Many (probably most) of my fellow leftists fervently, fiercely, assert that all cultures are inherently valid and valuable—EXCEPT our own, despite being practically unique in even acknowledging, must less advancing, that very idea. All "institutionalized" bigotry, from racism to sexism to homophobia to religious hatred, is the norm virtually EVERYWHERE ON EARTH but Europe and the North American continent remade in its image. Yet the same people who eagerly declare aboriginal pedophiliac cannibals "merely misunderstood" and "incapable of judgement by our irrelevantly alien mores" are equally quick to declare bare birth in the West the authentic and only Original Sin.

Even with the Twenty-First Centurys constant global satellite surveillance, many isolated primitive tribes remain wholly unstudied because the sole record of them is an immediate and invariably homicidal response to all outsiders. Like the Masters of Krikkit—EXCEPT civilization does not permanently isolate them out of self-preservation, but to protect their murderous xenophobia from "imperialist exploitation" (i.e. exposure to concepts like "do not murder strangers on sight," "do not murder and eat your rivals," "do not treat women as recreational incubators" etc.) And while that is the extreme case, it is also typical of the dichotomy. Take the most infamous one of all:

Europe outlawed slavery over a millennium ago, but continued and increasing "exposure" to it by the "victimized" Mideast and African cultures who preserved and PROMOTED slavery ultimately convinced Europe to resume slavery in its colonies, until Europe—ALONE—outlawed it all over again: And much of Africa STILL has not gotten the memo, even in 2017. So who is to blame for the former slavery of the American South and Caribbean? Why, the Europeans who bought those slaves from African slave merchants, of course; but for European colonialism, everyone died on the Middle Passage or was worked to death on plantations as they watched their children sold out of their lives forever would have... experienced THE EXACT SAME THING in Sudan, or Somalia, even "civilized" places like Enlightenment Egypt and Turkey. At least European slave owners did not CASTRATE slaves to provide their HAREMS trustworthy guards.

Sub-Saharan Africa is little changed, and what progress exists is "coincidentally" confined to thoroughly colonized regions (e.g. South Africa, Egypt, Kenya.) The "white mans burden" is less ironic in light of enduring apocalyptic wastelands like Sudan, Angola, Somalia or Rwanda. Impossible as it sounds, the "Democratic Republic" of Congo may have been better off under Belgiums King Leopold than as "the Belgium of Africa" half the continent uses as pretext and killing field for endless genocidal wars. The Mideast is relatively more enlightened, but only relatively, and only where/to the extent Western "imperialism" "exploited" it with "enlightenment" its brutal theocratic troglodytes brand "immoral decadence." Hence the understandable disgust so much of the American right feels at American leftists who condemn "Rape Culture" at home while defending foreign mullahs "freedom" to stone women who dare learn to read.

None of that is to say that Western culture is without guilt, nor any other without virtue: It is simply a reminder that if pluralism or multiculturalism mean respecting ALL cultures without fear or favor, that certainly includes ones own. The REST of the world (i.e. the ones NOT "colonialists" and "imperialists" certainly has no (pardon the pun) reservations about that; "Death to America" and "America is the Great Satan" are more culturally enblightened than enlightened. What is unique about the West is not "imperialism" nor "colonialism," but the decency (or at least shame) of being able to recognize, admit and try to reform its worst impulses and customs rather than ruthlessly repress all reform as an insidious existential threat to cultural orthodoxy embraced uncritically.

That in turn owes at least as much to very Western dominance considered unforgivable as to the Cult of the Individual that fueled the Wests rise and respect for pluralism. Thus the Wests reverence for pluralism is fragile, because both its leisure to academically reflect on ethical abstraction and incentive to do so decline along with its status. In the final analysis, both local and global liberal guilt are the ultimate "privilege," hence a large and growing number of working class male WASPs are insensitive (or downright hostile) to it. Guilt and a duty to make "reparations" are much easier to see through the lens of what one has than what one LACKS. More importantly, the chief concern of anyone barely (or not) surviving is feeding, sheltering, healing and educating their defenseless children "by any means necessary," with no concern for consequences nor absolution until/unless they live long enough to consider such things. If we cannot fault a fictional Jean Val Jean stealing bread to feed his starving family, we surely cannot condemn countless real ones for slavery in French Martinique, over which they had even less control.

So I cannot fault any of the downtrodden and disenfranchised doing what they must to improve their lot and that of their children, but that means NONE of them, REGARDLESS of particular superficial racial, sexual, geographic, religious or other extraneous attributes. The greatest real virtue Western culture (especially US culture) has is not any kind of unique enlightenment, but reconciling the very paradox of solidarity and individualism embodied in the motto "E Pluribus Unum." Unified diversity holds unmatched strength and limitless potential, but only if we always remember that "equal" is not synonymous with "identical" and that we are all in this together.