I am skeptical that any of us embraces “diversity” as much as we might believe.
We claim to be multicultural, but our conception has limits. These lines become apparent in any dispute involving vaguely liberal norms on the one hand, and a truly different way of life on the other hand. The easiest example to offer has reached the Supreme Court repeatedly and recently: faced with the dilemma of religious communities that reject anti-discrimination standards based on their faith, and the protection of persons toward whom they would express bias based on identity, we must make a decision which trumps which.
Our rights conflict. That is understandable. As individuals and society, we are capable of contradiction; it is the human condition.
There also are global versions of the same choice. A government that does not follow Western, specifically American, concepts of democracy, whether expressly or not, presents a challenge. The problem is there are not principles that can be imagined by humans without some sort of origin in a specific set of traditions. Yet the incompatibility of customs of one place with another place is real. The discrepancy cannot be reconciled by abstract reasoning.
A sign in a storefront that declares “all are welcomed” is as sincere as it must be false. The list of who is welcomed excludes a group that only its members are aware of.
“All are welcomed” does not accept those who reject that very proposition. There are people, however, who are decent, kind and nice, at least toward those who are like them, who are not willing to embrace everyone. They may be intolerant about other religions or those in interracial or same-sex relationships (or those who would compare interracial to same-sex relationships), and so on. A strict vegan who would like to convert carnivores cannot also be a multiculturalist. She or he is against the consumption of meat, which might extend to the killing of animals, which in turn might encompass the possession of firearms.
“Liberals” can be faulted. Not liberals in the crude, partisan sense, but liberals who are self-assured that simple recognition of individual rights will take care of injustice. They are hypocrites, since they cannot help but be so. They are counting on consistency. If individual rights all aligned in a single direction, then rights could determine case outcomes. But even if we all agreed – which it is clear many do not – on rights, these rights point in multiple directions. They cannot be relied upon as a guide.
