MAKING WAVES – AT 9:28 P.M. ET:  British Prime Minister David Cameron's recent speech slamming multiculturalism continues to make waves.  It followed a similar speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  In turn, Cameron's speech was followed by comments by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who echoed the notion that multiculturalism has failed.

Daniel Hannan is a British conservative member of the European Parliament, and examines this phenomenon in, of all places, the very liberal Newsweek magazine, or what's left of it:

The shocking thing is that anyone should have been shocked. The British prime minister’s repudiation of multiculturalism was so uncontroversial as to be almost platitudinous. In a recent speech, David Cameron emphasized the distinction between Islamic devotion and jihadi extremism, and argued that the government ought not to fund organizations that reject democracy, women’s rights, and equality before the law. He set out certain basic values that a liberal society ought to expect from its citizens: secularism, representative government, personal freedom, and the rule of law.

Common sense, we think. 

To most British people, including most British Muslims, this was a statement of the Pretty Bloody Obvious. Cameron’s remarks follow similar speeches by his French and German counterparts. Across Europe, there is a recognition that multiculturalism has failed in its own terms, creating ghettos and cutting off some immigrant women, in particular, from full participation in a free society.

But there are vested interests:

The trouble is that it takes a long time for such sentiments to percolate through the government machine. State bureaucracies, especially in local government, remain wedded to their diversity advisers, their interpreters, their racism-awareness counselors. As Upton Sinclair once remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends upon not understanding it.”

Wonderfully stated, and so true.

Idiotically, some Labour politicians have attacked Cameron’s speech as likely to give succor to racists. Their complaints are the authentic voice of self-interest, for it is those who work in the multi-culti apparatus who have the most to lose.

Multiculturalism has become a racket, deeply imbedded in the academic world, government agencies and the media of many nations.  But sane people are fighting back, tired of the racketeering.

One speech won’t solve the problem; but it’s a good start.

COMMENT:  The Europeans are now ahead of us in recognizing the danger.  Here, people who opposed the mosque at Ground Zero out of sensitivity to victims' families, were called racists, and Christiane Amanpour suggested that America is awash in Islamophobia.

President Obama is no leader in this area.  He's a multi through and through.  He would have been happy in the late sixties.  We hope for an American awakening. 

February 14, 2011