Christopher Caldwell discusses the New Years’ Eve coordinated attacks/gang-gropes against women by Muslim immigrants in major German cities:

“Suddenly there was a hand on my bottom .  .  .”

Caldwell:

…But the rules that protect minorities from mobs can be used to protect politicians from democracy. There may or may not be an increasing tendency to racism in Germany. But there is certainly an increasing tendency to brand as “racist” positions contrary to the interests of the government’

Maintaining German citizens’ basic security and freedom from violence in the public square would be nice.

If you’re going to cram over 800,000 mostly Muslim, mostly male, refugees from poor and war-torn lands along with German citizens in the public square, beneath your political ideals, ideals which guide your current immigration policy, then you’d better be able to demonstrate your ideals and policies are keeping citizens safe, and persuade them as to your basic vision for civil society.

Competence is often a high bar.

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Spiked Online reviews the past year since the Charlie Hebdo attacks.  Agree or disagree with the views of the Charlie Hebdo staff, a disproportionately small number of cartoonists, journalists, writers and thinkers in Europe are left to maintain one of the core freedoms of the West.

And they’re left to do it against people willing to kill them.

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Some light humor:

Michael Moynihan reviewed Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ which praised the Cuban Health Care System.

Christopher Hitchens took a helicopter ride with Sean Penn, and that tracksuit-wearing strongman of the people, Hugo Chavez-Hugo Boss:

It’s a long way out of socialist and revolutionary solidarity, which continually occupies the South American mind. One more revolution: Adam Kirsch takes a look at Mario Vargas Llosa. The Dream Of The Peruvian.

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As previously posted:

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Salman Rushdie at about minute 57:00:  ‘This idea of separate treatment for separate cultures…I think essentially if we follow that to its conclusion…destroys our ability to have a really moral framework for society.’

From Theodore Dalrymple:

‘The doctrine of multiculturalism arose, at least in Holland, as a response to the immigration influx, believed initially to be temporary. The original purpose of multiculturalism was to preserve the culture of European “guest workers” so that when they returned home, having completed their labor contracts, they would not feel dislocated by their time away. The doctrine became a shibboleth of the Left, a useful tool of cultural dismantlement, only after family reunion in the name of humanitarianism became normal policy during the 1960s and the guest workers transformed into permanent residents.’