Lets use this thread to discuss articles presented in the major media. Post articles so we can practice deconstructing them by highlighting the values that masquerade as objective facts.

Decontruct this, its from a liberal that hates to other liberals by supporting a semi-differentialism:


http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/against_mc.html


against multiculturalism

Kenan Malik


'It's good to be different' might be the motto of our times. The celebration of difference, respect for pluralism, avowal of identity politics - these are regarded the hallmarks of a progressive, antiracist outlook.

Belief in pluralism and the multicultural society is so much woven into the fabric of our lives that we rarely stand back to question some of its assumptions. As the American academic, and former critic of pluralism, Nathan Glazer puts it in the title of a recent book, We are All Multiculturalists Now.

I want to question this easy assumption that pluralism is self-evidently good. I want to show, rather, that the notion of pluralism is both logically flawed and politically dangerous, and that creation of a 'multicultural' society has been at the expense of a more progressive one.

Proponents of multiculturalism usually put forward two kinds of arguments in its favour. First, they claim that multiculturalism is the only means of ensuring a tolerant and democratic polity in a world in which there are deep-seated conflicts between cultures embodying different values. This argument is often linked to the claim that the attempt to establish universal norms inevitably leads to racism and tyranny. Second, they suggest that human beings have a basic, almost biological, need for cultural attachments. This need can only be satisfied, they argue, by publicly validating and protecting different cultures. Both arguments are, I believe, deeply flawed.

The case for 'value pluralism' has probably been best put by the late philosopher Isaiah Berlin. 'Life may be seen through many windows', he wrote, 'none of them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the others'. For Berlin, there was no such thing as a universal truth, only a variety of conflicting truths. Different peoples and cultures had different values, beliefs and truths, each of which may be regarded as valid. Many of these values and truths were incommensurate, by which Berlin meant that not only are they incompatible, but they were incomparable, because there was no common language we could use to compare the one with the other. As the philosopher John Gray has put it, 'There is no impartial or universal viewpoint from which the claims of all particular cultures can be rationally assessed. Any standpoint we adopt is that of a particular form of life and the historic practices that constitute it.' Given the incommensurability of cultural values, pluralism, Berlin argued, was the best defence against tyranny and against ideologies, such as racism, which treated some human beings as less equal than others.

This argument for pluralism is, as many have pointed out, logically flawed. If it is true that 'any standpoint we adopt is that of a particular form of life and the historic practices that constitute it', then this must apply to pluralism too. A pluralist, in other words, can never claim that plural society is better, since, according his own argument, 'There is no impartial or universal viewpoint from which the claims of all particular cultures can be rationally assessed'. Once you dispense with the idea of universal norms, then no argument can possess anything more than, at best, local validity.

Many multiculturalists argue not simply that cultural values are incommensurate, but that also that different cultures should be treated equal respect. The American scholar Iris Young, for instance, writes that 'groups cannot be socially equal unless their specific, experience, culture and social contributions are publicly affirmed and recognised.'

The demand for equal recognition is, however, at odds with the claim that cultures are incommensurate. To treat different cultures with equal respect (indeed to treat them with any kind of respect at all) we have to be able to compare one with the other. If values are incommensurate, such comparisons are simply not possible. The principle of difference cannot provide any standards that oblige us to respect the 'difference' of others. At best, it invites our indifference to the fate of the Other. At worst it licenses us to hate and abuse those who are different. Why, after all, should we not abuse and hate them? On what basis can they demand our respect or we demand theirs? It is very difficult to support respect for difference without appealing to some universalistic principles of equality or social justice. And it is the possibility of establishing just such universalistic principle that has been undermined by the embrace of a pluralistic outlook.

