Multicultural Follies: #Politicalcorrectness and the narrowing of the American mind

The Cultural Authorities still don't get the irony inherent in their use of terms like 'Tolerance' and 'Diversity', terms they use to counteract the very attitudes they purport to champion. They are used as cultural bullying words to beat unsuspecting Americans into compliance with their narrow left-wing program of tearing down every traditional cultural convention.

These are just two of the words that now pass for wisdom among American educators--educators who apparently think that political sloganeering constitutes an acceptable substitute for things like knowledge and understanding.

I remember when the Ayatollah Khomeini unseated the Shah of Iran and so-called "students" (of which, it was later revealed, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the now former prime minister of Iran, was one) took over the American embassy in Tehran and held its occupants hostage.

I remember thinking, do these "students," I don't know, study between their assigned hostage-keeping hours? Do they patrol the embassy with their machine guns from 8:00 to 4:00 and then go prepare for mid-terms in the evening? In fact, I don't remember any of the many news images from the time showing these "students" actually doing any school work. All they ever did was wave guns and chant slogans in the street.

For the political left, education is seen as inherently political. Rather than use them to pass on a culture from one generation to the next, schools are now simply vehicles for political or social reform. Today's "students" don't wave guns around or march through the streets (Americans, fortunately, are too lazy for that), but the term 'Diversity' in particular seems to be a part of every piece of propaganda pushed by the people who run our schools.

There is another word used to accomplish the same purpose: 'multiculturalism'. This word, in fact, was probably the first of the bully words to enter our modern political lexicon, becoming a sacred part of the secular theocratic rite that we have seen instituted over the last two or three decades.

Like the other terms we constantly hear chanted by the supporters of our modern Liberal Caliphate, the secular theocrats don't see the hypocrisy in their use of the term.

I was reminded of all this when I read the essay by British philosopher Roger Scruton at one of the best blogs going: The Imaginative Conservative. Scruton rightly diagnoses multiculturalism—and the whole tolerance regime, although the terms 'tolerance' and 'diversity' had not yet assumed their prominent place in our lexicon when this article was written in 1994—as the narrow-minded program it is and contrasts it with the truly multicultural traditional curriculum:

The word “culture” is used in many senses. Advocates of the multicultural curriculum cheerfully assume that they and their readers know exactly what is meant by such a thing, and that all would agree in recognizing the “monocultural” nature of our traditional education. A typical “multicultural” curriculum will concentrate on the lore, language, and literature of the modern pro­ letariat; on the history and “struggles” of minorities; and on the lowest and most popular forms of music, art, and entertainment. This monotonous study of ephemera can be encountered everywhere in America, Canada, Britain, Australia, and Scandinavia. I would be tempted to describe it as “monocultural,” were I convinced that it is capable of imparting any culture at all. By contrast, our grandparents studied the languages, religions, and literature of ancient Palestine, Greece, and Rome; they were brought up on the fairy tales of Arabia, the folklore and music of Germany, the art and architecture of the Mediterranean, and the history of the world. If the word “multicultural” means anything, then it should certainly be applied to their curriculum. It is precisely this openness toward culture in all its forms that is the essence of European civilization.

Liberals, who wouldn't even be allowed under other cultures, love every culture but their own. It's part and parcel of the Liberal Death Wish--the subconscious, nihilistic impulse to destroy the very culture that makes them possible. 

The agenda that goes under the multicultural label is really the worst kind of cultural jingoism. On the one hand, it sees every other culture through the distorted lens of the modern secular liberal mindset, making them merely the delusional mirror image of itself. On the other hand, it wants to impose its own uniquely secular technocratic attitude on cultures which, in reality, aren't really what liberals think they are.

If liberals are going to hate on the Christian West (and that's what Western civilization really is—the Christian West—which is why liberals hate it so much), then they're going to have to do things that liberals themselves hate. If they're going to embrace non-Western cultures—particularly those in the underdeveloped world that liberals pretend to value, then they're going to have to teach racism, sexism, cannibalism, human sacrifice, "classism," "homophobia," and every other "ism" and phobia—real and imaginary—the left fears and hates because they are rampant in the cultures of what used to be called the "third world."

They couldn't produce enough sensitivity trainers in a hundred years to address the problems they would encounter in just one corner of one non-Western country in one week.

But of course teaching what real non-Western countries believe will never happen. These people will continue to cling to their comforting delusion that non-Western world is exclusively the projection of their own non-smoking, gender-bending, radical egalitarian political and social selves.

But the left can't even hear these criticisms. That's the beauty of being a liberal: If there is something you don't want to hear, you just chant your slogans louder.