by John Clements
“The West is the best…Get in and we’ll do the rest”
– Jim Morrison, The End
Multiculturalism results neither in a melting pot nor even a social smorgasbord, but in parallel societies and, inevitably, ones that will experience conflict for not integrating. It ferments an anti-assimilation that threatens Western civilization.
Unarguably,
there is today among youth and the general public an unfortunate ignorance of
the Humanities and a lack of appreciation for history, especially that of
classical European cultures. Ignorance of Western Civilization among modern
students is not surprising given the educational establishment’s decades long
attack on the subject masquerading under the idea of a
“multicultural” curricula. The cultural relativists arguably dominating
a large portion of primary education in
We
are seeing this now magnified ten-fold in the current French riots—the shape
of things to come when integration collapses because immigrants fail to
learn the traditions of the West. We are witnessing in
Awareness of other cultures enriches a society’s to be sure, but as a political ideology multiculturalism fractures a nation’s moral and political harmony. As the political philosopher A. E. Murphy once observed, “We do not understand the ideas of other cultures by misunderstanding our own.”
Harvesting the Abandonment of the Humanities
Multiculturalism is premised on the innocuous ideal that immigrants and their children should be encouraged to preserve and celebrate their own culture separately from our national one. Multiculturalism is instead used to promote separatism, disengagement with American values, artificially elevate other cultures in the minds of students, and depreciate the West in order to diminish the value of and objective superiority of Western culture.
Through multiculturalism science, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Information Age, and a host of other ideas and achievements of Western Civilization—the very societies that inherently permit appreciation and recognition of other cultures—are diminished or barely taught. Through distortions, selective omissions, and half-truths, multiculturalism routinely portrays the most backward, impoverished, and brutal non-Western cultures as thoughtful, prosperous, and liberating. In a perverse anti-xenophobia and reverse-ethnocentrism, the multiculturalists ignore the singular and unique accomplishments in sciences and the humanities of Western Civilization as they promote the notion that other values are as good as, if not better than those of the West. At the same time they themselves benefit from and enjoy the bounties of Western Civilization, the multiculturalist educators fail to provide their students with a compass by which to appreciate the special place Western Civilization enjoys in history.
Key within the multiculturalist “politically correct” agenda of moral-relativism is the habitual routine of reserving judgment only for the faults of Western Civilization while ignoring the overwhelmingly primitive, cruel, and demeaning failings of non-Western ones. Rational contrast and objective comparison of differing cultures is almost entirely absent or conducted only to disparage the West (usually so as not to impugn the “self-esteem” of students of non-European heritage). Through the weak scholarship and intellectual laziness prevailing in historical revisionism, a philosophy of “diversity” for diversity’s sake equates all cultural values as essentially “equal.” Yet, in practice it is aimed more at blaming the West first while avoiding examination of the endemic problems of other cultures that limit their progress and restricts their citizens. Rather than enriching students, under the guise of “diversity” the purveyors of multiculturalism purposely cloud the minds of students and deprive them of the tools by which to objectively weigh the magnificent achievements of Western (and in particular, American) civilization—a culture whose values have raised humanity to a greater level of prosperity, health, and knowledge than ever before in the history of world.
As
one recent writer put it, there is a message being taught to children in the
West today, “that there is no such thing as a better or worse society, that
cultural values different from our own need to be understood and accepted in a
spirit of sympathetic tolerance, and that, all things considered, we ourselves
have at least as much to answer for as to be proud of.” Yet, as he observes the
reality is, in Western Civilization today, and particularly
A Self-Inflicted Social Masochism
The
whole idea of being “multi” cultural sounds so innocuous. After all,
Multiculturalists actually promote a philosophy that is in its result inimical to the very fundamental basis of liberal democracy itself: “identity politics”—the notion that membership in a certain racial or ethnic grouping matters more than the individual. From this belief special treatment and consideration is then warranted to any non-Western cultural grouping. It is this foundational idea that underlies the entire multiculturalist agenda. It amounts to no less than a concerted attack upon the Humanities and our Enlightenment heritage. It has also been suggested that multiculturalism is really less an effort to genuinely study world culture than it is about advancing the delusions of 1960s counter-culture with its paranoid distaste for traditional Western (especially American) values and institutions—(i.e., the culture of “dead white males”).
Ironically, in public education efforts at promoting the merits and virtues of the multiple cultures that now make up American and society and Western nations have in general morphed slowly into something of a self-loathing of Western culture itself—as if it’s impolite or rude to imply (let alone show the reality) how Western culture has had successes and accomplishments over and above that of any other. Thus, within our own communities valuing of Western society becomes marginalized despite its concrete attainments while other cultures are celebrated, in the abstract, as equally worthy of note and praise and in some instances even held to higher esteem merely because they are different.
