RUTHFULLY YOURS

Once upon a time there were people who naively fantasized about how all the incompatible cultures of the world were going to magically blend, weaving a beautiful tapestry of colors and variations. They called this “Multiculturalism”. Increasingly, the tapestry is made up of glass shards and human remains. At what point do we begin to tally the lives ruined or taken by members of all the “guest” cultures from members of all the host cultures? Pretty soon, I hope, since that seems to be a recurring element of multiculturalism. Wherever you see one, you see the other.

Cultures are either consciously abandoned, or consciously enforced. The theory of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture, still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with which it is mutually exclusive. Multiculturalism is entirely subversive. It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not want or need them. Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent. The “melting pot” concept worked not because of the concept of multiculturalism, but as testament against it. Those who came here in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation consciously chose to abandon the cultures they left in favor of the American culture. They became Americans, embracing one culture.

If one was being less generous than to call multiculturalism a tonic for simpletons, it would be more accurate to say that modern leftist multiculturalism is actually a weapon. Its purpose is not to enhance the host, but to consume it. If the host’s culture is peaceful, it has no use for malcontents who insist upon the dominance of their native culture. Malcontents, in the form of angry and entitled guests, foment chaos and disorder. And yet, the leftists insist that we demonstrate our cultural superiority by abandoning the superiority of our own culture and importing incompatible languages, traditions, practices, and morals.

Iran and North Korea exposed its hollowness weeks before our president convened it.

Hours before President Obama convened a fifty-nation summit on nuclear weapons last Thursday, he celebrated himself in a Washington Post op-ed. He began the article by reminding us that nuclear proliferation and the use of nuclear weapons are the greatest dangers facing the world, saying that was why he committed us, seven years ago, to stopping the spread of such weapons and seeking a world without them.

Obama went on to praise his nuclear weapons deal with Iran, saying that it closed every single one of Iran’s paths to the bomb. (He omitted to mention those that remain open, such as the agreement’s risible inspections regime which guarantees Iranian cheating by allowing it to self-inspect some of its key nuclear sites. And the one that allows it, after fifteen years, to enrich as much uranium to weapons grade as it likes, ensuring it can produce nuclear weapons then whenever it likes.)

Unsurprisingly, neither is there anything to learn from nor anything accomplished at Obama’s summit. There’s much more to learn and dissect in the actions and pronouncements of Iran and North Korea before the summit.

On March 8 and 9, Iran launched ballistic missiles in tests of weapons that have at least the range to hit Israel. According to the Iranian FARS news agency, the missiles were painted with the slogan, “Israel must be wiped off the Earth” in Hebrew. UN Security Council resolutions are supposed to be stopping Iran from testing such missiles, but those resolutions are having the same effect they usually have, which is exactly none.

On March 30, the day before Obama’s summit, Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “Those who say the future is in negotiations, not in missiles, are either ignorant or traitors.”

By now, last summer’s nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries, including the United States, is widely understood to have been a windfall for the clerical regime in Tehran. The agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), netted the Islamic Republic some $100 billion in previously escrowed oil revenue, a sum roughly equivalent to a quarter of Iran’s annual economy.

That, however, now appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. Recent days have brought new revelations that the Obama administration is planning still more economic concessions to Iran’s ayatollahs. Specifically, the White House appears to be mulling the possibility of allowing Iran limited access to the U.S. financial system, as a sweetener for its continued compliance with the terms of the JCPOA.

That plan effectively reneges on promises made by the White House last summer in selling the nuclear deal to a skeptical Congress. Back in July, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Treasury secretary Jack Lew waved away congressional worries that Iran’s regime might be unjustly enriched as a result of the JCPOA. Lew pledged that, regardless of the provisions of the new nuclear deal, the administration was committed to keeping existing, and extensive, trade restrictions in place.

“Iranian banks will not be able to clear U.S. dollars through New York, hold correspondent account relationships with U.S. financial institutions, or enter into financing arrangements with U.S. banks,” Lew promised. “Iran, in other words, will continue to be denied access to the world’s largest financial and commercial market.”

Now, however, the secretary and his colleagues are singing a decidedly different tune. “Since Iran has kept its end of the deal, it is our responsibility to uphold ours, in both letter and spirit,” Lew told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington last week. The message was abundantly clear: For the administration, allowing Iran access to the U.S. market has become an article of good faith.