Cartoon Backlash in Europe

The cartoons are finally coming home to roost.

Newsweek's March 6, 2006, International edition has an article on the European backlash over all the cartoon riots. It looks as though Europe has finally had it up to here with all their liberal, multicultural, tolerant policies and the results those policies have reaped. Now they're ready to change their ways.

The world has long looked upon the Dutch as the very model of a modern, multicultural society. Open and liberal, the tiny seagoing nation that invented the globalized economy in the 1600s prided itself on a history of taking in all comers, be they Indonesian or Turkish, African or Chinese.

How different things look today. Dutch borders have been virtually shut. New immigration is down to a trickle. The great cosmopolitan port city of Rotterdam just published a code of conduct requiring Dutch be spoken in public. Parliament recently legislated a countrywide ban on wearing the burqa in public.

Welcome to the end of tolerance, or at least to the nonnegotiable limits to what Europeans will tolerate. Whether it's the Netherlands' rediscovery of Dutch communal values, or the universal affirmations of free speech (to mock religion, or anything else), Europe is everywhere on the defensive.

It. Is. About. Time.

In Germany, which for decades refused to admit it had immigrants (in theory, they were "guest workers" who would one day go home), the newly appointed Federal Integration Commissioner Maria Bohmer now says that this see-no-evil attitude was "wishful thinking," to be replaced by what she calls "offensive integration." Interior Minister Wolfgang Schuble has also called on the country to adopt the more muscular Dutch Way.

Ditto for Schuble's counterpart in France, Nicolas Sarkozy. "The French way of integration no longer works," he said, meaning France's long-held pretense that its strict public secularism could erase differences and make newcomers "French." Immigrants failing to respect basic Western values face deportation. "In the case of a woman kept hostage in her home without learning French, the whole family will be obliged to leave," Sarkozy said, referring to a practice among Europe's most conservative Muslims of importing teenage brides.

The article also discusses some of the challenges facing Europe as they try to assimilate people who have never had to (or been permitted to) assimilate before.

What I want to know is how long it's going to take the multicultural elites in America to catch on and follow the lead of their beloved Europe. How long before we hear "Mr. UN" John Kerry calling for English-only education? How long before we hear about college professors teaching the benefits and necessity of a unified American culture?

I have to admit I'm skeptical about this. The American Left only seems to jump on the European bandwagon when it's headed left. Now that the bandwagon is shifting to the right, will our Lefties hop on? I doubt it, but we can always hope.