That Michael Barone is saying this in print means a great deal:
"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. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe."
The serious intellectual backlash against 'Multi-cult' has begun.
"Multi-cult" advocates never used to have to defend their ideas in honest debate outside the hot house atmosphere of acedemia. Now they have to intellectually defend themselves based on reality and not their utopian fantasies. Their normal debate-ending tactics of screaming "Racism," "Sexism" and "Homophobia" are being drowned in the bodies of those killed by Islamist beheaders and suicide bombers.
Tough for them. Good for the rest of us.
It would be good if you are right, but I think it might be premature. The remaining old MSM needs to bite the dust first. They are the ones screaming bigot every chance they get -- This insures the lowest common denominator thinking will prevail.
Multi-culturalism serves as a block for serious debate of serious problem.
This is so dumb. He makes up a basis for multiculturalism and then argues against that.
Multiculturalism is based on the idea that people are different in different societies. It would be stupid to assert that every group is morally equal, and that's why nobody says that.
And the idea that "tactics of screaming "Racism," "Sexism" and "Homophobia" are being drowned in the bodies of those killed by Islamist beheaders and suicide bombers" is equally ridiculous. There are Islamist beheaders, I suppose, and American boy-rapers, and Mexican tourist-robbers ... so what?
If your point is that law enforcement needs to target Arabs in order to prevent terrorism, then you're being silly. Most terrorism in America is homegrown. If you are commenting on the situation in Iraq, well, that's silly, too -- they're all Iraqis, what are you gonna do?
Intelligent people understand that there are different cultures, and that it is sometimes hard to understand the motives of people who differ from yourself, and that that does not imply that they are inferior. That isn't the "screaming" (and what an abuse of the word that is!) of any pointy-headed intellectual, it's just common sense.
Well, maybe not common, exactly, it does require a little intelligence and a little humility.
Actually, Barone is dead-on correct in his characterization of multicult in practice. I wish it was made up.
There is such a thing as a viable multiculturalism approach, but what has been sold to the public as multiculturalism by the Left is nothing of the sort. I'm talking with Dinesh D'Souza, and hope to get his "Multiculturalism 101" essay online shortly.
Passerby, FTL!!! (follow the links!!!)
Passerby, you are doing a very nice job trashing your own straw man.
The first step to having a productive discussion of multiculturalism is to discuss the degree to which "people are different in different societies." The next step is to discuss the consequences of those differences.
I wonder, is there a distinction to be drawn between multicultural affirmative action and a more general recognition of the value of various cultures. Or perhaps a continuum in which the government takes affirmative steps to recognize and promote "disadvantaged" cultures on one end, while on the other end, the government forces assimilation of non-national identies. Somewhere in the middle might be called tolerance.
While we're doing FTL, Dinesh D'Souza's recounting of his speaking tour re: his book Illiberal Education has more than a few revealing moments and bon mots related to multiculturalism as actually practiced.
I also commend his Preface from The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society.
-How many hijacking in history have been committed by non-Muslims? Non-Arabs/North Africans?
-How many suicide bombings?
-How many aircraft bombings?
The point is that we have limited resources and a known profile of terrorists that is damn near 100% accurate. To waste resources investigating groups and individuals almost certain not be planning the kinds of attacks we fear is idiotic in the extreme. To do so out of this blind love of multiculturalism is even more foolish.
Actually, passerby makes an excellent point - Barone is picking one particular definition of 'multiculturalism' to use as his own straw man. The word isn't generally thought to mean 'let everybody do whatever they bloody well want to, without any moral restrictions', as Barone seems to believe. Also, Mayor Dinkins is hardly in charge of defining multiculturalism for London, let alone anywhere (except, possibly, NYC).
His overly broad and short-sighted definition is especially troubling if you actually follow further along his own train of thought: if multiculturalism is 'bad', then what is 'good'? Enforced uniculturalism? Bigotry? Xenophobia? Check the quote:
"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."
The impression I get is that Barone's unspoken point is that all cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is better. I fear this path...
How many suicide bombings?
Ask the Israelies about the suicide bombings carried out by women and by people wearing hasidic attire and by those with other disguises.
Legion's last paragraph (#9) tells you all you need to know.
It is a perfect example of both the ethic he laughably claims does not exist, and of the problem it brings in its train.
Nice ad hominem there, Joe. Exactly what ethic am I claiming doesn't exist? The part about 'no moral restrictions'? I'm sure that philosophy does exist in some circles, but I don't think it's a good definition of multiculturalism. And what's "the problem it brings in its train"?
You (and Barone) seem to be implying that anyone who doesn't proclaim that "all other cultures suck" is, by definition, saying "my culture sucks". My understanding of multiculturalism is that life is not a zero-sum game - I don't need to slam other cultures in order to feel good about my own. It's one thing to, as Tony Blair says, "defend our values and our way of life". But by insulting countries like Holland and Australia for their 'tolerance', Barone edges very close to going from defense to offense, openly attacking any other values or way of life. And his mini-rant about "So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America, though it has existed in every society and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians." is pure tinfoil-hat paranoia.
Another good critique of the counter-effectiveness of multi-cuturalism is here.
It deals with the British variant, which has significant differences from the American form, but in some cases Britain merely has gone further down the path that some folks here want to start us on. The consequences have not been pretty.
Legion,
You might consider the official, STATUTORY, British definition of multi-culturalism, which is every bit as bad as detractors of the term say.
British definitions of a term often differ from American ones, so you have a minor point about defintional problems, but use of your own, idiosyncratic, definition does not go far in a public discussion.
Words should be used in their ordinary and common sense absent agreement on use of professional words of art for professional discussions. This isn't one of the latter.
Legion, that would be the implicit fear and denigration of Western civilization and culture, and the difficulty in looking at another culture and saying things like: "you know what? treating women like chattel is wrong, and those that practice this are wrong, and it's more important to insist on our standards of behaviour than it is to allow that to be fostered under a cultural guise."
You write:
Well, you know what? As Barone says:
And the result has been levels of freedom, prosperity, and protection of human rights unprecedented in the history of mankind.
Deal with it.
This isn't about slamming others to feel good, and that kind of idiotic response when dealing with clear issues of behavioural standards is, indeed, exactly the mentality Barone rightfully lambastes. It is also exactly what's driving the proper backlash we see, in the face of Islamic extremism that's being fostered in the un-integrated, ethnically segregated communities that left-wing multiculturalists celebrate so, defer to, and actively seek to foster (note American campuses, too: who campaigns for ethnically segregated dorms? The "multiculturalist" crowd).
And if you don't think that is happening, or that what Barone describes isn't a problem in Holland (which took down a "Thou Shalt Not Kill" sign near Van Gogh's murder location because it might offend Muslims) or Londonistan, or that multiculturalism does not usually mean in practice that only "white" culture can be bad or held to account - well, welcome back from outer space and nice having you back on earth, but open your freakin' eyes.
No, it's an accurate description of the way these subjects are taught on most American campuses, and promoted by the left-wing multiculturalist crowd.
Who do I trust, legion, you or my own eyes? Hint: it isn't you.
