David wrote:Skids wrote:David wrote:This is the dream of far-right groups: a return to ethnic-nationalism, where people only mingle with their own kind.
No, this is where you're way off mate.
Australians will gladly accept anyone who is prepared to assimilate and be good, hard working citizens. Greeks, Italians, Slavs, Vietnamese etc, are perfect examples of this.
Muslims want; mosques, prayer rooms (there's one at Movie World now ffs!), even their own, segregated suburbs! Not to mention have multiple wives, female GM, Sharia law, wear burkas and plot terror attacks.
They do not want to assimilate, or work, or abide by our laws.
That's the deal.
Mosques and prayer rooms are reasonable things to want and cost us nothing. Whatever their desire for Sharia Law might be, most accept that coming here means they live under a secular legal system and are perfectly happy with that.
Otherwise, the vast majority of Muslims do not want multiple wives, female genital mutilation or terror attacks (:roll:), and to say that they don't want to work or abide by our laws is just bigoted rubbish.
The stuff you're saying here is exactly what people were saying about Vietnamese etc. a generation ago. There's nothing new about it. You can say you're not a supporter of the White Australia Policy, but that's ultimately all this admiration of closed societies like Poland and Japan amounts to. You can blame the end of the WAP for the fact we have Muslims here today, along with quaint ideas about religious freedom and non-discrimination.
There's a whole bunch of stuff in here. Of course most Muslims want to work. Many of them do very menial and unpleasant, low-paid and insecure jobs and they struggle terribly because they have children and their wives do not do paid work. I dislike Islam intensely, but many Muslims are generous, hard working and serious individuals. I have more in common with them than I do with half of the welfare-state layabouts and no-hopers who get pissed weekly, beat up their children, and get by on petty theft and cannabis. In public policy terms, however, Islam is an ideology of a particularly passionate and identity-shaping kind, and even those who are reticent about its influence today will surely intensify their aspirations for a more Islam-inspired society as critical mass makes it possible. That is human nature. I think Islam is a lousy religion, but I have no interest in demonising Muslims. I simply know that humans are what they are, and if you import a large number of people whose identity is shaped by such a passion-inspiring force, you must expect them to try to reshape you, because humans are political animals. And, of course, 1 in about a thousand is interested in blowing your children to pieces. En masse,t hat turns into a large and clearly unmanageable number.
As to David's comment about "far right dreams where people only mingle with their own kind", well, If Japan is far right, it might be the only time I have felt attracted to that point of the political compass. A society with dignity, deeply felt traditions, strong family bonds, low crime, few drug problems, and a very high standard of living is not the kind of thing I associate with the far-right. Some immigration is fine by me. What is not fine is the reckless and uncertain transformation of society by the completely unnecessary infusion of large numbers of people who understand little of each other.
When our societies had little immigration, and the immigration was from culturally similar peoples, we were a kinder, more tolerant and more harmonious place, capable of making connections with each other through shared codes of language and meaning. Today, increasingly, we have communities of mutually uncomprehending solitudes held together by a tin circle of hapless government. This rather pleases the Left, I suspect, because a disunited people who cannot understand each other is far easier to control and the inevitable disorder justifies the endless expansion of government, which can always be relied upon to bodge fix the problems it has caused.
Clearly some immigration, carefully managed, can have benefits. However societies like Japan and China seem to be progressing rather better than those which have lost control of their borders.
