America’s Greatest Scandal……The Grand Ignorance of Its Present Population

There is much trouble which accompanies folks who are well educated.  ……well educated in the old sense…..knowledge in the general natural  sciences, human history,  mathematics, the arts, some sense of the trail of human struggle through the millenia as well as through ones culture. 

A civilized society needs to know and value its heroes.  

A nation without heroes is a society without both personna and ideals.   Welcome to America, 2010.

The greatest scandal in American history is the collapse in its educational institutions of teaching knowledge  over the past half century which is at the core of  the country’s descension into its present state of  a culture and therefore the nation in trouble.

I realize the following video is primarily shown for entertainment.  My contention is that this is America the educated of today.   Citizen ignorance is overwhelmingly crippling the country.  It is   disgraceful and humiliating…….the high point of a peoples pleased with their own knownothingness.  For the national ignorance accompanies its teachings over the past few decades with the indoctrinations of self esteem, that no matter how empty the child, teenager, college student, graduate student and citizen in general are of knowledge, they are to feel good about themselves.    That is “what democracy is about”, we are told.   We can feel good about our ignorance equally.

I offer that among the most anti-intellectual groups in American history  are those running the nation’s educational industries today.    They turned away from teaching knowledge nearly a half century ago gradually yielding to teaching what to think and how to feel.

The following is a video from the  popular Jay Leno television show……a segment called Jaywalking. 

I have conflicting feelings regarding the folks interviewed during these segments.   It is clear that those interviewed haven’t a clue……nice smiles, pleasant appearing,  they are without shame and are free from any stigma attached to any ignorance, no matter how overwhelming or small.

They are fully modern American……..and there is something very winsome about it.  God Bless Them…at least they aren’t phony…..they wear themselves where anyone can see.

I happen to like that trait, and it is very American……a winsome one.

But they vote…….in a nation that is suffering from the  mass and massive ignorance of its voters.   And there great numbers of citizens who can vote who are woefully less civil and civilized that these representatives Jaywalking.

Please note the one person, the  sex and age, who is among  the grave minority of those who can answer a few simple questions about their country’s birthday.

Here is the video:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQ6XgXeNuY

Which Bipolar Obama Will Show Up to Meet Netanyahu This Time?

 Jeff Barak of the Jerusalem Post writes the following regarding the upcoming meeting….another one….between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.  Mr. Barak is hoping Netanyahu will be in Arlen Specter conservative clothing to impress the president.  He blames the Israeli Prime Minister for the persona non grata  treatment the American president dished to him their last visit.

“The stage has been set; it’s now a question as to whether Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will deliver. Unlike his previous nighttime visit to the White House in March where he was reportedly treated like an unwanted guest, with no friendly welcoming handshakes for the cameras and a cringing humiliation at the hands of President Barack Obama, who even left the meeting to dine in private, this time it’s going to be different.

Tuesday’s meeting has been scheduled for late morning Washington time, ensuring that the scheduled joint news conference afterward will coincide with the peak-time nightly news broadcasts in Israel, thereby allowing Netanyahu to grandstand for the viewers back home.

And Obama has even invited the delegation for a meal afterward.

If Netanyahu were a true leader, he would use this opportunity to outline his vision for the future. Instead of constantly carping about the past and dragging up hostile Palestinian statements from the archives, the prime minister should seize this meeting as a way to move forward, rather than once again attempt to justify his government’s pathetic and ultimately self-defeating policy of treading water.

Even Netanyahu knows that the longer we hold on to the occupied territories, the greater the threat to our survival as a Jewish and democratic state.

FOR STARTERS, the prime minister could certainly use his meeting with Obama as the setting for declaring that his government will continue the settlement construction freeze past its September deadline so as to enable the beginning of direct talks with the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are complaining of Israeli foot-dragging in the proximity talks, so a major policy declaration on Netanyahu’s part would certainly improve his standing and revive what is beginning to look like a moribund process. The cautiously optimistic noises coming out of the White House over the weekend concerning the proximity talks should only be viewed as an American attempt to improve the atmosphere before tomorrow’s meeting.

Netanyahu could also use the White House setting to announce that Israel is ready to begin, gradually, ceding control of the major cities in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, boosting the state-building efforts of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Netanyahu is fond of boasting of the impressive economic growth rate in the West Bank, but the Palestinians, rightly, want more than just an improvement in their standard of living.

IT”S CLEAR that Obama, for all his fine words, doesn’t really have much an idea as to how to push the peace process forward. Netanyahu should step into this vacuum and present a plan that can be implemented immediately, be it a Palestinian state in provisional borders or a move to finalstatus negotiations.

