Is Multiculturalism to Blame for Iraq?

Well, today I had the misfortune of reading an article so transparently silly it amazes me that editors at the Christian Science Monitor allowed it to be printed. I begin to wonder if its author, Lawrence Harrison even read what he was writing, or simply ignored the obvious contradictions of his position in order to serve his point. In the opinion piece, "The End of Multiculturalism", Harrison asserts that the two great failures of the Bush administration—Iraq and immigration—have their roots in multiculturalism. He goes on to prescribe some actions by the government to nip that there multiculturalism in the bud. The whole article is built on an inane straw man, and consequently its merits are nil.

Harrison stuffs his scarecrow relatively quickly. By his second paragraph he is saying:

But multiculturalism rests on a frail foundation: cultural relativism, the notion that no culture is better or worse than any other – it is merely different.

First of all, this sort of statement is primed to elicit a reaction, as it implies an attack on the reader (the reader is assumed to hold his own culture in high regard). However, the central tenet of normative cultural relativism is not the same as the central tenet of a multiculturalism, which is that every culture has some value. Because the multiculturalist seeks to construct a single coherent society out of diverse cultures he implicitly accepts a set of external norms. Without such norms a coherent multicultural society cannot be constructed.

This is not an insignificant difference: the multiculturalist is still in a position to, say, oppose female genital mutilation, while a bona fide cultural relativist is not. The normative cultural relativist must reject the notion that there are any external norms by which a given culture can be judged, while the multiculturalist is not obliged to such an extreme position.

Harrison acknowledges this non-equivalence as well when he asks:

What, then, are the implications for a foreign policy based on the doctrine that "These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society"? The Bush administration has staked huge human, financial, diplomatic, and prestige resources on this doctrine's applicability in Iraq. It is now apparent that the doctrine is fallacious.

The stated doctrine is an explicit rejection of normative cultural relativism. Yet Harrison attributes it to a multicultural worldview. If these words truly reflect some kind of multiculturalism (as Harrison claims they do), then multiculturalism cannot be the same as cultural relativism. Moreover, if the failures of this 'multicultural' foreign policy arise from this sentiment then they are a result of cultural aboslutism ("right and true for every person") rather than cultural relativism. Harrison seems to be arguing that the flaw of 'multiculturalism' in this case was the invalid application of external norms—in other words, his is the argument of a relativist. Of course, I don't mean to suggest that Harrison is a relativist; rather, I mean to suggest that he is an idiot.

The reality is that the Bush foreign policy is not 'multicultural' in any intelligible sense. And to be honest, its failures were not so much philosophical as practical. Examining the war policy in the light of multiculturalism is nonsensical because they are not related. This is probably why Harrison doesn't spend a great deal of time trying to explain why it is. Instead he skips on to immigration, which at least seems like it could be intelligently framed in terms of multiculturalism.

Once again, however, Harrison utterly fails to deliver. The best he can offer is to sloppily and inanely equate bilingual education with values that perpetuate underachievement. However, it is totally unreasonable to suggest that multiculturalism requires us to uncritically accept cultural values that are at odds with particular norms. One can legitimately argue that Mexican customs, language, food, and literature are worth celebrating in America without being committed to the idea that the educational failings of immigrants ought be tolerated or encouraged. Only a hard-line normative cultural relativist is bound to such an odd outlook, and, of course, multiculturalism is not the same as cultural relativism. Harrison triumphs over his idiotic straw man, but produces no arguments relevant to the stated topic. The delayed assimilation and continued poverty of Hispanic immigrants are of major concern to everyone, not just monoculturalists.

There are other reasons to despise this article—among them Harrison's creepy adulation for 'Nordic' values and 'Anglo-Protestantism'. However, the chief reason to reject his argument is that he isn't talking about multiculturalism at all. While acculturation and economic opportunity for the Hispanic minority are a pressing concern for the nation, Harrison's extreme and distorted views of multiculturalism do nothing to inform the debate.