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Progressive multiculturalism is no match for Islamic fundamentalism.
Topic Started: Jun 14 2012, 05:30 PM (1,215 Views)
Dave Spelvin
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Fulla-Carp
That's an ugly picture, IT. Only by misunderstanding me deliberately can you post a horror like that. What's your point other than to shock people who can't follow the argument? Do you want me to counter this by posting black men hanging from trees, surrounded by southern white families like it's a picnic? There are such pictures and they would be equally irrelevant in condemning an entire culture.

You talked about intellectual integrity the other day. Why don't you take a few moments and try to find some?
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
John D'Oh
Jun 16 2012, 08:25 AM
So let me get this right, Americans are using products of their own culture as a way of demonstrating that other people's culture are inferior, since Madonna isn't really a product of an unbelievably crass and money-driven entertainment industry that has existed for bloody ages, but is because you've tried to accept everybody else's culture as well?
Sounds like a progressive lack of accountability complex.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Dave Spelvin
Jun 16 2012, 01:05 PM
That's an ugly picture, IT. Only by misunderstanding me deliberately can you post a horror like that. What's your point other than to shock people who can't follow the argument? Do you want me to counter this by posting black men hanging from trees, surrounded by southern white families like it's a picnic? There are such pictures and they would be equally irrelevant in condemning an entire culture.

You talked about intellectual integrity the other day. Why don't you take a few moments and try to find some?
David -- I have no idea what your point is apart from what you actually write. You stated "I say you can't make global value judgments across cultures." Yet you obviously don't believe such nonsense.

So go ahead and post pictures of black people hanging from trees -- go find one taken in the past half century to show the sort of moral equivalence that you seem to be arguing. Otherwise, why don't you simply acknowledge that we really can make adverse value judgments across cultural lines? We obviously were willing to confront our own bad values of racism, as evinced by the blindingly obvious fact that there are presumably no black people swinging from the trees in your home town.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Moonbat
Jun 16 2012, 01:05 PM
Quote:
 

The fact that you have to cast it in such facile cracker-barrel pseudo-psychological terms just shows you really don't get the point of the criticism against a multiculturalism that refuses to make objective and adverse judgements against other cultures but rather privileges them over the American experience and core values and tends to denigrate the American ones -- it is part and parcel of the Deweyesque technocratic education package.


I have no time for multiculturalism and I never have (I have no time for national identities either) but there is a lot to be said for not denigrating the cultures that immigrant populations come from. I recall some research that indicated that children for whom the positive aspects that their culture brings to Britain performed vastly better than those for whom the opposite message was broadcast.

In fact in general I think great damage can be done by casting the issue in terms of the superiority or inferiority of some particular 'culture', in addition to the claim being pretty ambiguous in and of itself, all it achieves is the alienation of those who happen to identify with the culture that is being dismissed. Far better to focus our ire on specific practices and principles. Thus we should attack a theologically basis for law rather than 'Islam', we should object to female genital mutilation not to 'Sudanese culture', etc. etc.
I agree with you, Moonbat -- cultures are never monolithically good or bad. The issue with Deweyism and his multicultural approach to education was an unwillingness to make any sort of virtue judgment, since it implied some objective standard by which one can say such and such was bad -- its not a question of moral superiority/ inferiority, though that sort of language was certainly part of the whole European colonial expansionism of the 18th and 19th centuries into Africa and southern Asia.

The entire concept behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is precisely that we can and ought to make adverse judgments where adverse judgments are called for. All the sort of handwaving about "the African experience" or "multicultural toleration" is basically nonthinking.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Dave Spelvin
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ivorythumper
Jun 16 2012, 01:30 PM
Dave Spelvin
Jun 16 2012, 01:05 PM
That's an ugly picture, IT. Only by misunderstanding me deliberately can you post a horror like that. What's your point other than to shock people who can't follow the argument? Do you want me to counter this by posting black men hanging from trees, surrounded by southern white families like it's a picnic? There are such pictures and they would be equally irrelevant in condemning an entire culture.

You talked about intellectual integrity the other day. Why don't you take a few moments and try to find some?
David -- I have no idea what your point is apart from what you actually write. You stated "I say you can't make global value judgments across cultures." Yet you obviously don't believe such nonsense.

So go ahead and post pictures of black people hanging from trees -- go find one taken in the past half century to show the sort of moral equivalence that you seem to be arguing. Otherwise, why don't you simply acknowledge that we really can make adverse value judgments across cultural lines? We obviously were willing to confront our own bad values of racism, as evinced by the blindingly obvious fact that there are presumably no black people swinging from the trees in your home town.
An example of a "global value judgment" is that the Aztecs were bad because they sacrificed virgins or Muslims are bad because some of them want to kill us. That's what I mean by "global" -- using specifics elements to condemn the whole. I never said or suggested that it's OK to cut off someone's nose. I've said repeatedly and I'll say again here that the nose-cutting part of that culture should not be used to condemn the entire culture, just as the fact that Americans owned slaves and hanged black men from trees should not be used to condemn the entire American culture.

As for timing, I happily admit that lynching as a cultural phenomenon is a thing of the past in our country. With respect to sliced noses, it seems to me that we can help put a stop to that practice, and clitorectomies, rather than demon an entire culture because some within that culture now engage in these practices. I know that cultures evolve over time (see lynchings and slavery) and I sincerely hope that these practices soon become a part of these cultures' history, as lynching and slavery has become a part of ours.

The other point I've tried to make in this thread is that we should not fear that American culture will expand to accept nose removal and clitorectomies, just as we should not fear that shari'a law will become the law of the land or that we will become just like European socialist countries, etc. If our values are strong, and I am confident they are, these things will simply not have a chance over here.
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Dave Spelvin
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Fulla-Carp
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cultures are never monolithically good or bad

I've been saying this for pages. What the hell are we fighting about?
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Dave Spelvin
Jun 16 2012, 03:17 PM
Quote:
 
cultures are never monolithically good or bad

I've been saying this for pages. What the hell are we fighting about?
Probably the fact that you used bizarre terms like paranoia to describe people who don't accept the multicultural PC nonsense.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Quote:
 
The fact that you have to cast it in such facile cracker-barrel pseudo-psychological terms just shows you really don't get the point of the criticism against a multiculturalism that refuses to make objective and adverse judgements against other cultures but rather privileges them over the American experience and core values and tends to denigrate the American ones -- it is part and parcel of the Deweyesque technocratic education package.


Hm, just to clarify, were you referring to this Dewey

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or this one?

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I get criticized enough for my actual beliefs, just want to make sure I'm not also being criticized for beliefs I don't hold.

"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
That one's a real Square.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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