From ZOMBLOG, writing in Human Rights Imperialism: leftist satire or moral collapse?, an interesting essay on the internal contradictions of left progressivism (a redundant phrase) and the modern mania for “diversity” and “multiculturalism.”
I also know too much about history and anthropology to continue the bankrupt charade that all cultures are equal in value and equally worthy of respect and admiration. And this is where the Kinzers of the world and I have parted ways, I suppose. The accumulated Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman/Renaissance-Enlightenment/you-name-it wisdom that Western culture has integrated over the millennia is without any question the best bet that the human race has going.
The essay linked above is long, but worth reading. And, given that the writer is evidently not particularly sympathetic with Christianity, the conclusion quoted above is all the more remarkable.
There is a fundamental question underlying all this, that the essay doesn’t quite address, though it hints at it. Is there such a thing as “natural law“, or not? Is there such a thing as “human nature”? “Human rights”? “Right and wrong”? If the answer to these questions is basically no, if everything is instead culturally bound and defined, then we have no basis for any project of any kind that is about changing any aspect of culture, our own or others, other than that we want it to be a certain way. On the other hand, if there is natural law, human nature, and some irreducible minimum of human rights, if right and wrong actually exist, then on what grounds do we decide that “non-interference” in human suffering is better than trying to do something about it?
The left is basically schizoid about this. On the one hand, the left thinks everyone should have universally funded healthcare and access to abortion and same sex marriage. On the other hand, the left thinks that the US and the west should not impose its values on other nations/cultures that deny these things, and which in fact actively persecute large sectors of their own populations, even unto death.
No wonder they want universal healthcare. Psychotherapy is expensive.