Well, Joe, where do you suppose this superior culture of ours came from? When the Constitution was written, it was the greatest political achievement of all time. And I feel the same way about the nation it created. But you know what? Neither one was perfect. We still had slavery. The right to vote only went to white male landowners, and most aspects of what we'd call 'freedom' were only for them too. We've fixed those things (and many others) as time has gone by, but we're far from perfect. No matter what your political bent, there's things everyone would change about today's America if they had the power.
The ideas for making those changes have to come from outside the system. Someone from another culture, or with experience of other cultures says "hey, maybe we should try that here", and it either works or it doesn't. That's the part you and Barone seem to skip - the middle ground between things that don't work for us and things that actively threaten us. Yeah, the way the Taliban and strict Sharia law treat women is horrifying and wrong. But that's no more reason to condemn Islamic culture than this joker is to condemn Christian culture. And that's the part I fear - the very thin line between Barone's (and your) writing and full-on violent bigotry and extremism in the other direction.
And I love your very next statement:Wow. An 8.5 on the hypocrisy scale in just one sentence. You try to say it isn't about hating everything that's not like "us", while simultaneously insulting any disagreement. Oh, so it was actually the right-wingers who brought us desegregation. I had no idea Medger Evers was a Republican. As I use the terms (your milage may vary), the difference between liberal and conservative is that liberals are willing to change the system, while conservatives generally aren't. Crap. Some places? Sure, every culture has self-loathers, but "most American campuses"? Utter crap. I went to public school in a medium-sized city. I went to a state university. My children go to public school. I've never had that kind of extremist dogma shoved at me even once. I love my country. It's not perfect, but you'll have to make a helluva better argument to convince me that going to war is going to make it better.
This is multi-culturalism in action in American universities, and at Virginia Tech to be precise. (Hat Tip: NRO Corner Blog)
It is the furtherance of Saudi Arabian Muslim gender apartheid in contravention of American constitutional law in America, for the sake of "being culturally sensitive":
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/28903.html
You have a point. Even with profiling, the jihadis will get around it.
Legion,
You multi-cultural slip is showing.
It is the usual dodge of the "Multi-Cult" crowd to scream southern racism. Try current reality and not your utopian religious faith.
We are in a situation equivalent to that faced by the British in India when they discovered the quaint Indian custom of the Suttee'.
The British told the Indians:
On second thought, there is another and better British Indian example that fits the current war. The British Raj versus the Thug gee cult. The Thugs were a religion of serial killers. The British exterminated every Thug gee.
That is what happens when normal people face death cults.
Now we Americans face an Islamist death cult deeply embedded in Islamic Arab-Tribal culture that is being exported via Arab oil money to Islam world wide.
Multi-culturalism says we should “tolerate” such things. Since all cultures are “equal.”
The reality is that if Islamic Arab-Tribal culture must die like the Thug gee for America to be safe at home. It is going to die.
I personally hope it does not come to that because it would mean the wide spread use of nuclear weapons.
Yet that is the road you multi-culturalist have put us on because you cannot accept what it is we fight.
Multi-culturalism states that I must regret the destruction of the death-cult Aztec empire. Common sense says that I may celebrate its end.
And I do.
legion,
Mohammed specifically approved slavery in the Koran.
Mohammed was wrong about slavery. The Koran is wrong about slavery. Islamic cultures are wrong in defending and practicing slavery. Slavery is always wrong.
Some things are always wrong regardless of culture.
You won't admit that.
Multi-culturalism as it is actually practiced in America and abroad is wrong. How purportedly good social ideas are actually practiced is rarely in general conformity with the original intentions in forming and promoting them, and often quite contradictory to the original intention. A friend put it this way yesterday:
"Out here in the West, we have a saying that you should always go fishing with two Mormons, because if you take just one he'll drink all the beer."
Your beliefs here are wrong. Your argument is wrong.
You won't admit that either.
legion (loved you in The Exorcist): the difference between liberal and conservative is that liberals are willing to change the system, while conservatives generally aren't.
Let's pretend that's true. It isn't, but pretend real hard. For if it is true, no liberal should have any truck with multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism does not encourage the critique and change of cultures (with one notable exception, of course). Instead multicult tries to cover over all their differences with relativist goop. So multicult does underhandeded apologism for slavery, tyranny, and every kind of social bigotry by discrediting any attempt to even talk about it. As you put it, such talk implies that other people are considered "inferior", and that makes us the bad guys, not them.
Passerby gives an excellent example of this technique, above: "There are Islamist beheaders, I suppose, and American boy-rapers, and Mexican tourist-robbers ... so what?"
The moral equivalence, as always, works only one way. When the multiculturalist looks with horror at "neoconservatism" - which has come to mean every bad thing including bad weather - he does not remind himself that in other cultures they chop off people's heads.
Multiculturalism is a demonstration of Pascal Bruckner's thesis in The Tears of the White Man: The only interest we have in "third world" people is in how we can use them to attack each other - over here in the "real world".
Why is it that people who defend mulitculturalism know everything that's supposedly wrong with American society, but they know next to nothing about other cultures?
Passerby, you say there are "Islamist beheaders, I suppose.." Do you know which segments of Muslim society support and finance the "Islamist beheaders?"
Do you know the difference between a Shi'ite and a Sunni? Wahhabis and Wasabi? Do you know the differences between the Saudi legal system, the Lebanese legal system and our own? What's the difference between the Lords Resistance Army and al Qaeda? What are the similarities between them? Why are Islamist beheaders beheading monks in Thailand?
I'm willing to guess that you couldn't answer any of these questions without looking stuff up. But I'll bet you can tell us all about the evils of Halliburton.
Multiculturalism just a way of helping the Western Left feel less guilty about their privileged lives.
"...just a way of helping the Western Left feel less guilty about their privileged lives"...in some cases, but many of these people don't feel guilty at all. Rather, they feel superior, and their political beliefs are to a substantial extent a way of reinforcing these feelings of superiority to others in their own society.
C S Lewis had some interesting thoughts on this kind of thing, excerpted here:
Repent Now
Sounds like passerby and legion hit a nerve, and the rest of you guys lost your normal ability for cool and rational discourse! (That's a joke, by the way. Once someone opens the "left-vs-right" box, the amount of "cool and rational" drops precipitously, although it can still be observed in other contexts.)
We all know that there's an idiot in every village, including our own. (See the recent discussion of "idiotarians", both left and right.) But notice the argument it's all too easy to fall into: "Your position is identified with the . Here's what a ist idiot said. That's obviously foolish, so you must be wrong." Substitute "Right" or "Left" for as you choose. It's an invalid argument either way.
It may well be that a good deal of nonsense is taught under the banner of "multi-culturalism". Happily, those of us who teach in the sciences tend to avoid exposure to that, and certainly avoid passing it on to our students. On the other hand, as passerby [#2] points out:
Reader, if you think the above is a criticism of America, or an endorsement of terrorism, beheading, slavery, or abuse of women, then take yourself to the showers and come back when you are rational. Then try to read the words as written. (If not, then this paragraph doesn't apply to you, so don't feel insulted.)
There certainly are practices that are accepted in certain other cultures that are (or should be) morally abhorrent to the entire human race. It's perfectly reasonable for the civilized world to enforce those values on other cultures, whether they agree or not. Slavery is a particularly non-controversial example.
On the other hand, not everything about our own society is perfect and should be emulated throughout the world. Do you really want a McDonald's and a Starbucks on every corner in every society in the world?
