Cultural customs; ours should be as valid as theirs....

Found this in the Kobayashi Maru blog this evening .....

Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun Times last Sunday:

In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" -- the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

Brilliant. Flippin' brilliant. The point, of course, is about our timidity in standing up for our own culture and values and legal frameworks and even religious heritage. In the rush to uncritical political correctness, what's often overlooked is that, in order to be consistent and meaningful, respect and tolerance must encompass and include the culture that gave birth to those ideas. If all other cultures but mine are exempt from criticism and any effort to change them then the very foundation of respect and tolerance falls apart.

Amen, brother.