Recently I spoke with an acquaintance of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the conversation quickly turned, as conversations about Ms. Merkel now always do, to her decisions on immigration. Last summer when Europe was engulfed with increasing waves of migrants and refugees from Muslim countries, Ms. Merkel, moving unilaterally, announced that Germany would take in an astounding 800,000. Naturally this was taken as an invitation, and more than a million came. The result has been widespread public furor over crime, cultural dissimilation and fears of terrorism. From such a sturdy, grounded character as Ms. Merkel the decision was puzzling–uncharacteristically romantic about people, how they live their lives, and history itself, which is more charnel house than settlement house.
Ms. Merkel’s acquaintance sighed and agreed. It’s one thing to be overwhelmed by an unexpected force, quite another to invite your invaders in! But, the acquaintance said, he believed the chancellor was operating in pursuit of ideals. As the daughter of a Lutheran minister, someone who grew up in East Germany, Ms. Merkel would have natural sympathy for those who feel marginalized and displaced. Moreover she is attempting to provide a kind of counter-statement, in the 21st century, to Germany’s great sin of the 20th. The historical stain of Nazism, the murder and abuse of the minority, will be followed by the moral triumph of open arms toward the dispossessed. That’s what’s driving it, said the acquaintance.
It was as good an explanation as I’d heard. But there was a fundamental problem with the decision that you can see rippling now throughout the West. Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.
Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street–that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending–because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.
The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”
The challenge of integrating different cultures….
Exactly right.
This is not a religious issue, no matter how they try to frame it.
Religions do not survive if the culture does not support it.
I’m not one who is necessarily negatively affected by “globalism” – if anything I directly benefit from it as my business is based on helping a corporation maintain a certain internationally recognized certification – but one can clearly see that a whole lot of my countrymen are being negatively impacted by these globalist twits. And the future looks pretty grim if they continue down this “borderless” mindset/policy direction.
I sent this to the extended family last night. Noonan knocks it out of the park every once in a while. And Ace’s post on the column was the icing on the cake.
Integration, assimilation are a one way street for the migrants.
You change for them and kneel to their demands.
They are gimme-dats, who despise western culture
Merkel is a traitor to her people.
There will be a lot of grief before this farce plays out
The lights of civilization are going out in Europe
The last time this happened we spent a lot of blood and treasure to set them free
Canada and America were built by EUROPEAN migrants. Not Muslim ones. There was a cultural affinity between both countries and Europe so it was relatively easy to adjust. We have nothing in common with middle eastern cultures. In fact we reject their values which are barbaric. It’s now called racist to point this out though.
We better take heed of what’s happening in Germany. We have everything in place to encourage the creation of ghettos, the left like to call the “communities”. It is already in progress thanks to our stupid idea of multiculturalism and the Charter, both of which are Pierre Trudeau’s legacy and the weakening of Canada as a unified and cohesive society.
Religion is the basis of every culture and as the religion changes so changes the culture. Within each culture/religion is a spectrum of belief with some being rabid followers (our own NME666 being one such fundamentalist on the atheist side) and others who are nominal at best in their belief system. (the present pope being a prime example whom it would seem gives more credence to John Lennon than Jesus Christ). That being said importing a bunch of people who do not wish to assimilate or accept the native culture but instead want to impose their own beliefs on the nation never ends well for the native culture.
“Moreover she is attempting to provide a kind of counter-statement, in the 21st century, to Germany’s great sin of the 20th. The historical stain of Nazism, the murder and abuse of the minority”
During World War II, members of the Muslim Brotherhood spied for Hitler’s Nazis in the Middle East and fought for Hitler as Nazi troops in two specially formed Muslim Waffen-SS Handschar Divisions (‘Handschar’ is German for scimitar, the curved saber used by the Muslim troops of the Ottoman empire).
Muslim Nazi SS Division
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/104/002.jpg
Muslim Nazi SS Division at prayer
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aWPiLagXt58/VC9q8jEx_EI/AAAAAAAAJ0Q/vOt1SQgXSO0/s1600/Muslim%2Bmembers%2Bof%2Bthe%2BWaffen-SS%2B13th%2Bdivision%2Bat%2Bprayer%2Bduring%2Btheir%2Btraining%2Bin%2BGermany%2C%2B%2B1943.jpg
Nazism is illegal in Germany, and yet here is Frau Merkel welcoming into Germany the descendants of the people who flocked to Hitler’s SS to perform, with joy in their hearts, atrocities against Jews and Serbs in Nazi occupied territories.