Obviously, the hard part is to discern which practices go into which category.
Those of us who are rational are not arguing for cuddling with those darling terrorists. (That was sarcasm, by the way, just in case you missed it.) But just like any military leader wants to understand the enemy, it is important for us to understand the cultural forces that lead people to become suicide bombers. Calling them something like "cowardly psychopaths" is (a) incorrect, and (b) unhelpful to our side.
What I mean by multi-cultural education includes learning what the world looks like to an Islamic fundamentalist, so I know how to counter their teachings and prevent them from achieving their goals. "Understanding" does not necessarily imply "acceptance" or "tolerance".
However, a good moral education helps us understand when acceptance and tolerance for differences are warranted, and when they are not.
There's an answer I've gotten to related posts, of the form, "Don't understand them. Just kill them all. Then we don't have to worry about them." (I'm caricaturing, but only slightly.)
In addition to being essentially genocide, this won't work, because the number of innocent people you kill by accident will create more new terrorists than you succeed in killing old ones.
So, there's power for our side in (genuine) multi-cultural education. And rejecting genuine multi-cultural education weakens our side in this conflict, very seriously. (Meanwhile, I have no problem with criticisms of bad multi-cultural education, as long as it points the way to the good kind.)
Oops. I made an HTML error in [#25], using angle-brackets inappropriately. My paragraph 2 showed up as:
It should have been:
Sorry.
Reply to #9 from legion on August 9, 2005 08:03 PM
"The impression I get is that Barone's unspoken point is that all cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is better. I fear this path..."
Here's the pointed question. If our culture isn't better, then why do we keep it?
Pangloss
Mary [#23] describes some very reasonable topics that I would expect would be covered in a multi-cultural education dealing with Islam.
At the same time, just as I wouldn't expect a course on Western civilization to focus on the evils of Halliburton, I wouldn't expect a course on Islam to overlook the positive sides of both historical and contemporary Islam.
Certainly there are bad multi-cultural courses out there, maybe many of them. But your argument supports replacing them with good ones, not eliminating them.
Anyway, there's a Higher Authority on my side on this:
Beard: But just like any military leader wants to understand the enemy, it is important for us to understand the cultural forces that lead people to become suicide bombers.
Then why is any discussion of those cultural forces being shouted down by the multicult left?
They continually pretend that this question has never been posed, when in fact we have been examining it in great detail for four years now, while the multicults have been out to lunch.
But just like any military leader wants to understand the enemy, it is important for us to understand the cultural forces that lead people to become suicide bombers. Calling them something like "cowardly psychopaths" is (a) incorrect, and (b) unhelpful to our side.
Obviously you know a lot about those cultural forces. So, what are the forces that lead Muslims to become suicide bombers? What is the name of the system of laws which justify their actions? Which Imams, and which legal authorities, have encouraged this activity?
What is the Muslim definition of a "human being?" What's a Dhimmi? Are you najis, and if so, what does that mean. Do you live in the Dar Al-Harb or the Dar Al-Islam? How many people have been murdered in the name of Islam in the Sudan? How many have been enslaved in Africa under the full approval of Allah? How many ways does Islam have to say the word Allah?
What proof do you have that you, as a supporter of multiculturalism, understand anything about Islamists and their culture.
the number of innocent people you kill by accident will create more new terrorists than you succeed in killing old ones
How are these new terrorists instantly created? Do they spontaneously generate? What historical proof do you have that killing one terrorist generates more terrorists?
Glenn Wishard [#29] writes
Who's shouting? I didn't hear any shouting from passerby, or legion, or even me. Sounds to me like we are all trying to carry on a reasonable, rational discussion, even among people who may disagree on certain things. Disagreeing is not "shouting down".
Mary [#23,#30] appears to be posing her questions as a way to say that I don't have a right to speak unless I know the answers to all of them. (Right, Mary?) That's pretty close to "shouting down", as I understand it. (If any of you disagree, please clarify exactly what does and does not qualify as "shouting down".)
I'm not an authority on Islam, but I am an authority on certain areas in science, so I know what it means to be an authority on a topic. I also understand the importance of intellectual humility, even in the area where one is an acknowledged authority.
Although I am not an authority on Islam, I am a reasonably well-educated and well-read citizen of this country. I do have some opinions on what motivates someone to become a suicide bomber, but that discussion is for some other time.
I do know that Islam is not a monolithic system of belief, with every Muslim lined up with Osama bin Laden, any more than every Christian lines up with Eric Rudolph. (And no, I am not asserting a moral equivalence between OBL and ER. I am using both as examples of bad people using religion to justify their evil activities.)
Mary, the way to carry on a respectful discourse between people who disagree is not to disparage the other person's right to hold an opinion. Rather, state your argument, with citations to back up your specific points when specialized knowledge is necessary. Often, more generally accepted knowledge is sufficient (as I believe it is for this post), so no citations are necessary.
The problem people are unwilling to face is, our culture (the "West") IS better, in all aspects, to EVERY OTHER CULTURE IN THE WORLD.
This is best illustrated by the Commander of the Space Shuttle (a woman, Captain Eileen Collins), piloting a flawless landing at Edwards, when women in Saudia Arabia are not allowed to vote or even drive, and live in virtual bondage throughout the Third World.
Or, if you prefer a movie reference, there is the excellent "Mountains of the Moon" with Patrick Bergen. Bergen playing Richard Francis Burton, is appalled when his friend and native guide is captured by another tribe and brutally tortured to the point of impending (and painful) death. Burton tells the brutal and tribal primitives that their tribal idiocy (the man was tortured merely for being from a rival tribe and viewed as an escaped slave) that they were a "little people" destined to be ground into dust by History and modernity.
Or perhaps the Dream Speech of Martin Luther King. King did not lay out some alternative culture and separate kingdom for African Americans, no he wanted inclusion, without respect to color, for everyone in the American Dream. His Dream was simply extending the American Dream to every American, and points out the fundamental difference between Western Culture and others:
Western Culture continuously reforms, adapts, changes, and has inherent in it the notion of progress, that people can and should strive for equality of opportunity AND advancement, based on fundamental human equality.
No other culture has this, mired in stupid tribalism and primitive superstition. South Korea, Singapore, Coastal China, parts of India, and Chile demonstrate that Western Culture does not equal ethnicity but instead fundamental values as outlined above, and can be freely adopted by people determined to join the modern success of the West.
Multiculturalism FAILS because it FAILS to acknowledge the obvious: Western Culture is better (if only for the utilitarian argument) than all others, and the world will be a better place when Western Culture spreads to all parts of the globe. When Niger resembles South Korea, or Australia.
I personally have no problem with Starbucks and McDonalds in every city on the Planet. Why not? Those companies don't put guns to people's heads to make them buy their products. Other folks are free to compete. They win every day by offering a superior product at a superior price (just ask the Chinese in Beijing who flock there, and KFC too). Samsung, Sony, Honda, Ikea, Nokia, Erricson show that's not limited to the US either.
I'll respectfully submit that the world would be one helluva better place if Niger for example had a world-class franchise restaurant, or electronics company. Better than providing "local color" which essentially results in grinding poverty.
