Fiddling while Rome burns. The current dominant "fairy story" is wokery - making sacred - literally - race, gender and sex in particular. Under this umbrella the bad (illiberal) behaviour of minorities (or in the case of Australia, the female majority) can shelter.
I think Finnis has easily the better of this because he is not so blind to human nature as Raz. But I agree that they are both wrong for largely the reasons you say.
I see little hope for defunding the whole horrible apparatus, but on immigration and security there are some positive signs that Europe is waking up to the horrible mistake they've made.
I don't know about Australia because you seem to have a very pragmatic sense there, but in any country of Europe there is no real tradition of naturalization. I could move to France, and possibly even gain citizenship and the franchise - but socially/culturally I would never be French. Immigration into any country like that is bound to be problematic. Germany certainly experienced it with the embrace of Turkish labor, on supposedly a temporary basis. Does a child born to Turkish parents in Germany really think of himself as a German? Do Germans think of him as a German? People from imperial territories had some claim on the home country, but I don't think the home country ever felt too kindly to that claim, nor was it exercised in mass.
The only country that I can think of that really made wide-open immigration work was the U.S., and we are long removed from that era. We have now abandoned assimilation in favor of balkanizing on identitarian lines. I do not expect that to end well and we have no one to blame but ourselves (actually just a select set of assholes with really bad ideas).
But the example stands that it can work, as long as old-country identities are at least partially shed and commitment to ideals foreign to the old-country (but core to the receiving one) are embraced.
Multiculturalism is an indication that the governing class does not value the native culture. This is an inevitable consequence of the way the education system turns its elite into "anywhere people".
Taqiyya is also practiced by communists and International Socialists/Trotskyists and other authoritarian parties in a democracy. Why authoritarians are allowed to stand in democratic elections is a mystery. However, all the parties lie and actually represent narrow interest groups.
My Mum was something of a moral philosopher, and reading this reminded me strongly of a conversation I had with her in the 80's, on exactly this. She covered much of the same ground and came to the same conclusions. She very clearly saw our current predicament coming, but being something of a libertarian she knew she needed to work out how her prescriptions fitted into an "ordered liberty" framework. But she also worked in a truly Catholic social justice/action imperative (not the bullshit Catholic Social Justice espoused by Bishops Conferences and the like - Mum had actually read Rerum Novarum and the related encyclicals).
"John Finnis, who argues (among many other things) that discrimination on the basis of both religion and nationality—but not race—is justified."
Well here in the USA, Project 2025 is all set to start taking away religious freedom and start discriminating against religions other than Christianity. I guess the only "good" thing about it is that Christians themselves are constantly at idealogical war with each other, what with Protestants saying Catholics worship Satan and Catholics saying they are the one true church and nobody gets to heaven unless they get catachized in the Catholic Church. So the rest of us citizens are out here wondering which sect of Christianity is going to "Christian Nationalism" our country.
Islam teaches that conquest can be achieved through jihad (war) or hijrah (migration). How do you propose to counter this, or do you?
Fiddling while Rome burns. The current dominant "fairy story" is wokery - making sacred - literally - race, gender and sex in particular. Under this umbrella the bad (illiberal) behaviour of minorities (or in the case of Australia, the female majority) can shelter.
I think Finnis has easily the better of this because he is not so blind to human nature as Raz. But I agree that they are both wrong for largely the reasons you say.
I see little hope for defunding the whole horrible apparatus, but on immigration and security there are some positive signs that Europe is waking up to the horrible mistake they've made.
My criterion is simple and hopefully inoffensive: do you like trees? 'Cuz we like trees.
Yes
The debate on the gender of angels intersects with the number of angels on the head of a pin.
I don't know about Australia because you seem to have a very pragmatic sense there, but in any country of Europe there is no real tradition of naturalization. I could move to France, and possibly even gain citizenship and the franchise - but socially/culturally I would never be French. Immigration into any country like that is bound to be problematic. Germany certainly experienced it with the embrace of Turkish labor, on supposedly a temporary basis. Does a child born to Turkish parents in Germany really think of himself as a German? Do Germans think of him as a German? People from imperial territories had some claim on the home country, but I don't think the home country ever felt too kindly to that claim, nor was it exercised in mass.
The only country that I can think of that really made wide-open immigration work was the U.S., and we are long removed from that era. We have now abandoned assimilation in favor of balkanizing on identitarian lines. I do not expect that to end well and we have no one to blame but ourselves (actually just a select set of assholes with really bad ideas).
But the example stands that it can work, as long as old-country identities are at least partially shed and commitment to ideals foreign to the old-country (but core to the receiving one) are embraced.
Multiculturalism is an indication that the governing class does not value the native culture. This is an inevitable consequence of the way the education system turns its elite into "anywhere people".
Once the native culture has gone the country is changed forever - see https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/why-did-the-english-self-destruct It becomes a football for the corporate elite to play with.
Taqiyya is also practiced by communists and International Socialists/Trotskyists and other authoritarian parties in a democracy. Why authoritarians are allowed to stand in democratic elections is a mystery. However, all the parties lie and actually represent narrow interest groups.
See https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/your-rights-under-equality-act-2010/race-discrimination. In the Equality Act, race can mean your colour, or your nationality (including your citizenship). It can also mean your ethnic or national origins, which may not be the same as your current nationality.
"I do not want to be the government official who paraphrases Star Trek...."
"who [adapts] Star Trek...."
(Pedantic? I?)
N
This is a very good, very necessary piece.
My Mum was something of a moral philosopher, and reading this reminded me strongly of a conversation I had with her in the 80's, on exactly this. She covered much of the same ground and came to the same conclusions. She very clearly saw our current predicament coming, but being something of a libertarian she knew she needed to work out how her prescriptions fitted into an "ordered liberty" framework. But she also worked in a truly Catholic social justice/action imperative (not the bullshit Catholic Social Justice espoused by Bishops Conferences and the like - Mum had actually read Rerum Novarum and the related encyclicals).
"John Finnis, who argues (among many other things) that discrimination on the basis of both religion and nationality—but not race—is justified."
Well here in the USA, Project 2025 is all set to start taking away religious freedom and start discriminating against religions other than Christianity. I guess the only "good" thing about it is that Christians themselves are constantly at idealogical war with each other, what with Protestants saying Catholics worship Satan and Catholics saying they are the one true church and nobody gets to heaven unless they get catachized in the Catholic Church. So the rest of us citizens are out here wondering which sect of Christianity is going to "Christian Nationalism" our country.