The failure of PC, multi-culti thought

I've related the anecdote before here of a conversation I had with a very liberal friend of mine. I'd asked my friend first if he believed it was possible for one culture to be objectively superior to another, to which he emphatically replied "no". I then asked him if he believed in the existence of universal rights, those rights to which all human beings are unconditionally entitled. He saw the contradiction and said I'd "worked him into a corner". Indeed.

We're exhorted over and over again to "celebrate" all cultures and hold them in equal esteem. Yet in certain regions of Afghanistan, it's an accepted practice for grown men to take young boys as sexual playthings. In Saudi culture, women have a social standing roughly equivalent to that of breeding stock. In parts of Pakistan and elsewhere, women are routinely stoned as adulteresses for the crime of being raped. In Iran, homosexuals are hanged in public. And hardly a week goes by without a story in the news of a Muslim male killing a female family member to restore the family's honor.

Are these just cultural oddities that are to be laughed off so we can get on with the more lofty goal of celebrating those cultures? No. To claim that all cultures are on an equal moral footing is to deny the existence of universal human rights.

The logic here is simple and unassailable. If one believes in such universal rights then one cannot believe that all cultures are equal and worthy of being "celebrated". To believe both betrays not just a complete failure of logic but a despicable moral dishonesty.

'Our culture is better'

I think I've posted before about a conversation I had with a lib friend of mine who holds all the usual multi-culti beliefs and moral relativism that goes along with them. To make a point, I asked him if he thought it was possible for one culture to be superior to another...not to just believe itself superior, but to actually be superior. Naturally, he responded with an emphatic "no". Then I asked him if he believed there were universal rights to which all humans were unquestionably entitled, and he acknowledged that I'd backed him into a corner.

The outspoken Dutch politician Geert Wilders believes it is possible for one culture to be superior to another on the basis of universal rights.

Having his own party liberates Mr. Wilders to speak his mind. As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," he says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."

Read the whole article. I have to admit that I'm apparently brainwashed enough to not be entirely comfortable saying our culture is "better" than others, but if we don't defend our culture and values we'll have no choice but to accept theirs.