Georgina- Good work!
Thanks for outlining different aspects of multiculturalism as a policy. It is the kind of education badly needed by some misguided/deceptive patriots (to put it politely).

Speaking of those….

BOAZ_David

Quote:

“1/ When intervied after the Cronulla events, a Muslim youth counsellor stated on national TV as follows:

a) Muslim youth regard themselves as superior to Aussies.
b) They detest western values.”

Unquote:

Who exactly was this imaginary friend of yours??...and proof?

Quote:

”2/ Marrickville Signage. The issue is current.. many businesses are only using 'ethnic' language on their signs.
Saed Kahn, a Marrickville Councilor said regarding the push to enforce English/Ethnic languge on all signs "a bad idea and possibly illegal"

So.. where is 'tolerance and fair go' in ideas of 'racial/religious superiority and linguistic discrimination against the majority of the population ?”

Unquote:

Not withstanding your inability to spell correctly…

There was only ONE shop in the whole of Marrickville that didn’t have a sign in English, a Chinese Video shop.

Now, I have a question for you?

1. When was the last time you walked into a Chinese video shop to hire a Chinese language video? …..Exactly!

If you look for the meaning of Majority in your MS Word dictionary, one of the meanings it spits out is “group in power”. Now you see the basis of your whole self-deceptive point of view is wrong.

The whole beat-up is in fact about a bunch of heavies from the local chamber of commerce wanting to push-out a growing Asian business community. What do you call that?

Oh, in Marrickville we don’t use paternalistic words such as TOLERANCE….how about appreciation for a change

I came here from England 44 years ago and have never tried to keep to my own culture [whatever that's supposed to mean]. Those who I have had as friends and or business associates and/or clients would cover probably every major [and a good many of the less well represented] cultures in Australia.

I have been a member of the [Perth] German Club, Airforce Club and Malaysian Singapore Australian Society. And also a regular or occasional visitor to the Austrian Club, Dutch Club, Spanish Club, Perth and Fremantle Italian Clubs and the Hellenic Society. Why? Because they all like to dance and that's my sport/social interest. Last Saturday, we went to a dance at the Dalmatinac Club.

My second wife learned Belly dancing and became very good at it. She taught this artform for the WA Education Dept. She also performed at functions where most of the people were Eastern Mediteranean, North African and Middle Eastern and we made many new friends and had some great times.

I don't care if people prefer to keep to themselves, but I don't want to associate with serious criminals or serious trouble makers, whatever their racial origin. I believe that Australia should send such people back to where they came from, whether that was England, Lebanon, or anywhere else.

And I don't care what people choose to wear [or not wear, see the thread on nudism]. But sometimes a woman's face must be seen for driving license or passport ID purposes.

And I certainly don't want any newcomer's religion pushed down my throat. We already have more than enough of that from our umpteenth generation Christian extremists.

Mr Khan, in the interests of exactness the word is 'notwithstanding' (no spaces).

And if you are going to type 'Chinese Video' you should be consistent. You give the shop another mention in your comment piece but it appears as 'Chinese video'.

Consistency and correctness are a must on your part if you are going to correct others.

Another councillor, Saeed Khan, called the plan "outright racist", saying: "I don't mind if every business has an English name, but to force shops to translate every single word on their shopfront into English is a stupid, divisive idea."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/shop-names-in-english-support-lost-in-translation/2006/10/24/1161455709410.html

At least we know where you stand when it comes to the issue of racism S Khan. Being critical of any minority groups for any reason is being a racist in your eyes. Nazi are racist asking someone to put a sign up so that the majority of the population can read it isnt. Believe it or not I can see where you are coming from when saying it is silly to put English signs on a shop which only rents out Chinese video’s. Mind you the line has to be drawn somewhere, when I was last in Sydney I was visiting my aunt in Strathfield and I visited an internet café called the Zen (I think that was its name) it was just near the station on the boulevard road. Anyway I went in there and found out the bloke on the desk could not speak a word of English and all the computers were in Korean, all these errors kept coming up in Korean when I was using my hotmail account and I didn’t know what was going on and no one could explain to me cause they could not speak any English. Yeah it might be nit picking but these people where my age in their mid 20’s and had made no attempt to learn the language.
If you want to live in Australia learn to speak the bloody language you get a whole lot more respect from the native population and its the first thing I would do if a moved to a country that did not speak english.

So Boaz regards himself as a tolerant fellow because he learnt Indonesian/Malay so he could preach to them. In other words, Boaz, you went to their country and did exactly what you complain about some Muslims doing here; trying to convert people. Pot. Kettle. Black.

From your experiences in Malaysia, you would be aware that it is a vibrant multicultural society, combining vast numbers of indigenous Malays, Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Islamic and even British and Dutch, into a successful and rapidly modernising society.

The fact that you choses not to mention this in your critique of multiculturalism reveals a rather disingenuous stance on your part.

As for Themistocles' belief that you can't form a nation from "a mosaic of various ethnic groups and cultures", I'm afraid that is exactly what nations are built from, as Ernest Renan demonstrated in 1882, in his work that is foundational in modern scholarship on nationalism: http://www.nationalismproject.org/what/renan.htm

Off the top of my head, here are a few nations that have been built from "a mosaic of various ethnic groups and cultures". Some of them might even be considered great nations:

-The United States of America (every ethnicity on Earth, and the world's greatest power - coincidence?)
-China (Han, Mongols, Cantonese)
-The United Kingdom (English, Welsh, Scots, some Irish)
-India (Every province of India is/was a separate ethnic identity before it was woven into a modern nation)
-Australia circa 1901 (English, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Irish, Chinese, Afghan)
-Indonesia (Over 200 separate ethnic identities across 4,000 islands, Hindu culture, Arabic-Islamic culture)

However, by all means regale me with the success stories of monocultural policies as adopted in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Rwanda, Afghanistan under the Taliban, the Soviet Union, and the great and glorious Japanese and German empires.

EasyTimes however had the most special request. I hope EasyTimes wasn’t thinking of British people when he mentioned “European Australians”. Very few British people would describe themselves as “Europeans” and most would be quite offended at the idea. But then a non-ignorant fellow like EasyTimes would know that. Wouldn’t he?

Mercurius
To be effective in your critique you have to be careful with your reading of what you want to criticize. I did not say that you cannot build a nation "FROM" a mosaic of various cultures, but ON a mosaic... America, as you correctly point out, "has been built" to a great extent from various ethnic groups. But nonetheless, it was the MAINSTREAM of Anglo-Saxon-Celtic culture, that determined the establishment of America as a great nation.

If you have the time and proclivity to see another point of view on multiculturalism, you should read "Multiculturalism: How a Pet Idea Became a Dinosaur"--http://www.con.observationdeck.org