A couple of quick points and then I, too, must take off for the weekend.
First, there is no such thing as “culture.” Culture is an arbitrary intellectual construct. The idea of culture is useful as an analytical tool but on a basic level, everyone has his or her own unique culture. For example, we speak of “Western Culture.” By this we mean countries that share certain intellectual traditions. However, not everyone in each country in the “western sphere” shares every tradition. Italy, has its own unique culture but, once again, there are no cultural elements that every Italian shares. Each region of Italy has its own cultural attributes, including unique foods, attitudes and even language. In Sienna, each neighborhood has unique cultural traditions. Of course, even families and individuals have special cultural traditions.
So where do you stop? At what arbitrary level do you become incapable of making a judgment?
Radical multiculturalism, which is what Achilles is expounding, is ultimately incoherent because it, too, has its own set of values that it believes everyone should abide by. For example, radical multiculturalism would hold that it is immoral to make value judgments about other cultures. This is in itself a value judgment. For example, how can you make the following statement?
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How can you make such a value judgment, Achilles? He’s speaking from his own cultural tradition. His perspective is just as valid as yours, isn’t it?
Would his point of view still be bigoted if he were French? Australian? Argentinian? Burmese? How are you in any position to make such a judgement?
I’m not saying that it is usually a good idea to make value judgements about other cultures, only that it is possible. Your attitude ultimately means that the West has no right to interfere in – or even really comment on – things like genocide in Rwanda or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Hell, the American South had its own unique culture, so I guess you would have thought it “bigoted” to claim that chattel slavery was inherently immoral.
The bottom line is that there are a few principles – not many, but a few – that are “morally superior” and that ought to be imposed on other cultures. We can argue about what specifically they are and how they ought to be expressed in a particular case, but there are some.
That what my cultural perspective says, anyway. So if you don’t like it, you’ll just have to suck it up.