The mutation of conservatism into multiculturalism

The step by step movement of “conservatism” to the multicultural left, of which Sen. McCain’s speech is the latest expression, was discussed by me in my 2003 booklet, Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. In the below excerpt I show how George W. Bush’s August 2000 Miami speech fits into this broader progress.

And so, without a hint of fanfare, the race-blind universalism of the American Creed had mutated into multiculturalism. As bad as this was, however, it was only the second of three stages by which America was being defined out of existence. Initially the liberal democrats (who were once called “liberal Democrats” and today are called “conservative Republicans”) declared that America is not defined at all by its historic racial and ethnic character, but only by a common culture, consisting of the English language, some minimal knowledge of American history, and the belief in individual freedom and equality of rights. The idea was that all people, regardless of their background, could participate equally in this common culture. But then, as the non-Western immigrant cultures increased in size and vociferousness, the liberal democrats changed their tune. They began saying that America is not defined at all by its language and culture, but that it must include Third-World languages and cultures alongside the (steadily retreating) common language and culture, with both the native and the immigrant cultures held together by nothing except the belief in individual freedom and equality of rights. Bush’s Miami speech exemplified this transition from the belief in an American common culture to the belief in multiculturalism. Yet the process did not stop there. As non-Western peoples continued to gain in numbers and power, largely as a result of the first two redefinitions, the next step was to say that America is not defined even by individual freedom and equality, but simply by its openness to other cultures—even cultures, like Islam, that have no respect for individual freedom and equality. This last stage was delineated in the aftermath of the 9-11 attack, when Americans for the first time clearly saw Muslims’ profound enmity toward and total incompatibility with our country, and simultaneously pretended, in the interests of “peace” and “tolerance,” not to see it. The result has been the acceptance of radically anti-individual, radically anti-Western religions and cultures in our country; indeed, the more alien and dangerous they are, they more they are assured of our special protection and nonjudgmental concern. And no one—if he wants to keep his position and his place in respectable society—can say anything against it.

Thus, having started out by claiming that ethnicity is entirely irrelevant to American culture, liberals and conservatives have ended by surrendering to the minority ethnic cultures and silencing the former common culture—along with its principle of equal citizenship. The lesson that should be burned into our brains by this disaster is that there can be no entirely “neutral, ethnicity-blind” substitute for the American national culture. Since culture depends on ethnicity (in the broad sense in which we have defined it), to erase our nation’s dominant ethnic identity is to erase our nation’s culture, which results, inevitably, in the gradual takeover of our nation by other cultures.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 26, 2005 02:29 PM | Send