Re:Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible w...
by 0xfeba on Monday December 05, 2016 @01:22PM
(#13107792)
Flynn does go on in the book and explicitly state Islamic (don't recall if it mentions Islamist) culture is "evil", etc. I specifically mention a country rather than a extremist group. So he's not really hiding behind much.
> how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway?
Well, you can't. At least, not without being in terms of your own culture. That is, culture defines morals, in my opinion.
But I see no problem in pointing out these problems--as long as you don't go as far as pre-emptively accusing individuals or demanding they account for them. Eg., accosting Scientologists over Scientology.
In the context of Flynn's other rhetoric, he's clearly referring to American Culture vs Islamic and other non European cultures. So why didn't he just state that directly, like you did? Why the "political correctness" around not using concrete examples of the "cultures" he is referring to? Probably because he is trying to maintain the thinnest possible veneer of plausible deniability of bigotry by avoiding making those references to specific cultures.
However, even if you take his statement in isolation, how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway? Do you take the laws of a country that represses a huge number of it's citizens, like Saudi Arabia? There are huge numbers of individuals who do not subscribe to the "morality" of the culture that the world associates them with.
Over-generalizing about cultures and denying individuals in those cultures moral agency is one step on the path to justification of terrible acts against them.