But the issue is not the downside of cultural choices but the standards the culture sets for 'proper' behavior. Honor killings and clitoredectomy is not 'crime' in the cultures involved ( except where 'Western' norms have forced sanctions in order to get foreign assistance. They are considered 'the right thing to do'.

Western culture certainly has its own list of horrors and any legal permission or sanction of slavery, racial discrimination, homophobia, repression based on gender etc is to be condemned.

Perhaps my point doens't strike home if you have not been exposed to an American liberal arts education in an environment when Political Correctness insisted one not make value judgements about other cultures but consider all cultures equally valid - whatever atrocities they have institutionalized as 'proper' behavior. So a 'glass ceiling' making it difficult for women to advance to the highest corporate levels in the American workplace are considered equivalent to Saudi treatment of women or Somali or Yemeni tribesmen performing genital mutilation. Opposing particular policies to redress historical grievances earn comparisons to Hitler and cries of 'holocaust'.

Pornography, a lot of violence, homelessness ( which is very often the product of 'freedom' from forced instiutionalization of the mentally ill and chronically addicted ) are indeed terrible but they are side effects of freedom, not what the society has decided are worthy social goals.

Barbarism in the name of rigtheousness has certainly existed in the history of the west but our current culture at least recognizes this is not the ideal but rather a problem to be solved.

BTW, this is not to single out Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or Christian cultures - I've lived and worked in all of those to where I feel comfortable seeing the nuances within them. I don't feel 'tricked' by news stories but rather rely on first-hand experience in the cultures in question. But within all of those cultures there are elements of thinking which frame barbaric behavior in terms of righteous acts.

I place honor killing in Pakistan at the same level of personal barbarism as dragging a gay teenager behind a truck in Texas. Whatever portion of the local culture supports such acts as 'correct' are barbarians.



>>>http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3142288&page=1
>>
>>So much for cultural relativism. Suttee, clitoridectomy, honor killings, bride burning, gay-bashing and wilding are pretty good arguements for the idea that some cultures, while imperfect, are, in fact, superior to others.
>
>On the other side, when they are trying to scare/brainwash their own people, 'those' cultures are screaming out loud about folowing western 'achievements';
>
>Number of homeless people, number of criminals per capita, organised crime, drug business turnover, gambling bussiness turnovers, mass murderers as common phenomenon, number of drug addicts per capita, prostitution as part of industry, biased media/pornography/violence blasting from home entertainment units all over the place, Tenage sex and pregnancy rates, indecency and dishonesty as frequent road to success, military as major industry inducing hostile foreign policiees Etc, Etc.
>
>List can be as long and scary as you want it to be.
>If you really go to bad neighbourhood couple of blocks from you, you will probably hear story as brutal and ugly as this one that happened in this wild Iraqi willage.
>
>But just as list assembled above does not proove that this is who westerners really are, the same applies other way arround.
>This is not at all fair represent of Islamic countries/cultures that you are refering here with indignation, cynicism and arrogance at the end.
>
>C'mon man you can do better then that;
>Things are not black&white and news stories should not
>trick you to believe so.
>
>I wld say that (like always) truth lies somewehere in the middle.
>Both worlds have good and bad things, problems to deal with,
>things to improove and at the end but foremost;
>Find the way to recognise and talk to each other, rather then
>have century long war.
>
>>
>>And, of course, see Voltaire below.
>
>Yeah, Woltaire peace in your signature is really universally
>applicable. Last 2 or 3 wars are brilliant proof to that.