Multiculturalism
Makes sense to me:
Exactly how beneficial to a society is multiculturalism, this word that is so celebrated in the West?
...Put differently, all values prized by the modern West -- religious freedom, tolerance, humanism, gender equality, monogamy -- did not develop in a vacuum but rather are inextricably rooted to Judeo-Christian principles which, over the course of some 2,000 years, have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society and, of course, culture.
While they are now taken for granted and seen as “universal” virtues, it’s not for nothing that these values were born and nourished in Western -- not Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, or pagan -- nations...
Returning to the initial confusion, that cultures are often conflated with race, it bears stressing that being wary or critical of multiculturalism is in no way the same thing as being wary or critical of other races or ethnicities (that is, “racism”) but rather being wary of disunity...
In short, there’s nothing wrong and much to be celebrated if a nation’s citizenry is composed of every race and ethnicity -- but only if they share the same worldview, the same priorities, the same ethics, the same rights and wrongs -- in a word, the same culture. Then it will be a strong and healthy nation, perfectly capturing the meaning of E pluribus unum.
The author is
Raymond Ibrahim:
Ibrahim’s dual-background -- born and raised in the U.S. by Coptic Egyptian parents born and raised in the Middle East -- has provided him with unique advantages, from equal fluency in English and Arabic, to an equal understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets, positioning him to explain the latter to the former.
I wrote this in a comment online about 3 years ago...
ReplyDeleteThere are two forms of multiculturalism:
The first recognizes that people actually have different cultures, and that those differences go beyond what spices they use in their cooking. It recognizes that people might actually want and value different things than does the prototypical liberal university professor. People who believe in this form of multiculturalism are able to accept that some cultures are incompatible with others. For example, a culture which believes gays should be publicly executed is incompatible with a western liberal culture. A culture which believes that husbands have a god given right to dominate, rape, and beat their wives, and divorce them by saying nine words, is incompatible with a culture that believes in the equality of the sexes. A culture which believes that girls should be ill-educated and be forced into marriages with first cousins, and which accepts a family's right to slaughter their daughters and sisters if they dress in western clothing or are seen talking with boys, is incompatible with a culture which believes that every individual should be free to better themselves and make their own decisions.
The second form of multiculturalism assumes that there aren't actually multiple cultures, but that everyone thinks the same with the same hopes and values. Of course this universal set of values perfectly aligns with a leftist-progressive worldview, where everyone wants to hold hands and teach the world to sing Kumbaya, and where the greatest ambition anyone could possibly have is sinecure in the African American Lesbian Studies department at an ivy league university. This form also believes that if you actually think people want different things out of life, that it is proof of your disgusting racism.