Thursday 3 September 2015

These are the rules.


Should we review our position on the need to accommodate the inflow of people, mainly from the African countries that are war torn and have forced these people to flee the conflict.

As a society we pride ourselves on our humanity. We thank our lucky stars that we have been born into a peaceful law abiding country where we take for granted the issues of safety and protection which these families have lost specifically since the start of the Arab Spring.
Remember the Arab Spring, when the dictatorships and despotic regimes which had held together the status quo in the North of Africa were defeated by popular uprising. The people were out on the streets protesting and we watched from the safety of our lounge the toing and froing across the various open spaces and city squares. It was fascinating and I'm sure the media felt it was great TV to see so much pent up emotion bubble to the surface.
The hope was that this was the birth of democracy, allowing the people to choose who they wanted to rule them through the ballot box. The dictatorships crumbled and we watched the mob executing Gaddafi in Libya, the West having already put away Saddam Hussain by trial in Iraq. Getting rid of the despots was supposed to bring in good governance but as in the case of Egypt, the result of getting rid of Mubarak and introducing the popular vote produced a result that the "play makers" didn't want and the army stepped in to throw out Morsi.
The region collapsed. It added the harsh brutality of the governance of Eritrea to the basket case which is Somalia, the civil war in Yemen to annihilation of the state of Syria and the rise of ISIS.
People in turmoil, some of which we had a hand in, are the collateral damage of the political class and as humanitarians we have a responsibility through our ethical and moral teaching to reach out and do much more than we are doing. It will, over time warp even more the sureties we once held about the culture and our identity going forward, and I'm not sure that the largely Arabic culture which this new influx of people will bring is an answer with its fiercely Muslim, Patriarchal sense of entitlement. Perhaps it is time to be more stringent and lay down the rules to live here and not assume that everyone will integrate normally. 
The Americans are much more up front in insisting that "now you are an American" and lay great stress on the formality of the flag and what the Constitution means. Individual "human rights" has trumped the continuity of form and tradition which eventually only alienates both sides.
There has to be a quid pro quo, a trade off.  If you want to come here, these are the rules !!

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