I saw the news about the assailant who drove his car over people on the bridge near Big Ben and then crashed into the gate of Parliament, got out with a knife, and attacked other people. This person was an Islamic terrorist.
Now think of other examples of terrorism, such as the man who went to the top of the tower at the University of Texas, 50 years ago, and started shooting people. Think also of the many cases of black people being taken and lynched by white supremacists. All these examples of terrorism resulted from assailants not living by the code of a certain culture, a culture which assumes that all individuals are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In 2009, Andrew Neather, who was a speechwriter for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, defended government-engineered mass immigration as the source of a more “interesting” and “cosmopolitan” society, delightful to sophisticated Londoners, as if it were the government’s job to create such pleasures. He stated that there were economic reasons for immigration, but that government ministers were “passionately in favour of a more diverse society. . . . I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended — even if this wasn't its main purpose — to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”
Another way to think of a “diverse culture” is a segregated society, one that has different rules for different people.
The problem then was that many of these new immigrants didn’t adopt the English culture of individuality. They held onto a culture that embraces subservience, as exemplified (but hardly exhausted) by burqas and Sharia law.
How can you have a single culture that is diverse in this way? “Culture” is another way of saying “social group,” which is governed by social rules. Another way to think of a “diverse culture” is a segregated society, one that has different rules for different people. Sharia law would apply to Muslim people, who would be further divided into Sunni and Shiite people. The Ten Commandments and kosher laws would be enforced on Jewish people. Christian people would be divided into Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, and all the other denominations of Christianity, each with its own legally recognized rules. Polygamy would be legal for Mormon people but not for Catholic people. In short, a fully diverse culture would be analogous to a group of not-necessarily friendly tribes living in the same area, similar to the way in which Native Americans used to live on nearby but separate reservations in Oklahoma when it was called the Indian Territory. They were called, very accurately, the nations.
A segregated society is not one society, with variations, which is what the average person thinks of when they think of “diversity.” As the Supreme Court said in Brown v. Board of Education, “Separate is not equal.” This is why I think our desired diversity should be defined as diversity of background, not diversity of overarching rules. We have many different ancestors, religions, orientations, and physical characteristics, but we have a common set of social rules. Our shared social rules should center on our individuality, not on our backgrounds. Each of us individually has the right to do or not do whatever we want, as long as we are not imposing our wishes on others, or getting the government to do so, which is often what “multiculturalism” means. In other words, laws that restrict our liberty should be placed at the minimum, whoever we are.