Equality requires a common yardstick, or measure of judgement, not a plurality of meanings. As the philosopher Richard Rorty observes, the embrace of diversity and the desire for equality are not easily compatible. For Rorty, those whom he calls 'Enlightenment liberals' face a seemingly irresolvable dilemma in their pursuit of both equality and diversity:

Their liberalism forces them to call any doubts about human equality a result of irrational bias. Yet their connoisseurship [of diversity] forces them to realise that most of the globe's inhabitants do not believe in equality, that such a belief is a Western eccentricity. Since they think it would be shockingly ethnocentric to say 'So what? We Western liberals do believe in it, and so much the better for us', they are stuck.
Rorty himself, a self-avowed 'postmodern bourgeois liberal', solves the problem by arguing that 'equality is good for "us" but not necessarily for "them". We can see here how the argument for incommensurability leads not to equal respect for, but to an indifference to, all other cultures.

Equality arises from fact that humans are political creatures and possess a capacity for culture. But the fact that all humans possess a capacity for culture does not mean that all cultures are equal. 'We know one of the realest experiences in cultural life', the art critic Robert Hughes has observed, 'is that of inequalities between books and musical performances and paintings and other works of art'. Much the same could be said about all cultural and political forms. Some ideas, some technologies, some political systems are better than others. And some societies and some cultures are better than others: more just, more free, more enlightened, and more conducive to human progress. Indeed the very idea of equality is historically specific: the product of the Enlightenment and the political and intellectual revolutions that it unleashed.

The idea of the equality of cultures (as opposed to the equality of human beings) denies one of the critical features of human life and human history: our capacity for social, moral and technological progress. What distinguishes humans from other creatures is capacity for innovation and transformation, for making ideas and artefacts that are not simply different but also often better, than those of a previous generation or another culture. It is no coincidence that the modern world has been shaped by the ideas and technologies that have emerged from Renaissance and Enlightenment. The scientific method, democratic politics, the concept of universal values - these are palpably better concepts than those that existed previously. Not because Europeans are a superior people, but because many of the idea and philosophies that came out of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment are superior.

To argue this today is, of course, to invite the charge of 'Eurocentrism', or even racism. This simply demonstrates the irrationality of contemporary notions of 'racism' and 'antiracism'. Those who actually fought Western imperialism over the past two centuries recognised that their struggles were rooted in the Enlightenment tradition. 'I denounce European colonialist scholarship', wrote CLR James, the West Indian writer and political revolutionary. 'But I respect the learning and the profound discoveries of Western civilisation.'

Frantz Fanon, one of the great voices of postwar third world nationalism, similarly argued that the problem was not Enlightenment philosophy but the failure of Europeans to follow through its emancipatory logic. 'All the elements of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times, existed in European thought', he argued. 'But Europeans have not carried out in practice the mission that fell to them.'

Western liberals were often shocked by the extent to which anti-colonial movement adopted what they considered to be tainted ideas. The concepts of universalism and unilinear evolutionism, the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss observed, found 'unexpected support from peoples who desire nothing more than to share in the benefits of industrialisation; peoples who prefer to look upon themselves as temporarily backward than permanently different'. Elsewhere he noted ruefully that the doctrine of cultural relativism 'was challenged by the very people for whose moral benefit the anthropologists had established it in the first place'.

Multiculturalists have turned their back on universalist conceptions not because such conceptions are racist but because they have given up on the possibility of economic and social change. We live in an age in which there is considerable disillusionment with politics as an agency of change, and in which possibilities of social transformation seem to have receded. What is important about human beings, many have come to believe, is not their political capacity but their cultural attachments. Such pessimism has led to multiculturalists to conflate the idea of humans as culture-bearing creatures with the idea that humans have to bear a particular culture.

Clearly no human can live outside of culture. But to say this is not to say they have to live inside a particular one. To view humans as culture-bearing is to view them as social beings, and hence as transformative beings. It suggests that humans have the capacity for change, for progress, and for the creation of universal moral and political forms through reason and dialogue.

