John Hinderaker:
I think the problem goes far deeper. True, we need to account for the increasingly common phenomenon of lying to pollsters for tactical reasons. But more than that, I think the problem is one of epistemology. Those of us who have grown up in the Western tradition formed by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and all the rest make certain assumptions about truth and reality, and it generally doesn’t occur to us to wonder whether those assumptions are universally shared. I don’t think they are.
I think that some cultures have a fundamentally different view of reality, of the objectivity of truth, of the importance of truth, and of the need for consistency. Thus, there are people who will say 1) that the Holocaust is a myth, and 2) that Hitler should have finished the job, without seeing any need for explanation or apology. And there are some who celebrate the outrages of October 7, while in the next breath denying that they occurred. Without in the least expecting to be believed.
If that is correct, the difficulties of cultural assimilation are more profound than is generally recognized.
David Strom:
Let's be frank: the flood of Muslim refugees into Europe has not been an unalloyed success.
It's not that all Muslims are incapable of integrating into Western cultures. Really, it's not.
It's just that a lot of them can't, especially when they emigrate from medieval societies and are dumped into the modern world. Their reaction is not to adjust to the culture around them; it's to demand the culture reflect their own values.
They emigrate from what Donald Trump inelegantly calls "s**thole countries" and work to recreate the s**thole conditions elsewhere.
And,
Diversity is not our strength. Our culture is our strength, and it's the reason we live in societies to which millions of people flood every year.
# posted by Ranger @ 8:55 AM
