A short clip from John Anderson’s conversation with Melanie Phillips draws a line between ordinary respect for other people and the doctrine that treats every culture as interchangeable. Phillips is a British journalist and commentator who has written for The Guardian, The Observer, and The Times, and now contributes to The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle. She has long argued that the West has lost confidence in its own principles.
The full interview, on antisemitism and the West’s self-doubt, is here: [VIDEO]
Phillips argues that multiculturalism is commonly mistaken for simple courtesy toward difference. What the doctrine actually asserts, she says, is that no culture is morally or intellectually superior to any other. Once that claim is accepted, Western principles—democracy, one law for all, free expression, equality for women—cannot be defended as preferable. The result is not enrichment through food or custom but a society that has ruled its own standards out of bounds. That, in her telling, is how a culture stops being able to protect itself.
The arguments keep coming anyway. Diversity is our strength. In Minnesota, politicians describe the Somali community as part of the fabric. The same phrase gets applied to immigrants from other cultures in general. Those lines treat difference as automatic proof of strength. They leave little room to ask what the difference actually requires of the place that receives it.
