I have to agree that the West, or Australian society at least, is falling apart. Our society teems with thieves, vandals and belligerent people, who do as they please without reference to anybody else. How often do you see graffiti and vandalised public property? How often do you encounter impatient and pushy motorists? How often do you see houses with steel barred windows, apartment blocks having multiple levels of security, cars fitted with alarms and immobilisers, goods in shops needing anti theft devices, bags that must be inspecting when entering or leaving a department stores? How often do you see people at supermarkets who leave shopping trolleys lying around, being too lazy to return them? What kind of society is this? A very sick one, and it’s getting worse. Last Sunday I boarded on a train, only to be astounded at the ill manner of other people, who yap away loudly on mobile phones as though other people on the train don’t exist. People here are ill mannered, uncouth, filthy and have no sense of decorum. OK, there are many decent people here too, but the percentage of people who are not good is big enough to make life here pretty unpleasant. Cultural background doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference – I’ve seen bad examples set by all peoples.

As to extolling American possessive individualism: it may well have created enormous wealth, but how few hands that wealth is in, and what a shambles of a society. It’s just like Australia.

Boazy: "AT LAST... EUREKA.. I'VE FOUND IT.... "THE TRUTH""

Better chuck out the old bible then!

Thanks to Pericles and chainsmoker for pointing out the old tubthumper's misinterpretation of Fukuyama's latest pronouncements.

Wasn't it Francis who famously wrote about "the end of history" or some other such bunkum?

Chainy.. yes.. I might be a cosmopolitan in some ways, and plugged into cyber space..and participate in a global village, but I still call Australia home.
Let's be very clear about something. I have no illusions as to our 'glorious past' in thinking it is without blemish. I happen to believe that a glorious present can be achieved by in fact recognizing those blemishes, and facing them square on. Doing that will give us an honourable foundation to face the future.

PERICLES I chose that sentence from Fukuyama because it said what I've been feeling for so long and expressed it in a very succinct way.

I've not read the rest of the work. I hate to labor a point, but my passion in this thread, for this topic has little to do with Islam. I said.. it is but one of a NUMBER of cultural threats we need be aware of.

If you wish to bash my Islam bashing, please restrict it to the threads where I am actually doing that.

NEOCONS ..Chainy, if that is our model for Australia, we need to yell WOAAH to the geegee and wheel him around. I'm not even sure what a neocon is in our context. Do you mean that we are in bed with Bush ?
I support the alliance, but would be ripping into Bush about many issues.

COLLECTIVE IDENTITY. The most important question is 'what' is our most beneficial collective identity ? I think it should have a Judao Christian element, but I realize it would be bordering on fantasy to think Australia is suddenly going to become a Christian land flowing with evangelical milk and honey.

Pericles; "That at many periods in history Muslim societies have been more tolerant than their Christian counterparts"

The key word here is periods. Many societies have remained tolerant while opposing religions or ethnic groups have remained small in numbers, but if you look more into the future of those societies you'll find that fighting broke out further down the track as the numbers became bigger and more threatening.

C J Morgan,

"Modern Societies have weak collective identities.
Post Modern Elites especially in Europe, feel they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and Nation. If our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are."

I fail to see how you can misinterpret the above statement.

I'll translate it for you. It means-; that Western countries have lost their sense of identity especially some of the elite groups like the left wing academics and teachers who think they have evolved into some kind of higher species and continually pour scorn on their own Western culture and nations. Immigrants to Western countries are very sure of their brotherhood through religion and not having been brainwashed into being scornful of their own culture by elitest utopian groups. United we stand(the immigrants) divided we fall the Western nations. Plain as the nose on your face.

The problem with this global citizenship piffle is that all traffic appears to be one way - to the West. Multiculturalism and the inability or unwillingness of Western nations to uphold their borders from massive immigration is viewed by non-Western cultures as an invitation to essentially gate crash the party and usurp the host culture. Such non-Western migrant groups are more interested in re-colonisation than integration. And who could blame them? Our weak collective identity, caused by the erosion of traditional Western culture, has effectively given them the rope to hang us with. Australia is sadly leading the Western world in terms of self-destructive immigration and multiculturalism.