HaloScan.com - Comments

You *are* crazy to think that morals are objective across all cultures. You are annoyingly mistaken in your assertion that multiculturalism is just a guise to subvert western civilization.

What makes you so annoying is that you have zero understanding of what you discuss, and yet you write with such arrogance. Perhaps it would do you well to pay more attention in your philosophy class and actually learn how to reason.

Let me give some examples. Multiculturalism can surely be critiqued--but subverting western civ? Your logic depends on dividing multiculturalism from western civ, when it's clear that multiculturalism devloped out of western civ. What you are really saying is that you have a notion of western civ--which you don't define, undoubtedly because you can't--that somehow excludes multiculturalism--which you also don't define. Multiculturalism in its essence works to engender relations of equality and respect across different cultures and ethnicities; in part, it is a response to globalization and immigration patterns. More particularly, it is a direct outgrowth of Enlightenment thinking on equality and democratic principles about equality and equal representation. In other words, direct outgrowths of what we mean by Western Civ.

Now, you may not like the way multiculturalsim takes these aspects of our European cultural/philosophical inheritance, or you may object to the way such ideas are turned into policies and implemented, but please, do us the favor of making a knowledgable argument rather than giving us rah-rahing and stupid hyperboles.

One more example. You claim that those who hold values to be subjective to society cannot accept that people are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. This is incorrect. By way of analogy, think of a buliding. A building is something humans create through their toil--they conceive it, gather the materials, construct it, and inhabit it. The fact that they construct it means that in a very real sense, it is subjective. But, that doesn't mean if we walk into a wall it won't hurt, or that if it's poorly laid out we won't be affected by it? Does the "subjective" component of building something somehow dissolve its real world impact and effects?

Ditto for something like the Declaration and Constitution. These are constructs with strong roots in European political philosophy. That means, they are quite subjective. But at the same time, the fact that they are the products of human toil does not mean that we can willy-nilly do away with them--they exist in the world, they impact us, they have affects. They profoundly structure human relations and political arrangements--that is their objective component. And like most things that we build, it requires constant care and attention if it's going to last. Politics is one of the names we have for that constant care and attention; it's the way we have of taking care of the imporant things we construct, like human rights. Human
tjr | 04.27.06 - 11:16 am | #

The post cut off; here's the final paragraphs:

Politics is one of the names we have for that constant care and attention; it's the way we have of taking care of the imporant things we construct, like human rights. Human rights are unfortunately *not* objective, as they can be violated by anyone anytime, and have been. As one of the best things European/American thought has constructed, it is imperative that we tend to human rights, like a garden upon which we depend for survival. But saying this is not the same as saying it is somehow "objective."

In short, your understandings of "objective" and "subjective" are facile. Once again, why don't do us the favor of paying more attention and reading more deeply in your classes, and learn something, before spouting off with pseudo-profundities that only confuse people. You give right wingers a bad name, no different than a celebrity like Michael Moore gives left wingers a bad name.
tjr | 04.27.06 - 11:23 am | #

Commenting by HaloScan