Columnist Alex Knepper sets up a straw man when he claims that liberals are concerned more with gay marriage in the West than anti-homosexual persecution in other countries such as Iran. He ignores the numerous causes championed by the left long before they were mainstream, such as genocide in Darfur, torture in former Soviet states, and child trafficking in Southeast Asia.
This is as opposed to those of us on the right, who only claim to be champions of human dignity when the violators become the Next Big Enemy. After all, it was not until the frenzy for war after Sept. 11 did the right acknowledge what the left knew all along: that the Taliban were theocratic abusers of women. On the point of Western culture, of course it is correct to point out that the modern environment of liberal and pluralistic thought has its roots in the Enlightenment of the West. However, one cannot discount the negative aspects of Western culture in light of these positive ones, such as parochialism and paternalism.
Even as "Western culture" might work in a specific type of society such as our own, it is not to say that other cultures can simply emulate it without any problems. After all, one need not more than look to the shining successes that are Iraq and most of Africa, all of which attempted to transplant "Western culture" on their own societies.
Barnaby Yeh Senior, School of Public Affairs
