PARADISE LOST

"Grandpa, what was it like in Australia when only white people could come and live here?"

Grandpa looks up from his newspaper, slightly startled by the question. "Honey, it was the most wonderful place on Earth." Then after a moment's reflection, he adds in a quieter voice, "compared with what it's like now." His granddaughter turns back to her writing assignment. A tiny wrinkle appearing on her forehead reflects her confusion. She loves Grandpa so much but what he has just said is in a head-on collision with what her teachers have been telling her about 'the bad old days' when Australia was ruled by something called 'the White Australia Policy' She's been told it is a very good example of 'racism' That's a new word she has learned. Although a little unsure of its meaning, she knows it is something terrible and 'racists' are very bad people. The thought of ever running into one of them frightens her.

She underlines the title of her assignment again - 'Why Couldn't They See That it was so Wrong?, - but she's stuck with what to write. As she turns up her little nose in frustration, Grandpa has lost interest in his newspaper and is staring into the dancing flames in the fireplace. 'Yes,' he's thinking, 'compared with today, it was a paradise.'

A paradox, one may conclude. After all, we are constantly told that what we have today in our multicultural wonderland is, if not paradise yet, the coming paradise, as in the old Communist promise, is just around the corner. So let's try and untangle the paradox with a little cost/benefit analysis.

Firstly, this is (supposedly) what we have on the credit side of the multicultural ledger: exotic cuisine, propagandist, state or council funded multicultural fetes and celebrations .... (If any other benefits can be thought of please use the comments facility to help out.)

Now for an inventory of what has been paid for these scant benefits. Let me count the ways:

1  A seeping away of social capital  Robert Putnam is a professor of Political Science at Harvard University. Straight after marrying his wife Rosemary in 1963, he converted to her religion of Judaism. In spite of his findings, the result of comprehensive social analysis, he remains a self-described 'progressive and integrationist, as well as a convinced multiculturalist, which in itself tends to point to Multiculturalism's kinship with religion in their both being faith-based.  So what were these disturbing findings?

Perhaps uncharacteristic of an egg-head, Putnam was a keen league bowler. This was what initially nudged him toward the research into diversity and its effect on social capital he launched on. He somehow stumbled upon the fact that while the once ubiquitous bowling leagues were disappearing like washing on the clothes-line when gypsies arrived in town, bowling itself was becoming more and more popular. Talk about a paradox!

This led in 1995 to his essay, Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital appearing in the Journal of Democracy. In 2000, this was expanded into the book Collapse and Revival of American Community. To what must have been Putnam's most bitter disappointment, the original essay was an expression of an unavoidable conclusion: diversity led to diminishing social capital, most surprisingly not only between different ethic groups but also within them.  Social capital is essentially mutual trust and community spirit. Both flee as diversity moves in. People retreat from each other to the safety of their homes and TV sets.

The 2000 book appears to be a self-prescribed cure for the shock he'd experienced, in that it is centred upon his predicting a bouncing upwards after the decline. All it would take to more than remedy the collapse in social capital in spite of his theorising about two distinct types of social capital - bonding and bridging.  The first was the social cementing within ethnic groups and the latter between ethnic groups and, the two types being interconnected, tend to pull each other down. Ergo, the hoped for revival appears to be yet another element of faith, if not wishful thinking. It's unknown to this writer whether the Islamic branch of diversity was factored into Putnam's thinking. Because of the complications inherent in this, one must suspect it wasn't. It's difficult to accept the likelihood of a revival of social capital when co-inhabitants are duty bound to murder, maim and destroy the society of those not sharing their barbaric religion. All Putnam's research of course was concerned with American society but no reason whatsoever exists for it not also applying to Australia.

2  Fragmentation and the loss of social cohesion  This is of course closely related to the diminution of social capital. It is though more obvious and easier to see. Arthur Calwell was one of the last true Labor Party warhorses of working class background. With a nose that almost forced cartoonists to draw him as a parrot and a voice sounding as though it was coming out of a nose even bigger, he was, although brilliant, incapable of taking the leap into the modern media dominated era of politics - the main reason he was ditched in favour of the smug, camera-mugging Gough Whitlam as Labor Party leader who messiah-like would lead the party out of its twenty three year exile in the political desert.

 However, as a former immigration minister, he presided over the first great watershed of Australian immigration by overseeing a tidal wave of refugees from the smoking ruins in which World War 2 had left Europe. Given this was a radical change from the traditional source of immigration, it needed to be done with the greatest delicacy and consideration, hence the selection of only the best looking refugees to begin with. Calwell in his wisdom and knowing these people were not of too dissimilar stock to the native inhabitants, was confident they could eventually assimilate. And, although he succumbed to pressure and dropped the ball by allowing Jewish immigration, he was absolutely adamant this was as far as he was willing to travel on non-traditional immigration, that is, the line was drawn between Europeans, or Caucasians and the rest. Why? For starters he warned about the establishment of 'ghettos'. For this and similar sentiments ("two Wongs don't make a white"), Calwell's memory is now quarantined in the badlands of Australian history in the eyes of the New Class.

But was Calwell so wrong or had he been singularly prescient? The evidence before one's eyes should be sufficient as a decider. Not only do we have ghettos; we have areas where if discretion really is the better part of valour, it's probably not wise for a white person (Australian) to enter. The multiculturalists in their dreaminess evidently imagined a multicultural Australia which would resemble the (socially engineered) office of a government department, or in the wider world, where members of various ethnic groups all breathed in the euphoria attendant on visiting the celebratory functions of other ethnic groups, all singing I am, you are, we are all Australian. 