Reader,
You seem unaware of the historic response to suicide attacks - it's called "Kill them all, their families too, and anyone else you can catch near them."
Here are the historic examples I have in mind.
1) The Assassin cult - you've heard of them. The Mongols eliminated them. The surviving Assassin cultists quite changed their behavior and beliefs - now they are known as the Ismali sect of Islam.
2) The Anabaptists of the early Reformation. Their neighbors eliminated them. The survivors totally changed their behavior and beliefs. The descendent sects of Anabaptists are known in America as Amish, Brethren (my church), German Baptists, Mennonites and Quakers.
3) Some Islamic cult on Mindoro Island in the Phillipines shortly after the U.S. forcibly replaced the Spanish as overlords. There was a BIG scandal in the U.S. over what we did to them, their relatives, etc.
4) The Japanese in 1945 - kamikazes, suicidal resistance, etc. We nuked them and, if that hadn't worked, would have gassed them all (starting with civilians in Japanese cities) from the air like bugs until either all of them were dead or resistance ceased. Read the article titled "Gassing Japan" by Polmar & Allen in the Autumn 1997 edition of Military History Quarterly.
Trust me, it has never, ever, been necessary to "understand the cultural causes which lead people to become suicide" whatever.
The ONLY time the response has NOT been genocide has been the past ten or so years.
That will change.
Beard: Disagreeing is not "shouting down".
What exactly are you disagreeing with? Because you appear to me to be saying exactly nothing, at some length.
Wow! That's quite a set of replies.
Jim Rockford [#32] says, The problem people are unwilling to face is, our culture (the "West") IS better, in all aspects, to EVERY OTHER CULTURE IN THE WORLD.
I'm actually quite a fan of Western Civilization myself, but I find it rather breathtaking that someone actually believes what you say. America is a great country, and has the ability to become greater, but not by ignoring our failings. I apologize for repeating this quote, but Jesus has something to say to you:
Jim Rockford left me breathless, but Tom Holsinger [#33] bowled me over. As far as I can tell, Tom is advocating the position, "Kill them all, their families too, and anyone else you can catch near them."
Poor naive me, I had assumed that we would agree that genocide is a crime against humanity. I fear that Tom's items 3 and 4 might shake Jim's confidence in the superiority of our culture. It certainly convinces me that the other side has no monopoly on terrorists. I just hope that Tom never gets access to WMD, or any kind of weapon at all, for that matter.
I presume that Tom's position is not shared with others on this list. If I'm wrong, I'd appreciate knowing it.
Glenn Wishard [#34]: Read my original post, #25. My #31 is just responding to you and Mary.
Beard - actually, I was hoping that you'd take the time to look up some of the answers to my questions, and, as a result, learn something new. My expectations were too high.
I'm not an authority on Islam either, but I read the news everyday. Don't you?
So, a simple question - you said "it is important for us to understand the cultural forces that lead people to become suicide bombers"
How can you "understand" cultural forces if you refuse to learn anything about those cultural forces?
Beard, actually you are misrepresenting what Tom wrote. His comment had nothing to do with advocacy, Tom was describing history and what is inevitable. You should not confuse the two, it leads to confused and weak thinking.
Mary [#36]: pretty quick to jump to conclusions about other people, aren't we? In fact, I looked up the terms that I could find quickly, and learned a few things, though nothing that changes my overall impression of Islam.
There's some pretty grim teachings and beliefs in Islam, but you can find some pretty grim things in the Bible, too. The questions are, what groups believe what, and which will take what action. I don't doubt that we have a serious problem with Islamic fundamentalists, and that those Muslims point to their scripture for their justification. But there are other, much more moderate, Muslims as well.
What are the implications for how we can work towards an end to the War on Terror?
Robin Roberts [#37]: If, as you and Tom seem to believe, genocide is the inevitable response to suicide attackers, a lot of Iraqis, who thought we were on their side, are going to be seriously disappointed. What do you suppose they will do then? Or won't it matter, because we'll just kill them all?
(No more responses from me tonight. I'll read whatever else comes in the morning. Thanks for an illuminating exchange.)
Related.
(Hat tip Watch site.)
Multiculturalism is ridiculous because its adversity to 'metanarratives' and embracing of 'diversity' could only be supported accepted by postmodern society anyway. It is not a neutral point of view. It is a western particularism par excellance.
"Good" social values which are historically rooted in western culture are said to be "discoveries of the universal human spirit", but when they find a value they don't like they see that value as being particularly western.
Of course we think western values are better. Pomo style "tolerance" is a particularistic idea that has come into vogue in the specific collapse of the modernist project starting with neitzche and reinforced by his disciples in the field of anthropology. I'm not saying this to sound brainy, I'm saying this to show how specific and exclusive of a value the whole pomo/tolerance/diversity/multicultural thing really is.
So don't "fear" where this is going, thinking that west is best. We already do it, it's called multiculturalism.
I will leave Tom Holsinger to defend himself on this, one since he did not say what you wrote above.
I will note that your lying about it, not once but twice, puts you into the same inflammatory hyper-partisan category as Juan Cole or the Daily KOS-oids. Anything you or yours don't like is NAZI grade genocidal evil as well as being cancer causing and fattening.
It is why folks like you are being tuned at as having nothing to contribute to any debate on the war, because you don't.
Why is it that people who defend multiculturalism have an encyclopedic knowledge about everything that's supposedly wrong with American society, but they know next to nothing about other cultures?
Instead, the multiculturalist here defines "understanding" as something that can only be personally interpreted through their knowledge and/or contempt for Western Culture. They know very little about facts concerning concepts like najis, Shariah, Dhimmitude and the Dar Al-Harb.
See my blog for the rest of my argument with Beard.
"For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane."
-- Neal Stephenson
Beard,
You are playing the usual lefty games here, which is unfortunate as there might have been a productive discussion. You fell into a deliberate trap – one designed to reveal whether you are the rare lefty with whom it is possible to talk. That does not seem to be the case.
It is SOP for your ilk to attack the statements of those you disagree with by contending that describing or predicting something you don’t like is to advocate it. The silliness of that is obvious :“Last December’s tidal wave in the Indian Ocean was awful”, or “There will be a major earthquake in California in the next twenty years.”
I related true historical facts (mass slaughter as the response to suicide attacks) and said that the recent exception (mass slaughter has not been tried – well, not outside Chechnya anyway – to eliminate the suicide attack patterns of the past ten years) would change, as a possible lead to a discussion as to why the recent exception exists, whether or not this exception is a good thing, and the factors which might cause it to change.
But you reverted to the expected type.
Let us know if you want to talk, or prefer to continue the way you were.
How about some cultures are objectively better than others based on their treatment of minorities; be the minorities sexual, racial, religious, ethnic, economic, political, etc.
Any one want to disagree with that?
===================================Slavery arose due to a lack of mechanical advantage.
Once mechanical devices became widespread the value of slavery declined. Then it lost its social value.
=====================================Slavery is useful when you have a low energy low value task that requires a mobile power source (running errands for the king) or some intelligence - separating the cotton seeds from the cotton. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Once there is machinery to do the job the value of the slave goes down.
So to say that slavery is always bad is to ignore how the institution came about.
When the economic pie is small and precarious slavery may be a good option (if freely entered in to as it sometimes was). You trade freedom for the privledge of being treated like a wasting capital resource: some one else has to assure your maintenance.
