[GoNative]

Much of this thread is just sad in my mind. The level of ignorance and intolerance shown by some shows why multiculturalism struggles. And it never ceases to amaze me that the most intolerant and ignorant are often those that are religious. Personally I truly can't understand how any intelligent person can still believe in things like gods in this century. It absolutely astounds me. As much as I hope for a day of enlightenment when humans can live without fairytales of gods I would always fight for peoples right to have such beliefs and that regardless of where they lived they should be allowed to practice those beliefs without any predjudice.

Apart from religious intolerance the biggest threat to successful multiculturalism I believe is national pride (which I abhor). Patriotism/nationalism are based on pride. And pride really is a bad thing. Why? Because you cannot have pride without comparison. It's impossible to have pride without comparison. So the more proud you are of something (say your country) the more you start to believe that your country, your people and your culture are better than others. It should be obvious then how this translates into intolerance of others.

Multiculturalism can and does work. I believe in Australia on the whole it has been very successful and has played a big role in making the country as strong as it is today. Are there still racists in Australia? Sure plenty of them. Are there some problems with integration of new arrivals? Sure there's plenty. Thing is what we've found in Australia is give a couple of generations and people mostly integrate (not assimilate) just fine. As long as you don't suppress their freedom to be who they are, to practice their cultural and beliefs within the laws of the country and give them every opportunity to prosper with the same rights of any other citizen of the nation then they generally integrate with few problems at all.

Attack their beliefs, suppress their freedoms, try and assimilate them into being something they are not and sure you are going to have huge problems and create extremism on all sides. Assimilation is for the Borg not for new immigrants into a country!