January 24, 2012

Democracy v. Diversity in the Muslim World

From my new column (link fixed) in Taki's Magazine:
If the Arab Spring is good for democracy, then it has to be good for diversity, right? We know that democracy and diversity are virtually the same thing: Both words begin with a “d,” end with a “y,” and by definition are good. Who isn’t aware that minority protection (indeed, minority promotion) is the essence of majority rule?

Read the whole thing there (link fixed).

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

The second page is missing

Anonymous said...

Basically, the Copts are screwed and nobody cares. Too bad. Why not helping protect them instead of trying to impress deranged Muslims into becoming "our friends"?

Democracy is usually mob rule. For some strange reason, only in Europe and America the majority (whites) don't seem to understand the concept and vote for their own demise.

Well, no. Also in Latin American countries, the white middle class is voting in mass for the Left, who is parroting what is done in the US, affirmative action, gay marriage, welfare for the poor, etc. I guess it's a white thang, you wouldn't understand.

But back to the Copts, it's a shame, some say it's the oldest Christian community. A part of History that goes away.

Dumbo

Anonymous said...

I don't think the term 'Arab Spring' should be used anymore. OK, I know it's only ever used with heavy irony around here; but still, I feel like reaching for the nearest Makarov every time I hear it.
Gilbert Pinfold.

Anonymous said...

yurrrr - the 2nd page is missing again. no need to print this.

eh said...

OT (but it concerns the "Muslim World")

From the 'you could not make this up' department:

Female driver who defied Saudi motoring ban dies in fatal road accident

Anonymous said...

The truth is, Steve, that the elitists who run the west honestly couldn't give a damn about 'democracy' in the Arab world and only care about keeping the oil flowing and the mullahs out.
Take Saudi Arabia for example.A truly horrible state run by a truly horrible royal family, that among other things treats subcon immigrant workers like shit - and has the temerity to kick them out, bag and baggage, when they are no longer useful as workers.Of course, we all know if any European nation even dared to deny citizenship to immigrant 'workers' the squawking and screaming from the 'great and good' would be defeaning, but as it is the Saudis, there's nary a squeak.
China gets hammered again, again and again about 'democracy' and 'human rights', but never a peep about the Saudis you notice.
Also consider the dictatorship that runs Algeria.An Islamist party won the last democratic election.The dictatorship tore up the result and cracked down, because it couldn't stomach the will of the people, but, non, you'll never hear a dicky-bird about it.
But Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko?, Why you'll read page after page of pompous pontification and hand wring about 'democracy'.

lighthouse customer said...

Ah, another Takimag.com cliff-hanger

Alhough the way it ends now ("And in conclusion there is much to be gained or lost by the victor or loser in this complex situation, or perhaps not") it reminds me of a smart-alecky junior-high current-events essay or NPR story

Some one said...

You nailed it again Steve, the "democracy" that the USA and other western countries have in comparison with the "new democracies" of the middle-east.

In Syria the Alawite minority rule with iron hand, the blacks in Lybia are no more tolerated since Qaddaffi fall, who knows what is going to happen with the Copts in Egypt, all that without mention Iraq right now.

And just think about the US since the '60s. "Democracy" became the slow dispossecion of the white majority since them.

Another eye opener Steve.

Gilbert Ratchet said...

Link is farked

Big Bill said...

Broken link. This one works:


http://takimag.com/article/democracy_v_diversity#axzz1kT7z01bl

You need to remove the period (OED: "full stop") after the "v" in your link.

anony-mouse said...

Of course the Arab Spring will be good for diversity. Look at all the Copts who will be coming to America to increase America's diversity. Alawites may end up coming to America, too. Not sure if America has any now.

Anonymous said...

You've reached this page in error.

Anonymous said...

That is not a link!

This is a link!

Anonymous said...

No period in the URL

Anonymous said...

Steve - completely off-topic, but have you been following these new changes in the Google privacy policies?

Google owns Blogger/Blogspot, which basically means that, going forward, we in the iSteve-o-sphere will have d*ck for anonymity [seeing as how everyone else in our households will be using the same IP addresses, making it pretty trivial for Google to guess who we are].

Bottom Line: We have GOT to get you off of here and onto your own server.

Would you be game if some of us were to set it up for you?

Anonymous said...

What I fear is globocracy.

Anonymous said...

