Two grand (if not good) visions and resulting social policies have dominated and even defined modern Europe and been the envy of the American left: social welfare based on extensive economic redistribution and multiculturalism. Now it is becoming increasingly clear, even to the Europeans, that both have failed.
First, the Germans:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this weekend that the “multikulti” concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany.
At “the beginning of the 1960s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country,” said Ms. Merkel at the event in Potsdam, near Berlin. “We kidded ourselves a while. We said: ‘They won’t stay, [after some time] they will be gone,’ but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by side and to enjoy each other … has failed, utterly failed.”
Then the British:
Prime Minister David Cameron, in a speech attended by world leaders, on Saturday criticized his country’s longstanding policy of multiculturalism, saying it was an outright failure and partly to blame for fostering Islamist extremism….
“If we are to defeat this threat, I believe it’s time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past,” he told an international conference in Munich.
“Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream….”
And now the Dutch, who took multiculturalism even further than other European countries (HatTip: Thomas Lifson):
The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.
A new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads: “The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society.”
The letter continues: “A more obligatory integration is justified because the government also demands that from its own citizens. It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands. The integration will not be tailored to different groups.”
The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants to ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.
As for the other half of Europe’s failed vision, after traveling to the Soviet Union in 1921 Lincoln Steffens famously (if incorrectly) proclaimed: “I’ve seen the future, and it works!”
Anyone wanting to see our future, unless we change course, need look no further than Greece. Unfortunately, the Democrats aren’t looking.
Mass immigration at levels that cannot be assimilated, by people whose cultures are entirely alien to Western values makes multiculturalism a fait accompli as policy.
If you oppose multiculturalism, then you must support sustainable immigration levels with better selection of immigrants based on education, skills and cultural compatibility.