From the London Times:
Yet it is hard not to feel that something serious is happening. Paris, Amsterdam, New Orleans and Birmingham are not the Balkans or the Middle East. If violence is in the air in the citadels of liberal democracy, alarms should be ringing…. Then there is the collapse of the concept of national belonging, the feeling that we are all in this together and that the distress of some of us is a matter for all of us. Far from being a means of integration, multiculturalism has become a path to segregation. There are fewer mixed neighbourhoods, more urban and suburban ghettos. The ties that bind grow ever weaker. The forces that divide become stronger year by year….
There is no shortcut that allows us to bypass the long, slow task of society-building; integrating minorities, creating a shared sense of history and destiny and cultivating a national conversation in which each of us has a voice. Otherwise the prospects are dark. When conversation ends, violence begins.
The rabbi is mistaken only in thinking that the state has a positive role to play in society. In fact, the two are inherently at odds, hence the need for society’s limits on the state. Once the state slips its restraints, it immediately begins destroying society. This is why all state involvement on societal organizations must be destroyed and those who further it removed from power and positions of influence.
The state is like an immune system. Kept to its proper place and performing its proper function, it can defend society against those who would destroy it. But once it begins attacking society’s vital organs, it is like a lethal leukemia that must be eradicated before it fatally weakens the victim.
Elements such as distributive entitlements, the public schools, women’s “rights”, paper currency, open immigration and progressive taxation can all be seen as “cancer-causing” factors that structurally weaken society. The elite are foolish to ride this tiger; it seems the fatal lessons of past utopian tyrants have been completely lost on them.