But remember.. the progressives say what applies to other nations don't apply to America because America is a proposition nation or prop nation, or maybe it should be called 'agit-prop nation'.
Unlike diversities in the Old World which are rooted in ancient blood ties and thus tend to be tribal in nature, diversity in America the New World is premised on different peoples taking on a new identity and creating a new creature. Diversity in the Old World means looking back; diversity in the new world means looking forward. This has been made all the more possible in America and other Anglo-parts of the world because of the bland blank-slate culture of Anglos. If one goes to India, there is the unmistakable smell and look of Indians. Same goes for China. And Italy and Greece. But Anglo and Anglo-American culture has been known for its simplicity, cleanliness, and lack of odor. So, it serves as a kind of cultural blank slate for others to rub their scents on. Some Anglo-Americans are appalled by the new smells and odors, but others are excited by it as adding color to what would otherwise be an all too bland society. After all, while Canada may be a quieter place to live, America seems to be more exciting. Of course, too much of anything is a bad thing, and I think America has reached a point where diversity has degenerated into too many Mexicans ruining California finances and too many blacks running amok.

Anonymous said...

The link is bad, here is the good URL: http://takimag.com/article/democracy_v_diversity

Carol said...

Something's wrong with the link, though I enjoyed Jim Goad's MLK article.

NicholasHoltman said...

The link isn't working for me. Here's a good one:

http://takimag.com/article/democracy_v_diversity#axzz1kUOqf2ew

Anonymous said...

Steve,

A little off base, but thanks for reminding me that the funniest people I know (well, I guess that I don't "know" you but you understand) aren't the usual loud-mouthed comedian types, which is what most people think.

Indeed, the funniest - in a very quick wit kind of way - person that I've ever known is a dentist in Minnesota. But if you met him at a Bar-B-Q or neighborhood party, you'd never know. His humor and personality just doesn't fit that type of setting. (I'd suspect the same to be true for you.) I'd bet that many people who have met him only a couple of times would assume that he's a pretty dull fellow.

The masses - even the middle/upper middle-class masses - just don't get people like you and him.

Carol said...

OT Steve did you see this competency test alternative thingy? http://tinyurl.com/84ffagg

Kind of an easy end run aroune Griggs, isn't it?

Dutch Boy said...

The secular rulers have severely misgoverned their countries and the people have naturally turned to Islamic parties as an alternative (no surprise since they are Muslims). Alas, the Islamic parties will also likely misgovern.

Anonymous said...

Steve, are you still writing for VDARE?

Anonymous said...

There was a bbc R4 interview yesterday with some Syrian Christians (10% of Syrian pop, about the same as in Egypt), the vast majority of whom

a) support Assad

b) have seen what happened to Christians in Iraq

c) and what's happening to Christians in Egypt

d) and Palestine

e) and that's why they support Assad.

Laban Tall

alonzo portfolio said...

@Carol,

Could you explain how alternative certification programs would operate as an "easy end-run around Griggs"? I'm not an ACLU lawyer, but Griggs was about employer-generated aptitude tests, right? If alt-cert. testing arose for the same function (critical skills), why wouldn't the same "disparate impact" argument be available to the activists this time around?

WMarkW said...

What they don't get is that Diversity is the OPPOSITE of Democracy.

Democracy is the will of (the majority of) the people. Diversity is the requirement that the majority get out of their shell of preferences to do something they wouldn't otherwise.

Anonymous said...

I propose a trade. We take in the Copts in the West, and replace them in Muslim countries with our Muslims. Then the Muslims can riot and plant bombs and whatever else, and no one is victimized but other Muslims. And the Copts don't get exterminated. Seems like a win win.

Anonymous said...

@Alonzo:
Courts have been much more willing to allow employers to use education in their hiring processes than cognitive test scores, even though education proxies to some degree for cognitive test scores. Courts have also been more willing to let employers use very job-specific tests, like tests of programming skills for programmer jobs, than cognitive scores. The question is in which category courts will put these tests - education, specific skills tests, or cognitive tests. The tests being described in the article do sound basically like cognitive tests. But the other possibility they refer to - educational institutions giving certifications for passing course-related tests - sound like they might be treated as education.

Anonymous said...

@anonymous 2:35PM

Anglophone Protestants, historically, have shown some concern with their co-religionists in the East- the better to missionize- and there were some Romanticist Greekophiles who sided with the anti-Ottoman rebels. But particularly recently, willful ignorance of Anglophone Protestants on Christianity in the ME has been appalling. When you tell some of these people Bush killed Christianity in Iraq you just get blank stares.

