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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Lielks: "Multiculturalism is simply the state between two different cultures." |
| 2007-10-16 |
| Part of today's "Bleat" I was in the car this afternoon, listening to a debate about Ann Coulter, and her remarks about Jews needing the “perfection” of Christianity. Never quite thought of her as a religious sort, frankly, and I am not interested in her thoughts on theology. The comments weren’t remarkable, but the subsequent tempest was. Religion in a diverse society is a masked ball without midnight. It’s agreed that the masks stay on. Should they slip off, you learn things. Look: many people who are serious about their religious beliefs are quite convinced of the superiority of their creed; it’s not as if the Pope sits up nights wondering whether Buddha might be on to something. I say “many” instead of “most” because there are millions of cultural Christians in the country who have a casual sense of creedal superiority which they don’t indulge, examine, or display. If they do, they err on the side of the Shrug: to each his own. But you can’t say you have the One True Path and believe that other paths lead to the same destination. There are people who believe that everyone can graze from the Old Country Buffet of Theology and still assemble in the common afterlife of the parking lot, and nevermind the details; they’re mostly liberal Christians in the West who regard tolerance and coexistence as values more important than witnessing and converting. If nothing else, they prefer to lead by example. There are others of all faiths whose indifference to the beliefs of others has less to do with a commitment to religious pluralism and tolerance than a disinterest in the paths others take. In the abstract, they hope you’ll come around. If not, well, that’s how it plays out. Every faith that builds on another regards itself as the last word. So Coulter’s remarks weren’t unusual; they were just impolitic. We don’t get into the details, because the details breed friction For some, however, anyone who ventures into the thicket of theological disputations is equally suspect, which led a guest on the Medved show today to utter a stupendously idiotic judgment: she found Ann Coulter’s remarks as offensive as a jihadi’s snuff video of Daniel Pearl’s execution. It was an interesting remark, because you could sense the parameters of her intellectual terrain. There is a big comfy warm spot in which the smart and decent people reside, and beyond that there be dragons. If these people believe in the warm mealy notions that hold all cultures equal, and regard the assertion of a culture’s values as the equivalent of passing gas in the museum, you’ll naturally get this. If such a mild assertion merits a visit from the police, then any frank expressions of doctrine will earn the same, until sermons turn into room-temp gruel. But I suspect the efforts of the police will be selectively applied, in order to assure all that the hitherto dominant culture has assumed the supine position the times require. Multiculturalism is simply the state between two different cultures. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 When I listen to Ann Coulter, sometimes I think somebody should invade the offices of National Review, kill the leaders, and convert the rest to Christianity. Well, that's what Ann would have done. Besides , there was the book of hers where she wrote of how Americans always imagined themselves as being in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and not as Maine clodhoppers. Um, has she ever visited Gettysburg? |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2007-10-16 23:14 |