I could link to pictures of Mohammadans protesting with signs declaring their love and respect fo Hitler today and Mein Kampf is still a best seller in the Middle East from where she welcomed these “migrants”.
Merkel is as ignorant as owl-shit about history. Her motives are not just suspect in this case.
Meanwhile, back at the farm for anyone who cares, according to The Rebel oue PM, who may still be on holiday, allegedly went on an airborne drinking binge with his friends and we pay the tab. I’m sure this would be a tad more than Bev Oda’s orange juice. When it comes to politics viva la difference, this will not be reported on mainstream media.
There’s a sickness ruling our elected officials in the Western World. That sickness is displaced responsibility and empathy that’s characterized by those that rule extending their limited powers and resources towards affecting non-constituents in place of those that have roots in their community. I think it happens in large part because those that rule with little regard for the average Joe’s and Joanne’s that live around them. They are already insulated somewhat from poorer honest working folk with their education, social and work experiences. They do not believe charity begins at home and have no respect for the origin or value of the dollars they spend. For them public office is a selfish power trip and they continually think of new ways to take more from the source of their power – the faceless taxpayer. That taxpayer / voter should be seen ultimately as their boss. Of course that’s not the case but if there was something that could act like a leash, recall laws, things would indeed be much different. Ideology would have to take a back seat to community responsibility.
The elites don’t know how to make the system work, but want to make all the decisions and take no responsibility. there are idea/theory people. And if you be around long enough you see the same old tired ideas come up again and again. History repeating its self. it didn’t work before What makes the Elites think it will work this time. It all sounds good but doesn’t work.
“The historical stain of Nazism, the murder and abuse of the minority, will be followed by the moral triumph of open arms toward the dispossessed.”
Perhaps within your considerations, not your primary driver. Oh right – progressive, they’re smarter than you, they know where the ! goes. So pay up.
We must all keep that in mind as we ponder their endless errors in judgement, addled by their political romanticism and human frailties.
What’s Hillary’s excuse for the Dems dangerously drastic plan to bring in over half a million refugees, despite the miserable European experiences?
Well said. Canadians have yet to figure this out. Many Americans have figured this out and support Trump, and their media is doing its best to discredit him and his supporters.
As in Germany’s case, the regular folks are the ones who pay the price, not only with the invitation to the civilization destroyer culture ideology migrants, but also to the AGW taxes in various forms being implemented to reduce the standard of living of Joe and Joanne Sixpack as well as to enrich the crony friends of the Establishment.
So … Nazi-guilt is even more powerful than ‘white-guilt’ … So … a German leftist is much more dangerous than a run-of-the-mill American leftist ? Good to know. I will be more carefully examining the heritage of every leftist politician …
Joe…here’s one of the problems…”As the daughter of a Lutheran minister, someone who grew up in East Germany, Ms. Merkel would have natural sympathy for those who feel marginalized and displaced.”
as I’v said a few times, lefties and “kristians” are most often cut from the same cloth.
As to me, you are so far of I laffed my ass of at your nonsense. A dimwit like you would consider a driveway puddle “deep”. I’m not actually an atheist, and if you had any smarts you would know why, butt smarts ain’t your strong point, and never will be. The 666 didn’t give you the equipment for “smart”. But you are good entertainment:-))
and what of the pope and his bullsh*t were this “immigration” nonsense is concered?
“as I’v said a few times, lefties and “kristians” are most often cut from the same cloth. ”
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. Shortly after I started grad studies, I attended worship services at a small on-campus congregation. It was a big mistake. Most Sunday sermons were pro-capitalist, anti-American diatribes rather than sources of spiritual guidance or sustenance, based on the gospels according to St. Marx and St. Lenin.
Most of those in attendance went along with what was said, nodding in agreement like the sheeple they were. Anyone who questioned anything, let alone objected to it, would quickly find themselves shunted aside or ridiculed for holding such seemingly primitive views. All perspectives were allowed provided that they conformed to the resident ideology.
