Incoming

The deal we seem to have come to in Europe is that, on the minus side, we’ve got a bit more gang rape and beheading than we used to have, but on the plus side, there’s a much wider range of cuisine. So it’s all swings and roundabouts.

Mark Steyn talks with Douglas Murray about demographic transformation. 

Somewhat related, the Simon Schama Tendency. 

Comments

[Sporkatus]

I would have thought that with the exception of Indonesian food, the whole pan-Muslim set of cuisines would not be that internally diverse. I mean, clearly you'll get some variation from Turkish to Iranian cuisines, and they on a different axis than Pakistani foods and another still than North African/pan-Arab, but the phrase that comes to mind is "diminishing returns".

At some point, a new and slightly different shawarma from another province might not be worth it.

[David]

At some point, a new and slightly different shawarma from another province might not be worth it.

That does get explored during the discussion, the various forms of cultural enrichment of which we’ve so often been assured. And, as you say, diminishing returns.

[Xas7wcrg9e]

Not that I'm overly keen to peruse a video on mobile to find out, but isn't cultural appropriation supposed to be verboten these days?

Is this most important of issues explored, or at least advice given on mitigating any potential offense that may be taken by third parties feeling aggrieved on behalf of others?

[David]

And here’s Douglas Murray being interviewed on NPR.

[Russtovich]

"And, as you say, diminishing returns."

Shouldn't that be "dhimmiminishing returns"? :)

[sH2]

Culture matters. Whodathunkit?

[David]

Culture matters. Whodathunkit?

Yes, but ours is an age in large part defined by a kind of practised, rather prickly unrealism. (The reactions to John McEnroe’s brief comment about male and female tennis players spring to mind.)

[David]

Related, the Simon Schama Tendency.

[Captain Patrick Dalroy]

Accentuate the positive. As the censored tweet put it, Washing pieces of dead little girls out of your hair is a small price to pay for mass Islamic immigration. #ManchesterArena

[svh]

And here’s Douglas Murray being interviewed on NPR.

I bet there was some tutting afterwards. :-)

[David]

I bet there was some tutting afterwards. :-)

NPR’s interviewer, Robert Siegel, didn’t seem entirely prepared for the airing of basic facts. As if it simply isn’t done.

[Sporkatus]

NPR's only interested in lofty musing and the facts that enable it. There are such facts as are simply too vulgar. Disruptive of the flow of the elements in the studio, you see.

Related, the repeating of bollocks is often essential, as it frames the mind properly. Regard, if you will, the next time some pretentious phrase or "observation" is repeated: it's really something rather like a koan.

[Black Ball]

Melanie Phillips
http://www.melaniephillips.com/astroturfing-lynch-mob/

[JuliaM]

So I'm sitting here in the morning, getting ready to go to work, listening to Radio 2 and the middle class panic of the day is clearly Himalayan Balsam. It's an invasive species, it causes damage, it needs to be rooted out wherever it's seen, and the Royal Horticultural Society is marshalling its forces to eradicate it.

And strangely, no-one's saying we should celebrate this diversity in our floriculture....

[David]

Incidentally, the Question Time clip that Mr Murray mentions - in which an unsavoury Islamic leaflet apparently handed out at Didsbury Mosque, where Salman Abedi worshipped, is presented for discussion and promptly deemed inadmissible - can be viewed here.

As Murray wrote at the time:

An audience member, who happened to have the triple disadvantages of being white, male and not being young, waved an anti-Western leaflet he said had been handed out at an open day at the Didsbury mosque where Salman Abedi worshipped. This significant revelation mainly attracted awkward shuffling. By contrast, a young woman in a headscarf in the audience immediately dismissed the man’s leaflet as probably not from the mosque and in any case “taken out of context.” Along with the programme’s chair, David Dimbleby, she implied it was possible the man had made the leaflet up himself, leaving the poor man spluttering, waving his leaflet and clearly wondering why he wouldn’t be believed.

Quite how the young woman knew that the quoted content was “taken out of context” is something of a mystery, but the air of taboo, and evasion, is, I think, all too familiar.

[David]

The Federalist interviews Douglas Murray here.

[Anon]

We got the cuisine when the numbers were much smaller. I don't see millions of Greeks or Italians, yet we have Greek and Italian restaurants. The number of French residents has shot up this century but there's zero change in the number of French restaurants.

[Mr Hulot]

listening to Radio 2 and the middle class panic of the day is clearly Himalayan Balsam. It's an invasive species, it causes damage, it needs to be rooted out wherever it's seen ... And strangely, no-one's saying we should celebrate this diversity in our floriculture....

If, as we all know, nativism is the worst thing in the history of the world when it comes to people, how can nativism be good when it comes to plants and animals?

Why aren’t we more sensitive to the plight of the poor immigrant kudzu vines, emerald ash borers, and Asian longhorn beetles? After all, conservation in America was largely invented by people who were nativists about flora, fauna, and people... Back in the 1990s, the wealthy couple of David Gelbaum and Monica Chavez Gelbaum bought the Sierra Club’s soul for $100,000,000 on the condition that they drop their immigration restrictionist stance and thus their stance against population growth in the U.S. and in the Sierra Club’s home state of California. This epochal switch has largely disappeared down the memory hole. Today, everybody assumes that plant nativists are, by the nature of their superior morality, human antinativists. But there are psychological tensions in this inherent contradiction.

Now, the easiest thing to do is to simply ignore the contradiction. But it gnaws away at some.

From the Boston Globe: In a polemical essay that appeared in the leading science journal Nature in June, a biologist from Macalester College in Minnesota named Mark Davis led 18 other academics in charging that the movement to protect ecosystems from non-native species stems from a “biological bias” against arbitrarily defined outsiders that ultimately does more harm than good.

[David]

I’m sure you all remember Dr Ben Pitcher and his theories of racist gardening and racist furniture.

Though perhaps not fondly.

[Alice]

Dr Ben Pitcher and his theories of racist gardening and racist furniture.

"Gardeners' Question Time is... saturated with racial meanings."

Still laughing. :-)

[Spiny Norman]

Now, the easiest thing to do is to simply ignore the contradiction. But it gnaws away at some.

Cognitive dissonance is a cross they must bear for the betterment of society...

[David]

Still laughing. :-)

It’s the signature imperviousness. When mocked for his statements, he lies about what he said, then claims that the derision somehow proves him right, and then repeats exactly the thing he claims he didn’t say.

It’s hard to know where to start.

[John D]

"Over 10,000 asylum seekers arrived in Italy from Saturday to Tuesday and some 12,000 have arrived in the last 48 hours."

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/268663/

Not going to end well for anyone.

[Spiny Norman]

Not going to end well for anyone.

The Camp of Saints is just absurd paranoia, and such a scenario could never, ever happen...

[David]

Not going to end well for anyone.

But I’ve been repeatedly assured that political correctness is just another word for manners and that nothing disadvantageous or dystopian could ever result from it.

[Governor Squid]

Cognitive dissonance is a cross they must bear for the betterment of society...

They'll go on for ages about the need to "heighten the contradictions" to hasten the collapse of capitalism, but the moment you start pointing out the contradictions inherent in their own 'arguments' (to use the term generously), they just start screaming at you.

I guess this sauce is never to be poured over the gander. Who knew?