Whatever transpires in Scotland next week, something’s afoot that illustrates a simple fact: Multiculturalism cannot work.
We’re supposed to be living in the era of consolidation of power. There’s the European Union and the euro, NAFTA and ambitions for a North American Union, and former Israeli president Shimon Peres even floated the idea of a UN-style Organization of United Religions. And isn’t this the tide of history? Just as the Brythons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans, and others all became amalgamated into the “English,” just as the same happened in other parts of Europe with different “barbarian” tribes, doesn’t everything move toward oneness?
That’s the theory. The reality today is a bit different: Secession is all the rage. There are the Basques and Catalonians in Spain, the Kurds in the Middle East, Belgium’s Flanders region, Venice and other areas in Italy, and no small number of U.S. counties want to separate from their states. All talk? Right now, yes. But a lot of this talk wasn’t heard a decade ago, and the rest of it has gotten noticeably louder. And then there’s Scotland. It’s perilously close to turning talk into action with a referendum on independence next Thursday and a recent poll showing the “yes” contingent ahead — for the first time ever. What’s happening here in our Kumbaya world?
Human nature is happening.
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