Shared values

Every time someone mentions the Great American Melting Pot (see previous post), someone else says that either it never existed or it's a uniquely American construct and won't work in Canada.

In answer, I give you the parallel between the development and present condition of New York City and Toronto. (They are both fine places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there!) Toronto may have been a pretty provincial "white-bread" city until about 60 years ago, but now both cities can only be described (being charitable) as "communities of communities".

Torontonians often refer to their city as "The Little Apple", leaving out the adjective "wormy" which can be applied to both big and little apples. They see Toronto as just as "world class" as New York, which means just as blighted and just as divided by race and ethnicity. You want to see ghettos? New York's got them...in spades! [Oh please... Ed.]

But perhaps -- dare we hope? -- New York and Toronto are not metaphors for the countries in which they are situate? If we could detach them from the neighbouring land mass and let them drift out into the Atlantic, we might be left with a more homogeneous North American society.

The idea of multiculturalism rests on the assumption that there is no majority community with a shared culture and shared values. Multiculturalism treats the USA and Canada as blank slates on which anything at all can be written. This is wrong.

Canada and the USA are western democracies, founded on Christian principles. In recent years people have been trying to remove the "European cultural bias" (not to mention God Himself) from our constitutions. Yet we do seem to have embedded in our DNA some quaint notions, such as:
* One person, one vote.
* Freedom of speech.
* Freedom of the press.
* Freedom of assembly.
* The right to dissent
* The supremacy of secular law.
* Religious tolerance

Granted, some of these values, like "one person, one vote", weren't there from the beginning. And some, like the idea of equality of the sexes, have yet to be fully realized. But they are in the makeup of the overwhelming majority of native-born Americans and Canadians.

Seems to me multiculturalism, to have any validity at all, should be a two-way street. The host country should accommodate and welcome newcomers IF -- and only if -- the newcomers also make attempts to integrate and accept that not everything will be the same as in the country and society they left.

If immigrants cannot get onside with the concepts of integrating into our society and adopting our core values as their own, I would say there is no place for them here.