A Readers Comments About the Article Faroe Island Whale Slaughter

I say you are quite wrong that any and all behaviors claimed to be intrinsic parts of "cultures" are, and should be, off-limits to criticism by members of other cultures.

Using that same logic, the military response to Hitler would have stopped at the borders of Germany. If your response to that would be that Hitler's behaviors were not congruent with German "culture" up until that time, first I would beg to differ, and secondly, you would then have to come up with a definition of when and when not, a given behavior could be classified as "part of the culture".

Does if take one year, 100 years, or one thousand years for the existence of a practice to be considerd "cultural"? What percentage of the population must have engaged in it? Etc.

Here in the US, we have people claiming that because their grandfathers got away with damaging forest ecosystems by driving motorized vehicles through them, distrubing soil and wildlife, and because their fathers did the same, that now they must be allowed to do so as part of an historic exercise of their family culture, a part of a culture of off-road vehicle use in the USA.

Does that fit your defintion of a sacrosanct cultural use?

Jim Wells

Very good response, good examples, and good questions, but my arguement came from a different perspective on the issue of culture, in our Politically Correct and Multicultural World.

From that different perspective comes two questions:

1. Would it have been right for anyone in America to punish you for speaking up against Hitler? Or worse - for defending the Jews!

Political Correct Multiculturalists would! You have no right to criticize a foreign culture of which they approve, or to support one of which they disapprove, because that makes you racist.

2. Are you allowed to criticize the 'off roaders' and their culture? Or are you attacked for being 'insensitive and discriminatory'?

The overall point in my article was that those who 'punish us' for not being 'politically correct'; for not agreeing with certain 'politically correct' points; for not freely accepting foreign culture at the expense of our own, are the very people who before anything is ever said and done, 'clean up' the foreign culture, removing from it, everything that 'they' (the Politically Correct Elites) find offensive.

My question then is: Who turned these people into 'God'? To decide what can and cannot be, and what I must and must not accept?

We should be free to approve or disapprove of actions, and seek redresses wherever they may be legally redressed, but we don't have the right to tell people what they must and must not believe; and especially have no right to punish them for not believing as we do.

And it doesn't matter when the 'they' are one of 'us' or one of 'them'.

I won't insist on the Faroe Islanders putting an end to their 'cultural activities', because I won't tolerate 'foreigners' telling me what I can and cannot retain of my 'culture'.

R.P. BenDedek

Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

It is refreshing and encouraging to see someone who is not blindly following along with the other sheep and can actually think for themselves. I am interested in reading more of your articles or more like them. Can you suggest a online forum that I can get "politically incorrect" news from.

Holli Currie

Thanks Hollie - R.P. BenDedek