Universalism, Rethought

Ever since I heard President Clinton's speech to the Class of 2006 at Princeton University, an interesting thought has been brewing in my head. While I am usually skeptical regarding any sort of universalism (see my article on Ms. Hirsi Ali or the Muhammad Cartoons), there could be a way of bringing about "shared values" that President Clinton spoke about.

In his speech, President Clinton gave a concrete example of how opinions (and values) can change over time. In Indonesia, he said, after the war in Iraq began, approval of American actions was down to 30%. However, after the tsunami, where approximately 30% of Americans gave money in aid for tsunami victims and countless NGOs from the US and other countries (like the Netherlands and UK) came in to help rebuild the lives of the victims, that same approval rating was up to 58%. Therefore, as a result of an empathetic struggle to rebuild Southeast Asia, where the citizens of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India saw that Americans actually cared about their well-being, relations between America and those countries (in particular, Indonesia) improved considerably.

The key point in the above example is that the opinions and values of the region evolved not through some propaganda offered up by the American government, but through the hard work and monetary contributions of American citizens. If the government of the US had been the key player in the Indonesian relief effort, there may have been any number of suspicions regarding why the US government was so interested in helping Indonesians. However, when American people, a diverse and characteristically discordant group, come together in an effort to rebuild the region, such suspicions fall away. There is no worry of a conspiracy existing between all the different groups that came to the aid of the Indonesians - the multilateral and non-governmental nature of the effort prevented that. Therein lies the key to a practical universalism.

By avoiding "uni-traditional" and governmental actions, the world can work towards the sort of "shared values" that President Clinton speaks of. If the actions are "uni-traditional" (ie, all the aid groups come from within Western nations), immediately there is the worry of conscious manipulation of another culture's values by the aiding culture. If the actions are governmental, there is a similar worry of governmental conspiracy to colonize the region they are aiding. Thus, in order to achieve the shared values that President Clinton feels would result in "more friends and fewer enemies," any actions causing a profound effect on a region (whether culturally, economically, or physically) must be taken by multi-traditional and non-governmental entities. That is, a relief effort in any part of the world must, in order to succeed in the long-term, possess participants from as large a cross-section of the world as possible. Then, any cultural effect caused by the effort, be it a direct result of the effort or an indirect consequence, will be seen not as a malicious trick by any one group, but rather a coming together of people in an effort to improve the lot of their fellow person, resulting in the growth of a basic set of shared values.

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As a side note, I would like to say that President Clinton's idea about NGOs is similar to what I suggested as a possible solution in Iraq. The diverse nature of NGOs would prevent any sort of focused influence effected by any one country. As a result, the shared values that arise will be, as the president said, "general and embracing and [would] work everywhere," rather than being values perceived to be imposed upon Iraqis by the Coalition of the Willing.

Rationale for the Muhammad Cartoons

The New York Times published an editorial written by Flemming Rose in Der Spiegel explaining why he printed the Muhammad Cartoons in his newspaper last year. He caricaturizes himself as a 60s hippie who, over the years, has become jaded by the exploitation of the left by the very victims they try to protect. He speaks of fundamentalist Muslim clerics in Europe taking advantage of the doctrine of "victimology" to use it against the people who defend them. And so on and so forth.


After making a case against the clerics, he moves onto defending his own actions. He makes a very strong case for himself, writing:

By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion...

However, as one of my close friends pointed out, it's like covering oneself in honey just after a bee's nest has been poked, merely because covering oneself in honey is within the bounds of allowed action (and perhaps even the "right thing to do"). She referred to his actions as "idiotic" and "mistimed." However, while I agree it was mistimed, I think he sees his own actions as idealistic rather than idiotic. There have been many situations when we have lauded a person for doing something like this, saying he or she "did the right thing" despite having every reason not to. Ultimately, I think, while he had the right to do what he did, especially as his reasons were idealistic, I think he did, in fact, mistime them. But furthermore, as he writes, the Muslim community in Europe should not have reacted quite as violently as it did - being a citizen of a multicultural democracy carries with it the implicit assumption that ones culture and religion may very well be the butt of a joke every once in a while. As a citizen of a democracy, one also has the right to protest such perceived violations, but not to the point of threatening the lives of other humans - such a reaction solves nothing and has potentially gigantic costs.