The Multicultural Moment
September 11 is our fault.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
October 2, 2001 2:00 p.m.

omebody was bound to say it sooner or later: The September 11 attacks were the result of a failure by Americans to embrace multiculturalism.

"Those people who said we don't need multiculturalism, that it's too touchy-feely, a pox on them," said Judith Rizzo, New York City's deputy chancellor for instruction, in yesterday's Washington Post. "I think they've learned their lesson. We have to do more to teach habits of tolerance, knowledge, and awareness of other cultures."

In other words, our refusal to understand the terrorists is why 6,000 people had to die last month. Yet this is exactly wrong. It's their refusal to understand us that makes terrorism possible.

No culture is more curious — or tolerant, knowledgeable, and aware — about other cultures than our own. It isn't even close. Our bookstores stock dozens of titles on Islam and the Middle East. Does Rizzo seriously believe Damascus bookstores provide a similar range of choices about us?

The goal of multiculturalism, of course, always has been the embrace of relativism: To grant moral equivalence to all cultures at all times, including the practitioners of cannibalism and human sacrifice. (None of the cultures to which we're supposed to extend this courtesy actually return the favor, of course.)

Relativism does have its uses: Anthropologists in the field may find a utility in suspending their critical and moral judgment temporarily as they try to understand obscure customs. But the main function of relativism, for the Left, is the deflation of the Western way of life.

Arthur Levine, president of Columbia University's Teachers College, added his own silly flourish to Rizzo's comment: "Our notion of great books can't be Western anymore or wholly Western anymore. Is 'Middlemarch' more important than the Koran in terms of the curriculum?"

Perhaps not, but it's a false choice — the terrorists may have blown up some of our biggest buildings, but there's no reason why they should blow George Eliot out of the curriculum, too. It's also hard to stomach when presented by people who would cringe at the suggestion that American schoolchildren spend a little more time with the Bible. If there's a separation of church and state, shouldn't there also be a separation of mosque and state?

The greatest crisis in American education isn't a refusal to know other cultures — though this, like anything, surely could be improved. Instead, it's the failure to know our own culture and history. The Left would like nothing better than to block this traditional goal of education, and multiculturalism is its primary weapon.

Recommended Reading
Darrell Cole writes in First Things on Christians and warfare: "Christians who willingly and knowingly refuse to engage in a just war do a vicious thing: they fail to show love toward their neighbor as well as toward God."

Seymour M. Hersh on what went wrong at the CIA, in The New Yorker: "'Are we serious about getting rid of the problem — instead of sitting around making diversity quilts?'"