No Contrast to Barbarism

There are aspects of his column that I disagree with (primarily a sympathy to religion that I think is undeserved), but I do appreciate Walter Williams having asked a few pointed questions of multiculturalists:

Multiculturalists argue that different cultural values are morally equivalent. That's nonsense. Western culture and values are superior. For those who'd accuse me of Eurocentrism, I'd ask: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values? [ad links removed]

As Williams indicates elsewhere, those who preach multiculturalism pave their way by confining their critiques (when their insults even rise to that level)  to the West. That is bad enough, but, I'll add a further question of my own: If they can't bother critically examining other cultures, how can we assume that they have even examined ours for its virtues?

Part of what makes the nihilistic left as strong a cultural force as it is is that too many people unwittingly accept the following basic, unstated, and wrong premise: Fault-finding is the hallmark of critical thought. This premise helps lead to the enormous injustice against the West we are seeing today: The civilization that ended slavery and has achieved unprecedented (and widespread) prosperity is unacknowledged, while a caricature of it is held up to barbarism and found equivalent, if not wanting.

-- CAV