MultiKulti doesn't work ... in Germany

[LaRondo]

Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed

• AFP – German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pictured in Potsdam on Saturday at a conference of younger members her …

by Audrey Kauffmann Audrey Kauffmann – Sun Oct 17, 11:50 am ET
BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.
Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.
"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.
"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.
Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in a weekend interview, also urged the Turkish community living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.
"When one doesn't speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn't serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society," the Turkish president told the Suedeutsche Zeitung.
"That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries."
German President Christian Wulff was due for a five-day visit to Turkey and talks with the country's leaders on Monday.
The immigration debate has at times threatened to split Merkel's conservative party, and she made noises to both wings of the debate.
While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoeing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, who represents the right-wing, recently said Germany did not "need more immigrants from different cultures like the Turks and Arabs" who are "more difficult" to integrate.
While warning against "immigration that weighs down on our social system", Merkel said Germany needed specialists from overseas to keep the pace of its economic development.
According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers, whose lack is knocking about one percent off the country's growth rate.
The integration of Muslims has been a hot button issue since August when a member of Germany's central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants with headscarves.

The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, has since resigned but his book on the subject -- "Germany Does Itself In" -- has flown off the shelves, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.
A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."
Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report. "Hardly eight weeks have passed since publication of Sarrazin's theory of decline, and the longer the debate continues to a lower level it falls," the weekly Der Spiegel commented Sunday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101017/wl_afp/germanymuslimreligionimmigration

Why is it that I cringe when I hear a German leader talking about "Christian values"?

[LaRondo]

Originally Posted by Craig

Why is it that I cringe when I hear a German leader talking about "Christian values"?

Why is it? Germans don't have Christian values?

[Hatterasguy]

She is right, assimilation is how it works.

[strelnik]

Originally Posted by Hatterasguy

She is right, assimilation is how it works.

Compare it to France, where political correctness basically allows minorities to skirt laws.

When in Rome....

[pj67coll]

She's right and so was that banker dude who was forced to resign. But so what? Europe is so far gone that nothing that happens therein is of any world significance any more.

- Peter.

[pawoSD]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

She's right and so was that banker dude who was forced to resign. But so what? Europe is so far gone that nothing that happens therein is of any world significance any more.

- Peter.

She is right to a point, the people coming into the country cannot just try and form their own mini-country within the existing system, it just causes conflict and disorganization.

Our society is pretty far gone also. We've pretty much reached an "anything goes" and "anything is ok if you want it to be" mentality.

Ah how society has and continues.... to degrade.

[raymr]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

She's right and so was that banker dude who was forced to resign. But so what? Europe is so far gone that nothing that happens therein is of any world significance any more.

- Peter.

I don't know what's going to happen there over the next few generations. I already saw in my aunt's village in Germany how the Turks moved in and mostly refuse to assimilate. Perhaps the Germans could do more to reach out, but what I saw was two separate worlds with very little commonality.

It's reasonable to presume the same thing is going on in hundreds of other towns. Most Europeans have been complacent and tolerant with the newcomers, but I sense there may be a powder keg waiting to blow.

[MTUpower]

Originally Posted by Craig

Why is it that I cringe when I hear a German leader talking about "Christian values"?

"Why is it that I cringe when I hear a XXXXX leader talking about "XXXXX values"?



That's the same logic (prejudging/fear/assumption) and no different than when someone says
"I'd hate to have those XXXXX move into my neighborhood".

Originally Posted by MTUpower

"Why is it that I cringe when I hear a XXXXX leader talking about "XXXXX values"?



That's the same logic (prejudging/fear/assumption) and no different than when someone says
"I'd hate to have those XXXXX move into my neighborhood".

I agree, although I do find the term "Christian values" especially ironic.

Personally, I don't want to live in any country where the leader can refer to a specific religion's "values" without having rotten fruit thrown at him/her.

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by Craig

I agree, although I do find the term "Christian values" especially ironic.

Personally, I don't want to live in any country where the leader can refer to a specific religion's "values" without having rotten fruit thrown at him/her.

What do you mean by that?

- Peter.

[MTUpower]

Assimilation is the key- and it's when the newcomers do not issues are raised. For example it's hard to have a safety net of low income gov help when the many groups view this "safety net" differently. One group may view it as a safety net when a person is down on their luck to be used then and only then and another group views it as a base income that is a right to collect $ from the gov regardless of if you can work or not. One group may view standing in line as a basic rule of society- the other does not and everyone rushes forward with the strongest outreached hand getting the "prize" first. Without assimilation society truly becomes closer to law of the jungle style of living and everyone is weakened. Another simple everyday example is what side of the road a group rides bicycles on. In the USA the law and rule is to ride with traffic on the right side. Hispanics and illegal immigrant nearly 100% ride against traffic- causing traffic accidents that simply would not happen if assimilation took place. It's a very small thing but shows how culture and society is weakened- there are literally thousands of examples, and many of those examples are reasons the culture/people ask that outsiders to assimilate and if they do not, to leave.

Originally Posted by pj67coll

What do you mean by that?

- Peter.

I do seem to remember Germany doing some nasty stuff while claiming to be a christian nation; they weren't the first and probably won't be the last. In my experience, religion has very little to do with "values."

Originally Posted by MTUpower

Assimilation is the key- and it's when the newcomers do not issues are raised. For example it's hard to have a safety net of low income gov help when the many groups view this "safety net" differently. One group may view it as a safety net when a person is down on their luck to be used then and only then and another group views it as a base income that is a right to collect $ from the gov regardless of if you can work or not. One group may view standing in line as a basic rule of society- the other does not and everyone rushes forward with the strongest outreached hand getting the "prize" first. Without assimilation society truly becomes closer to law of the jungle style of living and everyone is weakened. Another simple everyday example is what side of the road a group rides on. In the USA the law and rule is to ride with traffic on the right side. Hispanics and illegal immigrant nearly 100% ride against traffic- causing traffic accidents that simply would not happen if assimilation took place. It's a very small thing but shows how culture and society is weakened- there are literally thousands of example, and many of those examples are reasons the culture/people ask that outsiders assimilate and if they do not, to leave.

I bet, with a little research, you could find similar statements made about every group of American immigrants for the last 150 years. Translation: I got mine and I don't want to share with the next group because they are not like "us."

Germany is a different culture from the US, many there would actually prefer to have a homogeneous population. Good for them, but I don't want to live in that type of society.

[MTUpower]

Originally Posted by Craig

I do seem to remember Germany doing some nasty stuff while claiming to be a christian nation; they weren't the first and probably won't be the last. In my experience, religion has very little to do with "values."

Yep, they did IMHO, and religion does not have much to to with values but does cause a huge amount of friction in all societies.