We may well think about reviving the melting pot ideal ourselves as Fraser Nelson writing in the Scotsman suggests for the British.
TONY BLAIR faces two enemies in his new war against British terrorism: the seed of jihad, and the fertile ground on which it is sown. The last mission of his premiership will be finding policies to neutralise both.
The response to the July 7 attacks was always going to be determined by the life story of the culprits. If they were foreigners, it would have been easy to restrict visas and tighten security. But the truth is grotesquely more complex.
Britain is incubating its own suicide bombers and has become the European headquarters for people seeking to indoctrinate them. It is not enough for Blair to “uproot this evil ideology”; he must also treat the soil from which it springs…
Those close to Blair say it is now time to ask whether multiculturalism is to blame – and to accept that pockets of Muslim Britain have been allowed to become isolated and radicalised, thinking they live in an enemy state.
It is a sign of the paucity of debate in Britain that multiculturalism is used interchangeably with ‘immigration’. It is, instead, a specific form of immigration where the foreigners are not encouraged to integrate.
The alternative is the “melting pot” method of integrationism used by the United States, whose newcomers must learn English, salute the flag and sign up to a set of values. They must buy into a basic idea that they have to belong.
This would be seen as cultural imperialism in Britain, where a mosaic-style of immigration has been preferred. The natural consequence has been segregated ghettos – and pockets of radicalism, left alone to seethe. Americans look on aghast at the Britain’s immigration mismanagement. “You seem to shun these folks off to the side, and let them behave as if they never left Islamabad,” says Deroy Murdock, fellow at the Atlas Foundation…
Lack of social cohesion has been the curse of Blair’s premiership. Britain has grown richer, but the underclass has remained down – as Labour tested the materialist theory that welfare and the tax system buy social cohesion.
This idea has never looked more naïve than it does now. After locking up the jihadists, ministers have little choice but to find ways of piecing society back together in northern English cities. And this will be the hardest task of all.