Well of couse a lot of slaves were unwilling. It was accepted for a long time that if you couldn't defend yourself slavery was your lot in life.
The Jewish laws on slavery and the treatment of slaves is quite interesting. There was a Jubilee every 49 years when all slaves were freed. There were also lesser jubilees every 7 years. The laws also go into the treatment of slave families, etc. Quite liberal for the time. In fact they would have been quite liberal in 1855 in the USA relative to the laws in place.
Oh, and Beard...
Since when did "better" mean "without fault"?
Wow. Go home for the day and see what happens...
Pangloss(#27)-"Here's the pointed question. If our culture isn't better, then why do we keep it?"
Well, we don't; we never have. To be more specific, you can't consider something like 'western culture' to be a completely monolithic thing... a culture has many different aspects, and some (but not all) of these aspects can change over time. Our culture remains "our culture", but it evolves bit-by-bit. Rock music is a pretty significant part of 'American culture', but it came from blues, which came from slave spiritual music. Our culture has accepted rock music, while discarding slavery. Many cultures have had slavery in their pasts also, but gotten over it. Two centuries ago, many people considered it 'good', but today we've recognized that we are all human beings, and treating a human as property is flatly wrong. In a passing response to Tom (#21), it is wrong, even though the Old Testament approves of slavery (and genocide, down to the last man, woman, and child) also. We've progressed to a point where we can see that such things are both morally unacceptable and culturally unnecessary.
For Glen(#29):"Then why is any discussion of those cultural forces being shouted down by the multicult left?"
To go back to your earlier comment (#22),I don't mean to 'shout down' that discussion at all. There are things in this world we need to recognize as threats and treat appropriately. What sets me off, however, is broad, genocidal comments that treat entire multi-hundred-million chunks of humanity as universally 'evil'. I'm perfectly comfortable with judging individual aspects of a culture as 'wrong' or as direct threats to us, but I will 'shout down' attempts to unfairly demonize the rest of the world.
I disagree with your definition of multiculturalism. At the very least, that's not how I intend it. In particular:
The problem is, there's another thought that goes after that - It's useless to classify entire cultures ('western', 'eastern', 'Islamic', 'Christian', etc.) as wholly 'evil' or 'good'... if you want to discuss cultural forces, you have to be more specific. Anything taken to an extreme is going to go bad... Islam is a large & broad religion. But Islamic extremism? Bad. Wahabbism? Bad. In a similar vein, I strongly diagree with any blanket condemnation of Christianity. But the Inquisition? That was bad. I love German culture, but the Holocaust? Hella bad.
I guess the point I've been trying to make this whole time is that while it's perfectly legitimate to point out certain groups or aspects that should not be accepted, it's just as important not to over-generalize those aspects. There are enough terrorists in the world today, we don't need to 'buy more trouble' if it's not necessary.
Whew. That's enough for now...
legion,
I dare you to love German cooking. Or even survive it.
"The secret of German cooking is missing ingredients."
"Germans are so atrocity-prone because their mothers' cooking makes them think it's normal."
Eternal Meat Loaf - add whatever is left of last week's meatloaf to the next loaf as a "starter". Repeat weekly in the same pot (or pan) for 100-150 years.
Tom [#44],
If I misunderstood your intent in [#33], I apologize. I would be happy to discuss this issue. (That's a liberal thing to do, by the way: give a conditional apology to smooth things over and allow productive communication to continue.)
Given that I had just been arguing for understanding the cultural causes that lead to suicide bombing, you might see how I would interpret your response:
I am pleased that my reading of your intent was wrong.
How do you think we can overcome the problem of suicide bombers in Iraq? I agree with Mary (believe it or not), that understanding their belief system is important to understanding why this happens, and to fighting it effectively.
Following the link in [#43] to Mary's blog, I was pleased to see a note from Joe K explaining that there had been a temporary bug in the database of the post-filtering software. I briefly worried that I was being censored for disagreeing politely with you folks.
I wouldn't mind having a substantive discussion with Mary, as I have had with several others, but she seems to want me to pass a test first. Furthermore, the test just seems to get longer. How about if you make an actual statement I can respond to?
I've made several actual statements for people to respond to. Mary quotes two of those, and I stand behind their content. She responds directly to neither one, but claims that I believe "sure, terrorism is bad but we're bad too", and implies that I have "contempt for Western culture". Not only are both claims false, but I can't find anything in my posts that can plausibly be distorted into those.
Beard - You said that you had a background in science. As far as I know, scientific inquiry consists of many series of questions, theories and tests. Why are you flummoxed by a few questions?
The basic difference between multiculturalists and others seems to be their definition of "understanding" as it applies to our enemies.
I think we should "understand" our enemies as a policeman would understand a criminal. We should learn how our enemies finance their operations, we should learn what motivates them, their habits, their beliefs, their friends, their supporters and their enemies. We need to know what they fear and what they can't bear to lose.
The purpose of this understanding is to separate our enemies from the innocent, the moderates, and the noncombatants. The ultimate goal of this understanding is to effectively destroy our enemies and eviscerate the organizations that support them before more crimes are committed and more innocent people die.
That's my definition of 'understanding'. What's yours?
Mary,
I'm glad we're back in communication. I think we can come pretty close to agreeing on your statement:
The concern I have is how you define "our enemies". Are the terrorists our enemies? Or all of Islam? Or everyone who doesn't support President Bush's policies? Or who?
The broad-brush criticisms of "the Left" (or for that matter, "multiculturists") I hear don't give me confidence that you are making careful distinctions between different aspects of Islam. But the quote above suggests that you recognize that there are innocents, moderates, and noncombatants, as well. That's good news, but there seem to be others who support the "Kill them all!" philosophy.
In fact, it is simply impossible for us, as outsiders, to destroy the terrorists in Iraq (short of total genocide, which I am prepared to reject). Only the Iraqis can destroy the terrorists in their own community. The only way we can prevail in this struggle is to help build up a civilized culture within the complex Islamic society in Iraq that is willing and able to identify, isolate, control, and destroy the terrorist elements within it.
So, how do we do that? I certainly can't give you a recipe, but understanding their society, in all its complexity, is a major part of it. I agree with you about the importance of answering the questions you raise. However, there are many other questions that also have to be answered, particularly about understanding the positive aspects of Islamic society capable of controlling the negative parts.
The problem I have with your questions is not with the importance of learning about Islam. It's that all your questions, and all the answers I was able to find, were aimed at the darker, evil side of Islam. Is that all there is? Perhaps you believe so, but I don't. And I think that finding and supporting the positive, good side of Islam is a necessary part of a winning strategy for us.
Going back and reviewing the quote from your statement above, I think it's an important mistake to say that our "ultimate goal" is to destroy our enemies and eviscerate their support systems. Our ultimate goal is to create a healthy, peaceful society that will be able to keep its nut-cases to a tiny, impotent, minority. (You can never destroy every Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph in a society, but you give the society a strong enough "immune system" to protect itself from them.)
If we characterize our enemies incorrectly, and if we have too simple a view of the weapons we can use against them, we risk building a "Maginot Line" that is simply irrelevant to the actual threats we face.
