Jeff Taylor passed me this link in response to my earlier post today. It’s a column by Michael Barone entitled “Cultures Aren’t Equal.” In it Barone writes of multiculturalism and the British response to the July 7 terrorist attacks. It’s an excellent read.
Barone observes,
Writers in other tolerant countries have been noticing the blowback from multiculturalism. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, “the delicate mechanism of Holland’s traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance.”
In The Age of Melbourne, Australia, Pamela Bone wrote, “Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here.” The Age’s Tony Parkinson quoted the French writer Jean Francois Revel’s Cold War comment, “A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
Barone later comments that “Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse.” That is precisely the sentiment I was mocking with my remark below about “the need to recognize the equality of all cultures above our own.”
