THE DEBATE

Diversity and Social Fragmentation

"Diversity does not produce 'bad race relations' or ethnically-defined group hostility, our findings suggest.

Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television. Note that this pattern encompasses attitudes and behaviour, bridging and bonding social capital, public and private connections.

Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us"
- Prof. Robert Putnam

Links HERE & HERE

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the
levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in
the melting-pot of contemporary civilisation. I do not agree
with this opinion...the disappearance of nations would have
impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with
one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind,
its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its
own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of
divine intention."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

- Milton Friedman

"You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state"
- Milton Friedman

- David McWilliams

"We already know that Ireland takes in more immigrants per head than any other EU country and this includes the UK and Sweden - the only two other EU countries with an open borders policy to the new eastern states of the Union. We are also absorbing more migrants per head than the US.

If the US were to match the per capita Irish figures, it would have taken in close to 15 million people in the past two years - twice the population of New York! Compared with other European countries with more restrictive policies, the Irish numbers are startling.

We are now absorbing seven times per head more than France and the Netherlands. Anecdotal evidence suggests that immigration is increasing not decreasing. The impact of foreign workers is being felt in every county and town around the country"
- David McWilliams

Let's come to our census on immigration