And if he truly believes a deal with the Palestinians is beyond hope, then he should switch attention to the Syrian track and seek to break up the Iran- Damascus-Hizbullah triangle.

The whole tenor of Netanyahu’s premiership has been the dangers facing Israel from the threat of a nuclear Iran, but instead of working to create a coalition of moderate states in the region who also understand the dangers posed by Teheran, he has instead allowed the world’s attention to focus on building projects in east Jerusalem, slipshod assassinations in Dubai and the Turkish flotilla.

In fact, Netanyahu has so far wasted his second term in office, bringing the country to a state of international isolation that a decade ago would have seemed unbelievable. He can argue that the right-wing makeup of his government prevents him from taking any initiative, but we all know this is a hollow argument. Kadima is ready and waiting in the wings to replace Israel Beiteinu and Shas and provide Netanyahu with the backing he needs to change direction.

Given that the prime minister knows his choice of Avigdor Lieberman was a mistake, and that precious energy has to be wasted on seeking ways to circumvent him, as in the case of last week’s meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Netanyahu needs to reassess his premiership.

He has two choices: He can either follow in the footsteps of the first Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, who chose peace over ideology when making a deal with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, or he can retrace the path of Yitzhak Shamir, Begin’s successor, whose only policy centered on not giving up an inch of the territories, leading to a rupture in relations with the US and the outbreak of the first intifada.

While Netanyahu will certainly enjoy the full-press welcome he will receive tomorrow, he should be aware that there is no such thing as a free meal. If he passes up the chance to set out a new direction for his government, we are all going to pay the price for his failure in leadership.”

The writer is a former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post.

Comment:  Mr. Barak sounds like former Republican Arlen Specter giving advice to Ronald Reagan on how to combat the Evil Empire, the USSR.   “Give them Finland and Poland if they promise not to develop nuclear weapons”.

This time, despite himself, the American president will attempt a smile or two, a memorized phrase or two, one stuterred and the other  teleprompted,  all in his best effort to win the  more Marxist American Jewish vote…… those members who no longer  remember or worry about Israel.  This group is so blind, it will chew any nibblings allowed by their favorite president. believing it is  steak.

After all, they have become the most enlightened  of any group  in the world.

Holder’s Dismissal of Black Panther Intimidation Case

Philadelphia Inquirer, Kevin Ferris offers the following article: 

“For more than a year, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to adequately explain why his Justice Department dropped a slam-dunk voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

His department’s answers to inquiries have been incomplete and unsatisfactory. Career attorneys involved in the case have not been available for questioning, even when subpoenaed.

Now, one lawyer is speaking up – and making damning allegations against the Justice Department.

J. Christian Adams, who was a Justice Department voting-rights lawyer until he resigned last month, is scheduled to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Tuesday. At issue are the events of Election Day 2008 in Philadelphia.

Here’s how a Justice Department complaint filed in January 2009 described those events:

Samir Shabazz, head of the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panther Party, and party member Jerry Jackson were “deployed” in front of a Fairmount Avenue polling place in “military style uniforms.”

Shabazz brandished a nightstick. He “pointed the weapon at individuals, menacingly tapped it [in] his other hand, or menacingly tapped it elsewhere.” Both Shabazz and Jackson leveled “racial threats and racial insults at both black and white individuals,” and they “made menacing and intimidating gestures, statements, and movements directed at individuals who were present to aid voters.”

The two men, the party, and its national chairman were named in the complaint. Since none responded, the case was all but won.

However, in May 2009, the Justice Department dropped claims against all but Shabazz, who was merely ordered not to take a weapon to a Philadelphia polling place through 2012.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), a Philly native, has repeatedly called for an explanation. The Civil Rights Commission has held hearings on the case. In May, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez told the commission that the case had been re-reviewed, and the evidence deemed insufficient to proceed.

“That claim is false,” Adams, the former Justice lawyer, wrote in the Washington Times last month. “If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls.”

Adams wrote that the dismissal of the case “was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law.” As for the re-review, “the lawyers who ordered the dismissal … did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation.”

What’s “most disturbing,” Adams wrote, is “the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

“Some of my coworkers,” Adams continued, “argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. … Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the [Justice Department's] Voting Section.”

In a follow-up article for the website Pajamas Media on Monday, Adams cited other cases, in Texas and Connecticut, showing the department’s “hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws.”