It use to be that being “multi-cultural” was as simple as liking Thai food, taking a Yoga class, enjoying foreign films, or celebrating cinco de mayo in the same way that earlier influences by immigrant Italians, Irish, Poles, etc. were assimilated into the larger American pantheon to enrich and compliment rather than diminish the openness of our civilization. But this is no more. The “other” is now rapidly becoming us. The larger context and perspective of Western civilization in general and the American experiment in particular is no longer taught in our public schools or celebrated in our entertainment. As William J. Bennet noted, “This is the vacuum into which have stepped the diversity mongers, the multiculturalists, the relativists, and the plain old anti-Americanism.” (Bennet, p. 158) It is the classic case of “to bring myself up, I must bring you down.”
The Social Poison of Identity Politics
The whole conception of “identity politics” asserts that a citizen’s essential attributes are racial, ethnic, or gender specific so that each person’s own understanding is genetically determined by association or recognition as part of a “group.” Thus, as the argument goes, the interests of any member of a minority “group” can only be determined, comprehended, or satisfied by other members of that same group. Further, identity politics, once perceived as a kind of benign cultural cross-pollination, has itself increasingly become an effort devoted only to instilling students with a philosophy that past inequalities or injustices are legitimate grievances that deserve reparations for each “victim group”—which must now be perpetually compensated by ever-expanding efforts. As former education secretary William J. Bennet has observed, “racial and ethnic tensions were sharpened rather than ameliorated in the [1980s] and [1990s] by our official commitment to multiculturalism and ‘diversity’. In government, education, industry, and every aspect of public life, an ethos of wounded resentment was fostered among minorities and majority alike.” (Bennet, Why We Fight, p. 152).
The ideologues of the postmodern multicultural Left argue it’s “imperialistic” to think of Western Civilization as unique or special. The diversity-first mentality assumes it as somehow self-evident that all cultures are “equal”—as if Renaissance Italy were on the same level as Idi Amin’s Uganda, Victorian England and the Ayatollah’s Iran just as worthy, Colonial America comparable with Shaka’s Zulu nation, and Athens under Pericles equivalent to Mao’s cultural revolution or Montezuma’s Mexico. And not one culture is ever described as anything other than “sophisticated.” The multicultural moral-relativists crowd also accepts no objective standards or universal criteria by which to judge the progress of a culture. Criticism of non-Western ways is intolerable, excepting where such (politically correct) criticism is directly at Western Civilization. To disagree with them is to be guilty of the “crime” of being ethnocentric—as if this were an exclusively Western pathology.
Yet, no civilization is made up solely of its faults and failings, but of its values and accomplishments. Failure to teach these unique values to our citizens and our posterity is a suicidal mistake. Western Civilization is itself arguably a culture of freedom that is by nature introspective of its contradictions and self-scrutinizing of its faults. Curiously, the very faults of Western civilization so often fervidly criticized (typically by Westerners themselves) are the very things that so many other cultures have for centuries been (and still are) notoriously guilty of: squalor, poverty, famine, tyranny, corruption, inequality of the sexes, slavery, statism, tribalism, racism, religious intolerance and oppression, ethnocentrism, dictatorial coercion, and the suppression of individual expression. To this we could add a host of other failings unique to non-Western cultures: cannibalism, gender apartheid, female circumcision, theocracy, xenophobia, and caste divisions. Yet, the diversity-minded ideologues of the multicultural and postmodern Left habitually ignore and even dismiss these facts. Instead, they attack the very culture of the West that provides them the stable lifestyles of leisure and security they so enjoy.
A
strong sense of shared social, political, historical, and linguistic
heritage with, yes, a sense of allegiance are what define a culture. But when
youth stop being taught their own culture and heritage
they begin to look for another. This is the subtle aim behind the
multiculturalism education movement in
Tolerance has been one of the hallmarks of liberal Western societies. But multiculturalism is not about understanding or respecting other cultures—else such sentiments would be applied equally to those of Western Civilization. Every minority and ethnic immigrant group is simultaneously given both equal and victim status in the multicultural program, everyone that is except caucasians (and especially heterosexual caucasian males). We now have, for instance, sensitivity to Latinos, Hispanics, and Chicanos, as well as multiple Asian civilizations, but Caucasians, in contrast, merit only being lumped all together as “white”—regardless of whether their ancestry is Celtic, Slavic, Flemish, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Frankish, Iberian, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, etc., etc. Those all just “white” after all. Indeed, other than at some benign role-playing festival or commercialized holiday parade, for someone of European descent (and certainly never caucasian male) to express cultural pride in Western Civilization as a whole is now more or less tantamount to being a Nazi white supremacist. Yes, all manner of diversity is celebrated in multiculturalism—except the diversity within Western Civilization, that is.