To view humans as having to bear specific cultures is, on the contrary, to deny such a capacity for transformation. It suggests that every human being is so shaped by a particular culture that to change or undermine that culture would be to undermine the very dignity of that individual. It suggests that the biological fact of, say, Bangladeshi ancestry somehow make a human being incapable of living well except as a participant of Bangladeshi culture. The idea of culture once connoted all that freed humans from the blind weight of tradition, has now, in the hands of multiculturalists, become identified with that very burden.

Multiculturalism is the product of political defeat. The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the left, the defeat of most liberation movements in the third world and the demise of social movements in the West, have all transformed political consciousness. The quest for equality has increasingly been abandoned in favour of the claim to a diverse society. Campaigning for equality means challenging accepted practices, being willing to march against the grain, to believe in the possibility of social transformation. Conversely, celebrating differences between peoples allows us to accept society as it is - it says little more than 'We live in a diverse world, enjoy it'. As the American writer Nancy Fraser has put it, 'The remedy required to redress injustice will be cultural recognition, as opposed to political-economic redistribution.' Indeed so deeply attached are multiculturalists to the idea of cultural, as opposed to economic or political justice, that David Bromwich is led to wonder whether intellectuals today would oppose economic slavery if it lacked any racial or cultural dimension.

Not only is the demand for the 'recognition' the product of political pessimism, it has also become a potential means of implementing deeply authoritarian policies. Consider, for instance, Tariq Modood's distinction between what he calls the 'equality of individualism' and the 'equality encompassing public ethnicity: equality as not having to hide or apologise for one's origins, family or community, but requiring others to show respect for them, and adapt public attitudes and arrangements so that the heritage they represent is encouraged rather than contemptuously expect them to wither away.'

Why should I, as an atheist, be expected to show respect for Christian, Islamic or Jewish cultures whose views and arguments I often find reactionary and often despicable? Why should public arrangements be adapted to fit in with the backward, misogynistic, homophobic claims that religions make? What is wrong with me wishing such cultures to 'wither away'? And how, given that I do view these and many other cultures with contempt, am I supposed to provide them with respect, without disrespecting my own views? Only, the philosopher Brian Barry suggests 'with a great deal of encouragement from the Politically Correct Thought Police'.

The thought police are already at work. On more than one occasion over the past decade I have been refused permission by both newspaper and radio editors to quote Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses because it was considered to cause too much 'offence'. The McPherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence argued that even racist comments made in the privacy of the home should be made a criminal offence. Thankfully, this suggestion has so far been ignored politically. Many multiculturalists, however, wish to go further still, demanding that all private thought and feelings be subject to political scrutiny. Iris Young welcomes what she calls 'the continuing effort to politicise vast areas of institutional, social and cultural life.' Politics, she suggests, 'concerns all aspects of institutional organisation, public action, social practices and habits, and cultural meanings'. 'The process of politicising habits, feelings and expressions of fantasy and desire', can Young believes, 'foster a cultural revolution'.

Culture, faith, lifestyle, feelings - these are all aspects of our private lives and should be of no concern to the state or other public authorities. Multiculturalist policies inevitably bring to mind George Orwell's description in 1984 - 'A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police... His friendships, his relaxations, his behaviour towards his wife and children, the expression on his face when he is alone, the words he mutters in his sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body are all jealously scrutinised.'

The irony of multiculturalism is that, as a political process, it undermines what is valuable about cultural diversity. Diversity is important, not in and of itself, but because it allows us to expand our horizons, to compare and contrast different values, beliefs and lifestyles, and make judgements upon them. In other words, because it allows us to engage in political dialogue and debate that can help create more universal values and beliefs, and a collective language of citizenship. But it is precisely such dialogue and debate, and the making of such judgements, that contemporary multiculturalism attempts to suppress in the name of 'tolerance' and 'respect'.