This was 1979/1980. There was no mention of what the Red Army was doing in Afghanistan, let alone why it was even there in the first place, and, since the congregation claimed to support liberation struggles throughout the world, not even a peep about what Lech Walesa was doing in Poland.
I guess any contradictions of the great communist ideology could have been safely ignored as heresy.
I left after a year but, unfortunately, most of the other congregations in that denomination that I was associated with weren’t a great deal different. I guess it could be said that “In the beginning was the Word…..and that Word was communism.”
Eventually, I left the church altogether and haven’t set foot in one in years.
Sell Siemens, Krupp,Volkswagon they are about to be ruined by Merkel
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/08/13/merkel-demands-big-german-companies-hire-refugees/
“Nothing in their lives will get worse.”
Exactly. The howling, scowling rabble aren’t likely to be rampaging through Westmount or Rockliffe Park. turdo la doo and the supreme court justices and the rest of the Ivory Tower Trash won’t be in the shopping malls, theatres, schools, etc. that we plebians frequent.
” Most Sunday sermons were pro-capitalist,…”.
I suspect that you meant anti-capitalist?
To some extent, as you say, unfortunately, I have to agree with you and NME666 especially in regards to western main stream Protestant churches, Lutherans come to mind, and in some of the Catholic regions. The United Church of Canada comes to mind as being the NDP at prayer. The Orthodox and eastern European Catholic churches, for example Poland and Hungary, are very much anti-communist due to their experiences.
Where I differ is that, while there is some infiltration of leftist thought due to university education, generally the fundamentalist Christian churches in Canada, the US, and in Europe, are resisting being taken over by Marxism. A lately deceased uncle of mine was a sometimes fundamentalist pastor and a full time English prof at Brock U deplored the gradual absorption of Marxism by the university educated classes. A brother-in-law of a friend of mine was the Controller-General of Alberta and left the mother fundamentalist church of a Mennonite denomination in Edmonton after being a member there for thirty years due to the, in his words, the infiltration of Marxism.
So Merkel, a Lutheran, having a guilt complex for western affluence is not a strange phenomenon.
Robert of Ottawa….YUP!! Was a manager for a company here in Canuckistan that was sub to a Yank company. They came up with the same nutty idea. Of course,HR blindly went along with what Houston wanted. When production started dropping,and penalties for missing deadlines started becoming the norm,head orifice wanted to know why. I told them simple; besides taking lunch/coffee breaks, the ME’s where also taking their 3 thru the workday prayer breaks. They asked how to fix it. Again I said simple: dock their pay. Amazingly,HO said go ahead. After about 6 months,production had turned around,and actually improved. Why? The ME’s who didn’t like it and where protesting where forced out by the ME’s who needed the jobs to feed their families. Simple problem,simple solution. Something about common dog-f**k.
“” Most Sunday sermons were pro-capitalist,…”.
I suspect that you meant anti-capitalist?”
You’re right. (slaps forehead) I originally wrote “pro-communist” and didn’t edit my comments properly.
I’m originally a Lutheran and the synod I belonged to became slowly more left-wing over the years, starting almost immediately after it became independent of its American parent body. I really noticed it in the mid-1970s, and it appears to have accelerated after that.
I shouldn’t have been entirely surprised. Some of the professors at its seminary were advocates of that heretical doctrine known as liberation theology.
Once in a while, I reconsidered returning to church but going instead to the most conservative synod, or so I believed from its past reputation. Unfortunately, even that aspect appears to be a thing of the past. From what I gathered, it, too, had split from its American body and is now all touchy-feely socialist.
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed a document to the door of a church in Wittenburg. It was the 95 Theses. I don’t recall progressivism or communism of any kind being part of his arguments.
To all of you lefties in the church, thanks a lot for destroying my faith.
Ken, during the 1970Ts (cold war) in central and south America there were a lot of Catholics, (priests) who sided with the communists, especially in Guatemala. Also during this time frame the strongest communist parties in western societies were in Israel and Italy. Italy being the heart of the Catholic church. The current pope shows a lot of signs of being far left sympathetic. Yup, there are a lot of lefties in the churches, and you can be assured that most American blacks are religious and left leaning. Too many in here equate their own beliefs with how they judge the rest of the religious demographics that they identify with.
