Taylor and the Little Picture

In an otherwise strong review of Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, Jared Taylor makes a common error of specialists. Because his professional focus is entirely on the symptoms of mass non-White immigration into the West Taylor rationalises that Europe’s political leaders are reluctantly compelled by the principle of non-discrimination to impose their solution for immigrant related problems on all communities:

By contrast, Europeans act on principle. When the French decided they couldn’t have Arab girls wearing veils to school, they felt compelled to ban yarmulkes and ‘large crucifixes’ as well. Italians and Germans couldn’t ban veils without taking down classroom crucifixes that may have been up for centuries.

Europeans therefore cannot bring themselves to combat alien practices head-on. When the Danes got sick of Muslims fetching brides from the old country, they had to ban young spouses rather than illiterate Third Worlders. By forbidding the import of marriage partners under the age of 24, the Danes mostly stopped the practice, but they had to pretend they had an underage-spouse problem rather than an immigration problem.

Measures like this bother people who shouldn’t be bothered. If the authorities step up surveillance on fire-breathing imams, they think they have to keep tabs on other people, too. If they cut back on welfare because of immigrant chiselers, they have to change the rules for everyone. Although it came to nothing, one Swedish bureaucrat, shocked to discover female genital mutilation was going on in her country, argued for mandatory checkups for every Swedish girl.

If Taylor did not choose to limit his study to the effect and ignore the cause he might have concluded that Europe’s rulers find ‘managing diversity’ a useful excuse for imposing the policies they prefer but that would otherwise have little justification.