“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.” Friedrich Hayek
Progressive myths began to be imposed on society over a century ago.
In the United States Progressives began to shape society in the early 1900s. The Depression brought many of their ideas into government and the economy, but hard times slowed their ability to “remake society.” Revived interest occurred again in the 1960s when the term “social engineering” was coined. Applications have only accelerated since. So-called intellectuals, believing they can remake society, imposed their ideas on the economy, the workplace, the home, schools, laws, neighborhoods and anything else they believed could be improved (basically everything in their eyes).
Ordinary people resisted the elite wisdom. These people were disparaged as “prejudiced,” “backward” and too ignorant to know what was good for them. Coercion, in the form of legislation, was used when people refused to behave in the “correct” manner.
“Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive.” Ayn Rand
Decades later, societies that have implemented these idiotic prescriptions and proscriptions are in shambles. The so-called “ignorant masses” were of course correct. The progressive elite were wrong. The countries in trouble include Western Europe and the United States. Problems are not limited to either developed nations or these parts of the world. Damage has been done wherever these social architects have been able to impose their nonsense.
We look at our current plight as an economic crisis. It certainly is, but economic crises do not just happen. They have causes, many of which are subtle and impossible to link to the outcome itself. It is my (unprovable) contention that the progressive nonsense so weakened society, morality, ethics and institutions that it created the vulnerability for our economic plight.
In our weakened economic condition, we no longer have the luxury of tolerating fools and their phony elixirs. The so-called intellectuals and their political puppets are no longer affordable. The current political backlash against Washington is in no small measure due to the obvious failure of progressive follies. Public anger continues to increase as it is apparent that at least one political party intends to increase these policies of destruction.
Thomas Sowell provides his insight on multiculturalism. Much of his career has been spent studying and exposing the negative outcomes of such policies. His column was prompted by a respected world leader admitting that multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Ordinary folks knew that long ago. It takes a bit longer for politicians to understand and then even longer still to develop enough courage to state the obvious.
The Multicultural Cult
Somebody eventually had to say it — and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has “utterly failed.”
Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about “diversity,” without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.
“We kidded ourselves for a while,” Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could “live side-by-side” and “enjoy each other” has “failed, utterly failed.”
This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.
Even the tragedies and atrocities associated with racial differences in racist countries have been exceeded by the tragedies and atrocities among people with clashing cultures who are physically indistinguishable from one another, as in the Balkans or Rwanda.
Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the multicultural cultists.
Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values of the larger society around them is “cultural imperialism” according to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.
Multiculturalists condemn people’s objections to transplanting hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.
The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere biased “perceptions” or “stereotypes,” if not outright “racism.” But some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant ghetto life back into their midst.
The absorption of millions of immigrants from Europe into American society may be cited as an example of the success of multiculturalism. But, in fact, they were absorbed in ways that were the direct opposite of what the multicultural cult is recommending today.
Before these immigrants were culturally assimilated to the norms of American society, they were by no means scattered at random among the population at large. On New York’s lower east side, Hungarian Jews lived clustered together in different neighborhoods from Romanian Jews or Polish Jews — and German Jews lived away from the lower east side.
When someone suggested relieving the overcrowding in the lower east side schools by transferring some of the children to a school in an Irish neighborhood that had space, both the Irish and the Jews objected.
None of this was peculiar to America. When immigrants from southern Italy to Australia moved into neighborhoods where people from northern Italy lived, the northern Italians moved out. Such scenarios could be found in countries around the world.
It was in later generations, after the children and grandchildren of the immigrants to America were speaking English and living lives more like the lives of other Americans, that they spread out to live and work where other [ORIGINAL TERMINATED HERE]
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
