- Jan 13, 2001
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I think it is BS that someone would say we aren't being good global citizens, as it is now we are terrible global citizens and that doesn't change if you take the Middle East out of the equation.While the US (and the West) to a degree have foisted themselves on the Middle East, I don't believe this has anything to do with a "failure to try and understand other cultures" as you put it, but because a) most of the world's oil reserves are in the Middle East and b) misguided white guilt over WW2 and therefore continued support of Israel. Neither I support (I would prefer we work on alternative energy sources and let Israel rot in the desert instead), but the way I see it, we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. We get involved, its because we want oil and we want to force our way of life on others. We don't get involved, we are accused of not being good "global citizens" but using our wealth to save those poor souls cutting each others heads off over Abu or Ali.
You also forget that multiculturalism is a Western institution. Outside the West societies are either a) in tribal form (which is a recipe for disaster) or b) monoethnic. I see multiculturalism as a pretty decent method of compromise (another thing I don't support). Its logical that people migrate to the West in search of a better future (which implicitly suggests an acceptance of our values and culture), but by your reasoning, it also follows that it's perfectly natural for Western societies to baulk at the notion of having other cultures and systems forced upon them (which is what multiculturalism is).
The West shouldn't need to compromise (our attempts at compromising have failed), it should simply leave the Middle East (and elsewhere) alone, stop Western multiculturalism and discourage purely economic migration.
Multiculturalism has come out of the new world and the fact that migration removed traditional cultural boundaries to a large degree. There has been a strong push against multiculturalism in large parts of Europe. The more socialist the countries the less multicultural they are for the most part in Europe (France being the notable exception), but those not of a European background are definitely made to feel unwelcome on most of cotninental Europe.