Arguments about whether liberals enable terrorism are nothing new in conservative American media (the press surrounding would-be Taliban John Walker and his supposedly lax Marin County upbringing being only the most obvious example). Now, the idea has caught on with conservatives in Britain -- with similarly muddled results. Theodore Dalrymple writes in U.K. weekly The Spectator that the self-flogging instinct of leftists in that country will have grave consequences:
When the intellectuals of this country express no admiration for or appreciation of the cultural achievements of their civilisation's past, when only denigration and iconoclasm appear to advance an intellectual's career, when moral stature is measured by the vehemence of denunciation of past or present abuses, real or imagined, it is hardly surprising that Muslims conclude that the West is eminently hateful; it must be, because it hates itself.
And again a paragraph later:
Those who claim to hate and despise themselves for good and sufficient reasons will very soon enough be taken at their word by others, in the most literal sense, particularly by those who believe themselves to be in possession of an all-embracing creed.
In other words, why are we so afraid to admit our culture rocks?
We could debate the merits of this (weirdly therapeutic) political philosophy. But suppose that, like most Westerners, you have no problem with Western civilization. Maybe you embrace the modern Western concepts of pluralism and tolerance; hell, maybe you just plain like and respect other cultures and believe they have something to contribute to our own.
Dalrymple can't quite get his mind around such a possibility. As he puts it in the conclusion to his piece: "Every multiculturalist is a recruiting officer for al-Qa'eda."
Read "Creatures of the cultural cringe" in The Spectator.
