Thursday, June 21, 2012
Back in the day, when I was a newspaper columnist in
Denver, representatives of the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League paid
a visit. Over coffee, they told the opinion editor and me that they had a
program, “A World of Difference,” that “celebrates America’s diversity.” They
asked for our editorial support. The editor and I had the same reaction: Would
it not be better to celebrate all the things we have in common, all the things
that unite Americans of whatever ethnic or religious backgrounds? Our friends
left the meeting mightily miffed.
At the time, I viewed such initiatives – the ADL was
hardly alone -- as well-intentioned if somewhat ham-handed efforts to combat
prejudice. I later realized this was part of a larger campaign to promote
multiculturalism – which seemed like a fairly harmless attempt to encourage
appreciation of varying styles of art, dress and cuisine by pretending that all
are of equal merit. (Is there anyone who seriously believes that German cuisine
is on a par with Chinese, French or Indian?) Only years later did I come to
realize: Multiculturalism is an ideology with far-reaching – and damaging --
consequences.
This was forcefully driven home to me by a book probably
not featured at your local book store: “Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation
of Multiculturalism” by Salim Mansur, a professor of political science at the
University of Ontario. Mansur recounts that back in the 1970s, Canada became
the first Western nation to embrace multiculturalism on an official level, “sponsored
by the state, supported by taxpayers, and monitored and enforced by
thought-police (human rights commissions).” He makes a compelling case that
adoption of this ideology has damaged Canada, and not just Canada:
Multiculturalism, he writes, has been “destructive of the West’s liberal
democratic heritage, tradition, and values based on individual rights and
freedoms.”
Mansur observes that “freedom is the distinguishing
feature of the West,” a core value that came under ferocious attack in the 20th
century from fascism and communism. In the current era, “the West is confronted
with a new, or third, challenge of totalitarianism in the form of Islamism and
its asymmetrical assault on liberal democracy, increasingly since the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States.”
Multiculturalism insists that all cultures are equal and
equally deserving of respect and celebration. It ignores the fact that freedom
emerged and flowered in the West due, Mansur writes, to the “unique
transmutation of Western culture and civilization brought about by the
Enlightenment and the new scientific method pioneered by Galileo…” These
influences “subjected religion to the scrutiny of reason.”
In the lands of Islam, it is generally the other way
around: Reason is subject to the scrutiny of faith. Multiculturalism makes
believe the conflict between these two schools of thought is inconsequential.
Worse, by emphasizing collective identities and group rights, and by pushing
for equality of results rather than equality of opportunity, multiculturalism
undermines individual freedom and devalues the Western cultures that have
nurtured and defended it.
In Canada, the U.S. and other countries that accept a
continuing stream of immigrants from non-Western societies, multiculturalism
also inhibits the process of integration and assimilation. Instead, Mansur
writes, it empowers new citizens “to demand that their host country adapt” to
their cultural requirements while relieving them of any responsibility to weave
themselves and their children into the cultural fabric of their adopted
homeland. In this and other ways, multiculturalism is a “slippery slope” that
“imperils” liberal democracies.
Mansur’s insights stem from experience as well as
academic study. Born an Indian Muslim in Calcutta, he is Canadian by choice and
conviction. You may not be surprised to learn that his defense of Western
values, his self-identification as a “dissident Muslim” whose his “faith does
not take precedence over my duties … to Canada and its constitution, which I
embrace freely,” has resulted in two fatwas calling for his execution.
Those whose religious/cultural beliefs lead them to the
conclusion Mansur deserves death also want to destroy Canada, America, Israel
and other “infidel” nations. That represents diversity – but should we really
celebrate it?
Unable to answer that question, multiculturalists instead
maintain the fiction that those who declare themselves enemies of the West are
merely addressing “grievances” over such historical “crimes” as colonialism and
imperialism (ignoring the fact that Islamists promote Islamic colonialism and
seek to revive Islamic imperialism), and the inequities of the global economic
system (though their funds are derived from wealth created by Western agriculture
and industry, and exchanged for Middle Eastern oil).
Mansur makes clear that Islamists are motivated by a
fierce will to power, and a deep antipathy for the West’s “civic culture, its
freedom and democracy.” And Islamists, he adds, “find that multiculturalism
increasingly in the post-9/11 world works in tandem with their interests to
weaken the West politically and culturally from the inside.”
Most of those who advocate multiculturalism no doubt mean
well. But their intellectual myopia is striking. The truth is some cultures
value freedom of religion; others see no virtue in granting free rein to what
they regard as false religions. Some cultures prize free speech; others believe
many ideas too dangerous to permit. Some cultures believe that women and
minorities should have the same rights as the majority; others consider that a
blasphemous notion. Some cultures are willing to compromise to achieve peace;
others are willing to fight and die for conquest and victory.
But the big trap of multiculturalism is simply this: If
all cultures are equal, why defend your own? The culture that replaces it will
be just as good, won’t it?
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