In writing these words I violate one of my principles which
is not to respond to someone when, in apparent response to something I wrote,
run and hide behind a third person. Usually this would be a hyphenated person,
almost always the skirt of a woman, but sometimes a male with opinions that
differ from mine. It is that when I engage someone, I take direct aim at what
they say and tackle it; thus prefer to be treated the same way. But I make an
exception this time because I see in Clifford May's article: “The Trouble with
Multiculturalism” an opportunity to finally express many ideas I accumulated
over the decades and did not have the occasion to express. May's article has
the subtitle: “Freedom is the distinguishing feature of Western culture,” and
was published on June 21, 2012 in National Review Online (NRO).
Clifford May is hiding behind Salim Mansur, a professor here
in Canada who is of Muslim East Indian origin. He wrote a book repudiating
multiculturalism I never heard of before. In fact, I never heard of Mansur
either but because NRO carries his picture above the article, I remember seeing
this face once on television for no more than five seconds. To explain what
happened, I must divulge that the cable service to which I am subscribed has
between channels 500 and 510 most of the stations that I like to surf. When I
do the surfing, I stop at whatever sounds interesting. There is one channel
that is never interesting because it is the Canadian pale imitation of the almost
always laughable News Fox of America. The way I see things: If you have access
to big comedy why bother with amateur comedians?
And so it was during one of these surfs that I saw Mansur
for a few seconds. I do not know what he was discussing and I cannot say he
made an impression on me one way or the other. But I am not here to discuss a
book I did not read or an author I know nothing about. However, I know
something about Clifford May, and I have his latest article about which I have
a few things to say.
Unlike May who had his first encounter with multiculturalism
when someone from the Anti-Defamation League paid a visit to his newspaper, I
had my first encounter with multiculturalism in 1964, the day our family landed
in Canada. Not one of us; not for a fleeting moment did we entertain the
thought of asking where we could find a ghetto, a center, a club or any place
where we could meet other Egyptians or Arabs. As far as we were concerned, we
came here to be Canadians not to continue being what we left behind.
Eventually, I did encounter other Egyptians and other Arabs of the Christian or
Muslim faiths at work and in other places. What delighted me was the fact that
all these people were scattered throughout the city because they too had come
to this country with ideas similar to those of our family.
And then, bit by bit, I learned a few things about Canada
that culminated after nearly half a century in me preferring to watch Fox News
(which I do not like much) rather than watch its Canadian imitation which bores
me to death after five seconds. In fact, I was shocked early on by the Canadian
never-ending desire to imitate someone else. This happened when I saw the “long
established Canadians” do what the Americans do which was to call on the
newcomers to embrace the Canadian way of life then do something baffling.
Whereas the Americans welcomed the transformation of the newcomer, the
Canadians dissolved into a puddle of insecurities the moment that a hyphenated
someone came close to doing something the way they did it. Time after time, I
saw them talk the talk but when it came to the walk, they melted like Snowman
on a hot Summer day.
Eventually, the inclination to imitate overcame the fear to
compete and papered over the insecurities of the long established Canadians who
opened the door just a little for the writers and the artists of other cultures
to get in and experiment with melting the Canadian Mosaic into what may become
an American style Melting Pot. Already you can see that what used to be the “Two
Solitudes” of a French Canada separate from an English Canada melting into a
blend of Celine Dion quality recognized the world over for being excellent, and
not for being of this Canadian solitude or that one.
But the mentality which views the country as being a
“Community of Communities” is still with us. When push comes to shove, the
established ones go on the offensive as if they were facing an existential
threat, and so they reactivate the old habit of tripping the other guy. This is
what happened when I started a small newspaper and began to receive advertising
from the provincial government. I was told point blank that even though the
paper was strictly in English, and that I only dealt with local issues, I shall
be pushed out unless I identify my paper as being an ethnic publication. This
meant I shall be tolerated as a piece of the Mosaic but not as a melted
component of the pot. And you know who led the charge against me? They were the
Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, the two largest newspapers in Canada.
In the process of pushing me out, they committed crimes I
reported to the municipal, provincial and federal police forces. Only the
municipal police agreed to look into the matter. The investigator who worked on
the case was on my side all the way but was overruled by a higher authority,
and so they did nothing. When I went to the clerk at the station and asked her
for the report, she asked what I wanted it for and I made the mistake of
telling her I intended to sue. She said she could not give me the report just
now but that I should check with her in two weeks. I did so and she gave me a
report that had only one sentence on it; something to the effect that nothing
serious happened. Disappointed, I was not surprised because I had been here long
enough to know that Canada is like the forest you view from ten miles up. It
looks peaceful and quiet till you land and see how savagely the animals and the
insects devour each other.
Thus, as far as I am concerned, the key to understanding
Canada is to understand the Canadian character of feeling insecure combined
with the desire to imitate someone else and the hunger to look perfect. We
developed this last trait because we sought at one time to be loved by those in
the British Commonwealth who ceased to love Britain. But now, we wish to lead
the nations where people are developing distaste for the American way of doing
things. No doubt we shall deviate from that mentality someday, and the world
will know about it the day we decide to rule ourselves. As of now, however,
even though the British monarchy wants to get rid of us having once competed
against it, we still cling to the idea of being ruled by it because we do not
trust each other and cannot bear the though of one of us ruling over us. This
is the nature of our freedom, and the essence of our democracy. Lovely, are
they not?
Let me tell why I reject off hand something that Clifford
May says Mansur wrote and he totally agrees with. He says Mansur wrote the
following: “freedom is the distinguishing feature of the West.” Well, you know
now I probably define freedom differently. But then May adds his own comment
which is this: “a core value that came under ferocious attack in the 20th century from fascism and
Communism.” But fascism and Communism are also Western values according to
their own definition of the West. And this makes me wonder why these people
still believe the Western culture is superior to any other. Until they resolve
this contradiction, nothing they say will make sense to me.
Now let me say something about scientific thought. The
people who built the pyramids and the monuments before them must have had the
ability to think as rationally as anything that Galileo or Descartes could have
thrown at them. In fact, if you study ancient Egyptian mathematics, you find
that they knew about the relationship between the circumference of a circle and
its diameter, they knew about the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras and
they had a solution to the quadratic equation. And if you study the phlogiston
theory, you will know that the Arabs and the Muslims pioneered the modern
scientific research when Europe was still in the dark age. In fact, when the
Jews took the Arab scientific discoveries to Europe, the Christians called it
black magic and burned the Jews alive. What a lovely demonstration of
democratic freedom it must have been! You want to see these days return, Cliff?
Let me tell you something, all of you dogmatic demagogues
out there. Art, philosophy, science and all the rest began tens of thousands of
years ago the moment that our species started to think. Every time one group of
people took something to its conclusion, these people thought they had reached
the ultimate nirvana thus rejected anything that upset the existing order. But
things keep changing and someone else always comes up with something better and
carries the ball of civilization a little further. For example, in modern
times, Japan embraced the “Western” ways of doing things while the Chinese
rejected it. Japan advanced and so the Chinese rushed to embrace the Western
ways as a result of which they are doing better now. As well, the world
continues to change while the “West” seems to fall behind. Who knows what will
happen next!
You guys can come up with all sorts of examples about some
little nobody who says precious little nothing about a subject that does not
merit mention, and you can do big write ups all you want to convince the
uninformed that the world is about to be run over by a handful of kids who
discovered it is more fun to play cops and robbers with Uncle Sam than to play
with a local police force, and you will accomplish nothing but pollute the
marketplace of ideas with useless noise that will be forgotten as soon as it is
digested.
You are wasting your time, suckers.