I stumbled across this interesting opinion piece recently:
I didn’t mean cultural relativism was the cause of the problem in Islam. I meant it was the source of weakness for the West in dealing with the problems of Islam. There is this quaint view that’s coalesced over the last 30 years especially that you mustn’t challenge anybody’s cultural mores, and in tandem with that, if you live a model left-wing lifestyle, that other cultures will be amazed at how open minded and hip you are, and reward your “respect” with a reciprocal respect for your own lifestyle, culture and ideology and – as a result – we will all live in a multicultural paradise.
This is, of course, bullshit.
The rest of it is here.
I think the author has a valid point. However, it’s not a very pragmatic point. If you enter a meeting to strategise about immigration, assimilation and population change with the quoted premise above, it’s unlikely you’ll get far. It might not be fair or equal to either culture to be more tolerant than them…but it’s certainly causes less friction.
Posted by nlthinking 