“Multiculturalism as an official doctrine, complete with enforcing bureaucracies, undermines the rule of law because it seeks to divide people, formalise their cultural differences and enclose them in moral and intellectual ghettoes. As a result, as Bhiku Parekh puts it, ‘The idea of national culture makes little sense.’ But the rule of law requires a common cultural understanding, not merely the means of repression to enforce a legal code. Once that basic cultural understanding is lost, all that remains is repression, effective or ineffective as the case may be, and experienced by many as alien and unjust.”

—  Theodore Dalrymple

"Why Borders Matter" http://www.spectator.co.uk/2012/09/why-borders-matter/, The Spectator (September 1, 2012).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Multiculturalism as an official doctrine, complete with enforcing bureaucracies, undermines the rule of law because it …" by Theodore Dalrymple?
Theodore Dalrymple photo
Theodore Dalrymple 96
English doctor and writer 1949

Related quotes

Barrett Brown photo

“This is not the “rule of law”…it is the “rule of law enforcement.””

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

The Guardian, "Barrett Brown statement: 'This is not the rule of law, it is the rule of law enforcement'" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/22/barrett-brown-hacking-sentencing-full-statement-text, 22 January 2015.

“Multiculturalism relies on an intellectual rout, the refusal or inability to address what makes up a culture.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: The End of Utopia (1999), p. 39

Robert Sheckley photo

“On Omega, the law was kept secret. Older residents used their knowledge of the law to enforce their rule over the newcomers. This system was condoned and reinforced by the doctrine of the inequality of all men, which lay at the heart of the Omegan legal system. Through planned inequality and enforced ignorance, power and status remained in the hands of the older residents.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 5 (p. 26)

Vasil Bykaŭ photo

“Bureaucracy and culture are incompatible. Bureaucracy needs power, and culture is not wanted by it.”

Vasil Bykaŭ (1924–2003) Belarusian writer

1989. Source: [Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era, Vladimir Shlapentokh, 2014, 22, 9781400861132, Princeton University Press]

Ann Coulter photo

“The British Empire spread Anglo-Saxon culture around the globe–Protestant morals, individualism, the rule of law. Most British colonies rejected those values. Only the ones populated by actual British people–America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand–managed to hold on to them and, as a result, prospered.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015, Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit here at home, if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Marsha Blackburn photo

“If a President can enforce a part of a law and delay a part of a law, then does he have a power to not enforce any law he so chooses? If he can allow illegal aliens to freely run across our border, can he force legal citizens out of the country? Where would be the end of his power? We are a nation of laws with respect and recognition of the rule of law. We are not an imperialist government with a monarch abiding by the rule of one man.”

Marsha Blackburn (1952) American politician

What I Saw During Our Vote To Secure The Border https://www.redstate.com/diary/marshablackburn/2014/08/06/saw-vote-secure-border/ (August 6, 2014)

“Cross-culturality differs radically from multiculturality. There is no creative and re-creative sharing of dimensions in multiculturality.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

Interview with Wilson Harris (2003)

Rosa Luxemburg photo

“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: The Junius Pamphlet (1915), Ch. 1

“Aboriginal lore is vast and it is inclusive. Bitterness comes from loss of culture and loss of lore. And we have lost those things to some degree. But if you actually understand the old culture then you understand that we are all in it together.”

Melissa Lucashenko (1967) Australian writer

On aboriginal lore in “The interview: Melissa Lucashenko” https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-interview-melissa-lucashenko-20130306-2flr6.html in The Sydney Morning Herald (2013 Mar 9)

Related topics