Diversity and Tolerance: The Culture Wars

Last "holiday season" a rabbi filed suit against a Seattle Airport in order to have a Chanuka Menorah placed alongside the usual Christmas Tree (or is it Holiday Tree now?). While many people were mad at him for possibly having the tree removed, as it almost was, I am more upset that there is a tree up in the first place. While many might disagree with me politically regarding what a government should and should not do, I cannot see that anyone can really argue that government spending on any decorations for any holiday are warranted or even an acceptable use of public funds. If a private business chooses to place a decoration up that is their business.

In recent years Target has been criticized for taking the word Christmas out of the store sales and making it merely a "Winter Holiday Season.” Many people are upset over this but Target is a business and I can only assume that in an effort to best serve its customers it made an educated choice which a private (not governmentally owned) business may do.

The main reason for all of this hullabaloo is that diversity has created a climate where we expect all cultures to be represented or at least have a chance at being represented in every situation. This exposure to the cultures of others, while enlightening, has actually watered down the cultures into marketable clichés. A Christmas tree somehow became the symbol of a Christian holy day and a marketable symbol at that. The holidays of Kwanzaa and Chanuka are treated as sidekicks to Christmas just because they happen to fall during the same so called “holiday season.” Christmas and Chanuka have absolutely nothing in common. They are probably the anti-thesis of each other if one really studies the true meaning and history of each.

When diversity makes all cultures seem relative to each other the real differences are masked. It is for this reason people like quotes such as “we are all people” or “we all live on the same planet” or “can’t we all just get along?” and forget that individual cultures have different views on what behavior is acceptable and what getting along means. While a Muslim community in the Middle East may be viewed as backwards in their treatment of women or how they live, this is their culture. Any attempt to homogenize them or incorporate modern notions of the best way to live would destroy that culture.

Are some cultures worth destroying? That depends upon the particular view of each culture and within it, the majority of its participants. Certainly, any culture has a right to defend its way of life. The resulting wars and killings may seem harsh but are necessary for the preservation of civil societies. By civil societies I mean independent cultures that operate on their own and take care of the needs of the people within the culture.

Diversity in its current incarnation has created a world of supposed equality amongst cultures. The results are terrible. It has become impossible for any culture to attempt to defend itself without being told by the UN to stop or risk sanctions. The West fights the East and the Islamic Terrorists fight the World. Meanwhile, people think that if we all just understand each other a bit better we will avoid all this strife. By “understand” they mean let things go that are fundamental to the very core of their own culture. How can a Jewish person let go of an ingrained hatred of Jews by the Palestinians? How can the feminists let go of their belief that women should be equal to men? Certainly in a country with Islamic rule this will not happen.

Should we then forget this and make peace anyhow?

In order for any culture to survive it must fight for its own beliefs. This is an essential characteristic of a culture. It has a definite identity and a strong identification of its members. Additionally, the members are willing to defend their culture as it exists or lose and become another culture.
As private citizens living within our own cultures and intermingling with other cultures we maintain a dual citizenship in both the outside world and our own cultures. We feel this difference every day when we deal with those outside of our own culture. The main reason American society has lasted as long as it has is due to the government’s ability to remain out of the sphere of culture and religion. This is why many oppose church and state mingling or government funding for anything other than national defense and infrastructure interests. Any more intermingling affects the individual cultures within American society and makes a homogenous society with nothing worth fighting for but much fighting about what exactly is.

In the end we have societies fighting for inconsistent reasons. This is one reason the War on Terror” is so debated. There is a large block of people that do not understand why the fight exists in the first place. Since diversity has taught them that all cultures are allowed to freely exist and no other culture may assert any dominance over another there is never a reason to fight, even when another culture actually does attempt to assert dominance over others.

I may have digressed far from my original scenario involving Christmas Trees and Chanuka Menorahs in airports but this is exactly where this scenario leads us to when all cultures must always be represented at every moment and at every time by selectively taking aspects of each and attempting, on a micro scale, to blend them into a “holiday season” or, on the macro scale, a global culture.

(This blog is a previously written piece I placed in my computer archives in anticipation of creating a blog. Now that I have a blog I am slowly editing and releasing my writings. Enjoy!)