But naturally, these dreamers, most of whom can never allow themselves to wake up, live in a fantasy world so far removed from the real world, it might as well be on another planet. The best smelling salts for these people, if they showed any inclination at all to be woken up, would be a tour of what effectively is the logical conclusion of multiculturalism. That would be a jail where increasingly members of different ethnic groups are segregated - to prevent them from tearing each other's throats out.

3  The loss of freedom   The catch-phrase of the French Revolution was 'liberte,
egalite, fraternite' - freedom, equality, brother hood. To anyone who has taken time to scrutinise this, it is a crock. The reality is freedom OR equality. To have freedom, a natural order of inequality will arise.  To have equality, freedom needs to be suppressed - as in every disastrous communist experiment ever tried. And so it is in Australia. Our freedoms have disappeared like those clothes on the line. In order for us all to be equal in the Utopia of diversity, we have to be kept in line - one level line. And the most effective tool for achieving this? Why, affirmative action of course. How after all did that rainbow of colour appear in the aforementioned government office? (Hint: it wasn't on merit)

What if there are some ethnic groups that just can't seem to get their act together? No problem. Just keep throwing (our) money at them. If all else fails, we can just spend even more money supporting them for the rest of their lives.

And I'm sorry snowflakes in the remote possibility you're looking in, but we once had the freedom to insult each other - yes I know, OMG how did we possibly survive without the assistance of the hurt feelings police to call on? Now, one must be far more circumspect in casting aspersions. There's a lot to consider. There's the Human Rights Commission; there's the law against inciting racial hatred - this one's very elastic - and there's probably soon to be a law against expressions of 'homophopia'. Doubting the holocaust? Get it off your chest while you still can.

4  Unprecedented crime and violence  There was once customary among Australian men to settle their differences with their fists. It's probably difficult for many now to believe but kicking was considered cowardly and to kick a man when he was down was simply not on and the offender would be liable to a quick intervention. Now, where once a punch would be thrown, a knife is thrust - it's the 'go-to'. Hardly a day goes by when someone isn't knifed and, slightly less frequently, killed. This wasn't even a problem when we had refugees pouring in from the devastation of six years of European war, or even after taking in those fleeing the collapse of South Vietnam. However, it definitely became a problem after taking in another batch of people from a war-torn area, but this time people with a singularly insular and violent mentality.

Who remembers the Anglo-Saxon bikie? Who knows? Perhaps he's not extinct - simply on the endangered species list. He was essentially what Australians used to call a "no-hoper" - carrying a connotation of one not making the cut socially but basically harmless. How times have changed since his displacement by an imported breed definitely not harmless. Gangsterism and highly organised crime was the new bikie's stocks in trade. Coincidentally, in an attempt to curtail the violent crime of members of this new breed, a special police branch was formed dedicated to the investigation of crimes committed by members of a specific ethnic group. Called the Middle Eastern Crime Squad, this was unprecedented in the history of Australian crime.

Although not entirely free of the fear of rape, Australian women would once not have to worry about being raped by men who would claim they didn't know it was wrong to rape, or to be raped as part of the plan of attack in the war against infidels. And if a woman became a rape victim, it would have been impossible to be actually found to be the culprit. That's changed. To quote a certain Sheik Hilali who in 2006, but with his unbalanced mind snagged somewhere in the seventh century, said, "If you take out uncovered meat and place it on the street ... and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" Such a gentleman.

5  City centres looking like no-go areas  For someone who has never thought of himself as anything other than Australian, from a long line of Australians, it is an absolute outrage to be subjected to the feeling he is in a foreign country when strolling through the streets of his home city.

6  The end of Australian Democracy  This was surreptitiously engineered by a little something called a bipartisan policy. If Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee are in lock step on an issue as important as the racial transformation of our country, it is glaringly obvious that the people get no say in the matter, no matter how many times they obediently plod to the polling booths or who they vote for, especially, as Bob Hawke once admitted, the media had been brought in on the act. Even with the might of the media poisoning people's minds day and night, every survey that's ever been done has shown convincingly that the majority is against both mass immigration and multiculturalism. So it's not hard to work out why they were never allowed a say. If they had been, we'd still be looking like the kids in Grandpa's old school photos - all white.

 We've been betrayed, sold out. We're well within our rights to tear up the social contract. We never signed on for this. 

7  Stagnating wages, soaring housing costs  Adjusted for inflation, wages were higher years ago without the competition from cheap imported labour. And beggaring belief, the Australian Council of Trade Unions is a willing accomplice in the multicultural/mass immigration crime of the millennium.
The old unionists who fought for every improved condition and every extra crumb from the banquet table must be gyrating in their graves. The second part of the double whammy is of course the obscene amounts being asked for houses and flats. A great many of the new comers pushing up the price of housing don't even deign to live here; they simply send their money to live here. This of course suits governments, the real estate racket and the building industry but what do the plebs get out of it apart form cities becoming unlivable?

This is by no means the end of the list - it seems to go on like a country road. However, even with a truncated list, it's obvious we've paid a massive price, and for what? What exactly did we get in return apart from the usual crap about restaurants and fireworks on Chinese New Year unless you're like Putnam who just likes "a more interesting place in which to live." Speaking of the Chinese, a curse originating with them and as deadly as an Aboriginal witch-doctor the pointing his bone at someone gullible enough  to believe it means his demise, is, "may you live in interesting times".

Grandpa may have been exaggerating a  little, even idealising the past by likening it to a paradise, but by Christ it was several orders of magnitude better than the hell we are only just entering.