The Justice Department fired back last week, saying in a statement that ” … it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda.”

I understand that some view the Panther incident as an unimportant blip on a historic election day. I get not wanting to make too much of an insignificant gang of thugs. But the message the Justice Department sends about hate groups and equal enforcement is important.

One of the department’s own, Christopher Coates, said in January, “America is increasingly a multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural society. For such a diverse group of people to be able to live and function together in a democratic society, there have to be certain common standards that we are bound by and that protect us all. … For the Department of Justice to enforce the Voting Rights Act only to protect members of certain minority groups breaches the fundamental guarantee of equal protection. …”

The remarks of Coates, a former ACLU lawyer, were reported by National Review Online when he stepped down as Voting Section chief. In his piece Monday, Adams suggests that Coates, who also worked on the Panther case, was transferred because of his “race-neutral enforcement” of the law.

Coates is still with the department, so he won’t be with Adams at the witness table Tuesday. But the attorney general should be.”

Comment:   The problem here is the Obama foxes are running the hen house.

Is Obama Maneuvering for 12,000,000 Illegals’ Votes in 2012?

Dennis Prager believes that the coming American midterm elections are the most important in his lifetime.  He clarifies that he has made that statement only once before….in 2004 in the case of “Bush II, Bush term II”.   He reminds listeners that had we withdrawn in defeat from Iraq as demanded by vapid man in empty suit, John Kerry and most of his Democrat Party leadership, the world today would be a significantly more dangerous place than it actually is.  

I agree with Dennis in nearly anything and everything important. 

I believe  the present president of my country is devious, dishonest, and politically dishonorable.  He has many such colleagues in Washington who practice these Obama characteristics.  

Mr. Obama appears to have no interest in leading from a devotion to do what is best for the country.  He is moved by  his  political “religion”  ,Marxism, instead.   He knows the American electorate  is not yet on board with his Marxism. 

So, instead of taking steps to fix the massive illegal immigration problem, he insists on providing amnesty…..explaining not with reasons why America, its laws, culture, economy and morality  is so much benefited by his promotion of amnesty, but be intimidating the citizenry with racism; that these foreigners who have broken American laws have as equal a right to work undisturbed with all of the social benefits equal to those unionized Democrats as any American citizen. 

Until a few days ago it didn’t even seem to matter to Mr. Obama if these illegals ever bothered to learn to speak English or become an any way “Americanized”. 

The president has arranged his policy regarding amnesty for immigration criminals not based on what is good for America…..but, instead, is based on what is most beneficial to the Marxist movement led by the leftwing of his Democrat Party.

The president is hiding behind the left’s coating of “racism” it often uses to advance  this victimhood protectorate.  How prescient he is to establish a monopoly over another racially rather identifiable population to be used against his opponents no matter how vital  the issues may be to the democratic health of the country.  Twelve million more Obama votes in 2012  must help  the president sleep at night.

But first he must throw gasoline on the fire to stir some hate.  And that is  what he seems to be doing.

America’s Teachers’ Union “Insulted” by Obama’s Folks? ……..Good!

 Sam Dilton of the New York Times wrote an article, “Teachers Union Shuns Obama Aides at Convention”.    

These teacher union officials apparently are in a snit over some remarks and political moves the president has made about the condition of modern American public school education.

Well, three cheers for the president for smelling the smell of the dead animal correctly. 

Mr. Dilton writes:

“President Obama and Mr. Duncan have supported historic increases in school financing to stave off teacher layoffs while seeking to shake up public education with support for charter schools, the dismissal of ineffective teachers as a way of turning around failing schools, and other policies. That agenda has spurred fast-paced changes, including adoption of new teacher evaluation systems in many states and school districts, often with the collaboration of teachers’ unions.

But it has also angered many teachers, who say they are being blamed for all the problems in public schools.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Duncan played down the tensions. “I have great respect for the leadership of both unions,” he said. “We’re trying to push a lot of change, and we’ve seen extraordinary breakthroughs in the last 18 months. But we won’t agree on every issue.”

He noted the considerable range of views among union leaders nationwide. “Some state and local unions are very thoughtful and progressive and are embracing innovation,” he said. “Others are more entrenched in the status quo.”

Still, administration officials are concerned about the souring relations, and have been working to ease tempers, partly by emphasizing what they consider to be positive leadership by teachers’ unions in some regions.

