Nicholas W. Drummond’s “Immigration and the Therapeutic Managerial Government” appears in Telos 166 (Spring 2014). Read the full version online at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our store.
Multiculturalism as state policy in the Western World has functioned without serious complications because an unequivocal division existed between the oppressive culture group and the culture groups requiring protection. Recent evidence suggests this distinction may be fading and the consequences are likely to be significant. Managerial governments traditionally accommodating towards diverse cultures are beginning to critically evaluate immigrant communities feared to be afflicted with objectionable pathologies like the tendency of some Islamic groups to promote gender inequality, homophobia, and Sharia law. If immigrant modes of cultural life are transformed by therapeutic government policies, then the suppressed truth about multiculturalism will be revealed. Instead of effectuating the preservation of cultural diversity, multiculturalism empowers the managerial government with the moral authority to homogenize Western societies in accordance with the normative preferences of government bureaucrats and their diversity industry allies. Such a revelation may not be welcomed by immigrants unencumbered by the moral incertitude that has enabled the managerial government to rehabilitate members of the majority culture. Multiculturalists remain hopeful that moral concerns about immigrant groups have been inflated and that democratic values subsist within targeted immigrant groups that can be resuscitated by the managerial regime. But if this optimistic assessment proves unfounded, then conflict might erupt when faithful members of intolerant cultures resist the efforts of managerial governance to eradicate their traditions and values.
