Civic and human communities

Paul Keating tells it like it is:

All the people who dabble in race, whether it be the Hitlers at the hard end or the Hansons in Australia on the soft end, have one subject in common - citizenship. And these days, for citizenship read migration.

They seek to construct parochial and arbitrary distinctions between the civic and the human community. So some of us have a right to enjoy the sovereign benefits of security, sustenance and belonging while others are wayfarers and itinerants who are not entitled to inclusion with us.

These appeals more often than not find a measure of uncritical acceptance in countries that formerly have been monocultures. But only the shabbiest of political figures has any truck with this stuff.

Read the rest. Keating is writing about 'the slippery and sleazy track' that Michael Howard's party have taken on the issue of immigration. (See also this). There's one particularly telling piece of evidence about immigration and national vitality, prosperity, flourishing and so forth: the United States of America.