This Doesn’t Happen in Countries That Aren’t Close to Social Collapse

@Fred: LOL! :-) That's great. I did that (reworded their comment to flip it around on them) to someone myself recently.

I blame people not being raised write by their parents. Me and my children know people from all sorts of backgrounds, yet we know how to treat them all with respect. One we all talk, dress, play music, and fuck the same then this world will cease to be an interesting place.

... oh ... and it certainly isn't evidence of impending social collapse. It's about greed and selfishness (two different things) .. not about social collapse or multiculturalism.

Daniel said: "They polled for how much people trust their neighbors in various parts of the country. Homogeneous areas up north and in the midwest scored really high; the place where I grew up scored really low. Why? Multiculturalism."

No. You mean to say: "Why? Because there is a mix of cultures that have not tried to understand each other and (due to their ignorance) fear and distrust each other." This is not "multiculturalism."

ncloud said "The fact that we welcome people from every nation to become American citizens does not mean that we are welcoming them to establish islands of their own culture within the American border."

Establishing islands of their own culture isn't the problem. It's the isolationist nature that these islands sometimes have. It seems to me that overcoming this isolationist nature is what "multiculturalism" is about.

In any case, I'm not convinced that the chaos at the give-away had ANYTHING to do with multiculturalism however you choose to define it.

I don't like the idea of complete unity, and I think for a society to work there has to be some sort of diversity. If we were ALL unified as one culture, and everything was good because of that, I think there would be a huge groupthink problem.

It would lead to anyone saying something out of the ordinary to be shunned from the culture. For an intellectual existence I think that there needs to be a certain level of disagreement and mistrust. If you go along with everything everyone is saying you're obviously not thinking for yourself - and I think that is plainly dangerous.

Hey now Allan, don't go painting capitalism with this brush.

If anything this behavior is a symptom of unbridled Nanny Statism. This sort of thing wouldn't happen in a capitalist society.

Personally, I’m not a true-blood capitalist, but I do think that anarcho-capitalism is probably a better system than what we have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

I’m just tired of people labeling stupid, irrational behavior as “capitalism”.

Stupid, irrational behavior is just that, and doesn’t have anything to do with anarcho-capitalism.

I mostly agree with ncloud's summary. The key is a lack of unity that is getting more and more obvious as time goes on.

I'm not sure if you guys have heard about the recent study done by a very liberal group about trust among people in America. It was a huge blow to the liberal group who did the study, as it went exactly opposite of what they thought the ideal was.

They polled for how much people trust their neighbors in various parts of the country. Homogeneous areas up north and in the midwest scored really high; the place where I grew up scored really low. Why? Multiculturalism.

The fact of the matter is that the Chinese tend to not like Mexicans. Mexicans tend to not like blacks. Blacks tend to not like Chinese. Etc. Etc. And because these groups are growing in size very rapidly and are increasingly able to speak their own languages and have their own infrastructures the problem is only going to get worse.

What the study showed, to the horror of the liberals, was that multiculturalism hurts society in a very serious way. It erodes unity. That's my entire point here. Balkanism is bad, and it's on its way to destroying us. But we're too stupid to figure it out. We'd rather just call the people who HAVE figured it out racists.

I'll find the study and add it here, but it was talked about on NPR extensively; you should be able to find it there.

I think Daniel is approaching this from the perspective that multiculturalism serves to further solidify cultural boundaries, and consequently prevent unity. There is an American cultural identity that is distinct from the rest of the world. The fact that we welcome people from every nation to become American citizens does not mean that we are welcoming them to establish islands of their own culture within the American border. This isn't about food, or dance, or the varieties of religion found in other parts of the world -- it's about the core American philosophy of self interest to mutual advantage. This philosophy has slowly fallen prey to the entitlement philosophy, and has generated a "tragedy of the commons" where resources are not to be earned and traded, but rather consumed at the expense of everyone. The primary virtue has become how many handouts you can get vs. how much wealth you can produce. The world doesn't come to America for freedom; it comes to America for welfare.

Hey now, don't go painting anarchists with this brush.

If anything, this behavior you note is a symptom of unbridled capitalism; this type of thing wouldn't happen in an anarchistic society.

Personally, I'm not a true-blood anarchist, but I do think that anarcho-syndicalism is probably a better system than what we have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalist

I'm just tired of people labeling stupid, irrational behavior as "anarchy!". Stupid, irrational behavior is just that, and doesn't have anything to do with anarchy.

Thanks :)

Of course, PGC, but multiculturalism isn't about looking at people and seeing only differences. In my view, the whole POINT of multiculturalism is to see that despite differences, we are all people and are all essentially the same at some fundamental level. The point is that we should not fear (or worse - hate) others because of our differences. We should understand that we all have hopes and dreams; we all love; we all want what is best for the world; and we all have a basic core morality. "We all" refers to the different cultures of the world. Of course there are amoral individuals in ALL cultures.

Maybe it's looking at people and seeing only your differences instead of any similarities. If we saw ourselves in everyone else would we treat people better? I think so.

Clearly true: "They are purely selfish and view $30 as more valuable than the physical safety of others."

It's not clear to me how multiculturalism is to blame. ... and ... " so-called 'country' " ???
The US has always been a collection of people from other countries. I agree that the values of the country have changed in recent decades, but it's not even clear to me that this is due to an influx of people from other countries. You've said it yourself in this blog: Who is it that has the work ethic that we think of as so essential to American values? (Your answer was that the hard working foreign nationals who do things like run gas stations exemplify this work ethic more than the (so-called?) Americans who complain about them.) Who do we blame for the apathy we see in so many of our students? Immigrants? I don't think so. Who do we blame for a government that thinks that their job is to protect and defend lives at the cost of protecting and defending the constitution (which is what their job description actually entails)?

It is indeed sickening that people would be so selfish that they would endanger the lives of others for a "prize" worth $29. But, these were greedy Americans - perhaps you've encountered the type.