Balkanization Quotes

Is diversity our strength? Or anybody's strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan's homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity - or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization? ~ Thomas Sowell

Ethnic minorities were 10 times more likely than whites to eat at a table where they were the only representative of their race. ~ Rebekah Nathan

To understand what ended up happening in the 2016 presidential election, you have to understand this: When protests toppled the Ukrainian government, Putin interpreted that as the United States coming into Russia, akin to an act of war; when he launched his counterattack - annexing Crimea, creeping into eastern Ukraine - he weaponized information and showed a willingness to lie, using traditional media like television, and new media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to spread disinformation into open, Western societies like a virus. Eventually, the Russians would come into America, as they believed we'd gone into Ukraine. They took advantage of the fact that we were worn down by decades of political polarization and the balkanization of our media. America's antibodies to the sickness of Russian disinformation were weak, if they were there at all. ~ Ben Rhodes

Balkanization is a feature of the ad agency industry, but it is not a universal phenomenon across all service industries. Somehow, management consulting firms (again!) expanded their technical capabilities and specialties under one brand name. They added specialist consultants, to be sure, but at the same time, they expect their senior partners to become adept at understanding a growing number of disciplines. ~ Michael Farmer

Life will be happier for the on-line individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity."

J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor,
"The Computer as a Communication Device," Science and Technology , Apr. 1968. ~ Walter Isaacson

What is important about immigration is how immigrants arrived and what the individual immigrants do with their lives after arriving. Do they open a restaurant or other business, do they provide for their family, do they integrate into the larger community - in essence, do they become proud Americans? Or do they try their hardest to stay "economic migrants" or "hyphenated-Americans"? Or, at worst, do they attempt to convert America into the countries from which they escaped? ~ Mike Klepper

I distrust all multiculturalism, liberal or conservative. The Balkans amply demonstrate the perils of Balkanization. ~ Charles Krauthammer

The Balkans I know is the Balkans from below: a space of bogoumils- these medieval heretics who fought against the Crusades and churches- and a place of anti-Ottoman resistance; a home to hajduks and klephts, pirates and rebels; a refuge of feminists and socialists, of antifascist and partisans; a place of dreamers of all sorts struggling both against provincial "peninsularity" as well as against occupations, foreign interventions and that process which is now, in a strange inversion of history, often described with that fashionable phrase, "balkanization." (p.11) ~ Andrej Grubacic

Whereas once medieval Europe had adhered to a common Catholic religion, a common Latin language, and common well-spiced cuisine (at least, for the elite), the balkanization of the Christian world along national lines now meant that nations could no longer gather around the same table as easily as before. Even though it would take some years, the Europe-wide fashion for spices-as much as Latin-would be a casualty of Martin Luther's squabble with the bishop of Rome. ~ Michael Krondl