Friday, May 04, 2007

Passing along a couple of items:

This from Christopher Orlet:
Behind multiculturalism was the conceit that various tribes, races, and sects embracing radically different or opposing values -- indeed encouraged to embrace different values -- might live together in peace and harmony. What's more, one and all would be richer for the association. And since we are all reasonable modern people ancient grudges and historical injustices would be as forgotten as, say, Walter Mondale's running mate. Under multiculturalism the Earth would be a peaceable kingdom once more, an Eden before the fall.
Only it didn't quite work out that way. It seems tribes, races, and sects do hold grudges. Sometimes for a thousand years. And as for sharing different values, many Muslim immigrants and their Saudi and Egyptian spiritual advisors were not as big on multiculturalism as were the West's intellectuals and politicos. The former's secular European neighbors were not regarded as distinct cultural groups with equal cultural and political status, but godless infidels and Zionist apes and swine.
Yes, that's Big Ben in the background,
for many the symbol of the United Kingdom and London its capitol.
The foreground is London citizens hoisting a Hezbollah flag.


And this from Roger Kimball:
Western democratic society is rooted in a particular vision of what Aristotle called "the good for man." The question is: Do we, as a society, still have confidence in the animating values of the vision? Do we possess the requisite will to defend them? Or was François Revel right when he said that "Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it"? The jury is still out on those questions.

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