Multiculturalism is a product of relativism; the only way you can believe that all cultures are equally valid and good is if you believe that all values are relative, that there is no objective right or wrong or good or bad. Of course even the most hard core relativist can’t live such a philosophy consistently, but that doesn’t stop them from believing it anyway. Most people with a modicum of common sense realize that some cultures are better than others, but this doesn’t apply to the West’s cultural elite. For them it isn’t only relativism that makes them think such an absurd notion, but an animosity to the West, and mostly to America. The political class in the West bought this silliness for decades, but there is something about radical Muslims beheading people on camera that concentrates the mind.

Libertarian Walter Williams tells us multiculturalism is now failing, but why some otherwise intelligent people would buy it:

Multiculturalism is Islamists’ foot in the door. At the heart of multiculturalism is an attack on Western and Christian values. Much of that attack has its roots on college campuses among the intellectual elite who see their mission as indoctrinating our youth. In past columns, I’ve documented professorial hate-America teaching, such as a UCLA economics professor’s telling his class, “The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world.” A history professor told her class: “Capitalism isn’t a lie on purpose. It’s just a lie.” She also said: “(Capitalists) are swine. … They’re bastard people.” Students sit through lectures listening to professorial rants about topics such as globalism and Western exploitation of the Middle East and Third World peoples.

If you’ve been to a university you know how true this is. I used to work at a small Christian liberal arts college, and in a weekly newsletter I produced, I’d put quotes to give people something to think about. Once I put something in about the greatness of America, and a professor called me to read me the riot act about how ethnocentric this was, and how offensive to non-Americans, bla, bla, bla.

Williams argues that the ultimate Western value is the supremacy of the individual, and that you don’t have to be Western to accept that. Traditionalists of various stripes would certainly have a problem with this libertarian perspective, but individuality doesn’t have to militate against community, and vice versa. The American Founders, as Alexis de Tocqueville saw, got it just about right.