Catching up on professional reading this afternoon, I browsed a 30 page Industry Canada decision licensing my client's satellite services. It didn't take long; the left-hand column in English was less than half the whole. The right-side would still have been unreadable even were my language skills better, for I don't know French engineering terms or legal idioms.
But I can measure length--and the French version was a page longer than the English (that's 11 inches, or as they say in Canada, 6.1 deciliters). Canadian official publications are printed in two languages; Canadian taxpayers pay more than double for the privilege of multilingualism.
The rap on Canada is it's boring.1 Not lately. Though perhaps true before a 47 year-old flamboyant -- and flamboyantly single "swinger" -- French-Canadian law professor became Prime Minister in 1968, only three years after first elected as MP. Holding the position (with a six-month Conservative interregnum in 1979-80) until 1984, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (PET to wives and girlfriends) was Canada's most successful politician and the 20th Century's most famous Canadian. His September 2000 obits say, "An ardent believer in "cooperative federalism" and a strong federal government in Canada, Trudeau fought passionately to keep Quebec in Canadian Confederation." Though drawing "violent opposition from Quebec separatists," PET proposed to preserve Canada through the "Official Languages Bill," formalizing "official bilingualism" and mandating perpetually double-sized laws, regulations and other official scrofula.2
What followed: a 1982 Constitution signed over Quebec's objections; a Province of Quebec law requiring commercial signs be predominantly in French, widely resented and later held unconstitutional; the 1987 draft Meech Lake accord, recognizing "Quebec as a 'distinct society' and restor[ing] its veto over most constitutional amendments," ultimately blocked by Elijah Harper, a Native Member of Manitoba's Parliament, because it gave neither Natives nor Manitobans their fair share.
By the time he retired, Trudeau's early opposition to Quebec appeasement led him to oppose the distinct society his language bill fostered. From an acorn, a mighty oak grows.
Another multi-culti nation was Yugoslavia, formed in hope of uniting the "south Slavs" after World War One. Built atop the multi-lingual and -ethinc fault-line where Catholicism, Eastern Rites Orthodox, and Islam met, the country was composed of the Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Albanians who, before Yugoslavia was created, had "virtually independent histories."
Communist Josip Broz, who became Tito in 1930s Vienna and Field Marshal during World War Two, initially agitated for break up, but changed his mind on becoming Prime Minister in 1945 and kept the country together by totalitarianism for decades. The Yugoslavia experiment -- like the grandfather clock of nursery rhyme -- stopped, never to run again, when the old man died in 1980.
After death, the cult of Tito tried resuscitating his reputation--to the extent of stuffing the ballot box of Time Magazine's "Man of the Century" poll (Time disqualified Tito; Einstein won). Meanwhile, the Croats started slaughtering Serbs and Bosnians, Serbs (led by world-renown multi-culturists Slobodan Miloševic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic) started murdering anyone in sight, and everyone killed Bosnians and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Both Bosnia and Kosovo are now U.N. protectorates, the slaughter slowed by blue-helmeted peacekeepers. The Yugoslavian experiment is, thankfully, over. Everyone -- including the Dutch -- lost.
Has anything been learned? Not (until, maybe, this month) in Britain, where mosques in Finsbury are safer than subways, and Saudi-employed Imams stoke grudges and genocide. Not in the mid-East, where the "right of return" is non-negotiable, and the favored "two state solution" actually is a single Palestine governed by Arabs and including all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Not in America, where advocating teaching English to immigrant children in public schools (or questioning free health care for illegal aliens) is evidence of racism and the melting pot an antiquated and somehow offensive idea confined to "BusHitler" conservatives.
At least bureaucrats haven't doubled the size of the already over-stuffed Federal Register. Though it's a bad sign that Los Angeles election officials print their ballots in seven languages (see page 5), despite English language proficiency being part of the citizenship exam--and citizenship still is a prerequisite for voting.
The French-less Nationals lately dropped a half-dozen games in a row, a free-fall worthy of the old Senators, surrendering first place. But the worst team in Washington doesn't play at RFK stadium--it's the anti-war, Howard Dean-loving, left who still worship disastrous multi-culturalism as if it were undefeated.
More:
Even the Guardian, Britain's largest left-wing paper, is learning, as evidenced by Sunday's editorial:
Britain has tilted far too far towards multi-culturalism. We should encourage people to bring their skills, energy, culture and breadth to our country but those we welcome should not be allowed to live in cultural ghettoes. We should not aim to be an umbrella nation sheltering a range of separate ethnic and religious groups but a single nation with far more of a single identity. Core British values should be part of everybody's lives. There should be compulsory English lessons for new arrivals and a comprehensive programme of tuition, backed by significant incentives, for the thousands immigrants, some living in the UK for decades, who speak only Urdu or Arabic. And immigrants need to recognise that rights bring responsibilities.(via Joe's Dartblog)
Still More:
It's bi-partisan, according to the Guardian (UK):
David Davis [likely the next leader of Britain's Torys] today said multiculturalism was "outdated", and that ethnic and religious minorities should respect "the British way of life". Criticising the government for appearing to promote "distinctive identities" over the "common values of nationhood", the shadow home secretary said the UK should learn from the US model of pride in the nation's values.(via Dust My Broom)
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Davis said he now agreed with the opinion of the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, that multiculturalism was out of date.
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1 Like most in the business, post-war publishing lion Bennet Cerf was convinced a title could make or break a book. Asked during one of the legendary New York City multi-martini lunches for the titles that could best boost or chill sales, Cerf gushed over "Lincoln's Mother's Doctor's Dog" (this was the 1950s). His nightmare -- "Canada: Sleeping Giant to the North."
2 The only unfortunate aspect of the ex-Expos moving to Washington to become my home team is the permanent loss of a few French language baseball terms. Because they disdained established English vocabulary, when the Expos entered the league in 1969, the Montreal media developed a charming list of French alternatives, my favorite of which was la balle papillon -- a knuckleball.This post also is available at Blogger News Network.
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