A truly plural society would be one in which citizens have full freedom to pursue their different values or practices in private, while in the public sphere all citizens would be treated as political equals whatever the differences in their private lives. Today, however, pluralism has come to mean the very opposite. The right to practice a particular religion, speak a particular language, follow a particular cultural practice is seen as a public good rather than a private freedom. Different interest groups demand to have their 'differences' institutionalised in the public sphere. And to enforce such a vision we have to call in the Thought Police.

Multiculturalism is an authoritarian, anti-human outlook. True political progress requires not recognition but action, not respect but questioning, not the invocation of the Thought Police but the forging of common bonds and collective struggles.

And this other:

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3300.html

Are Americans European?
by Nicholas Stix
06 April 2004

The European tradition is one of centralized absolutism and obscurantist, metaphysical speculation.


Today, the terms “the West” and “Western” can refer to America alone, to America and her former European allies, or even simply to white folks. The terms are successors to the terms “Europe” and “European.”

Most Americans under the age of 40 know little about Europe, and have only the most tenuous relation to the Old World. What they do know, however, is that we bailed the Western Europeans out of two world wars, and then saved them from communism.

And yet, today our relationship to Europe, even the concept of “Europe,” is typically exaggerated here at home. American socialist writers speak still of our “European allies,” when referring to countries (France and Germany) that can only honestly be referred to as rivals or outright enemies. And multiculturalists, black racists, and white nationalists alike refer to white Americans via the euphemism, “European Americans.”

The socialist writers’ practice is not hard to understand. They are writing not of America’s allies, but of their own. They see themselves as domestic enemies of America, and consider America’s foreign enemies their friends. (Hence, I disagree with Lee Harris’ thesis that American “liberals” have no concept of an “enemy.” Sure they do – the term refers to their own country, and its patriotic defenders.) You can find these traitors all over the world, sucking up to America’s foreign enemies, the latter of whom hold the traitors in contempt, but who find them useful idiots. Sound familiar?

And so, when the Spaniards turned on us, the New York Times’ March 16 house editorial engaged in double-talk: “It is possible to support the battle against terrorism wholeheartedly and still oppose a political party that embraces the same cause.”

No, it isn’t.

In theory, one could “support the battle against terrorism wholeheartedly” while voting against a political party embracing the same cause, if say, that party had botched every other aspect of statecraft, particularly the economy. But before 3-11, the vast majority of Spaniards had never even halfheartedly supported the battle against Islamic terrorism, and the Popular Party’s stewardship of the economy had been excellent. But at the Times, anyone who screws over America is their friend, and must be defended.

Such traitorous anti-Americanism is nothing new. In Oliver Stone’s anti-American movie, Platoon (1986), set during the War in Vietnam, the “good” American sergeant, “Elias” (Willem Dafoe), says, “We've been kicking other people’s asses for so long, I figure it's time we got ours kicked.” The character was a hero to anti-Americans across the land, who saw his murder by the evil sergeant, “Barnes” (Tom Berenger), in terms of the crucifixion of Jesus. That reaction was odd, coming as it did from a group of atheists.

The use of the term “European-American,” has had an even odder trajectory. As far as I can determine, it comes from the Nation of Islam, when it was known as the Black Muslims, under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (aka convicted felon and traitor, Elijah Poole; 1897-1975) and Elijah’s momentary favorite son, Malcolm X (aka convicted felon, Malcolm Little; 1926-1965). The Black Muslims identified the races with continents. Well, sort of. Early on, they referred to blacks as “Asiatics,” so their geography was as nutty as everything else they said.

I think white multiculturalists are simply imitating black racists, as they do whenever they discuss race relations.

The white nationalists are the oddest bunch. The typical white nationalist knows as much about Europe as he does about Timbuktu, and the more intelligent ones, most notably Sam Francis, should know better than to join the words “European” and “American.”

America does have a very close cultural and historical relationship to England, but if there’s one thing I learned in over five years of living in Europe, it is that England ain’t in Europe. (I also learned that I am no “European.”)