I've tried to explain to people about the fate of religious minorities in Syria, post successful Sunni rebellion; blank stares. "Al Lawite" who? They got Christians in them countries? Funny, I was watching the 700 club and never saw any footage.

American foreign policy is all about domestic concerns- profit motive, blood lust, and leftist morality play. Foreigners are just props.

ben tillman said...

What they don't get is that Diversity is the OPPOSITE of Democracy.

Democracy is the will of (the majority of) the people.


Actually, it's the unanimous will of the people. The people can unanimously agree that a majority vote shall decide things, but one way or another the decisions ultimately must be based on unanimous agreement. Read Tullock & Buchanan's Calculus of Consent.

Reg Cæsar said...

...willful ignorance of Anglophone Protestants on Christianity in the ME has been appalling.

Because they don't consider Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, etc., to be real Christians. Indeed, fundamentalists are closer to Moslems in some respects-- five pillars, an abhorrence of drink, an abhorrence of design, and obsession with a single text. Oh, and they love warm climates.

On the other hand, Iowa fundies spurned one of their own for an open-borders Papist, while those in South Carolina spurned that now-closed-borders Papist for another Papist (of questionable religious sincerity) even more open-borders than the other one. But I suppose the latter's (serially)multiple wives did make him seem more Protestant.

no name said...

The EU war against popular rule in Hungary is intriguing:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11995/
Thirty or 40 years ago, the way that the EU and the IMF are behaving towards Hungary would have been described as a classic example of neo-colonial pressure. Unlike Greece, Hungary is not simply being lectured about the need to sort out its economy - it has also been subjected to a veritable culture war. As far as the EU and the Western media are concerned, the real crime of the Hungarian government is not so much its inept economic strategy as its promotion of cultural and political values that run counter to what is deemed correct in Brussels.


The Brussels bureaucracy has long regarded Hungary as a society in danger of being engulfed by white savages. In 2006, when people in Budapest rioted against their corrupt government, the EU and sections of the Western media described the demonstrators as right-wing mobs posing a threat to democratic values. At the time, Brussels weighed in to support its man in Budapest, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Socialist prime minister. The fact that Gyurcsany had lied to cover up the scale of Hungary’s massive budget deficit, and that he had admitted his dishonesty to some of his close colleagues, did not stop his mates in the EU from singing his praises. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists, was quick to rush to Gyurcsany’s defence, claiming he was the ‘best man to make the reforms that Hungary needs’.
(...)

Hungarian-British writer Tibor Fischer is also unimpressed by the claims of the EU and the political class aligned with it:
http://easterneuropewatch.blogspot.com/2012/01/tibor-fischer-on-hungary.html
(...)
If someone in Hungary who didn't speak English, who'd never been to Britain, who had made no study of its culture or history were to start fulminating about the state control of the media in the UK (the sinister Ofcom scouring television channels for "offensive" material at the state's behest), we'd laugh or feel sorrow at such patent lunacy. Yet that's precisely the sort of absurd and uninformed criticism that Orbán and his party Fidesz have faced.

Every country has regulation of the media and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, contained in Hungary's media law that isn't found in other EU countries or the US. Lord Annan's sparkling line that the authorities should "censure but not censor" is the ideal a democracy should work towards, but how do you achieve that? Even in Britain with a long tradition of unfettered news and opinion, we still have arguments about exactly where lines should be drawn (and who should be drawing them).

(...)
The Guardian reported that the "leading daily newspaper" Népszabadság had as the headline on its front page, "The freedom of the press in Hungary comes to an end". That's accurate reporting, but the Guardian overlooked significant facts. Népszabadság is the leading daily because it was the newspaper of the Communist Party (MSZMP)and it remains the mouthpiece for the Socialist Party (the home of the ex-communists, the oligarchy that still owns and controls most of Hungary from the comfort of the Buda Hills). Népszabadság was the paper that cheered the execution of Hungarians who wanted democracy and free speech, so for it to act as a champion of free speech is like someone from the SS running a workshop on human rights.

Orbán's concern about the Hungarian minorities in the neighbouring countries (where they have been very badly treated) is also interpreted by the Guardian as another manifestation of evil. Curiously, if you're an Arab or a Muslim anywhere in the world you're apparently entirely justified to be aggrieved about the plight of the Palestinians. The Irish are entitled to issue passports to those born in Northern Ireland, but Orbán's notion of giving citizenship to Hungarians three feet on the other side of the border is destabilising Europe.
(...)