Instead, we neglect to pay respect the struggles of our ancestors and to prize their accomplishments as we take for granted the freedoms, opportunities, and comforts we now enjoy. The humanist achievement of the Renaissance is forgotten as a failure to teach ethics and critical thinking leads to the absurdity of “moral-equivalence” theory. With small gratitude we fail to honor Western Civilization’s unique vision of a humane and just society based on made-made laws and the unalienable rights of the individual. History warns that societies which fail to retain their values and pass on their heritage, that lose boldness and confidence, inevitably come to doubt whether their ways are no better than any others—even those of their adversaries. As Jean Francois Revel once said, “Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
The Creeping Fog of Relativism
Despite its monumental efforts made against autocracy on behalf of liberty and individualism, Western Civilization is more often characterized by its critics for its historical incidents of oppression and imperialism and damned for its self-absorbed materialism and commercialism, as if such age old problems of humanity were somehow its own exclusive invention. Tolerance for the ways of other cultures it seems applies to every one except the West.
But
all cultures are far from objectively equal in respecting the rights of human
beings to live free, to form representative governments and make fair laws, to
enjoy their liberties or pursue their own health and happiness. Indeed, these
things developed first, and to their fullest extent in history, only in Western
civilization. All cultures are far from being morally equivalent either. Some
are indeed better than others. Elizabethan England was far nobler than Nazi
Germany, the Athens of Pericles cannot be compared with the Taliban’s
In the end, multiculturalism is not an effort merely to say that other cultures are also good in their own ways, but an ideology that teaches ours is in general “no better than theirs.” It venerates non-Western cultures, applying a non-judgmentalism to their endemic or intrinsic intolerance, inequality, and injustice, while simultaneously deconstructing the traditional values and cultural works of Western Civilization in the name of “diversity.” Diversity sounds like such an innocuous and positive concept but in action it invariably means dividing people by quota according to race, gender, and sexual-orientation—in effect a direct refutation of the dream of an American society that treats people as individuals judged upon their character not their skin, creed, faith, or national origin. It defeats the very hope for which so many immigrated to this land of opportunity.
When group identities based on race or ethnicity or religion are allowed to take precedence over our common culture, our “Americanism,” it erodes our cultural confidence. It undermines our sense of common purpose and disunity and resentment is the inevitable outcome as the nation loses respect for itself. It is not hard to understand that repeatedly hearing from leaders, educators, and institutions, that your culture or nation is no good eventually makes you hate it and yourself. From there hating others is no big leap. If you don’t feel your culture is better than any other then why be a part of it and why preserve it? When you stop giving your own society sufficient regard, when you say your culture isn’t any better than any other one, and when you stop defending it you shouldn’t be surprised that other people will attack it. This is especially suicidal now in the face of Islamofascism—a totalitarian religious fanaticism bent on converting or killing everyone who does not submit to its insane belief system.
Decades of sowing political correctness is now being harvested. As a result of years of multi-cultural relativism, diversity obsessing “tolerance”, moral equivalence and value-less non-judgmentalism has reached its fruition. The West now has in their midst members of their own community who hold their very society in contempt. When citizens have no respect for their own history, values, or culture, how can they expect others to? You cannot repeatedly insult your own culture and heritage with constant refrains that it is not sinless and really no better than any other without outsiders eventually coming to wholeheartedly agree with you.
Anti-Westernism as Ideology of Choice
Should anyone be surprised then that years of liberal and leftist assault on Western civilization has now come to fruition? This is what happens when members of a nation state try to repeatedly blame itself for the irresponsible actions and self-induced faults of others. It has produced the long-term fallout of enabling and inculcating in its own house what is, in effect, religiously and culturally motivated political violence —i.e., Islamist terrorism.
These issues take on even greater importance given the worldwide conflict we are now engaged in against militant Islamo-fascist terrorism. As we engage now in a global struggle against violent religious extremists, this issue of cultural conflict and national identity as a social issue cannot be ignored. Loyalty to the values and interests of Western Civilization transcends partisan politics and is in our own best interest. It enables us to act collectively against forces that violently oppose modernism and the freedom of the individual. Any behavior that denigrates our efforts to succeed or heartens our enemies is deeply irresponsible.
Western
civilization has learned that there is no solution to the continual human
problems of starvation, chronic violence, and social chaos, other than
consensual government, open economies, respect for personal freedoms, egalitarianism,
populism, and establishment of secular rationalism that does not disrespect the
historic civic role of different faiths. The attempt therefore to dispute the
authority of our own genuine Western cultural identity (especially that of caucasian Americans of European
ancestry) reveals the hidden ethnic bias of racist envy within multiculturalism
itself. As inheritors of the rich heritage of classical
One can certainly take rightful pride in the values and achievements of Western culture and believe that it is indeed superior without advocating in the process a “clash of civilizations.” There is certainly much to be gained by broadening our understanding of our planet’s peoples and societies. But ignorance of history and misrepresentation of history are serious matters that should concern everyone who seeks true knowledge and wisdom. As it is now, when students are barely even “cultural” about their own heritage to begin with, adding “multi” to the situation only increases the problem. As George Orwell once wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”