Multiculturalism = Persecution
Multiculturalism is becoming vogue in America’s universities and public life. What is it? Multiculturalism is the basis of political correctness; it is a relativistic view that all cultures, from that of Radical Islam to that of an advanced industrial civilization, are equal in value.
Are cultures equal in value? Not if the well being of each individual human life is your standard of value. Multiculturalism seeks to obliterate the value of a free, industrialized civilization, by declaring that such a civilization is no better than the primitive tribalism of Nations ruled by radical Islam. More deeply, it seeks to incapacitate a mind’s ability to distinguish good from evil, that which is life promoting from that which is life negating.
I say the question of this century is: Is moral judgment essential to life?
What happens if the ideas and values that animate a particular culture are not judged by their objective results? Is a culture that values freedom, reason, the rule of law and science, for instance, no better than one that values oppression, stagnation, mysticism, and ignorance? If they are the same then oppression is nothing more than a cultural prerogative to be tolerated, much like it is in Europe, where women are persecuted many kinds of ways often resulting in Honor Killings. These murders are swept under the rug, covered by the press through ambiguous headlines or held in confidence in the midst of a community governed by Sharia Law all in the name of Multiculturalism!
I would assert that the problem isn’t that we give other cultures a fair place, the problem is honesty. All cultures should be measured by what they do rather than by what they say they are. Under such an honest evaluation, however, we would have to give up a large portion of our illusion of ourselves as a nation. There is a vast gap between the mythology of America, and the real history of our actions in the world. If I were to use your terminology I would say America has a fairly sophisticated “racket”.
This is in no way should be taken as a defense of Islam. I for one have a deep distaste for it, and I am not afraid to say it, however, I find it equally nauseating to see Christians justifying the killings of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and refusing to recognize that we have killed far more people with misplaced artillery, smart bombs, and machine gun fire than all the suicide bombers combined. Though we can say that these killings were accidents, “collateral damage” the effects of these killings are just as real, and our responsibility is just as implicit. Yes, let’s be honest about culture. Yes, let us hold civilizations to the edge of critical analysis, but do not spare America this honesty. We need it more than anyone else in the world.
Yes, I would agree here. There is a real mythology about our actions in the world both life giving and life taking. I am with you on our racket. The scary thing is we don’t do much to really come to grips with that as a society both on the critical side as well as the supportive side.
At the same time, in the face of all that, the point I am making is about the contributions a culture makes. Based on the metric of contributing art, science, social and personal developments that bring life and civility to a community cultures are not equal.
In my experience, we have a tendency to live in shame because of our faults and portions of our culture create romantic sensations about how it is in other cultures, like totalitarian regimes like Venezuela. How many of the Hollywood elites have accused America of being a totalitarian state and compared us with countries like Venezuela where these accusers would be shot if they said anything of the sort about the governments that host them when they make these ridiculous assertions.
It is politically correct to honor cultures that are explicitly established to oppress people. We do it as a government and as private citizens. And much of the time we do it in the name of being inclusive.
Personally, the mob consciousness that goes along with being politically correct and “inclusive” seems to level distinctives that are qualitatively determinative with regard to civilized life; they major in the minors and present straw men to obfuscate, obscure and ultimately hide the difficult conversations that will eventually require our attention and resources when they grow up and become monsters. One of them is this whole radical Islam deal. Which when I say it, isn’t saying nor does it imply we don’t have plenty to correct in our own culture. I say, If we were as vigilant about having conversations that would reveal the intentions of the nations we are courting as we are about how we may be offending them or how we have hurt them in the past we would be more balanced than we currently are and they would have a much harder time dividing and conquering us.
thanks,
dan
True. I say the mob mentality must be regarded with suspicion at all times, and politically correctness is for the birds. I just don’t see that particular flavor of intellectual weakness as being nearly as dangerous as the nationalist propaganda used to entice our country (and many other countries throughout history) to send their sons to kill and be killed in wars based on lies. Hitler didn’t play the “politically correct” card to get Germany ready to kill millions of Jews; he used the “we are a superior culture” card. I know that you don’t come from that frame of mind, but it’s a fine line when one takes it upon themselves to judge the worth of another culture.
I agree, definitely a fine line. That is the risk of our existence. It is a fine line between good and evil, life and death. My concern is that we are not thinking soberly and based on results in the world we need to pay attention to the rising tide. We probably won’t because history shows that we don’t tend to wake up from our rackets until it wakes us up.
As you point out the rest of the world had to finally judge the Nazi culture as incompatible with civilization because of its judgment on the cultures of the Jews, French, Polish, and on and on thus the 2nd World War. The reality is that we choose. Not choosing is a choice.
“In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists but I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up.”
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Martin Niemoeller, Dachau, 1944
I hadn’t brought myself to the thought that multi-culturalism is problematic, but what you are suggesting is very interesting to me at the least. I wrestle with the scripture that puts male, female, slave, free, Jew and Greek onto equal footing, but then with scriptures that make very clear cultural lines that are drawn and almost preferential treatment for cultures who engage the most “beneficial” way.
Working to not judge, I always try to give high value for an individual in their humanness and work to create a picture of them that is divorced from what they claim as identity within culture. For myself, drawing too much identity from my broader LGBT community can be very problematic, though it’s not an attitide of judgement towards those who adopt values I don’t, it’s about how I am demonstrating the way that I live out.
Let me explain. Take a Christ follower who is very aware, in their own world, that they are righteous and pure. How insolent for them to take a posture towards individuals for adopting values that they do not adopt. It doesn’t really matter the circumstance, attitude is far more important. It should be the attitude of the Christ follower, that they be much more humble with respect to others that have adopted other value systems and live in such a way that they can demonstrate the benefit of their value system. It may never come to pass that an individual treats women respectfully, but if you demonstrate this value in your own life, it may be something tangible that will work toward the spiritual affect in their life. This is not controlled by you, it is only that you love and understand. Only. There is no message to the masses on value systems or judgement thereof. There are no organizations, founded in Christ, that make first moral value and judgement over that of love. The only moral judgement or even harsh criticism was for the very folk that were oppressing thier views upon the general masses. Christ is divorced from judgement in a very practical manner. That has been set aside for true justice, not for now, not for our concern and certainly not our responsibility.