Diversity only means Different

"Diversity" means "different." That's all it means. Why in the world would I celebrate "different." Mass murderers (thank God) are "different." Democrats celebrate mass murderers. Whether they are Che Gueverra or Tookie Williams, the Democrat adores the mass murderer.

Drug addicts are "different." The Democrats adore drug addicts. In fact, the reason they so hated Rudolph Giuliani in New York -- called him "Hitler," of course -- was because he wouldn't allow the drug-addicted prostitutes to continue to mug people in Times Square.

Sexual perversions are "different." Democrats promote sexual perversion at every turn -- with Robert Redford choosing a movie about a man who was having sexual relations with his horse to be honored with a slot at "The Sundance Film Festival."

You see, when mere "differentness" is the criteria for celebration, a good society that which is "different" is going to be bad. In a society that respects others, disrespect is "different." In a society where literacy is the norm, "ebonics" is what becomes the stuff of "celebration."

I'm am not an illiteracy-ophobe, or a sexual perversion-a-phobe or a mass-murderer-a-phobe. I just know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil and the behaviors that I want celebrated so that my children recognize that what is being honored is good, not just different.

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Identity Politics Gone Wild (or, how to use political pressure to threaten the integrity of an artistic vision)

Post lifted from Protein Wisdom

From The Rocky Mountain News, "Salazar joins critics of series on WWII":

Sens. Ken Salazar of Colorado and Robert Menendez of New Jersey have joined Hispanic veterans and others who say that an upcoming PBS documentary on World War II doesn't include enough contributions of Hispanics and American Indians. The seven-part series, directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, explores "the experience of war and combat through the personal accounts of more than 40 men and women," according to Burns' production company. "Sen. Salazar became aware that the PBS documentary on World War II did not include Latinos, and that was of concern, not just to his constituents, but to him personally," Salazar's spokesman, Cody Wertz said.

And there, in a nutshell, is the trouble with PBS: if the project is at all funded by the government, the government feels free, it seems, to cast aside the First Amendment and begin applying soft pressures to make sure that "misguided" film makers like Ken Burns provide each and every grievance group with annoited representation in Congress with their own little slice of the narrative pie-however thin, and however perfunctorily it's doled out.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear next of Barney Frank's concern that the film doesn't do enough to detail the contributions of homosexual soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge. It's part of the new American historiography: we teach what feels good and raises self-esteem among the greatest number of people. And if that means the larger lessons need be watered down for the purposes of egalitarian inclusiveness, so be it. In the union between fact and emotion, fact is content to let the act speak for itself. Whereas emotion just needs to be held after, I guess. As for truth? Well, who cares that the contributions of Latinos might not be the story a particular filmmaker wishes to tell, or that s/he decides to devote his or her time to those who had a more obvious impact? That's just racist!

In a statement, Burns responded to the criticism. "The film was never meant to be a definitive or comprehensive treatment of the subject," said Burns, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who has produced and directed several acclaimed historical documentaries. "As we say at the outset of each episode, `The Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any one accounting,' " However, the filmmaker and PBS have said that new footage about Hispanics and American Indians would be included.

-As a bow to political pressure which never should have been brought in the first place. Because not dealing with the roles played by Latinos or Native Americans in a documentary on World War II is an editorial decision. And members of Congress shouldn't presume to do the job of the filmmaker in order to pander to the egos of their perpetually-aggrieved swing voting groups.

There is no bias being alleged here other than bias by omission. And given that the film can't cover every aspect of World War II, these criticisms by Salazar and Menendez smack of pure political opportunism-the very kinds that stoke "racial" and ethnic animus and perpetuate the grievance culture that must never, ever be healed (lest these panders lose key constituencies).

Wertz said that Salazar would keep a watchful eye on the production and that the senator has called for a meeting with PBS President Paula Kerger. "I think the appropriate action is to fully incorporate our contributions into the body of the documentary," said Cipriano Griego, commander of the Mile High Chapter of the GI Forum, a national Hispanic veterans organization. "We are not a footnote."

Actually, you are a footnote, statistically speaking-and the irony is, you are such by your own doing. Because by separating yourselves out as "Latinos" who fought in WWII, you have distanced yourselves from the pluralistic "Americans" who fought and won the thing-and in doing so, you have denied yourselves the national pride that comes with such an achievement, hoping instead for the tribal pride that comes with separation.

James Cates, head of the National Native American Veterans Association, is also critical of the series. "He didn't do a very good job of researching his material," he said about Burns' initial decision not to include American Indians in the series. "There was Ira Hayes, who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima, and the Code Talkers of the Navajo, Comanche, and Choctaw tribes."

Indeed. And there was a major motion picture about the Code Talkers, and plenty has been written on the the inability of the enemy to break the cypher. This was a significant strategic advantage-and represented an very important contribution to WWII-but it is so well-known by now that perhaps Burns didn't feel like rehashing it, given that it's been one of the more frequently-cited of recent WWII stories.

At any rate, I doubt his decision was based on "insensitivity" or "racism"-all of which is moot, given that this in not something Congressmen should be dealing with in the first place. The fact that Salazar will be keeping a "watchful eye" on the program and will be meeting with the PBS president-presumably to make sure that the film is "fixed" with an eye toward some make-believe "equality"-is precisely the kind of thing that people from both sides of the political aisle should be condemning.



