Hi Maurice Winn; Re: "Carl, my point in the Irish comparison is that people don't change culture because they change country." Agreed, but it doesn't matter because people grow old and die.
Re: "Their children will adopt local norms to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the context of their lives."
Agreed. And in the "context" of a free Democracy, the inevitable result is that the children adopt the local norms to a greater extent. This is a simple historical reality.
Re: "If they live in Jewish ghettoes, they remain Jewish, perhaps for 2000 years, wishing for the Promised Land."
The Jewish ghettoes were not located in modern, free democracies. They were located in countries that had laws against Jewish movement out of those ghettoes. Let me remind the reader of some of the historical legal reasons behind the long term survival of Jewish ghettoes:
...
The name ghetto refers to an area where people from a given ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. The word historically referred to restricted housing zones for Jews; however, it now commonly labels any poverty-stricken urban area.
...
fact-index.com
Since there are no laws requiring Arabs or Moslems to live in certain districts of French cities, or laws preventing them from intermarriage with the locals, it is easy to predict that the Arab zones will slowly become more and more like the rest of France. The situation is more like the one in the US neighborhoods where large numbers of Arabs live (i.e. Detroit) than the situation in prescientific medieval Europe where Jews were required to live in certain neighborhoods. In France, as in the US, intermarriage will occur. Parents will raise their kids to speak French instead of Arabic in order to allow them wider opportunities. Eventually they will be indistinguishable from the French except for unimportant genetic differences.
What I'm describing, a melting pot, is the normal condition of the human species. It's not something that only happens in a few advanced nations. It's something that happens everywhere and throughout all time, unless there are legal reasons to prevent it.
You cannot have a "ghetto" without laws that keep people on it. The absence of those laws is best illustrated by the fact that even people who are very afraid of the Arabs taking over France go on at length about the high rate of intermarriage, LOL. For example:
The high rate of immigration by Arabs into France has additional unforeseen consequences. One of these is the high intermarriage rate. Because France is no longer a Christian country because the churches are empty and the Catholic religion largely abandoned, many French men and women marry Muslims. These Muslims demand that the children raised by them be Muslims as well. Now consider the birth rate. The overall French birth rate is 1.9 per woman aged 15-35. This is the same as in the U.S. The Muslim birthrate in France is 4.0, or more than double the average. Evidently then, Islam will become the dominant religion in France in a short time.
jbuff.com
The above admits the fact that the intermarriage rate is very high. But it then goes on to make the assumption that the results of those intermarriages are just as Moslem as the Moslem parent, LOL. It's like in the US where being even 1/256th black made you a slave. No, human genetics, and human culture do not work that way. The Moslems are not a "Borg" entity that is going to take over the world.
Re: "Look at the carnage in India [Kashmir and elsewhere] ..."
All your examples of lack of cultural melding are from 3rd world pre industrialized countries. But you examples of successful cultural melding (like those Canadians that thought they were Irish or French instead of Canadian) are from 1st world highly industrialized countries. See the pattern? Now which is France more like? India or Canada?
Re: "It's arrogant and presumptuous to think that children will continue to rebel and adopt the French way, or American way, though they largely have until now."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
So you admit that the children are rebelling? Funny, I thought that Moslems were different, LOL. But hey, I think that you are exaggerating a bit when you say that they are adopting the "French way". I would guess that the children will choose their own way, and that it would be more French than Moslem, but it will definitely not be a completely French way.
Re: "Presumably the point of being Hyphenated-American is that individuals are not fully subsumed by the melange of culture."
As soon as they admit to being anything -American, you have them. It's done. Americans are SUPPOSED to be blahblahblah-American. If you tell people that you're just straight American, and that you don't feel like you have any real connection to any other country, they look at you like you've just admitted to being a Nazi.
Re: "But immigration to the USA has been gradual and mostly from Euro sources. France has got a LOT of immigrants who are Moslem, not Irish, German, English, Spanish, Russian, Polish, etc. They are qualitatively different in their ideology."
I love how foreigners get all confused about American history. Just because we're the superpower they think that they know everything about us. Immigration here has not been at all gradual, but has always come in fits and spurts. The immigrants always cluster when they get here, and they always eventually add their little contribution to the local culture but mostly take up the local culture in turn.
For France, I laugh to think of how they will have to give up defending the purity of their language, but that's hardly the worst fate in the world. Pretty soon, all those Moslem fanatics will be talking about unimportant stuff like "Le Weekend".
The problem for the Moslem religion in France is far worse than the problem for the French culture in France, LOL. The material oriented culture of a prosperous democracy is a lot stronger than religion. That's how France, despite having a very strong Catholic religion (long ago), became secular, and those same secularizing forces are still in place.
In any case, the future of France is not something for us to worry much about. The Moslems already have nukes, and France's forces will arrive far too late to change any balance of power much.
-- Carl |