Anonymous said...

@Reg Caesar,

people make mistakes and Jesus forgives, provided you are a member of the cult in-group.

It's all about 'bortion and gratuitous blood-letting. I'm even inclined to think that Catholic anti-abortionism and Evangelical, particularly Southern, differ. Catholic teaching, agree with it or not, is grounded in a humanist tradition with some intellectual grounding. Evangelical opposition to abortion is more of a juvenile visualization of the fetus as a cute and cuddly little creature like a puppy. You wouldn't drown a puppy?

Going further with the 'd also say Protestants remind me of the sort of animal lovers who hate people. They are horrified at mistreatment of fido, but absolutely no thought on the ongoing tragedy of the human condition.

Finally, on a sliding scale, Iowa fundies are to be preferred to SC. The Midwest still has some pretense at rationality and intellectual consistency. The South, never

Anonymous said...

Would you be game if some of us were to set it up for you?
what's so hard or expensive - 6.99 a month bluehost + a free wordpress install. the only thing I can imagine is if he gets enought traffic that will require a VPS.. but are there cloud options now??

Anonymous said...

my big, serious question

How can neocons, reporters, MSM, our elite etc. have NOT seen this coming?

Is it stupidity ? Blinded by idealogy ? or is hiding something else?

Personally< I think, for example that the neocons just wanted to bomb iraq back into the stone age, get all the groups fighting so israel would be safe..

Anonymous said...

EU war against popular rule in Hungary
the EU also encourages nationalism where convenient - like Great Britain so they can, in the words of peter hitchens, chop up britian before tossing it in the blender.

NOTA said...

Anon 1:09pm:

Perhaps you should seek our a higher quality of news and commentary? Discussions of the brutality of Yemen, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq (before the invasion and now, Saudi Arabia, Libya, etc., appear in newspapers all the time.

Also, lots of first world countries (including the US) have guest workers who aren't made citizens. Notably, Germany even has a large permanent population of Turks who are not German citizens.

Svigor said...

Of course the Arab Spring will be good for diversity. Look at all the Copts who will be coming to America to increase America's diversity. Alawites may end up coming to America, too. Not sure if America has any now.

Haha! Thread winner!

Diversity means fewer Whites and more non-Whites in (countries formerly known as) White territories. It holds no meaning elsewhere.

So yes, "falling diversity in non-White regions"* increases diversity.

*(scare-quoted because it returns an IO error - diversity has no meaning outside White territories)

NOTA said...

Anon 2:35:

This is a major theme of Amy Chua's book World On Fire, back before she got 15 minutes of fame for being a Tiger Mother. Unpopular minorities often find it much safer to have a dictatorship than a democracy. The dictator can be bought off, or can even use the hated minority group as a source of loyal subjects who know their community has few other friends.

Svigor said...

Steve - completely off-topic, but have you been following these new changes in the Google privacy policies?

I haven't, but I saw that note at G**gle and wondered if them deleting my blog was them cleaning house ahead of the privacy changes.

Anonymous said...

Egypt just grabbed hostages:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-egypt-usa-idUSTRE80P1QC20120126

Anonymous said...

Nota,
An example is of an absolutely enormous defence contract won by British Aerospace a few years ago to equip the Saudi military.
The deal was corrupt.No doubt about it.Huge backhanders were paid by BAe to Saudi princes.An equiry was set up by the British government on the subject.The enquiry was later 'dropped' for no apparent reason.
Many many moons ago British TV screened 'Death of a Princess' based on a real Saudi story.Massive Saudi protest including trade threats issued.British government grovelled.Nothing like that ever shown again.
Similarly the sexual hi-jinnks of Saudi royals with whores in London.Well known, but never publicised.
And oh, by the way, Turks in Germany are not automatically granted German citizenship, which is based on blood, but in reality they have de fato citizenship.No one is going to kick them out.The have all the full rights and obligations of native Grmans, social security, health, pensions etc, their children are treated just like German children.
Now your average subcon maid in Saudi is not only expected to do the dishes, do the vacuuming and sleep on the kitchen floor, but she must also provide the extra 'personal goodies' for master and or sonny boy.If she doesn't comply it's back to Sri Lanka - and baby starves.