Meanwhile, four thousand miles away in Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech in which she said that multiculturalism as it has been practiced in Germany over the past several decades had "utterly failed." Foreign workers hired to labor in Germany had neither returned home after a few years as many believed they would, nor had they adapted to German culture and mores. Echoes of non-adaptive Muslims in France and Holland came to mind. The question is: are these two moments in the news, Juan Williams and Angela Merkel, related? Yes they are. Here's why and what we can learn.

For decades, elites from Berlin to Paris to Washington DC have loudly proclaimed that people from all walks of life, ethnicities, national backgrounds and religions can live together in harmony. According to the multiculturalists, there need be no "melting pot.". In fact, there must not be. The very idea of such a thing as American or European culture reeks of hierarchy and paternalism, they say. No, according to the multicultural dream we can each keep, maintain and celebrate our own beliefs and background and live together in harmony.

Like members of the Bahai faith we can celebrate all the prophets, all the faiths and all the people, despite all the apparent contradictions that leap out to the average person. But multiculturalism is not just illogical. It is dangerous. Did it ever occur to the multiculturalists their triumph might sink the prevailing culture for good, the only one that could keep the multiculturalist play pen protected with armed guards?

In the political sphere another philosophy claiming to unite us all arose after the fall of the Soviet Union, popularized by Francis Fukayama. Often called "end of history" argument, Fukayama proclaimed the "unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism" and the "triumph of the West.' Under the "end of history", we would now unite under one banner of universally held principles that could be propagated not just to every western democracy but to the ends of the earth. The enemy had retreated to her cave like Shelob in The Lord of the Rings never to appear again. Liberal democracy had triumphed. For now.

Then came 9/11, the death knell to both the multiculturalists and the "end of history" buffs. Suddenly reality broke in upon us and we realized what was true all along. The world was not on the same page. All religions were not the same. All the prophets did not carry the same message. Some religions were not only not reformed. They had become more brutal, especially to women, gays and those who disagreed.

Some people despised western democracy so much they were willing to kill thousands to defeat it. The more the West learned about Islam, the more threatening Islam became and the less it appeared to be one among many religions. Radical Islam, Islamism, Political Islam, Wahabbism, Sharia Law...no one was quite sure where the religion started and the violence stopped. The avoidance of these facts about Islam is so holy to the left that Whoopi and Joy had to walk off The View to keep the avoidance sacrosanct, protected from analysis. Facing these facts would be doom to the multiculturalist vision.

And yet the mainstream media continued to act as if radical Islam was rare. The Wall Street Journal's Brett Stephens pointed out that after The New York Times on October 19, 2001 extolled Imam Anwar al-Awlaki as a "leader capable of merging East and West," al Awlaki turned out to be the terrorist who inspired the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

When on December 9, 2004, NBC's Brian Williams praised Muzzamil Hassan as a man "disturbed that negative images of Muslims seem to dominate TV, especially since 9/11." Later on Hassan beheaded his own wife in Buffalo, New York. Furthermore, when Nidal Malik Hassan opened fire at Fort Hood killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others while yelling "Allahu Akbar," it became evident that the pc leaders of the US Army had not only ignored Hassan's radicalization. They would not even admit Fort Hood was a terrorist incident inspired by Islamist beliefs.

In short, the terrorist 2000's blew away any idea that we could all "just get along." The lesson learned was we were not pursuing the same things on this planet after all, if in fact we ever were. Why would people want to kill Americans just because we were Americans? Was it because we were rich and they were poor? Fewer job opportunities? Mental Illness? Stress? All the conventional western liberal explanations were trotted out to evaluate the root causes of Islamic terrorism and none of them could explain the real reason. It seems that Islam commanded jihad, that it taught that infidels should be converted or be killed and that lies, cover-ups and various other subversive tactics be used to take over the world and establish a new Caliphate.

Few Islamic leaders would condemn terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbolla. The Occams razor or most simple explanation leads us to the conclusion that Islam is much more than a major world religion, not some 1960's psycho babble about unmet needs. We can talk all we want about individual moderate Muslims and different Muslim groups, but the fascist Islamic takeover was where the cumulative evidence led us. Finally, the one positive thing Islamic terrorism did was to destroy the West's fantasies about the kind of societies we can build and maintain. We know now our culture cannot be multicultural if we in the West are to survive. We must discover what we believe in and are willing to defend, and fast.

So what does all this have to do with Juan Williams being fired? Simple. Multiculturalism was never about accepting "diversity of backgrounds." It was about using multiculturalism to impose speech codes, political correctness, liberal secularism and big government programs masked as tolerance, generosity and open-mindedness. We know this because those who, like NPR, American universities, Hollywood, and the media, proclaim multiculturalism the loudest are the first to fire people or shut down opposing views and stifle debate.

I was recently told by an NPR contributor in another city that NPR routinely censors his comments. Not political commentary mind you, because that is not what he articulates on-air, but statements of fact and statistics. They simply do not allow them because they do not fit the prevailing zeitgeist at NPR. In his view, NPR has "drunk the cool-aid" and it is getting worse. The political and cultural Left in America has become allergic to dialog and is now about carving out fiefdoms to indulge its own mind games and fantasies unreachable by opposing points of view. Juan Williams was a threat to the unchallenged kingdom of liberalism and that is why he was fired.

So why now, two weeks before a big election? Here is what the Left knows. According to Gallup, Americans divide themselves up as follows: 42% conservative, 35% moderate, 20% liberal. In a center-right country about to give a hard-left Congress a wake-up call, we can no doubt understand the trigger happy atmosphere at NPR. Might this have happened at another moment in time? Absolutely. Right now, when public rhetoric and attention is at its peak, Williams firing was a necessity. Every once in a while, we get the opportunity to see the left wing media's full monty. We got it in spades last week.

What Juan Williams firing tells us about multiculturalism and its twin daughters "diversity" and "inclusion" is quite simple. These are and always have been false labels for something far more sinister and deceptive, a dangerous view of cultural possibilities on the one hand and their own attempt to impose leftist views on the other. Fix the firing of Juan Williams and Angela Merkel's "utter failure" of multiculturalism permanently in your mind. They continue to define the agony of the American left out of touch with the world as it is. Adopting their worldview will leave the West defenseless against the challenges that will surely come.

----Jay Haug is a member of Anglican Church of the Redeemer, Jacksonville, Florida. You may e-mail him at cjcwguy@gmail.com