Right way, wrong way, Norway

A site called Honest Thinking, based in Norway, recently posted a manifesto (shouldn't we retire this word, with its Marxist associations?) about immigration. (Tip of the hat: Gates of Vienna)

The two editors responsible encourage others to reproduce the manifesto, so long as it is complete and verbatim. Right, then, here it goes:

The immigration policies currently in vogue in most Western countries show increasing signs of being unsustainable, and the associated problems are likely to grow ever more severe in the coming years. This is one of the largest ethical dilemmas of our time. We therefore believe the entire foundation for the prevailing regime needs to be reconsidered, and submit this manifesto as a starting point for reasoning about these challenges.

1. It is a moral duty to promote human rights all over the world.
2. The concept of human rights must not be confused with any particular legal implementation or formulation of that concept, since such explications could contain internal inconsistencies or imply consequences that would cause conflict with the previous tenet.
3. The worth of a human being is independent of his or her gender, religion, ethnic background, sexual preferences, culture, language, and other such markers.
4. Cooperation across cultural, language, religious, and ethnic borders is desirable and necessary.
5. Even so, culture, language, religion, and ethnicity are instrumental in establishing each individual’s identity, and thus central in forming his or her sense of belonging and loyalty. Any policy aimed at sustainability must take this into account.
6. It is therefore legitimate for any sovereign state to implement restrictions towards non-citizens in such a way that control over its demographic development is retained.
7. It is unacceptable, without foregoing careful consideration and proper democratic processes, that political dispositions be made to alter the demographic composition of a state in such a way that its stability, its inner cohesion, and the mutual loyalty of its population be threatened.

We are apprehensive of individuals, organizations, and other legal entities that try to quench free and open debate on the above issues, and regard such political actors as having little or no legitimacy in questions of democracy and human rights. Moreover, ideologies and political movements whose goals are irreconcilable with the above tenets should be considered devoid of moral and intellectual integrity, unless they are able to justify said discrepancy.

It's a strange mixture of conventional liberal pieties and daring (for Eurabia) nonconformity.

The former are contained in items 1,3, and 4. We need not detain ourselves with this boilerplate.

Item 2 is kind of overcast, but it seems to be saying that claiming it's for "human rights" does not automatically justify a law or policy. That's a very crucial point; too bad the authors couldn't shake off their legal or academic backgrounds enough to state it plainly.

Item 5 — "Culture, language, religion, and ethnicity are instrumental in establishing each individual’s identity, and thus central in forming his or her sense of belonging and loyalty" — is not helpful. All those factors play a role in a person's psychological makeup, but are they instrumental and central, which implies that everyone's essence consists of tribal loyalties? Politically, this is inadequate: it leaves out understanding arrived at by thinking. It also ignores nationality, apparently still a dirty word for the manifesters.

Item 5 is also deficient philosophically because it appears to give no place to an individual's spirit or soul. For some people, even today, spiritual truth as they perceive it is far more important than culture, etc. (True, the item does include religion, but in context it is very likely that this means formal religious doctrine, not an inner calling.)

As long as people are perceived, or perceive themselves, as a bunch of inherited or indoctrinated qualities glued together, with no "belonging and loyalty" to any higher truth, we will continue to have sectarian and ethnic strife.

Item 6 is very good.

So is item 7, except that "without foregoing careful consideration and proper democratic processes" sounds too much like an escape clause. Careful consideration by whom? Lots of multi-culti partisans working overtime for ethnic replacement believe they have carefully considered its advantages.

The postscript seems to be a ringing defense of free speech, but it too is a little wet. "We are apprehensive of individuals, organizations, and other legal entities that try to quench free and open debate on the above issues, and regard such political actors as having little or no legitimacy in questions of democracy and human rights" — so they might have a little legitimacy? "Ideologies and political movements whose goals are irreconcilable with the above tenets should be considered devoid of moral and intellectual integrity, unless they are able to justify said discrepancy" — now there's a weaselly pronouncement any politician could be proud of. In other words, such ideologies and political movements are unjustifiable, except when they're justified.

But I'll still give these gentlemen one thumb up. In Norway, this is pretty courageous stuff, even with its hedging. The Resistance is getting bolder in Europe, even as political correctness becomes harsher.