I know the Brits are now members of the European Union, but when I lived in the former West Germany, the Brits were part of the EU-forerunner, the Common Market, yet I never heard any Continentals speak of the British as “Europeans.” There was a palpable tension between the Brits and the Europeans, and there still is.

We got our language, our Common Law traditions, our notions of representative government, and our empiricist philosophical tradition from the Brits. The European tradition, conversely, is one of centralized absolutism and obscurantist, metaphysical speculation. Since FDR, unfortunately, we have been moving toward the Old World, as the American people have acquiesced to creeping socialism, centralization, absolutism and anti-scientific thinking.

Europe is for us less an ideal, than a cautionary example.

And yet, I was once in love with Europe. The idea of Europe, at any rate. I got over that love, by living there. And yet, I shall never forget, and never regret, the five years I spent in West Germany, reading old editions of old books; studying philosophy with the world’s greatest living classicist, Hans Joachim Kraemer (not that I’m a classicist!); working on the assembly-line, producing the world’s greatest production car (at Daimler-Benz -- “Mercedes” to you civilians); falling in love with the German language and one of its speakers; and traveling on both sides of the Berlin Wall.

By the early 20th century, Europeans tended to speak synonymously of “Europe,” “Christianity,” and “the West.” But Christianity was born in the same place as Judaism – the Middle East. Christianity may have achieved its greatest political power in Europe, but by the mid-19th century, at the height of European power, Christianity was a decadent, empty shell. And the ideas associated with “the West” were already moving … west.

Until the past generation, the notion of being a “European,” as opposed to the national of a particular country, was an oddity. There were no “Europeans,” there were only Frenchmen, Germans, etc. Today, since “Europeans” do not identify themselves in opposition to Asia and Africa (and South America isn’t a part of their consciousness), the only reason I can see for their identification with the Continent, is in unified opposition to America. (No, not “North America;” Europeans are indifferent to Mexico and Canada. The term “North America” functions merely as a petty insult to Americans.)

The official story today, is that nationalism destroyed Europe. As is so often the case, the official story is nonsense. Nineteenth century European history is largely split between wars pitting nation-states and alliances against each other, and the rise of revolutionary, transnational movements (communism, pan-Germanism). Those two trajectories converged and exploded, in the first half of the 20th century. In each case, a transnational movement (communism, national socialism) bonded with a national base and nationalistic passion (Russia, Germany, Austria). The irony, is that one of the reasons that Europe failed to stop Nazism, was due to the interwar influence of a bureaucratic, pacifist humanitarianism. After the war, that pacifist humanitarianism was left standing, unchallenged, in Western Europe, where it still saps the Continent’s strength. Today, corrupt, supranational bureaucracies (the UN, EU) are manipulated by nationalist interests (France, Germany, Russia) in the name of “internationalism.”

And as Europeans permit their nations to be swamped with their Muslim enemies, one wonders if the nations of the Old World will go down with a bang or a whimper. Thank goodness, no American president would be so foolish, as to let the U.S. be overwhelmed by hostile foreigners!

Europe functions today as a grand museum. It is home to much of the world’s great art, literature, philosophy, architecture, libraries, churches, and museums in the traditional sense … and oh, the food! Unfortunately, this treasure is largely lost on the Europeans, who have been culturally bankrupt and politically socialist since at least the end of The War. Given their embrace of the inferior fare at McDonald’s, Europeans’ appreciation of even their own food is suspect.

Rather than studying the masterpieces of the past, in order to create new ones, Europeans today often are simply satisfied to know that previous Europeans created great works, to patronize cultures that have not, and to smugly believe that their neglect of one legacy, and frivolous elevation of the other, makes them superior to the rest of the world.

Thus should Americans study Europe’s triumphs … and its decline. For if we are not careful, in the not-so-distant future, Europe’s fate will be our own.

