Why too much diversity makes self-government impossible

From a VFR thread, November 2002:

Actually, mass immigration, especially from the third world (Muslim or otherwise), does much more than dilute participatory democracy.

An egalitarian multicultural society can’t have widespread participation in self-government. Self-government requires there to be a political people that can deliberate and decide things somewhat rationally. There has to be a sort of public mind, which requires common history, habits, understandings, standards, loyalties, etc.

In a large radically multicultural society that kind of common mind can’t possibly exist among the people at large. As a result the society will not in fact be democratic. It will be ruled by some much smaller group who are able to deliberate, decide and act collectively. The more fragmented the people are — the more multicultural they are, for example — the less influence they will have in public affairs.

Posted by: Jim Kalb on November 14, 2002 10:38 AM

Mr. Kalb has elucidated one of the things I was hinting at when I said governments should safeguard their nations’ heritage and culture. Maintaining an ethnic balance that preserves the historic “public mind” of a nation is an aspect of that duty. (Unless the public mind concludes that its own destruction is warranted. As I said before, I don’t think any Western nation - as distinct from government - has yet reached that conclusion, although governments may yet achieve that result, thanks to the negligent indifference of most citizens.)

Mr. Kalb’s last paragraph is as good a summary of the motives of our globalist elites as I have seen lately, even if many of those globalists aren’t fully aware of them themselves. Better a congeries of squabbling peasantries that cannot join to impede plans for their improvement than a single monolithic peasantry that might. HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on November 14, 2002 11:00 AM

I agree that Mr. Kalb’s comment is important. Politics, as Aristotle said, is men discussing together the common good. If the people composing a society are so different from each other that they can’t discuss the common good together, then politics comes to an end, to be replaced by some administered or despotic state.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 14, 2002 11:17 AM

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