This is why I criticize the more bloodthirsty elements of the Right. It's a bit like watching someone run out to attack a plague of locusts with a .45 revolver. His heart may be in the right place, but his brain is not, and I'd better take cover until he runs out of ammunition. But if I criticize what he's doing, don't tell me it's because I love locusts!
The concern I have is how you define "our enemies". Are the terrorists our enemies? Or all of Islam? Or everyone who doesn't support President Bush's policies? Or who?
Our enemies are the terrorists and the groups who openly support them. These groups include, but do not solely consist of:
Abu Sayyaf, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, al-Qaeda, the GIA in Algeria, the AZFin France, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Muslim Brotherhood in America and in Britain, Hizb-ut-tahrir and al-Muhajiroun in Britain, and Chechen Terrorists led by Shamil Basayev.
The groups that openly support them include weathy Saudis and Iranians (ie: members of the Saudi and Iranian governments), Syria, WAMY in America, MAS in America, MAB in Britain, the Holy Land Foundation, etc.
According to the Washington Post, most of the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi. These young Saudis were encouraged to go to Iraq and kill Americans by their government. Our allies in Saudi Arabia are a large part of the terrorist problem.
In fact, it is simply impossible for us, as outsiders, to destroy the terrorists in Iraq (short of total genocide, which I am prepared to reject).
Hold on there, Tex. When you talk about people who think you can kill locusts with a .45, you're talking about yourself, right?
That is the most absurd, uninformed conclusion I've seen. Simply impossible? Is it also simply impossible to kill a disease without killing the whole person? What kind of science have you studied?
I don't need to ask you how much you know about groups like al Qaeda, al Ikwan and Hizb-ut-tahrir, Arab culture, Arabism, Ba'thism, etc. - you've already answered that question. Please stay on this site and read more about these groups. There's a lot of good information here.
C'mon, Mary, hold it together. We were doing fine there for a while. Let's keep trying.
Your list of terrorist organizations sounds plausible, though it was a bit odd to see "Gaza Strip and West Bank" in the middle of it. Those are geographical regions, containing quite a few people of different kinds, not organizations, terrorist or otherwise.
I agree with your point that Saudi Arabia is a significant part of the problem. You want to read an interesting analysis of that? George Friedman, founder of Stratfor, wrote America's Secret War, which is quite good. He's certainly no Leftist, but he's not a knee-jerk Rightist either. He points out that the administration's major reason for the Iraq war was to put serious pressure on the Saudis without upsetting too many other applecarts we wanted to preserve.
From your message, starting with your quote of me:
How do you think most diseases are actually cured? Certainly not by killing off all the infectious organisms through external intervention. Most medical treatment works by holding off the damage the invading organism does through one mechanism, while strengthening the patient's immune system through another (perhaps just buying it time), so the immune system can get rid of the disease.
The analogy with disease is actually pretty good. Our role in Iraq is to prevent the bad guys from interfering with the (slow and messy) Iraqi process of creating a democratic society that can (slowly) earn enough trust from the Iraqi population that they will serve as their own immune system, identifying and eliminating the terrorists who threaten their own way of life.
We, as outsiders, have exactly zero chance of identifying and killing all the terrorists in Iraq without causing so much collateral damage ("false positives") that we convert even more members of the previously-neutral population into new terrorists.
These last two points are the key to my argument. If you want to discuss these like adults, I would welcome the discussion. But don't just call names.
If I may bring the discussion back to multiculturalism for a minute, I don't know if Legion, Passerby, Beard, et al are being disingenuous or if they really believe that multiculturalism as practiced in our schools and universities is as innocuous as they claim. But as a former academic (in the words of the old man at the end of Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons, "Durn it, I tell ye I was thar!") I'm quite familiar with how it works at least in the fields of literary and cultural studies. Multiculturalists borrow a technique from poststructuralists and postmodernists (they are often all the same people). John Searle calls this technique "going from the preposterous to the platitudinous." They make the preposterous claim that all cultures are equal and that there are no means of adjudicating between cultures. When a critic points out the horrid implications of this position for the morality of honor killings, female circumcision, etc, the multiculturalist retreats to the platitude that "well all cultures have their good and bad points and all our theory really says is we should be tolerant." As Searle says, "There's the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back." The multiculturalist will usually follow up this shift to platitude by accusing the critic of racism and intolerance. Of course, once the critic leaves the room, the multiculturalists all go back to the original preposterous assertions among themselves. So Beard, you'll forgive me if I'm somewhat skeptical about your assertion that multiculturalism doesn't mean what multiculturalists themselves say it means when there are no critics of multiculturalism in the room.
Our role in Iraq is to prevent the bad guys from interfering with the (slow and messy) Iraqi process of creating a democratic society that can (slowly) earn enough trust from the Iraqi population that they will serve as their own immune system, identifying and eliminating the terrorists who threaten their own way of life.
We, as outsiders, have exactly zero chance of identifying and killing all the terrorists in Iraq without causing so much collateral damage ("false positives") that we convert even more members of the previously-neutral population into new terrorists.
So, if we as outsiders have exacly zero chance of idetifying and killing terrorists in Iraq, how do we prevent the "bad guys" from interfering?
You believe that we have exactly zero chance? Exactly? What facts are you using to form this conclusion?
Just wondering - do you believe that this quote is a reasonable assessment of the unstoppability of suicide bombers?
"the bomber will always get through. The only defense is in offense, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves"
Most medical treatment works by holding off the damage the invading organism does through one mechanism, while strengthening the patient's immune system through another (perhaps just buying it time), so the immune system can get rid of the disease.
Yes, and all of these methods require extrernal intervention with the ultimate goal of destroying (getting rid of) the disease. Unless you're talking about the spiritual healing methods used by Christian Scientists and psychics?
Fred,
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if there is a large amount of idiocy, just like you describe, going on under the name "multiculturalism" in our universities, including my own. It's worthwhile to oppose this.
The problem is to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It's clear to me that there is significant value in understanding the world-views of people who are different from us, including people we consider loathsome and evil.
Sometimes those people really are evil, and we need the knowledge to know how to fight them. Sometimes, we need to learn that something we might consider loathsome at first is just a cultural prejudice ("Those Frenchmen actually eat snails!").
I've never claimed that there are no idiots teaching multiculturalism. It's even possible that the term "multicultural education" ™ has been hijacked by organized groups of idiots. Nonetheless, I do claim that there is great value in learning about other cultures.
Some of the arguments I hear against "multicultural education" ™ appear to claim that there is no value in learning about any culture but our own. This seems foolish to me.
Mary [#56],
Ah, thanks for the grist for a nice discussion! Here's a snippet from your message, starting with your quote from me.
Here's where precise language makes a difference. We have zero chance of killing all the terrorists. Defending the good guys certainly requires killing some of them, which we can do. In fact, making them impotent is more important than killing them. They fear impotence a great deal more than death, and it is in fact more dangerous to their cause. To the extent that they become isolated, ineffective, and laughable, their entire cause is lost.
Well, 10^{-n} for some quite large n. Think like an epidemiologist for a moment. There is no perfect test. Every test has a false positive rate and a false negative rate. Suppose you have a test T that you can apply to a person x, to determine whether that person is a terrorist. Then, presumably, if T(x) says "yes", you kill x. [This doesn't have to be a blood test. It's short for all the judgment a person in fact applies when deciding whether to kill someone or not.]
