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And ... Germany Gets Back To Being German

There is a vast gulf that separates a government deciding it's no longer going to provide grants to the Fijian Tribal Dancers or the Latvian Circus Dwarves Community League and shoving people into cattle cars.

Let's hold off on the alarmism until we hear about "boncentration bamps", shall we?
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
There is a vast gulf that separates a government deciding it's no longer going to provide grants to the Fijian Tribal Dancers or the Latvian Circus Dwarves Community League and shoving people into cattle cars.
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And there's a vast gulf between government pulling back funding for the arts and, "Our problems are being caused by foreigners."
 
"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.

"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.

"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
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Ugh. There goes any respect I may have had for Merkel.
 
a melting pot is always prefereable to multi-culturalism.

immigrants should balance preserving their cultures and traditions, with adapting and merging into the larger society. they change..and the larger society changes with them.

learn the new language. adapt to the new dress. adapt to the new foods. but keep your traditions. this is why America's aclimation of immigrants is soo much more successful than Europe's.
 
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While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoeing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.
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Additional context for the part Shadowdweller just quoted.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
Additional context for the part Shadowdweller just quoted.
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Yeah, fair enough. Jumping to conclusions is bad. Still looks pretty damning to me in the absence of anything else though. You (or anyone else) happen to have a complete and fully translated transcript somewhere?
 
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Shadowdweller said:
Yeah, fair enough. Jumping to conclusions is bad. Still looks pretty damning to me in the absence of anything else though. You (or anyone else) happen to have a complete and fully translated transcript somewhere?
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Searching for it...
Dutch TV broadcast this snippet the day before yesterday, and it was quite strange. I hope I have it all right from memory.

First, Merkel noted that today, in Frankfurt, 2 out of 3 children born have an immigrant background. Then she noted that Germany had consciously brought those immigrants into the country in the 1960s and 1970s. And that everybody had fooled themselves into thinking they'd return to their motherland(s) in due time, which, of course, didn't happen. That then, people propagated for a long time multiculturalism - people living happily next to each other with different cultures, but that that didn't work out. Then she declared multiculturalism for dead.

I'm not sure anymore where the bit came in that Islam has become an integral part of German society, nor the bit about needing to integrate, but yes, she said those too.

The part about the birthrates seems tendentious. I don't know the overall figures, but clearly, immigrants tend to live in the (big) cities and not in villages on the land, so it skews the picture to cite the figures for one city (and why Frankfurt and not Berlin or Munich or...).

Overall, what I've seen and read of the speech at least does not vilify a part of the population. Seeing how in my country the political discourse is dominated by Wilders, that's good. However, sentences like the one on birthrates, and the one on having to learn the language and the one against forced marriages seem to be designed to attract those people who would otherwise leave the CDU and vote for a Wilders-like party, and disappointing seeing how harshly she criticized Wilders only two weeks ago.

Of course, things like learning the language and adhering to the laws are things an immigrant should do. They go without saying.

What I'm at a loss at, however, is: how can you say "multiculturalism is dead"? What is it in the first place? What is the difference between "multiculturalism" and "integration", and with "assimilation" - but especially the first two. Does it mean, when Merkel says that multiculturalism is dead, that Turks should convert their kebab stands into currywurst stands?
 
It's just funny that for someone who pretends to be against bigotry, the only thing he thought best to do in his opening remark is to vilify an entire people. :rolleyes:
 
Chaos said:
The usual.

I mean, what are Germans good for, to so many people, other than to smear them as Nazis?
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If you're going to link germans to Nazis, you should provide evidence that they've been holding public rallies demanding low taxes, limited government and balanced budgets.
 
Would be kind of like saying "and America gets back to being American" if Obama said the USA should invade Iran.

TAM:)
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
If you're going to link germans to Nazis, you should provide evidence that they've been holding public rallies demanding low taxes, limited government and balanced budgets.
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Are you saying the Teabaggers are Nazis?

TAM:D
 
Well, it's a highly complex question.

My point of view is that the notion of society depends on a shared belief among you and your neighbours about what that will mean, and require, in practice.

If, say, you live in Norway (for example), and you and your neighbours ancestors were Norwegian, then there will be a very high level of shared belief about what society is, and what it means in practice.

But then if you get, say, 1 % immigration every year, from Asia, or North Africa, or the Middle East... and gradually your neighbourhood changes, and these new people have their own ideas about what society is, and its implications, and they avoid integrating, or modifying those ideas... then how is that not some kind of cultural invasion?

And more importantly, why should the host society and its members be criticised for objecting to this process? I mean, maybe their culture is just better than the immigrants' culture... e.g. no 'honour killings', arranged marriages, rife misogyny, and 99% literacy versus 60% literacy etc....

I think they have every right to object, without being automatically labelled as racists etc..
 
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The 'multiculturalism has failed'-meme is completely empty.
How could it fail? it just means that multiple cultures are living in the same state.

It did not become the Utopian love-fest envisioned by hippies in the sixties. Well DUH!

People form cliques wherever you go. Look at places like Damascus or Jerusalem that after a millennium of "multiculturalism" still have a Jewish quarter and and Armenian quarter etc.

We have imported people with a different culture and that leads to tensions like it does in any other country that sits on a border between two cultural blocs.

Maybe politicians should start by painting a realistic picture of what a multicultural society actually is.
 
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