This article ran in my local "alternative" weekly this week. I haven't the foggiest idea how to "desconstruct" it, but I don't think they're trying to say Yale Law students are so feeble minded that they must be protected from big, bad evil homophobic employers. Or, maybe they are. :| Certainly the posturing about free speech is a load of nonsense. There is very, very little of that at any Ivy League school any more. Even Neo-cons like Horowitz aren't allowed.

http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:74996

Yale Law Sues Uncle Sam
The Department of Defense discriminates against gays, but has forced Yale Law to let them recruit on campus. Now faculty and students are fighting back.

by Dan Levine - July 22, 2004

Hello, Yale Law School? This is the Department of Defense. You won't let our military recruiters interview your students, like law firms do during career recruitment events. Kindly let our people into your events, or we'll withhold $300 million in funding from the entire university. You say we discriminate against gays and lesbians? Doesn't matter.
That exchange actually took place.

Hello, Yale Political Science Department? This is the Department of Homeland Security. One of your professors held a lecture entitled "American Neo-Fascism and George W. Bush." Kindly fire him, or we'll withhold $300 million from the entire university.

That exchange has never happened.

But when it comes to free speech rights, many academics and students fear the second scenario could easily flow from the first. In their view, the government's strong-arming Yale Law School into abandoning its anti-discrimination policy sets a dangerous precedent for freedom of thought.

To participate in events run by the school's Career Development Office -- like interview sessions -- law firms must certify that they do not discriminate based on race, religion, or sexual orientation, among other characteristics. Since the military does dismiss people for being openly gay, Yale Law School had in recent years denied military recruiters from its official sessions.

But two years ago, the school decided to allow recruiters into those events ... after the Department of Defense threatened to cut off all federal funding to the entire university -- not just the law school.

In response to the government's actions, one group of law school professors and another group of students have each filed separate lawsuits against the Department of Defense. The cases are proceeding along parallel lines in court, with all sides waiting to see if Judge Janet Hall of the U.S. District Court in Bridgeport will throw them out, schedule a trial, or rule that the professors and students should prevail as a matter of law -- without a trial.

The cases are important, law student Adam Sofen says, because if an exception is made for the military in this case, then more and more employers who discriminate may be allowed to recruit at Yale.

"Over time, it would be seen as uneventful that some employers discriminate," Sofen says. "It is very easy to become accustomed to discrimination if you do nothing to fight it."

In the mid-1990s, Congress passed what came to be known as the "Solomon Amendment." That law gave the government power to withhold federal funding from any university department that banned military recruiters from campus.

But in 2000, the Defense Department decided that it would deny funds to the entire university if only one of its departments denied access to military recruiters, the students' legal complaint says. The DOD didn't decide to play hardball until December 2001, and faced with jeopardizing $300 million for the university, the law school eventually relented.

Yale is not alone. Other law schools are challenging the DOD on its use of the Solomon Amendment, including the University of Pennsylvania. Yale's administration has been supportive of the legal actions challenging the government, Sofen says.

A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on the case.

But even though the immediate issue is discrimination, some see broad free speech rights at stake. The American Association of University Professors filed an amicus brief in the Yale cases, arguing that law school's anti-discrimination policy is an expression of pedagogy distinctly different from military policy. By threatening the law school to change its policy, the DOD is actually suppressing the school's First Amendment right to run itself differently than the military.

"American universities would face grave consequences if the government were permitted to use its funding in the way it has here," the brief says. "In 2002, the federal government provided approximately $87 billion in funding to universities and colleges across the country. It is not difficult to imagine that members of the faculties at these institutions often take positions in conflict with official government policy.

"Under the government's view of the First Amendment in this case," the brief continues, "it would be constitutionally permissible for the government to withdraw all federal funds to a university unless a particular faculty member or group of professors agreed to cease communicating a message that the government disliked. Such governmental power over university faculties would have far-reaching and devastating consequences for research and education."

I will get to these soon.