“The administration is aware of the anger and wants to do whatever they can to cool it off, including getting third parties to issue words of praise for the unions when warranted,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a Republican who last month used his influential education blog, Flypaper, to highlight the forward-looking positions taken by union leaders in Delaware, Tennessee and six other states. Mr. Finn said he decided to write the post after an administration official pointed out how many local unions had helped lead overhaul efforts.

Better relations are important to the administration. Mr. Van Roekel’s association, with more than three million members, says it spent $50 million in 2008 to help elect the president and more than 50 candidates for Congress and governors’ offices, most of them Democrats.

The American Federation of Teachers, with 1.4 million members, also spent millions of dollars to help elect Mr. Obama and other candidates in 2008.

“If the teachers sit on their hands this fall, it would be a disaster for Obama and the Democrats,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has studied the teachers’ unions.

In a skirmish last week over federal education financing, the administration and the teachers’ unions were bitterly at odds. Last year, Congress approved $100 billion in education stimulus funds, about half of it to help states avoid school layoffs.

With that money now running out, House Democrats proposed spending $10 billion more to shore up school district budgets, paying for it, in part, with $800 million in cuts to Race to the Top and two other competitive grant programs Mr. Duncan created to spur his initiatives. Mr. Duncan and the White House supported the $10 billion in new spending, but objected to trimming the grant programs, infuriating union leaders.

“For the Department of Education to say, ‘Everybody else has to sacrifice, but our pet programs must be spared’— that makes me so angry I don’t even know how to say it,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has often been more supportive of administration initiatives than the National Education Association .

E-mail messages pleading for the jobs measure rained down on Congress from thousands of union teachers, and despite a veto threat by the White House, Democrats in the House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to create the $10 billion school jobs fund and to trim Mr. Duncan’s grant programs. The bill must be reworked by the Senate. On Friday, Mr. Duncan shrugged off what appeared to be an administration setback, expressing confidence that lawmakers would eventually find a way to spare Race to the Top.

One group that helped the administration defend Race to the Top was the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that has pressed for changes in the way teachers are evaluated. Timothy Daly, its president, said the angry rhetoric from union leaders now was less important than the long-term changes the administration has begun to coax from them.

“Sometimes union leaders need to show their members that they are vociferously pushing back,” Mr. Daly said. “But in several areas of the country the unions have come quite a distance.”

As examples of what he called innovations that unions have recently supported, Mr. Daly pointed to a “revolutionary” new contract for teachers in Washington, D.C., a far-reaching state law overhauling teacher tenure passed in Colorado with Ms. Weingarten’s support, and a new contract in New Haven, under which tenured teachers who are ruled ineffective and do not improve may be fired.

“Teachers are like anybody else, we don’t want to make changes,” said David Cicarella, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, who helped negotiate that contract. “But those days are over. The public is sick of hearing that an ineffective teacher has tenure, that you can’t touch them.”

Here in New Orleans, many state and local teachers’ union leaders have expressed ambivalent views on the Obama administration.

“We have to recognize that with Obama we have a voice in the decision-making, they listen to us,” said Earl Wiman, president of the Tennessee Education Association. But he added, “Mostly what we’ve seen out of this administration is a top-down, put-your-thumb-on-somebody kind of philosophy, and it’s aroused more frustration around federal education policy than I’ve ever seen.”

Comment”  When I was in high school and early years of college, one of the best jobs a guy-kid could get was work at the slaughter houses  in South St. Paul.   Good wages, funky hours if one needed funky hours, and something that could toughen the  softer soul.  However, a joke was always added to the sales pitch….but you’ll never eat meat again.

I was a public highschool teacher for eight years and a “private” school one for four years previous to my term in the ‘profession’.  Funky hours and something that could toughen my softer soul applied, but with poor wages.   The joke was added, however…..”If you’re interested in educating, you’ll never last, and you’ll hate the institution  for the rest of your life. 

I never got my job at Swift Meatpacking House down “hook ‘em cow way”.   My asthma made me fail the physical.  I nearly failed getting tenure after my teaching probation time …….for having a “messy desk”.   However, I do eat meat……However, I do  find American public school education rotten to the core……

And, I would discharge every American  public high school teacher and would not rehire them unless they met an entirely new set of requirements.  They must prepare  to train  our American young  for responsible citizenry and adulthood.  Certain knowledge must be known and maintained.

It is likely the teaching profession then as now has about the same number of incompetent  people running a classroom,  My remarks are confined to my experiences in the public high school.

It is hard to get milk out of a turnip.  As a class of human animals, the public school teacher was much better educated then than now.   I believe this is eminently true, but unproveable.  But, I am referring only to the old “marms”.   The older guys were not as well educated in the formal sense as their female colleagues, but they were men,  and so kept a measure of order in the classroom.  Some were even well organized.

