One of the terms that keeps resurfacing in the left-right or liberal-conservative debate is the notion of “multiculturalism”. Adopted by the left, rejected by the right, revered in politically correct paradises such as Canada and Western Europe it has now a very negative connotation rather than what it should it have been. The concept originally was taken to mean the following:

“ … a view that immigrants, and others, should preserve their cultures and the different cultures should interact peacefully within one nation”

That’s the official policy in countries like Canada and Australia, the US with its unique melting pot never really bothered with the concept. Europeans in recent years have been taken by surprise that many temporary immigrants decided to stay and failed to melt-in and preserved a little too much of their respective cultures. Combined with demographic trends their presence started to contribute to domestic instability and these days many European countries are struggling with finding a solution to potent integration and assimilation problems. From a purely practical perspective I see no harm in the basic concept of multiculturalism, on the contrary, I laud places where a plethora of cultures, languages and religions thrive side by side, I have enjoyed that in my native Rotterdam, in London, in Hong Kong and now in Vancouver.

The problem arises when multiculturalism mutates into cultural relativism, a term best described as downplaying your own culture in order to accommodate other cultures. A great example is the forced description of “Christmas” as “Holidays”, as wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” these days may offend his or her cultural and religious sensitivities. This of course is utter nonsense as it speaks for itself that we should not denigrate, attack or otherwise insult a Muslim or Sikh, but to a priori act as if we have can only lead to a complete negation of our own culture. The term “Christmas” is even for the secular among us a tradition and festive benchmark, “I am dreaming of White Holidays” will wipe away one of the most treasured North American songs and with it an easily identifiable cultural icon. If we abandon our own heritage of shared traditions, what will take its place? Some call this form of revising one’s own culture “self- inflicted loathing”, here’s the ParaPundit:

If the intellectuals of Western societies do not regain some sense of belief in their own cultures and ethnicities as things worth defending then they are going to be outnumbered and eventually ruled over by people who do not suffer from self-inflicted loathing of their own identities.

Well, many intellectuals and writers have been working hard to help us regain some self confidence but the self-loathing concept has deep origins and is hard to neutralize. The embarrassment over fascism in Europe, the feelings of guilt over decades of colonialism and in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand a compulsive need to adjust past wrongs vis-à-vis the native populations all have contributed to turning the admirable notion of multiculturalism into the despicable practice of cultural relativism. The former by the way doesn’t necessarily mean that all cultures in one geographical are on an equal footing, the dominant culture allows and protects the rights of other cultures to be what they want to be within a certain legal framework. To preserve your culture doesn’t mean to celebrate it to the detriment of others.

That particular framework can have many features, such as allowing certain groups to adopt their own rules for arbitrage, shari’a being one of them, as long as they do not contravene the basic constitutional structure of the country in question. Things get off the rails when one of the basic Western tenets such as the separation of church and state is abandoned to accommodate a particular minority. That’s where you start to compromise the neutrality of the very law that seeks to let various ethnic and religious groups co-exist. There are many more examples I can give, my favorite one being imams fully exercising their right to free speech by calling on Muslim men to ensure that their women stay at home to do housework and forego the education opportunities offered to them by their hosts. There’s some cultural tension there and it’s not one that will get resolved in a pleasant way.

As politically incorrect as it may often seem these days, there is nothing wrong with fulfilling the basic human need to identify with and celebrate a culture. It strengthens the individual and allows it to interact with other cultures in a confident manner. Cultural relativism negates that basic human premise and in view of the fact that other cultures practice the very opposite of that relativism it may endanger and threaten the “relativist” culture with extinction, especially when demographics play a part. Many Western European countries are unable to come to grips with this phenomenon; attempts to introduce the melting pot so far have yielded opposite results. Yielding to cultural relativism is no answer either, but building a sustainable multicultural society with some mandatory melting-pot features most probably is.