Hurray! A Veritable Treasure Trove of Sheer Relativist Madness
We don't know anything, do we? Total empathy would make life in Europe impossible, but sometimes I can understand the mind-set of those Americans that see the government as the enemy.
When I first returned to The Netherlands from Greece in 1989 it was silently rumoured that - we live in a multi-cultural society, don't we? My conclusion was that must have happened gradually in my absence, while I was dancing the bouzouki with a Greek dude who didn't know how to spell women's lib. I took multi-culturalism to mean what most people believed it meant, being nice and tolerant to immigrants and buy an occasional Turkish loaf in the old quarter from time to time.
In the course of the happy nineties multi-culturalism developed into a real policy and got official status. Laws were introduced and regulations appeared. Being nice and tolerant to immigrants was no longer a form of politeness, but an imperative. Politicians surfaced to tell those that dissented that they had no choice, as the multi-cultural society simply was "a fact"; so they had better deal with their negative attitude and get used it.
I don't think anybody was ever asked permission despite the country being a free democracy, or that a referendum was put to the vote "Do you want to transform your country into a multi-cultural laboratory? Yes/No, strike what's not applicable". It just happened and nobody was ever told what the consequences would be, besides having to be nice and tolerant, and hire foreign if you want to be seen as an ethical employer.
The problem is, like immigrants, multi-culturalism doesn't come alone, but brings an entire family of pseudo-philosophies and destructive world views. Because, if you really want to be nice to immigrants - even if they murder loud-mouthed intellectual liberals, or threaten them to the point of them being taken into protracted protective custody - you really need to become a cultural relativist as well.
One who jumped the public discourse entirely after the ritual slaughter of Theo van Gogh, was the Liberal philosopher Professor Paul Cliteur, who has since re-merged with a article Falling Prey to Relativism. I condemned him for being spineless, but he may have known what I at the time was still blissfully unaware of, namely that a discussion with relativist multi-culturalists on the one hand, and a bunch of unhinged radical Muslims on the other, doesn't get you anywhere, intellectually speaking.
By the time I made the return journey to Greece in the spring of last year - between the aforementioned, and the majority of expletives hurling barbarians that don't know any better for their lack of a proper education - they had transformed the country into a living hell. As far as I can see from a distance, little has changed.
The readership can look forward to a series of posts on this subject, as I have just unearthed a veritable treasure trove of sheer relativist madness to dissect. By the way, for some time now I've been sitting on a really, really nasty picture ... I mean, they hardly come any more gruesome: do you want to see it?
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