The Pitfalls of Multiculturalism
Columnist Mark Steyn recently offered up a wonderful story that encapsulates all that is wrong with multiculturalism:
Now that's my kind of multiculturalism.
In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
Now that's my kind of multiculturalism.
posted by Under The Mountain | 8:12 PM
2 Comments:
nice! who knew the british empire was the provider of worldwide justice!
Brian, whatever arguments one wants to make about the rightness/wrongness of the British having an empire, Gen. Napier wasn't the one who made the decision. He found himself in India, and he wasn't hampered by the idea that all cultures are equally valid. There *is* a difference between burning women alive and *not* burning women alive. That particular widow probably didn't spend a lot of time cursing the British Imperialists.
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