Your mention of the United Church reminded me of a radio interview that its former moderator, Robert McClure, gave on the CBC in 1980.
Talk about a left-wing nut job! I don’t remember much of what he said, but I do recall he accused the Americans of war crimes during the Korean conflict. He kept insisting that they used biological weapons, though I believe that the origin of that allegation was a bit of propaganda created and circulated by either the Soviet Union or China.
During the time the German Democratic Republic existed, the Lutheran church was active. In that country, it seemed that everyone spied on everyone else.
There have been rumours, however, that many members of the clergy were informants for or collaborators with the Stasi.
Someone early talked about the affinity North America has for Europe and the culture that was brought to North America. Britain gave us the Magna Carta and democratic thought.
The more Euro history I read the less I feel that affinity. My ancestors on one side left what was to become Germany in the 17th century for religious reasons. My family on the other side left England for the same reasons. What North America, especially the USA, offered was an economic future in religious freedom.
When one reads the history leading up to WW 1, as a Canadian, I am outraged. The idea that so many young Canadians were sacrificed so that a collection of misfit monarchists could preserve their privilege cannot be justified. If the USA and Canada had sat out WWI the Euros would have been forced into a settlement and WWII likely would never have happened. The justified economic prominence that Germany was asserting in 1914 would have provided the base for a more realistic European union than the EU ever dreamt of.
OZ: Great bit of History…I did not know that.
I did know however that the Grand Mufti (Sheik Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini), of Jerusalem did in fact go to Germany in Nov of 1941…I also believe he became a good friend of none other than Adolf Eichman himself…imagine that. My understanding is that he spent a great deal of time in Nazi Germany up till the end of the war and then went into hiding in Egypt where he later influenced Anwar Sadat, Nassar et all.
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/islamfascist.htm
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/hitler.mufti.htm
Lots of connections from Hitlers time to the present day, and as you say Mein Kampf is the # 2 best seller in the Middle east.
There is a war coming – plain to see…and it will be the West vs Islam..So why we continue to import our own undoing into this country baffles me for I fully believe we will endure the same $hit as what goes on in Europe & Scandinavia today…
“Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections.”
Just like the CINOs that declared their votes for Hope and Change.
You’re taking the position that World War I was not worth fighting. That’s a reasonable enough position for some purposes, but not for judging the wisdom or honour of the people that decided to enter the war. We today know exactly what the cost of winning was, and can weigh it against the goals originally intended and those actually achieved. The people at the time knew none of that. They had no way of knowing what they were getting into. There had never been a war like it, and indeed, there hadn’t been a war of any kind in living memory.
Canada of course couldn’t have stayed out of the war even if anyone had wanted to, but no one wanted to. Canada fought to prove that we were every bit as much a part – and as important a part – of the British Empire as England was. And that was indeed the case, and we did prove it. And indeed, a Canadian was leading the British Empire within a few years of the war (Bonar Law). If that seems like a dubious achievement today, it sure wasn’t then. It was central to Canada’s existence as a separate country. An independent Canada outside the Empire can be nothing more than a saprophyte on the USA, as was proved after the Second World War.
If your point is that the war was a bad idea and shouldn’t have been fought in the first place, I see no grounds for arguing with you, but the conclusion has to be that the Germans should not have started the war. This of course immediately puts you into the war-guilt position that is commonly used to discredit the Treaty of Versailles. But it looks rather that you think the problem was not the war, but the fact that Britain entered it. Well, lots of people thought so at the time, so I can’t call you wrong. But the independence of Belgium was a legitimate British interest. The argument against the US entering was even stronger, then and now. But the freedom of the seas was a vital American interest, and the U-boat campaign was, frankly, one long war crime. The Germans brought the US into the war – and hello, Versailles again.
If Britain had stayed out, Germany would have dominated the continent, and we probably could have lived with that; even the British, although their position in Europe would have left them with lots to complain about. But the downside of allowing the Germans to do their thing was all too obvious, and the cost of stopping it was not. Indeed, the cost actually paid was entirely unimaginable. In such circumstance, a cost-benefit analysis becomes blind guessing. But the principles at stake were clear, and they called for Germany to be stopped. And they were, at astonishing cost. I can see regretting that decision, but I can’t see pissing on the people that made it.