How multiculturalism is betraying women

Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose. The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.

So Nishal went to the courts to request an early divorce, hoping that once they were no longer married he would leave her alone. A judge who believed in the rights of women would find it very easy to make a judgement: you're free from this man, case dismissed. But Judge Christa Datz-Winter followed the logic of multiculturalism instead. She said she would not grant an early divorce because - despite the police documentation of extreme violence and continued threats - there was no "unreasonable hardship" here.

Why? Because the woman, as a Muslim, should have "expected" it, the judge explained. She read out passages from the Koran to show that Muslim husbands have the "right to use corporal punishment". Look at Sura 4, verse 34, she said to Nishal, where the Koran says he can hammer you. That's your culture. Goodbye, and enjoy your beatings.

This is not a freakish exception. Germany's only state-level Minister for Integration, Armin Laschet, says this is only "the last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by the German courts". The German magazine Der Spiegel has documented a long list of these multicultural verdicts. Here are just a few:

A Lebanese-German who strangled his daughter Ibthahale and then beat her unconscious with a bludgeon because she didn't want to marry the man he had picked out for her was sentenced to mere probation. His "cultural background" was cited by the judge as a mitigating factor.

A Turkish-German who stabbed his wife Zeynep to death in Frankfurt was given the lowest possible sentence, because, the judge said, the murdered woman had violated his "male honour, derived from his Anatolian moral concepts". The bitch. A Lebanese-German who raped his wife Fatima while whipping her with a belt was sentenced to probation, with the judge citing his ... you get the idea. Their victims are forced to ask - like Soujourner Truth, the female slave who famously challenged early women's rights activists to consider black women as their sisters - "Ain't I a woman?"

In Germany today, Muslim women have been reduced to third-class citizens stripped of core legal protections - because of the doctrine of multiculturalism, which says a society should be divided into separate cultures with different norms according to ethnic origin. Too often this issue is mixed up with other debates and gets waved through for the sake of politeness. The right loves mashing "mass immigration and multiculturalism" into one sound-bite. Well, I think Britain should take more immigrants and refugees, not fewer - but multiculturalism is a disastrous way to greet them.

These German cases highlight the flaw at the core of multiculturalism. It assumes that immigrants have one homogenous culture which they should all follow - and it allows the most reactionary and revolting men in their midst to define what that culture is. Across Europe, many imams are offering advice to Muslim men on how to beat Muslim women. For example, in Spain, the popular Imam Mohammed Kamal Mustafa warns that you shouldn't use "whips that are too thick" because they leave scars that can be detected by the "infidels". That might be Mustafa's culture - but it isn't Nishal's. It isn't the culture of the women who scream and weep as they are beaten.

And yes, we should admit that this is disproportionately a problem among Muslim, Sikh and Hindu immigrants who arrive from countries which have not had women's rights movements. Listen to Jasvinder Sanghera, who founded the best British charity helping Asian women after her sister was beaten and beaten and then burned herself to death. She says: "It's a betrayal of these women to be PC about this. Look at the figures. Asian women in Britain are three times more likely to commit suicide than their white friends. That's because of all this."

Yet the brave campaigners who have tried to help these women - like the Labour MP Ann Cryer - have been smeared as racist. In fact, the real racists are the people who vehemently condemn misogyny and homophobia when it comes from white people but mysteriously fall silent when it comes from black and Asian men.

Indeed, in the name of this warm, welcoming multiculturalism, the German courts have explicitly compared Muslim women to the brain-damaged. The highest administrative court in North Rhine-Westphalia has agreed that Muslim parents have the "right" to forbid their daughter from going on a school trip unless she was accompanied by a male family member at all times. The judges said the girl was like "a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her disability, can only travel with a companion". As the Iranian author Azar Nafisi puts it: "I very much resent it when people - maybe with good intentions or from a progressive point of view - keep telling me, 'It's their culture' ... It's like saying the culture of Massachusetts is burning witches." She is horrified by the moves in Canada to introduce shariah courts to enforce family law for Muslims.

Multiculturalists believe that they are defending immigrants. But in reality, they are betraying at least 55 per cent of them - the women and the gays. It is multiculturalists, for example, who are the biggest champions of the Government's massive expansion of "faith" schools, where children will be segregated according to parental superstition and often taught the most literalist and cruel strain of a "faith". What will girls and gay pupils be taught there? Will they have Sura 4, verse 34 drilled into them, along with the passages from the hadith where Mohammed calls for gay people to be executed? We know Catholic schools often push the most vile aspects of their faith at children; why should Muslim schools be different?

We desperately need to empower Muslim women to reinterpret the Koran in less literalist and vicious ways, or to leave their religion all together, as they wish. But multiculturalism hobbles them before they even begin, by saying they should stick to the "authentic" culture represented by the imams. Yes, it would be easy to keep our heads down, go with this multicultural drift, and congratulate ourselves on our tolerance of the fanatically intolerant. But I can give you a few good reasons not to. Their names are Nishal and Ibthahale and Zeynep and Fatima, and, yes, they were women.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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