Sarkozy joins the parade, says multiculturalism is a “failure”

Agence France Press reports:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday declared that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

“We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him,” he said in a television interview in which he declared the concept a “failure.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron last month pronounced his country’s long-standing policy of multiculturalism a failure, calling for better integration of young Muslims to combat home-grown extremism.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia’s former prime minister John Howard and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar have also in recent months said multicultural policies have not successfully integrated immigrants.

Does any of this mean anything? In the case of Merkel, two VFR readers showed how it didn’t mean anything. As for Cameron, I haven’t yet read his speech. But Sarkozy’s remarks are interesting because he doesn’t just utter the slogan that multiculturalism has failed, he identifies the very nature of multiculturalism and rejects it: “We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him.”

However, I still say that conservatives who are celebrating these announcements are being terribly superficial. Multiculturalism is a central and intrinsic aspect of the ruling ideology of Europe. The fact that three European leaders have now criticized multiculturalism and called it a failure does not mean that they and their countries are going to do anything to end multicultural rule. In the mid 1990s President Clinton said that the age of big government was over, and conservatives went into their usual ecstasies. But the government continued to grow. Five years after Clinton’s pronouncement Americans elected a candidate pledged to “compassionate conservatism,” i.e., to big government conservatism, who as president pushed through enormous expansions in the government spending. And fifteen years after Clinton’s pronouncement, under a Congress and president of his own party, the U.S. passed several of the biggest big government measures in history, including the biggest one of all, Obamacare. So let’s not mistake words for facts.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 11, 2011 01:24 PM | Send