Whatever their weaknesses, and not commanding knowledge is a major weakness for a teacher of teenagers on up in years, the students were civilized and adults were in control without police in the halls and locked doors……except for some highschools with majority  black populations.

As I aged in the system a new profile of  human creature was appearing on the stage as a “leader” of instruction in the high school classroom.  Teaching was going to be replaced by facilitating……helping the students decide what they would like to learn and learn at their own “pace”.   Students would devise their fate.

I believe this is a result:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQ6XgXeNuY

The new ‘teachers’ of teenagers wouldn’t really have to know any knowledge at all.  They were told they  needed to be liked by the real underlings, and so, began to look, think,  and behave  more like the empty headed youngsters they were supposed to help guide into responsible adulthood  and citizenship. 

Adulthood in America disappeared.

These teeny-bopper “teacher” types of that day for the most part were gals, ditsy and vacuous as a grown-up by age  must be who attempts to milk a turnip or act like a teenager.  Guy teachers became feminized to accept their  newly sculpted profile.   Unisex had entered the system.  Male and female are carbon copies one of the other anyway,  don’t you agree? The past went untaught, except where it could be used to help create the victimhood classes in their racist quest to rise to the top…….whatever “top” might mean.

The age of “feelings”  trumped the age of learnings.  Today is faced without knowing a yesterday.   The Age of Stupidity became the new American way of life…………Is it any wonder at all that Marxism having enterred the classroom,  is now at our American door for a handout  now that such a crippled citizen has been created?  Wait till Obamacare kicks in for real!

As Dennis Prager has often said, if  today’s teacher has nothing to teach, the teacher is not a teacher and should quit the deceit.   

I believe the greatest scandal of the many great ones in America today, is the scandal of teaching  teenagers in the contemporary modern American public highschool. 

I am not so sure president Obama doesn’t have a similar view of this American education industry.  His goal is to strengthen the government to dwarf the citizen, however.  He wants to use the school systems to appy his prejudices on the matter, not mine……which is a very simple matter in education….

It is the duty of every voting citizen in a democracy  to amass as much knowledge as possible in ones lifetime.  After all, I was taught “The more one learns, the closer to God one becomes.” 

(I thank fellow used-to-be teacher, Mark Waldeland for allerting me to this article.)

Is Marxism’s Rule of Racist Divide and Conquer Coming to an End?

Is the American Obama-led Leftwing racism politics of hate-white America  finally had its day in court?   Will the first amendment marry common sense once again to put an end their antagonisms fomenting  racial divisions?

Don’t count on it, but some signs are good that free speech might be resurrected to rule over the Marxist censorship tools in its propaganda campaigns of ‘political correctness’ over the past 50 years.

The thirst for freedom and its yearning for truth and reality is not confined to thinking Americans.  Thinking pops up everywhere outside the world of Stalinist type Marxism led by the socialists like  Obama and his political associates demanding government control of citizen light bulbs, citizens’ personal health and everything thinking humans prefer to manage themselves. 

HOW ABOUT THIS ARTICLE FROM “THE AUSTRALIAN”?

READ AND ENJOY!  Our brothers and sisters of democracy in Australia  could be awaking!

“At first blush, Julia Gillard’s volte-face over immigration would seem to be as unlikely as Osama bin Laden singing the Star Spangled Banner or Richard Dawkins taking holy orders.

Here is a politician with a solid pedigree on the “anti-racist” Left rejecting former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s call for a “Big Australia” formed by continuing large-scale immigration.

Instead, Gillard has said she understands the anxieties of folk in western Sydney, western Melbourne or the Gold Coast growth corridor in Queensland.

As for the boats of asylum-seekers, Gillard has made clear she wants to be even more effective in stopping them in order to protect “our sanctuary” and “the Australian way”.

In other words, Gillard is signalling that she sympathises with the concern that large-scale immigration and multiculturalism are threatening Australia’s core values and identity, a position the Left denounces as bigotry.

Consequently, Gillard’s remarks have produced predictable cries of “racism” and “dog-whistling”. So why has the new Labor leader ventured into this particular cultural minefield? The explanation is that something tumultuous is happening, not just in Australia but in Britain too, something so unusual that people are stumbling around in a state of stunned disorientation.

It is that politicians are at last actually taking seriously what their electorates are saying to them about immigration and multiculturalism. This is that they will no longer put up with a policy which threatens to destroy their country’s values and way of life, and will vote accordingly.

