Friday, October 13, 2006
EACH DAY A JOY
Colin Miles, a Brit living in Charlotte, North Carolina, writes to Mark Steyn:
Like you I deplore the corrosive effect of multiculturalism. I agree with you - radical Islam is a contagion. I also believe that ‘moderate Muslims’ are, as the silent majority they profess to be, complicit in their silence. They have no broad desire to assimilate; their culture’s one drive is to metastasize.
I live in the South in modest circumstances. Each day God sends is a joy – I catch my breath at the politeness and gentility of everyday life, and the innate goodness of the people I have the good fortune to meet every time I go to the store or fill up with gas.
It’s the same thing in Australia – whenever I have had the privilege of visiting I have been struck by how much Australia has stuck to its values and continues to do so. The complete and utter absence of bullshit is exhilarating.
And as each day passes I realize with deep sorrow how much multiculturalism has damaged, and is close to destroying, my beloved old England. As you have mentioned before, “Fings ain’t wot they used ter be”.
National pride hides in the closet in England. It is the love that dare not speak its name.
One or two years ago I was sitting at the bar waiting for my flight from Charlotte-Douglas to the UK. Two or three bar stools away from me a couple of guys in their late forties were chatting good-naturedly about the merits of their respective homelands. I could only just make out that even though each of them spoke excellent English, English was neither’s first language - their command of the tongue being the result of hard work, dedication and a desire to assimilate.
One of the guys was a proud American, and the other a proud Australian, and I am convinced that neither knew the other was not born Australian or American. When they left for their flights there were warm backslaps, genuine handshakes and mutual compliments about the greatness of each other’s country.
How proud those guys were. How proud they deserved to be. How proud their adoptive homelands rightly are of them.
Beautiful note. Meanwhile, Austin Bay and Glenn Reynolds interview Steyn about his excellent new book.