The Limits of Progressive Cultural Relativism and "The Urgency of Now!"

Universities, if they pound one message home over any other in the "progressive" dominated fields such as anthropology, sociology, political science, and history, it is that we in the West must stop assuming our culture is superior and must accept what has been called the idea of "cultural relativism." We, for example, must respect regimes such as the ones set up by Castro, Mao, and others of that repellent ilk, and we must NEVER assume that the West has any greater knowledge about human nature than anybody else. We, in fact, must acknowledge the deep, deep flaws of the West which undermine any claims by it to moral superiority over or even equivalence to other cultures.

Well, not really. There is a big loophole. If one of those cultures makes the mistake of attacking a bit too loudly whatever group happens to be that month's progressive poster boy . . . all bets are off!

We have as Example A, Uganda.

That African nation is a strange and wonderful place. I am no expert on Uganda, having visited it only once many years ago, but I remember the people as exceptionally good looking, generally well-disposed to the US, and many of them quite religious. The politics, in the wake of Idi Amin, were standard "Third World," i.e. issues of corruption, nepotism, ethnicity--you know, things that would NEVER happen in Washington DC. Anyhow, for a time Uganda was held up as a model for the rest of Africa, and got lots of attention from the US. Now, however, the attention they are getting is of a different sort. It seems the President of Uganda has not read the Diplomad, or at least not the post in which I noted that when dealing with President Obama one must keep up with shifts in the official dogma --the bolded words are for President Yoweri Museveni,

If you question [President Obama], you are a racist, insane, a danger to democracy, hate the poor or all of the aforementioned. If you still hold the same views that he purported to hold up to a few weeks ago, e.g., the traditional definition of marriage, and failed to "evolve" when he did, then you are a hopeless homophobe; your business should be banned and ruined, and your employees bullied. This is not unlike Orwell's 1984, "We have never been at war with Eastasia . . . " You must keep up with the changes in Dear Leader's views. He will tell you when you can favor gay marriage; when you can raise closing Guantanamo; when the war will end; when the deficit must be cut with more spending. New Think is here.

It appears that President Museveni did not get the memo, signed into law anti-gay legislation, and made "non-approved" comments about homosexuals. It also seems that President Musevini and most Ugandans hold the same view on homosexuality that prevailed in the West, especially in the Anglosphere, until just a short time ago. Remember it wasn't until just after the 2012 elections that our Dear Leader gave us permission to favor same sex marriage; before then, he had spouted the same definition of marriage as had Romney, Bush, Reagan, and the Pope. Now, of course, if you hold President Obama's pre-2012 views, well, you are scum.

One wonders what the reaction of the White House, academics, and the official media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC would have been had Musevini said he found Christianity disgusting and an artifact of imperialism. Outrage? Doubt it. Condemnation? Nah . . .  We would have been lectured on cultural relativism and the need to respect other cultures and societies and the decisions they make based on their histories . . .

"We have never been war at with Eastasia!"