In Britain even more than in Australia – where at least John Howard or Tony Abbott have tackled such issues – race and culture have long been totally taboo. No debate has been possible about whether mass immigration might be a bad thing for communities or the country as a whole.

Even to question this has been to invite instant denunciation as a racist from the dominant left-wing intelligentsia, for whom anti-racism has long been their signature creed.

The Conservative leader and now Prime Minister, David Cameron, who is driven by the need to bury the label of “the nasty party” that was hung round the Tories’ neck, was accordingly too nervous even to mention immigration during the recent election campaign, even though it was at the very top of the list of voters’ concerns.

But Cameron didn’t win the election, and is now forced to govern in a coalition with the left-wing LibDems. His failure to talk about immigration is said to be the reason why he failed to win an election that was thought impossible for him to lose.

Nothing concentrates the political mind so well as the spectre of defeat. And so now in both Britain and Australia a political sea change is taking place.

In both countries, voters are stating unequivocally that they have seen through all the spin about multiculturalism, all the false arguments about the alleged economic advantages of mass immigration, all the bullying and name-calling about racism.

They look at their neighbourhoods and realise that their culture and national identity are being replaced by something entirely new. No one has ever asked them for their consent to this. And they are simply not going to take it any more.

In Britain, the public services are buckling under the sheer weight of the numbers coming into the country.

More explosive is the cultural transformation, particularly by the large influx and expansion of Muslims who, rather than accommodating themselves to British society, expect it to accommodate itself to them.

So Britain is being steadily Islamised, with more than 1700 mosques, the development of a parallel jurisdiction of sharia law in Muslim enclaves, banks offering sharia financing, extremists given free rein on campuses and relentless pressure to suppress and censor any criticism of Islam or the Muslim community.

In parts of Australia too there are similar worries about the growth of the Muslim community, the pressure not to criticise any aggression it may display and the simultaneous onslaught upon Australian values by the likes of [Muslim cleric] Sheik Hilaly.

Listening to such concerns pays electoral dividends, as shown by Abbott, who has made such headway by defending the traditional values and national integrity of Australia as an entirely justifiable and moral position.

So Gillard is now humming the same tune, saying she sympathises with voters’ desire for strong management of Australia’s borders, and pledging “sustainable population” increase with the “right kind of immigrant”.

A similar political convulsion is occurring in Britain. The Conservative Home Secretary, Theresa May, has promised to put a cap on immigration, a pledge that was in the Conservative manifesto but rarely mentioned during the election campaign.

Even more striking is the abrupt change of tune among several contenders for the leadership of the defeated British Labour Party. While front-runner David Miliband is sticking with its open-door immigration policy, his younger brother Ed has said “we never had an answer for the people who were worried about it”.

Former Labour health secretary Andy Burnham claims the party has been “in denial” about the issue, which was “the biggest doorstep issue in constituencies where Labour lost”.

Most jaw-dropping of all, former education secretary and hard man of the Left Ed Balls has said high levels of immigration under Labour had affected the pay and conditions of “too many people”, and has called for better protection for British workers if the European Union expands any further.

Such death-bed conversions are of course driven by cynical political considerations. Nevertheless, they are levering open an ideological fixation which has not just sunk democratic politics into disrepute but driven culture and morality in both Britain and Australia off the rails altogether.

For the doctrines of anti-racism and multiculturalism have not ended intolerance, prejudice or discrimination. They have instead institutionalised reverse discrimination and up-ended truth, morality and justice.

Following the Marxist doctrine that prejudice is restricted to those with power, they have given Third-World ethnic minorities special protection from rules or conventions that apply to everyone else.

They have also served to falsify the history of both Britain and Australia in the minds of countless thousands of young people, who are taught propaganda based on a false or distorted story of national oppression and shame.

Multiculturalism threatens to undermine societies, by removing the cultural glue that binds all citizens together and balkanising the country into interest groups fighting for supremacy.

Once upon a time, the need to have strong borders and endorse a historic cultural identity were axiomatic elements of citizenship and national survival.

But mass immigration and multiculturalism are predicated on what is called “transnationalism”, the belief that the nation is the source of all the ills of the world and must be replaced by supranational institutions and cultural identities.

This is precisely what -at a visceral level – the people of both Australia and Britain understand and are refusing to accept.

And at last, in both Australia and Britain, politicians are being forced to listen.”

Melanie Phillips is a columnist for the UK Daily Mail.