Last week it emerged various labor politicians have seen the fallacy of multiculturalism and are trying to rebrand it. Still calling it multicilturalism but really doing a complete u-turn towards monoculturalism. Tony Blair himself has led the way. Many people are saying, about time too. Here is my concern though. When the pendulum swings too far one way - as it clearly has in this country with the tolerance of militant groups that promote violence and mass murder - it is very hard to stop it going to far the other way. What tends to happen is people give it a little push, making it even worse! I wonder if this week Mr Blair has done exactly that. I don't remember his exact comments but it went something like this, "We will not put up with people who preach hate and stir up violence." Quite right too. "If you want to come and live in this country you have to integrate into the society. If you will not, you cannot come."
He maintains that he wants Britain to retain its multicultural status, but if you don't subscribe to that intergrated multicultural culture then you will not be tolerated. Now this is putting it stronger than the Prime Minister actually has, but not stronger than certain civil situations that are on going, including the new Sexual Orientation Regulations that the government is seeking to bring in. Let me deal with this issue on a different front though.
In various universities around the country Christian groups are being forced out because they believe homosexuality to be wrong, and aren't afraid to say so. This is labeled as homophobic and intolerant. Neither claim sticks. The Christians are not seeking to exclude homosexuals from any meeting, they are simply stating the historic and clear teaching of the world's best selling book year on year for more years than are recorded. The Christians are not saying homosexuals must stop meeting, they are more than willing to talk and debate and be friends with those of any and every sexual persuasion. Yet it is the Christians who are called intolerant, who student bodies think it it is "right" to exclude. There is no tolerance of a different culture there - the different culture and beliefs are simply considered wrong and so excluded. The Christians will not sign up to mono-multiculturalism - the unifying belief that all beliefs are valid - and so they are excluded; they are not tolerated.
The problem with Mr Blair's agenda is that it pushes us towards the situation where we will find that saying a set of beliefs is wrong or not true will not be tolerated. Literally, "If your culture won't subscribe to our culture - that all beliefs are valid - then your culture cannot be part of our culture." Or put more simply, we will only tolerate those people who agree with us; which of course is not tolerance at all. The culture that Mr Blair and many others seeks to create in this country is one where everyone agrees that there is no absolute truth, therefore everyone's beliefs are equally valid and where there is no immovable moral standard, so the law must protect everyone and attack those who hold to absolute truth and absolute moral standards, because that truth and morality makes the rest feel guilty.
The end of this road is the persecution of people who are no threat to the public, only the beliefs that public lives by. We are setting out on the road to mono-multiculturalism which ends with bigotry and persecution.
I hope my thoughts are too strong, but I fear that they aren't.
Chris
