Keith Windschuttle comment

Keith Windschuttle is a new name for me. As best I can figure he is a former Continental Leftist turned latter-day revisionist historian writing out of New Zealand or Australia. Clearly very bright and well-read, he has a way with the Mother Tongue that only a favorite son of the Empire can boast. His name and the following quote came up in a comment thread I was reading yesterday. I'm not sure I like what he says, but I have to admit he says it awfully well. Get this...

The logic of relativism is taking Western academics into dark waters. They are now prepared to countenance practices that are obviously cruel, unnatural and life-denying, that is, practices that offend against all they claim to stand for.

To see how decadent these assumptions have become, compare today's relativism to the attitude that prevailed when the culture of the British people was in its ascendancy. Sir Charles Napier, the British Commander-in-chief in India from 1849 to 1851, signed an agreement with local Hindu leaders that he would respect all their customs, except for the practice of suttee. The Hindu leaders protested but Napier was unmoved:

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

The moral rationale of cultural relativism is a plea for tolerance and respect of other cultures, no matter how uncomfortable we might be with their beliefs and practices. However, there is one culture conspicuous by its absence from all this. The plea for acceptance and open-mindedness does not extend to Western culture itself, whose history is regarded as little more than a crime against the rest of humanity. The West cannot judge other cultures but must condemn its own.

This is taken from a longish piece from his website. Good read, entertaining writing style and yes, I recommend a critical reading. It is the text of a presentation he made at a symposium last month. I was tempted to blog about it but forgot about it until this morning. The same snip popped up at The Is-Ought Problem, a Kurdish blog I came across a few days ago. He beat me to it.

Wikipedia link to Windschuttle.