>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'.

Question is where ?
Those things do exist, but stats will not rectify it as way of life
or 'mainstream' in muslim world. Far away from that. You could be talking about secluded, poor and primitive communities in some countries, mostly in regions hard to control by governments, but defenetely not in let say in Dubai, or in Beirut, or in Alexandria etc. Way you present it, someone who can hardly point to say ... Australia on a world map, might conclude very funny things. Now that kind of *funny* conclusions ARE mainstream in happy Bbq flipping US suburbs.

>
>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.

Ditto.

>
>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.

Desribed liberal art education is right on money. People ARE equal. People
constitute countries, and countries belonging to region or religion are
worlds we are talking about here. Countries just like People are different.
Some could be rich some can be poore, some can be clean some can be dirty. But you can't find kosher philosophical or political standpoint treating them anything but equal.

>Opposing particular policies to redress historical grievances earn >comparisons to Hitler and cries of 'holocaust'.

We can talk about Darfur but that's about it. If there was no
Iraq/Afganitsan they might hv been helped better but now ...

>
>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.

Or freedom from morals, real chance in life, free education, proper healt care or police enforcement all of them being 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.

Very recent history and yes, world 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.

I don't know; I hv read in a past few of your very flammatory posts
regarding middle east and now this one. So now I am kind of confused what liberal art education have to do with your passion to clean up Bekaa waley, and weather you were talking about Muslims, Buddists or Chineese.

But then again, when someone talks about racial superiority (see below) then
very few things can add up afterwards.

Peace :)

>
>>>>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.