QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 7:52 P.M. ET:  A few days ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron severely criticized the cult of multiculturalism, which has allowed Islamic extremists to live comfortably in Britain while polite society looks the other way to avoid "offending" Islam.  The left unleashed a flood of abuse against Cameron.  The Jerusalem Post comments:

If Cameron’s speech was fair, then, what explains the broadside against him?

WHILE BRITAIN’S hard Right has deteriorated toward crude fascism, large swathes of the Left seem to have adopted a policy of cultural masochism that advocates what Christopher Hitchens has called a “one-way multiculturalism.”

Amidst a hypersensitive desire not to offend, coupled with an embarrassing, terribly self-defeating willingness to relinquish Western values, all manner of antisocial practices – such as the wearing of veils, forced marriages, even genital mutilation – are rationalized, and sometimes validated, in the name of religion, even when none of these practices is necessarily dictated by the Koran. Even honor killings, in some marginal circles, can be regarded as something less than murder because of an ostensible religious imperative. At the same time, the demand that Muslims respect British cultural norms is sometimes presented as an untenable intrusion.

Cameron was trying to articulate a sensible middle ground. The attack on him from some on the Left represents the kind of response that has thus far prevented the formation of a broad non-partisan coalition in Britain, dedicated to reasserting the values at the heart of the country’s illustrious history of democracy and liberalism.

This does not bode well, and demographics are only further complicating the cultural conundrum. The Muslim population in the UK will almost double to 5.5 million – or 10 percent of the national total – within 20 years, according to a recent Pew Research Center forecast. The Islamists’ threat itself may be crude, but fighting it entails adopting intricate cultural and political distinctions, bolstered by the firm conviction that Western ideals of freedom and liberty truly are superior. The climate of response to David Cameron’s speech suggests that many in Britain are not convinced.

COMMENT:  Wonderfully stated, with considerable application to the United States, especially our pampered, overfed universities. 

As Charles Krauthammer pointed out, Barack Obama would never have the courage to denounce the one-way multiculturalism that is practiced here, especially in our coastal liberal enclaves.  But just as Britain, under Mr. Cameron, will be expected to hoist British values, we must defend American values and never again elect a president, like Obama or Carter, who is ashamed of them.

February 7, 2011