Defeating Multiculturalism

Thomas Klingenstein’s essay “Patriotism vs. Multiculturalism,” focused as it is on the contrast between what makes America a good nation and the multiculturalism that attacks that goodness, does not sufficiently explain multiculturalism (Spring 2019). Although the comments that follow the essay contribute to an explanation, they leave the reader without a schematic view of the phenomenon.

Multiculturalism is anything but “an insane exercise in self-flagellation.” Today’s multiculturalists, unlike medieval flagellants, neither confess their own sins nor flagellate themselves. Their self-purification and virtue certification consist of confessing your original sins and mine, and flagellating us!

Nor is there anything “multi” about multiculturalism. Unlike the version in Samuel Huntington’s time, it is no longer “a progressive cultural cosmopolitanism distinguished by superior sensitivity to the downtrodden.” There is zero cosmopolitanism about it; it is peculiar to a narrow class of latter-day Westerners. Having almost abolished the study of foreign languages and literature in universities, multiculturalists are aggressively ignorant about any and all foreign cultures. They neither know nor care about Confucius,