Suicidal ideology

Multiculturalists enable the worst oppressors | Gene Edward Veith

Krieg Barrie/WORLD

There is nothing wrong with appreciating other cultures or with saluting various ethnic groups and subcultures. But multiculturalism as an ideology denies that a nation has a culture of its own and turns cultural differences into a pretext for moral relativism.

The ideology of multiculturalism permeates America's intellectual and educational establishments, but it has gone even further in other Western nations.

When a British schoolteacher in Sudan accepted a class vote to name a teddy bear Mohammed, she was arrested, tried, and imprisoned for the crime of insulting the prophet as angry Muslim mobs demanded the death penalty. Some Britons criticized her for being insensitive to Sudanese culture.

For members of the cultural left, multiculturalism often trumps even their own causes. The National Organization for Women refused to take a stand on the woman threatened in the teddy bear case.