Western values under assault

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views January 13, 2003]

The multiculturalists are right in saying that in a just society, people of all races and cultures should be equal in the eyes of the law. But their argument borders on idiocy when they argue that one culture cannot be judged superior to another and to do so is Eurocentrism. For them, different cultural values are morally equivalent. That's unbridled nonsense. Ask your multiculturalist friends: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Under Islamic law, in some countries, women adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to ours?

Western values are superior to all others. Why? The indispensable achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. It's the idea that individuals have certain inalienable rights and individuals do not exist to serve government, but governments exist to protect these inalienable rights. It took until the 17th century for that idea to arrive on the scene and mostly through the works of English philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume.

While Western values are superior to all others, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It's no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person. There's an indisputable positive relationship between liberty and standards of living.

Western values are by no means secure. They're under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America. These people want to replace personal liberty with government control; they want to replace equality with entitlement; they want to halt progress in the name of protecting the environment. As such, they pose a much greater threat to our way of life than any terrorist or rogue nation. Multiculturalism and diversity are a cancer on our society, and, ironically, with our tax dollars and charitable donations, we're feeding it.

-- Walter Williams, syndicated columnist and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. He is author of The State Against Blacks, (McGraw-Hill), and several anthologies of his syndicated columns, which include: Do The Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks (Hoover), All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View (Regnery), and More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (Hoover). (Creators Syndicate)

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