he said “during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech”.
I can just about guarantee you that a good number of people tried to point out to Mr. Borovoy that this system would be used to curtail free speech. I can also just about guarantee that he wrote those concerns off as a wingnut fantasy. Having involved myself in several conversations recently regarding this issue, I can tell you that many are still writing off these concerns as a wingnut fantasy.
multiculturalism is Canada’s gift to the world.â€Â
I thought it was mediocre beer.
Education Guy, a small correction.
The Left did not write the concerns off as “wingnut fantasy”. They attacked them head on as further examples of the Right’s intent to Keep the Other Down, and used that as further justification to erect a Thought Police system.
They’re still doing it. Ms. Albrechtson is very much a despised minority.
Regards,
Ric
Ya know, one of the beautiful results of Jonah Goldberg’s new book is that the right’s starting to call the left “progressives”, and doing so specifically to tie them to their intellectual heirs.
While I am mortified at the mere existance of these commissions and their mandate, what scares me deeply is the attitude of those who are involved. I’ve come round to ric’s way of thinking on this. If we refuse to protect all speech no matter how sacreligious, biased or potentially harmful (fire in the theater) then we run the real risk of the gentle rolling slope becoming a steep glacier towards real censorship in the name of The Narrative.™
What those nice, fuzzy Canadians don’t get is that someone can continue to redefine what constitutes hate speech to include anything that suits any particular political or socio/economic point of view. The mere insistance that they are only trying to do good is the foundation stone of totalitarianism and the death of individual liberty. One need only think of the old Soviet use of Insane Asylum/gulags to deposit those “deeply troubled” individuals mentally unbalanced enough to criticise the Worker’s Paradise.
Canada’s aboot multiculturalism, eh? Take off you ya freakin lefty hosers.. It’s aboot beer ! All the free beer and sausages ya want..
Right on, eh… The freakin’ hoser Muslims dont even drink beer… If they want multiculturalism they should down a few Muskoga Brown Lagers or Quidi Vidi Northerns.. When the hoseheads do that then they can say they’re freakin Cannucks..
Multiculturalism? What about maple sugar candy? I’d have guessed maple sugar candy was Canada’s gift to the world.
Ed Flinn:
Actually it’s frostbite.
Multiculturalism? Candy? Frostbite?
I thought Canada’s gift to the world was the acceptance of illiteracy.
Blame Canada? Fuck that, we need to bomb Canada. For their sake.
They’ve moved almost their entire population to within a stone’s throw of the US border. If that’s not aggressive behavior, I don’t know what is. (Well, it might be passive-aggressive behavior, but we are talking about Canada, after all.) Do you think Poland would put up with this kind of behavior from Germany? Would New South Wales sit idly by while Queenslanders crowded their doorstep? No! And neither should we!
They’re up to no good, I tell you, and if we don’t take active steps to remedy the situation soon, it’ll be too late!
Or is it too late already? I’d call for air strikes, but the bastards have already infiltrated NORAD. Sneaky devils. I’ve always said you shouldn’t trust anyone what puts gravy and cheese curds on french fries.
I have fallen in love with Janet Albrechtsen.
Chicks that say ‘Aboot’ are hot… Terrance and Phillip Fart Jokes not so much..
1) Dr. Albrechtsen is teh hotness. No argument there.
2) Have the Canadians forgotten the Space Arm so soon?
3) Any babe with an accent is hot… some deep instinctual drive for genetic diversity or some such nonsense. Canadinas and Latinas have the advantage of being next door.
Yeah, Merovign … Dr. Albrechtsen has that hot librarian look down to a science.
Did you read Dr. Albrechtsen’s other piece, “Climate Change Cure Is Warm and Fuzzy” (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23024713-5013450,00.html)? I’m in love with her, and I’ve been married (to a man) for fourteen and a half years!
Okay, I’m going to have to interrupt this thread to demand a picture link.
“multiculturalism is Canada’s gift to the world.â€Â
This implies a great many things, which are all unequivocally inaccurate.
The biggest thing this implies is that “multiculturalism” did not exist before Canada and/or Canada invented it. And it should probably be understood that “multiculturalism” is a polite term for “co-option”.
“Multiculturalism” is the act [or series of acts] in which a culture accepts other-culture practices or norms as its own.
Multiculturalism can be accomplished by force [i.e., the cultural practice can be imposed upon the target culture]; the multiculturalism can be accomplished by any of various forms of “social osmosis” [i.e., two cultures exist next to each other for so long they start sharing traits — by mechanism of trade or other interaction]; or the multiculturalism can by accomplished by subsummation [i.e., the changed culture adopts habits from those it has overwhelmed].
Notable instances of multiculturalism which predate this moment of shining Canuckian self-adulation are:
1] the British Isles concoct the English language by being subjected to centuries of conquest and reconquest by others who spoke myriad languages;
2] American English gleefully accepts [indeed, seeks out and confiscates] words from still other languages for common usage;
3] Mexico is [to ethnocentric Spaniards] the “bastard” mixture of their noble Spanish “race” with the Maya and Mexica [et al] tribes, until you get the short, swarthy Mexicans who “can’t even speak proper Spanish”;
4] “popular” music, originating from the US, borrowed [read: “stole”] from black musical forms, to get everything from jazz to blues to rock and roll;
5] this music is now worldwide, thanks to the US inspiring, and the rest of the world accepting, American music in a great spate of non-Canuckian multiculturalism;
6] the entire Caribbean basin is a pre-Canuckian multicultural stew-pot, mixing what’s left of the native Arawak with black Africans and European colonialists to create patoises which resemble, but not too closely, their “parent” language, and hybrid religions which resemble, but not too closely, their parent religions, et cetera;
AND, in an example which is certain to inspire sanctimonious Canuckian multi-culti revisionists to mass suicide:
7] the entire Christian religion is, and has been, an exercise in subsummation of pagan ritualism into Christian Doctrine: the birth of Joshua bar Joseph was almost certainly in early spring, yet “christmas” coincides — as if by magic — with the primary ritual of nearly every pagan cult on the planet which grew up in the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere: winter solstice. “All Saints Day” coincides with the druidic harvest festival which simultaneously venerated the dead druids … venerating dead saints, same thing. The Christian religion has built its existence on co-opting everyone around it.
But that will never do.
And this doesn’t even get into classical history, where we find the Ptolemaic Pharoahs overseeing the multiculturalizing of Egypt; India freely multiculturalizing with everyone to the north, east and west on the “silk road” network; Roman, and later Byzantine, multiculturalizing of huge swaths or Europe, near east and central Asia; Greece imposing it on ditto; Persia ditto; Phoenecia ditto.
Canuckia certainly didn’t invent multiculturalism. It’s doubtful that a convincing argument could be made that they improved it any.
In the vast hall of mirrors that is Canuckia’s general view of the world, and their place in it, they are naturally all they see.
[…] for the gift of multiculturalism, […]
JD, Merovign, and ouroboros-
“Hot” Librarians– with an “accent”…
(I’ll be in my bunk).