It's Okay To Say It...Really...It is...

Michael Barone makes a good point in his commentary "Cultures Aren't Equal." He reminds us that it is okay to be proud of our accomplishments as modern western, civilized, democracies. It is not unreasonable to expect those who to live among us to adopt our ideals and customs. They do not have to deny their own culture, but they must adapt to ours or we risk losing ourselves in a multi-cultural rable, where no one is respected. Excerpts:

Multiculturalism preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture. Society should be not a melting pot but, in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, "a gorgeous mosaic." That mosaic, of course, looks less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers.

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Writers in other tolerant countries have been noticing the blowback from multiculturalism. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, "the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance."

In The Age of Melbourne, Australia, Pamela Bone wrote, "Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here." The Age's Tony Parkinson quoted the French writer Jean Francois Revel's Cold War comment, "A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." Tolerating intolerance, goodhearted people are beginning to see, does not necessarily produce tolerance in turn.