pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism, which teaches free people to belittle their own national culture, while bending their knees to tyrants, results in the removal of Western freedoms—above all the foundational and fundamental freedom—freedom of speech!
Multiculturalism is a peculiar set of attitudes that exalts individual minority groups of foreign cultures and treats their values as sacrosanct and equal in every way to the values that our forebearers and we have fought so hard to obtain and retain in this country.
The freedom we enjoy in the West is a precious, hard won inheritance. It is the obligation of all who have inherited it to protect and preserve that freedom and the culture we have created for generations to come, something that is an alien concept to multicultural minds.
It is an article of faith for countless multiculturalists that individualism and individual freedoms are dangerous and that minority group identity is a benign phenomenon. It is the multiculturalist’s belief that minority group identity trumps all, including the freedom of speech, because freedom of speech—true freedom of speech—means accepting the right to dissent, no matter what the issue may be, and to hold unorthodox views. At the core of this hard fought freedom is the sentiment expressed by Voltaire’s celebrated line, “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
By contrast, political correctness is profoundly conformist. Its practicioners are very uncomfortable with differing opinions and multiculturalism is the very epitome of political correctness. Suspend reality and pretend that all cultures are equally decent and virtuous, knowing full well this is not true. What could be more politically correct than that?
You can understand why political correctness has been described as a retreat of reason. It grew out of an attitude of decency and consideration towards society’s most vulnerable but has become gradually more dogmatic and intolerant of dissent until it now is a betrayal of the very liberal and decent concepts that fueled it in the first place. Political correctness today is less about decency than about image.
And keep this in mind: no aspect of democracy is more anathema to multicultural mentality than free speech because multiculturalism encourages censorship and the condemnation of insensitive utterances—especially utterances that are perceived as potentially offensive to some protected group.
Author George Orwell must have seen this coming when he wrote these famous words: “If liberty means anything at all, it is the freedom to tell people what they do not want to hear.” I wonder what multiculturalists would have to say today about Orwell, since to many of them anyone defending freedom of speech is a fanatic!
And I also wonder what Orwell would have to say about the Star Chambers we now call Human Rights Commissions, which are clearly a flagrant violation of free speech. These Commissions have an almost 100 per cent conviction rate because the accusation alone is almost always sufficient to find the defendant guilty. The fact that some individual, or more likely some minority group, found the statement or action to be offensive is proof enough that the accused is guilty and must be punished. These injudicious assaults on democracy and free speech are not only repugnant, but also decidedly un-Canadian. They are a vindictive and outrageous overstepping of government powers.
Because of multiculturalism, hate laws and human rights commissions, minority group culture has become acceptable even though it flies in the face of our beliefs. Reality is superimposed by convoluted language, implausible rhetoric, academic abstraction and a total lack of common sense. Granting any cultural group the ability to circumvent the law by pleading “cultural heritage” is repugnant to most mainstream Canadians.
Obscuring, vague language and obfuscation are the hallmarks of politically correct multiculturalism. We all know not all cultures are equally deserving of our respect and admiration but we mask that knowledge with pious exhortations about accommodation, diversity, and a mass of confusing words that fall upon the facts like a soft snow, blurring the issues and covering all the details.
History students will remember that in the 1930s, Adolph Hitler was admired throughout the world as a proponent of peace because he used all the proper confusing words. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, was branded the warmonger because he spoke bluntly of the truth. Obscure language carried the day.
Remember the lessons learned. Accommodation and appeasement can only result in loss of freedom. Beware!
We are faced today with a titanic struggle between faith and logic. In the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church (faith) demanded the persecution of Galileo (logic and science).
Today, the malignant forces of fundamentalist faith are renewing their strengths from the east and spreading their destructive tentacles ever westward, threatening the Enlightenment (Western values).
Fundamentalist faith can only survive in a dictatorial environment that suppresses all forms of inquiry or dissent.
Science can never survive or thrive under a fundamentalist faith regime because science is naturally curious and has no artificial boundaries. Therefore, fundamentalist faith can only allow technological, and thus economic, stagnation.
Our very way of life will, in all aspects, decline if we remain silent before the threats of minority groups that would silence our inquiries and dissent.
The basic pillar of democratic strength is free speech with no qualifications whatsoever. Hate laws are a hostile reaction to free speech and only support the malignant obfuscation inherent in political correctness.
Free speech is best exemplified by Voltaire’s statement that he is prepared to die for it.
It is interesting to note, as well, that it was Alexander Dumas who was sentenced to death by Napoleon III for Dumas’ staunch defense of free speech.
How paradoxical that the defense of free speech is a fundamental French tradition that was subverted at a French university in Canada with the cancellation of an address by someone who vigorously questions orthodoxy. (Editor’s note: This refers to the cancelled address by Anne Coulter at the University of Ottawa in March, 2010.) It was to be expected, however. Intolerance is the real hallmark of political correctness and multiculturalism.
Wake up, Canada!
– Andy Haydon
Troubled Waters
I think what we are doing to this country is that this idea of multiculturalism has been completely distorted, turned on its head to essentially claim that anything anyone believes—no matter how ridiculous and outrageous it might be—is okay and acceptable in the name of diversity. Where we have gone wrong in this pursuit of multiculturalism is that there is no adherence to core values, the core Canadian values… Sikh extremism is on the rise in some parts of the country and “politically correct” Canadians who let it happen in the name of diversity are partially to blame. We now have second and third-generation youth whose minds have been poisoned.
(Liberal MP and former NDP Premier of BC Ujjal Dosanjh during anOttawa press conference, April 21, 2010.)
Canada doesn’t have a culture!
(An angry caller to my show, The Lowell Green Show, 580 CFRA, Ottawa in December 2009, explaining
