Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Nov 30, 2025 12:57 pm
Whether precepts of other cultures should be tolerated depends on whether they oppress others or not, including within their own cultures.
Take eating dogmeat, for instance -- it really is no different than eating beef, and unless one views vegetarianism or veganism as a moral imperative there is no solid reason to consider it immoral -- even if we Americans regard it as taboo. As a result it should be tolerated.
On the other hand, take female genital mutilation -- it is highly oppressive because it effectively destroys women's ability to experience sexual pleasure and it has an intolerably high rate of complications for an unnecessary procedure, combined with that girls it is carried out on typically do not have a real choice in the matter. Consequently, it should be suppressed.
Every culture has things that it believes should self-evidently be suppressed and practices that it believes should self-evidently not be questioned. Reasons for this can often be produced, but are typically post-hoc, and the accounts of the practices may not have anything to do with the history of how they developed. Considering mainstream American culture as it exists: are we to believe that the philosophical truth, accessible to unaided reason (or at least reason aided by a suitably objective account of human experience), is that the line between oppressive practices and unquestionable facts about what one does is to be drawn to place female genital mutilation on one side and male circumcision on the other? There are differences in degree, of course, but it's certainly not obvious to me that this is the only place the line can justifiably be drawn. (Incidentally, the infamous David Reimer experiment began with a badly botched circumcision. Surgical complication rates of neonatal circumcision are generally given at 2-4 per 1000, although some estimates are as high as 4%.)
Male circumcision in Anglo-Saxon culture is an interesting case because it emerged relatively recently, well within the period of philosophical liberalism, generally for "scientific" reasons and concurrently with medical advocacy of clitoridectomy. It was seen as an unenlightened and oppressive foreign practice until the late 19th century, and mostly abolished in the UK as a cost-cutting measure.
zompist wrote: ↑Sun Nov 30, 2025 3:44 pm
If Graeber and Wengrow are correct, "mainstream American culture" was deeplly influenced by Native American models and criticism. See their book for their documentation. They point out that a French academy held a debate in 1754 on the question "What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by natural law?”— and how odd it was that such a question should be raised in the era of absolute monarchy in France.
Als Adam grub und Eva spann,
Kyrieleis!
Wo war denn da der Edelmann?
Kyrieleis!
Spieß voran, drauf und dran,
Setzt aufs Klosterdach den roten Hahn!
Hardly odd. The song is from the 20th century, but the events are from the early 16th. Were the Twelve Articles of the Swabian League (1525) influenced by Native American models? What about the Hussites, etc.? Would the ascendant bourgeoisie have meekly accepted their class's position relative to the titled nobility if not for Native American models?
In the United States, the top of the political class is drawn overwhelmingly from graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. This does not stop us from holding debates on the question of whether college is a good idea. It doesn't even stop people from adopting the slogan "send the tanks to Harvard Yard".
Maybe there's something to this idea, but I'm not convinced that the counterfactual is so different, and I've been unimpressed with Graeber in the past. (The book I'd try to write if I had the time would situate liberalism, parliamentarianism, governance by assembly, etc. instead in pre-Roman-Empire European history and its restoration as a process of purification from external cultural influences, which is basically what Thomas Jefferson thought he was doing - he once said that, for students to really understand what the American project of liberty was about, they'd need to study Old English.)
There's a niche political movement of "postliberals", Catholic conservatives who believe that the United States is not meaningfully multicultural because it doesn't extend sufficient tolerance to Catholic conservative cultural precepts, and believe strong liberal multiculturalism in this sense - in which the state holds to no vision of the good whatsoever - to be both unrealized and impossible. Are they descriptively wrong?
I think you've answered this yourself: Catholic conservatives would like a state which, against its people's wishes, enforces Catholic conservative ideas. Why is this craving supposed to appeal to anyone else?
States do always appeal to some "vision of the good"; the conservative idea that non-conservatives are "immoral" is self-blinded nonsense. (Romani think that non-Romani are dirty. Is that a reason to enforce Romani notions of cleanliness on the nation?) The problem is that those visions contradict in one way or another. The democratic solution is that of an exasperated parent: none of you get to impose your made-up rules on the other kids in the car.
The liberal state's enforcement of liberal ideas isn't entirely conformant with the wishes of its people (hence phrases like "legislating from the bench"), but these liberal ideas are generally agreed upon by the minority that exercises power. The postliberal program, of course, isn't supposed to appeal to anyone other than that minority, and perhaps useful allies in other power centers.
The
democratic solution, of course, would be to put the made-up rules to a vote. This is not on the table, for reasons which are entirely correct: the masses can't be trusted with such matters, and indeed generally wouldn't trust
themselves with such matters, and the direction of the culture must be determined by a wise, competent elite which leads the masses into enlightenment, or perhaps a much more polite and liberal-sounding sentence to the same effect. But if the masses find their situation intolerable, they'll support the replacement of the current elite with a new one, and the next generation of aspiring elites might throw in their lot with the challengers instead.
The appeal of Catholic conservatism in this sense is intended to be that replacing the elite with a new one would solve certain problems caused by the current elite and their state religion: the failure of liberal multiculturalism, the bizarre mix of permissiveness and severe restriction that people live under, the lack of rhetorical or material concern for majorities, etc. Obviously this is silly and wrong (even when it comes to multiculturalism: the leading postliberal talking head is on record as supporting open borders for Catholics, for an idiosyncratic definition of "Catholics" that explicitly excludes almost all Europeans), but that's the sales pitch they're making - and it's hard to have much respect for the current elites, whose current plot arc seems to be trying to protect a highly unpopular immigration agenda at all costs. (In the US, this looks like throwing trans people under the bus under the incorrect belief that the median voter is a devoted Daily Mail subscriber who is also a religious crank.)