Multicultural ideology is anti-intellectual, amoral, and runs counter to the very idea of civilisation.

One of the building blocks of multiculturalism is non-judgmentalism. All cultures, we are told, have their own validity. And, after all, who are we to question what someone else does? Why, that would be cultural imperialism. The anti-intellectualism and amorality of this position is simply breathtaking, yet it’s a widely held notion. After the 9-11 attacks, the president of Mount Holyoke College, where young women are presumably educated, actually praised her students for being non-judgmental about the people who had just hijacked and murdered. Even college presidents chimed in, informing us that we didn’t really comprehend the cultural factors driving the suicide bombers.

You know, if only we understood German frustration, we could deal with this man Hitler.

Non-judgmentalism violates one of the most fundamental concepts of civilization – that to be civilized means making choices, including cultural choices. The citizen is called upon to judge and evaluate all the time – in elections, in trials, in determining social policy. The basic American history text in Robert Hutchins’s college at the University of Chicago was called “The People Shall Judge,” not “The People Shall be Non-judgmental.” We not only have a right to judge, we have an obligation, and that obligation extends across cultures. We had an obligation to judge apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States. We had an obligation to judge the Gulag in the Soviet Union. We have an obligation to denounce the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

Champions of multiculturalism are loathe to talk about the failings of non-Western cultures because that would require discernment and exercise of judgment.

Mr Katz’s biography indicates a wide range of experience. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and former editor at The New York Times Magazine, he has also worked as a CIA officer, political aide, and writer of novels and television comedy.  Currently, he blogs at Urgent Agenda and Power Line.

From The New York Times to blogging. Some journalists and journalism professors would regard that as traitorous.