Quote Originally Posted by Marco View Post
It may be a case of translation errors, but how Bild's manifesto reads is just going to pour petrol on the current situation

Point 4 is racist
Point 6 is offensive to some religions
Point 11 is highly debatable
Point 13 allows for police brutality
Point 15 goes against what is written in the bible
Point 31 discriminates against some religions
Point 42 is offensive to many religions
Point 43 is highly questionable

All in all, it's an offensive and pretty **** article, the sort of thing you'd expect the National Front to write
I'm sorry you found the idea/manifesto offensive Marco, that wasn't the intention at all, and some of the objections you raised I think go to the heart of the matter about the nature of societies- everywhere on the planet.

I was listening to a debate recently, that looked at the topic of multiculturalism defined as:

"multiculturalism: The doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country."

I'd never considered the full implications of multiculturalism in detail before but saw it previously as having a strength based on diversity. Of course, that isn't what it means, and I think we're experiencing some of the problems when we have had (only recently) some large increases in immigration from very different, even contrasting cultural beliefs.

A point was made that what we might consider is 'multi-ethnicity (ism!!)" , where a country can be made up of lots of people from varying and diverse ethnic/cultural groups, but that there is an overarching, and inclusive culture to a country that people subscribe too. As such, the strength of diversity is valued but social cohesion and, importantly, the avoidance of 'ghettos'. Language learning is respectful to your host country as when people can communicate they can negotiate and understand each other better. I think that's what we've had for many hundreds of years in this country, with people settling from all over the world, but largely subscribing to and, significantly in turn, evolving the country's culture that people contribute too. I think that's what has been missing recently, as there has been such phenomenal changes with no time to evolve and has caused some of the issues we're seeing currently with marked divisions of ideas and beliefs, some of which are intolerant, even martial all in their foundation and proselytising. 'WE' have been a Judeo-Christian culture traditionally, and even though secularism seems to be widespread now, the echos of those underlying philosophies for understanding the world and the country remain. These are largely about tolerance for others.

As Karl Pepper posited:The paradox of tolerance - states that if a society's practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.