Helen Keller

Mark Steyn writes:

Usually it's the hostage who gets Stockholm Syndrome, but the newly liberated Wood must occasionally reflect that in this instance the entire culture seems to have caught a dose. And, in a sense, we have: multiculturalism is a kind of societal Stockholm Syndrome. Atta's meetings with Bryant are emblematic: He wasn't a genius, a master of disguise in deep cover; indeed, he was barely covered at all, he was the Leslie Nielsen of terrorist masterminds - but the more he stuck out, the more Bryant was trained not to notice, or to put it all down to his vibrant cultural tradition.

That's the great thing about multiculturalism: it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures - like, say, the capital of Bhutan or the principal exports of Malaysia, the sort of stuff the old imperialist wallahs used to be well up on. Instead, it just involves feeling warm and fluffy, making bliss out of ignorance.

Since I take it as truth that ideology is yet another weapon in Richard Dawkin's "arms race", what Steyn is describing in multiculturalism is a deeply flawed evolutionary strategy that is itself an outgrowth or mutation of a decidedly successful one.

In fact, it is nothing if not a flight from falsification. It is a Western-based ideology whose sole remaining attribute is its ability to speak, its senses of hearing, sight and smell having severely atrophied. If the West is Clark Kent, multiculturalism is Helen Keller.

Nevertheless, this refusal to interact cannot last. As Ayn Rand said, "We can seek to avoid reality. But we cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."