Jeff Goldstein, commenting on a Steele piece - one quote:
Specifically, a medievalist, pre-modern mindset like the one animating the Islamofascist movement is, ironically, quite adept at using postmodern observations about the nature of truth to sustain a rhetorical advantage over the West. And it does so by playing to the West’s arrogance—its idea that, because it has embraced the tenet of multiculturalism, it is somehow showing itself to be tolerant and nuanced in its dealings with the Other.
But recent history has shown us that all this Western “understanding” is a ruse. Instead, it is a mindset that pretends to an understanding by deferring to the Other, a maneuver that serves only to undermine Enlightenment principles and ideas of universal rights while simultaneously giving control of the identity narrative to groups it purports to “understand”, who are then able to use that control to affect victim status, define and shame their enemies, and bracket out unfriendly criticisms.
But this only works because the premises have been accepted by many in the western intelligensia, and have, from there, made their way into public and social policy....
I am not certain that those premises have been truly accepted. Some of that might be a ruse, and a pose, too. Good piece. Read entire.