Suppose T is amazingly accurate, and the false positive and false negative rates are both 0.001. (This is really good, even for blood tests. Judging whether a person is a terrorist is likely to be much less accurate.)
Let's imagine that there are 25,000 terrorists in Iraq, in a population of about 25,000,000. [Feel free to fiddle with these numbers afterward.] Out of those 25,000 terrorists, T(x) will say "yes" for 24,975 of them, and "no" for 25 (the "false negatives". So we kill off most of the terrorists. Great! Right? But wait.
Out of 25,000,000 innocent Iraqis, T(x) reports "no" for 24,975,000 of them, but we get "false positives", T(x)="yes" for 25,000 innocent people. What do we do?
Suppose we go ahead and kill them. Remember, by hypothesis here, these 25,000 are genuinely innocent human beings, with families and friends who are going to be really angry. They are hearing propaganda from elsewhere telling them how terrible we are, and their experience after we kill their own family member confirms that claim. How many of those family and friends are going to become terrorists, or will quietly support terrorists rather than than supporting us by turning them in?
By now, I'm sure your fuming, and getting ready to flame me.
But this isn't multiculturalist BS, this is epidemiology and simple mathematics. I've used precisely the same argument to discuss genetic testing and abortion, and data-mining and the TIA.
Before you get mad at me, work through the calculations yourself, with your own figures. But make sure that you include the fact that every decision has a false positive rate and a false negative rate, and make reasonable estimates of those. This calculation works for any situation where you are trying to detect something rare. And where intervention has side-effects.
And, to make things worse, the process by which you test every Iraqi x, and kill every one such that T(x)="yes" is not instantaneous, so the generation of new terrorists starts before you finish killing off the old ones. You can go on to calculate equilibrium levels if you like.
This is an abstraction of reality, but it captures a phenomenon that is real and important, and seems to be widely overlooked.
You can ignore it if you like, but the equations don't care. You just won't understand why you keep losing, even when you're doing what you think ought to work.
Well Beard, I certainly wouldn't agree with anyone who says there is no value in learning about other cultures. However, I do believe it is more important to learn about our own first. I also believe that our culture is superior in most ways that count to most other cultures (note the qualifiers here).
As to understanding jihadis, the analogy I like to draw is to a rabid dog. If you can understand the source of the rabies and eliminate it there, that's great. But in the meantime you've got a rabid animal running around infecting other animals and potentially killing people. Putting that animal down is of much more immediate concern than understanding the source of the disease (though long term that will help eliminate the disease).
I also disagree that killing jihadis or even killing innocent people increases the number of jihadis. From everything I've read about Arab culture, I would argue that our inaction in the face of terrorism since 1979 has produced far more jihadis than the Iraq war ever could.
Osama Bin Laden didn't attack us because he hated us. He did, but that's not why he attacked us. Lots of people hate us; they don't attack us. Bin Laden attacked us because he wasn't afraid of us. Horrid as it may sound to a reasonable liberal like yourself, I'm adamantly convinced that had we turned Tehran into a parking lot in 1979, September 11 would just be another block on the calendar. Of course, to concede your point, I believe that based on what I've been able to gleen about Middle Eastern Cultures from the books and articles I've read about them.
Beard - LOL. Okay, you have had some scientific training, and you're right, we can't kill every single terrorist. That's a fact I was already willing to accept. Fighting crime doesn't put an end to crime. On the other hand, not fighting crime causes it to increase exponentially.
The most effective method of fighting crime was demonstrated by Rudy Giulini's zero tolerance policies. Of course, it wasn't a precise zero tolerance, but it has been proven to work. I believe that similar methods can be used by civil governments to fight terrorism locally.
Remember, by hypothesis here, these 25,000 are genuinely innocent human beings, with families and friends who are going to be really angry. They are hearing propaganda from elsewhere telling them how terrible we are, and their experience after we kill their own family member confirms that claim. How many of those family and friends are going to become terrorists, or will quietly support terrorists rather than than supporting us by turning them in?
This point is not proven. As the Washington Post said, most suicide bombers are state-sponsored Saudis, not distgruntled family and friends. Most Islamist terrorists in general are from middle to upper middle class families, trained by Wahhabi or Shi'ite funded organizations - few to none are motivated by the death of a relative.
This is where research concerning terrorists and the culture that supports them comes in handy.
So, how many bad guys do you think we should kill? Many, some, none?
Fred, you and I certainly agree that there's a lot of ignorance going around about our own culture, as well as about other cultures. How would you suggest we teach, say, undergrads, about both our own culture, its diverse heritage, and other cultures around the world?
This is not just wasting time on a blog. (I almost wrote, "This is not just an academic question", but of course it is!) I'm serving on a committee thinking about such things, and your comments would be welcome. Others, too.
But I'm not interested in horror stories. I want to hear positive suggestions, or better, pointers to successful working examples.
Thanks.
Mary, you write:
Yes, I heard that too. Do you know of comparable research on Palestinian suicide bombers? My impression is that they have many fewer outside imports. What motivates those people?
The evidence I've read suggest that, on the ground in Iraq, American troops have acted with generally great restraint, and have put quite a bit of effort into establishing good relations with local Iraqis. Along with the fact that the suicide bombers have killed many more Iraqis than Americans, this means that the terrorists, rather than the Americans, are currently losing the war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. We're actually making progress, frustratingly slowly, but in the right direction.
But if we suddenly changed policy, went on an all-out campaign to kill all the terrorists, and killed 25,000 innocent Iraqis in the process, I'll bet we could turn that right around, and lose after all.
As I said before, it's impotence, not death, that really scares terrorists, and will ultimately defeat them.
Thanks for the respect Beard. I don't have anything off the top of my head, but let me do some thinking. Rignt now I'm reading "Theory's Empire" ed. Daphne Patai. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Do you have an email address? These are issues I've thought long and hard about and I'd like very much to discuss them with you.
But if we suddenly changed policy, went on an all-out campaign to kill all the terrorists, and killed 25,000 innocent Iraqis in the process, I'll bet we could turn that right around, and lose after all.
I think we're already trying to kill the terrorists in Iraq. The only thing I would change in our current policy would be to destroy their outside (Saudi, Iranian, Sudanese, Yemeni, etc.) support. Destroying that support wouldn't always have to involve warfare.
Since Saudis, Iranians, Syrians, etc. are also supporting groups like Hamas and European terrorism, this would probably help the situation in Israel and Europe. It's all part of the same war.
Beard,
I've been busy but have some time now.
Suicide bomb attacks in Iraq are the work of Al Qaeda and other foreign groups (including the Iranian government). Iraqi Baathists and local criminal gangs help the foreigners for pay, but wouldn't otherwise be involved in those as they have their own agendas and means (notably remote-controlled bombs). I.e., absent the foreigners there would be few, if any suicide bomber attacks in Iraq.
The solution to suicide-bombing attacks in Iraq therefore lies outside Iraq. What Allied and Iraqi forces do inside Iraq can at best reduce the number of successful bombings there. IMO the greatest reduction will take place when Iraq's Sunni Arabs turn against the foreigners, but that too won't entirely solve the problem.
