Wish I'd written that

From Mark Shea, with whom I've often disagreed, but who speaks the pure and unvarnished here:

The notion that the West is, in any serious way, “multicultural” is a complete, smug, self-congratulating fiction. We are a culture that is not only profoundly intolerant of ideas outside a narrow bandwidth and ready, at the drop of a hat, to sneer at those ignorant primitives who think differently from our middle class suburban enlightened selves, but we are also a people ready, willing, and able to go to war to impose our “values” on backward peoples in the name of spreading hedonistic democratic capitalism.

I would only add that the imposition of "values" on "backward peoples" that Mark speaks of isn't confined to foreign countries.  I recall my time working at a major food company, when the marketing department was preoccupied with American women who'd grown up in "big family" cultures (such as Italy) where preparation of a massive Sunday meal is considered a tradition, a way of keeping the family together, etc.  These geniuses were trying to figure out how to "educate" women out of this mentality, to get them to accept fast, pre-processed food instead of that made from scratch, and how to encourage the idea of small, quick meals eaten on the run, rather than long, festive family affairs around a huge table.  See, the traditions and cultures and family values that this represented - none of that was important in comparison to moving product and increasing the bottom line.

Really, it's just enough to make you shake your head and walk away.   ◙