Veils

It seems that Macleans has taken a decisive turn to the right. In its newest issue it goes from claiming that Wal-Mart is saving lives to portraying an ominous-looking Muslim child on its cover complete with a "Muslims are taking over Europe - prepare yourself" scare story. Following this is an article on why Harper should be more like Bush and statements on the War on Iraq that go as far as to say that the problem with the War in Iraq was that it pussyfooted its way around in a culturally sensitive way, which resulted in the war's longevity (with no foreseeable end).

I seems that this turn is largely due to Mark Steyn, the author of the hateful "America Alone" and regular columnist in both the nation's rightist paper, the National Post, and its libertarian western-Canada populist rag, The Western Standard. The jacket of his book proudly wears the quote of an Arabic dignitary which claims that "Steyn's arrogance knows no bounds." Both the book and Macleans go as far as to claim that Islam is taking over and destroying the world -- it should be noted that if such a claim were directed towards Jews it would be instantly labelled anti-semitic (and rightly so) and taken for nothing more than what it is...hate speech. The most unfortunate aspect of this is that Macleans always had the reputation of being fairly middle-of-the-road and relatively unprovocative. Hopefully the average person will see the different direction "Canada's best magazine" has taken.

Reading the Globe and Mail this morning it has become more apparent what an enormous Effect racist cultural globalitarianism is having on the world at the moment. What I mean by this is the growing trend of legitimating cultural discrimination and religious intolerance under the name of individual human rights (a problematic metaphysical construct) rooted in a liberal democracy which treats its maxims as necessarily universalizable.
The cult of the individual has been maximized into a universal; rights have been reified so as to free the other from their own self-imposed apartheid and usher them into secularization. Rawls' veil of ignorance breaks down when one realizes there may actually be people out there who, despite being legally allowed to snub their nose at their own tradition, might decide against doing so. The liberals solution? Claim 'false consciousness.' This type of cosmopolitanism (which is the geopolitical equivalent to the banishing of prejudices proffered by the type of Scientism we have been subjected to since the Enlightenment - in this case it is the prejudice of the nation/culture/tradition we must rid ourselves of) has now shown the consequences of its claim to universality. More than an ethical globalization, it is a globalitarianism in that it rules by force, accepting no cultural or economic alternative - no dialogue is acceptable. We can see next in Britain just as we've seen it in local law enforcement in France. We have seen it in warfare in the name of 'freedom' and 'liberalization.' The problem is not, as the (neoliberal) 'left' claims, in the execution of the plan to grant freedom to the Others. The problem is with the notion of the task itself - it is always phrased as if freedom from a nonliberal tradition was a goal worth striving for, a universal truth to behold. Much of the neoliberal 'left', while not defending the hawkish international agenda, are fine with the domestic move toward complete secularization, be that through the banning of headscarves or Jack Straw's position of merely asking them to commit heresy when they're in his presence.

There are some who are decrying this last case, but in what terms? Still with neoliberal rhetoric. But the Left needs to move itself away from individualism and toward a type of communitarianism, radical as it may sound. Only then can it expand its horizons of inclusiveness, which, in turn will give it the tools necessary to understanding its structure of meaning, that is, to understand its own identity. Only then will it have the proper means to execute the power of critism.