Don’t be afraid to say it
I am not afraid to say the West’s values are better
6 October 2007
The West should be proud of its ethical achievements
At a school in east London recently, a student perfectly calmly expressed his opinion to me — and in front of his principal — that girls who did not cover themselves in 7th-century desert-garb would be raped. It was salutary to speak with his headteacher afterwards as he boasted of the broad range of opinions at his school. Advocating the rape of fellow pupils strikes me as an unwelcome addition to the debate. But the principal’s desperate values-equality was an expression of a dying trend. In the face of one particular demographic which seems not at all afraid of being branded ‘culturally imperialist’, the West’s inability to assert the superiority of its values is beginning to look not so much coy as selfish.
It wasn’t always like this of course. In early 19th-century India, when Sir Charles James Napier was confronted with Hindu demands for a lifting of the ban on suttee, the general famously replied: ‘You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.’
Today we assume that any assertion of superiority must lead to assertion by force. But it need not be so. Rights are spread as much by confident example as by force. And as the multicultural fallacy showed (and countless harder totalitarianisms have demonstrated), when no one speaks up then lies become truths and the truth gets lost.
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Conor Pickering
October 8th, 2007 5:50pm Report this commentThank you for this voice of reason in an age and a nation that is scared of its history, politically and socially weak in its present and ill equipped to face the challenges of the future. With decency, tolerance, honesty, pluralism and ambition we can face the future with some hope of success. But to do so, we must understand who we are and be confident about the things we have got right, whilst recognising the things we have got wrong. Mr Murray is helping us do that.
Charles E Moore
October 8th, 2007 10:17pm Report this commentWe offend ourselves, and the world, by cringing beneath the weight of a self-imposed "guilt," affected merely in order to "apolgize" for the fact that western civilisation, out of respect for individual rights, has created so much for so many. For all the regard we may genuinely feel for the brilliant accomplisments of other world cultures, none have deigned to grant the single human being, and how much less the single human female, the dignity of meaning that we so take for granted...and shamelessly seem almost ashamed to note.
Ian Campbell
October 9th, 2007 6:05pm Report this commentIt should be remebered that historicaly, the freedoms we ascribe as western with roots in Judeo-Christian teachings have only recently become what they are in western liberal societies. Was it only in 1984 that women got the vote in Luxembourg (or was it Lichtenstein?). Our cultural values as embodied today are quite new, so we should not be surprised that other cultures are just getting exposure to them. That is not to say that their historical novelty means they should not be asserted as much better or else future developments of worldwide cultural values will not benefit from the lessons learnt along the path to the values we have today.
Brett_McS
October 10th, 2007 12:28am Report this commentExcellent article. "The emperor has no clothes" - or perhaps he is a social nudist? Multiculturalism and post-modernism: How future generations will laugh at us!
Rob Spear
October 10th, 2007 3:19pm Report this commentVotes'n'democracy as the sole determiner of government policy is at best a contentious issue, Mr Campbell. Since it has been introduced we have seen ever more rapacious and totalitarian states in the west. I do not know if this is inevitable, but it is possible that democracy is the enemy of freedom.
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