By Paul Weiser
A problem looms for “communitarians” (and for that matter, Britain and America). It is, if “communities” are empowered, how is their extent to be defined?
The situation is at its most distinct in Europe, particularly Britain, with South Asian residents. If a young Hindu, Sikh or Muslim woman behaves like a white woman the same age, her relatives will kill or beat her, kidnap her to Pakistan or India, or the “community’s” toughs will rape her... possibly (aside from country choice) all of the above. Treating these “communities” as if they had extraterritorial legal standing, British authorities are complaisant about such unquestionably criminal activity. To do otherwise - to enforce statute law - might get them called “racist.”
The wider question is, if a “community” is allowed to discipline its members in such fashion (which would include execution for apostasy, forced incestuous/polygamous marriage, etc.) how does a “member” leave his or her community to escape its violent if informal enforcers? For that matter, how does a person who shares defining elements of the community - Islam or birth in a village in Pakistan - avoid having the “community” unilaterally seize responsibility for him (and punish him, even unto death) in adulthood, against his will?
This is only the most intense example of a wider phenomenon, of groups with self-appointed spokesmen (“blacks” for example) having members who’d prefer to be something else (decent Americans, for example) abandoned to the group’s violent subculture. There they’re regarded as “inauthentic” or “acting white“ - and beaten up by the group’s own thugs either physically or in the complaisant media.
Any group, given power, will try to aggrandize itself - in the first instance by holding unwilling subjects it has, next by claiming anyone with any affinity. No government of liberty can tolerate such enslavement.
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