And IMO it is more likely than not that Iraq's Sunni Arab tribes won't turn on the foreign terrorists in enough numbers to be effective until there are a lot less Sunni Arabs than there are now, i.e., when the proportion of Iraq's population which is Sunni Arab is reduced from about what it is now (@ 15-18%) to under 10%, and possibly under 5% (i.e., what the Croats did to their Serb minority). This will be accomplished courtesy of great brutality and violence from the Shiite Arabs and Kurds, i.e., ethnic cleansing.
This is how they do business in that part of the world (the true joys of multiculturalism) and I doubt we could stop it by any means short of putting the Baathists back in power. Which won't happen.
Iraq's Sunni Arabs could of course stop this by agreeing to live in peace with the Shiite majority, but they haven't yet and are fast running out of time to make the necessary deals, assuming that they even want to. And the latter has definitely not been established. They're used to a rule or ruin policy where they always win, and it hasn't gotten through to them that this has changed. Tough for them.
We don't need Iraq's Sunni Arab minority as participants in an Iraqi democracy to accomplish our goals in the war on terror. We need Iraq's Shiites.
As you know, this thread got started on multicultural education. Now, I'm morally certain, without having heard them myself, that there are some idiots out there teaching multiculturalism, saying things like Michael Barone and Trent Talenko were complaining about.
However, that's an unsatisfying sort of knowledge. It's what mathematicians call a "non-constructive existential": I can prove that there must exist some x such that P(x), but I can't show you any specific individual a such that P(a).
So, in the name of empirical inquiry, I spent some time talking with a colleague of mine, who I respect a great deal, who is definitely not an idiot, and who teaches a course on multiculturalism in a leading anthropology department. (Sounds like precisely the sort of thing you are worried about.)
She tells me that this tale of multicultural education, trying to teach students that everything is morally equivalent (except that we are worse), is very much an old wives' tale. Doesn't happen.
They are very clear in their teaching that one of the challenges in understanding other cultures is to distinguish between things that are morally wrong (e.g., slavery and female mutilation), versus things that may seem strange and even horrible to us (e.g., eating snails or listening to dissonant music) but that are perfectly morally valid things to do.
However, one of their educational goals is to teach students how the world looks to people in other cultures, including how it looks so that they think it's fine to do morally wrong things. As I have argued in my own posts, understanding that outlook is important to be able to fight them effectively. But they explicitly do not teach students that those things are morally neutral, or even good, because they seem good to people in those cultures.
An additional observation of my own is that college freshmen and sophomores often have a very narrow and stereotyped view of life, and are liable to think that people who wear the wrong brand of shoes are morally inadequate. Part of what University education is for, is to try to open these kids' minds a bit. Possibly a few of them find this uncomfortable.
And possibly some multicultural educators are not as clear and careful as my colleague is. Possibly some of them are actually idiots, and say all the terrible things that Michael Barone is worried about.
But can you give me any concrete examples? Point me to the website from such a course. (Not an opinion website by someone who tells me stories about horrible things he has been told by students somewhere else.) Point me to a syllabus, or a handout, or an exam.
Michael Barone's article that led off this section says:
but without presenting any evidence that anyone says that.
The only concrete example presented here was by Trent [#17], who cites a contract course taught at Virginia Tech over the summer, under contract with a university in Saudi Arabia, where Tech provided gender-segregated classroom arrangements at the request of the customer. (Note, outside-of-class arrangements were not segregated.)
Sorry, guys, but this was not shocking. The customer gets to request certain things, and if they are not out of line, and they are willing to pay for them, they get them. If I were running a summer camp for American kids in France, and I wanted to restrict wine-drinking to 21 and over, it seems reasonable I should get to do that, even if the French are perfectly comfortable with younger people drinking wine under adult supervision.
So, I'm actually prepared to be shocked by the awfulness of multicultural education, but I want real evidence. Where is it?
Thanks.
Caveat: I'm talking here about university multicultural education, which is what most people complain about. Let's leave until some other time, discussions of pressures for abhorrent levels of tolerance that might take place outside of universities.
Thanks.
Beard,
My wife is a high school teacher. I read the multicultural stuff she brings home which the California Department of Education promotes. Plus that from the California Teachers' Association and the National Educational Associaton. Only South Park comes even close to the real thing much of the time, though some of it seems reasonable.
And higher education varies all over the lot - from department to department on the same campus, from one campus of a state university to another, and from one university or college to another. Not to mention from one instructor to another.
There isn't uniformity. What has happened is that people with other agendas hijacked multiculturalism as a handy vehicle for their other agendas, and haven't been called on it. It's the usual thing of well-intentioned people not being willing to defend their concepts from people with bad intentions, and suffering the consequences.
Beard,
Sounds to me like your friend is teaching stuff that is valid but trivial. Who's ever thought that eating snails or listening to dissonant music is immoral? Any student that dumb is probably unteachable anyway. Could your friend be engaged in the retreat from the preposterous to the platitudinous that I mentioned yesterday?I'm not an anthropologist, so I can't speak to that field. But look at any syllabus from your English or Cultural Studies department and you'll see the theory that Barone's multiculturalists use to justify their extreme relativism.
Just occurred to me. When you look at syllabi in English, Comparative Literature, Women's or Minority Studies, or Cultural studies and substitute "other cultures" for "women" "subalterns" "the Other" and such-like terms, you'll have Barone's multicultists. If you want the theory most directly relevant to multiculturalism, your best bet is post-colonial theory. I think you'll see that Barone is being kind.
Tom, Thanks for the insights from your wife's experience.
Perhaps what we have here is a valuable but fairly subtle body of knowledge about how to think about other cultures, poorly understood by many people who try to teach it.
Many years ago, when Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" was the pinnacle of science, people who had no clue about physics would claim that Einstein had proved that "Everything is relative." Sound familiar?
Of course there are people (both on Left and Right) who grab onto anything they can use to promote whatever agenda they have, whether they understand it or not, and whether the connection is valid or not. Clearly, we need ways to root out the BS.
But why all these foolish accusations about liberals "hating America" or having "contempt for the West"? Is that the only reason a Rightist can imagine for self-criticism? At the risk of repeating myself yet again, how about Matthew 7:3-5?
Fred [#69,#70], Sorry, the "eating snails" and "dissonant music" examples are mine, not hers. I wanted to make up extreme examples of things some readers might not like, but that are clearly far from immoral. Her examples are more complex, and I might not do them justice in my attempt to repeat them.
I'm working to get the URL of some good materials from a multicultural course that illustrates my point. How about if you do the same? Provide me with a URL that supports your point. If you ask me to do it, and I fail, you just blame me, and you won't change your mind. If you try to do it yourself, you will either end up with solid evidence to back up your position, or you will learn something valuable. It's a win-win situation for you. [That's science, by the way.]
Beard,
Failure to confront nutballs is to let them hijack the agenda. This is what happened to multiculturalism. It has been hijacked and whatever merit it may have had originally is gone. It is now a vehicle for leftist crap, and the major component of that is anti-American.
The same thing is happening to the Democratic party. They are not confronting the nutballs and are being taken over.
Liberals drove the Communists and their leftist friends from the Democratic party 58 years ago. My father was one of the former.
Something like that is needed now but it isn't happening.
Tom, you wrote:
Liberal or Communist?