"It's difficult to understand different cultures sometimes. We get set in our own ways and can only picture life the way we live it. How do we open ourselves up to understand that there are more people in this world who do things differently? What makes one culture more right than another? I ask myself questions like these and realize that when the soccer balls are dropping, kids playing and having fun is a good thing no matter what cultural or religious beliefs you may have."
~ Chief Warrant Officer 4 Princeton Soh (Operation Soccer Chopper)
Like many, I find myself hard-pressed to dare question the benevolence or nobility in wanting to bring a bit of joy into the lives of the children of Afghanistan, but I find myself unable to endorse the notion of the cultural or moral equivalence of anachronistic Islamic and contemporary Christian societies. Often times it's the children and those whom we perceive to be the innocent victims of war that eventually will succeed in trying the discipline of our nation's fighting men. It is above all the very innocence of a child that has the innate power to somehow ennoble the uncivilized in the eyes of the suitably disposed.
CWO Soh finds himself asking the question "What makes one culture more right than another?" Well, to quote Ayn Rand "A culture that values freedom, progress, reason and science, for instance, is good; one that values oppression, stagnation, mysticism, and ignorance is not." If CWO Princeton Soh and the rest of our fighting men in Afghanistan continue to find themselves unable to draw a distinction between the two, then we'll either follow in the footsteps of the mythical John Frum leaving the Afghanis waiting patiently for the return of the mechanical black dragons that drop Snickers bars and soccer balls from the heavens or at the mercy of another anachronistic Islamic regime.
CWO Princeton Soh's story should serve as a lesson to us all of how cultural relativism inevitably drags moral relativism in it's wake. If what is wrong for one society can somehow be right for another, then what is wrong for one generation can justifiably be right for the next. If we continue to find ourselves compelled in the "spirit of multiculturalism" to accommodate and appease these "noble savages" and feel that our culture is no better than theirs then perhaps it's high time that we pack up the rest of our soccer balls and just head home.
HT - LGF and Michelle Malkin
~ Chief Warrant Officer 4 Princeton Soh (Operation Soccer Chopper)
Like many, I find myself hard-pressed to dare question the benevolence or nobility in wanting to bring a bit of joy into the lives of the children of Afghanistan, but I find myself unable to endorse the notion of the cultural or moral equivalence of anachronistic Islamic and contemporary Christian societies. Often times it's the children and those whom we perceive to be the innocent victims of war that eventually will succeed in trying the discipline of our nation's fighting men. It is above all the very innocence of a child that has the innate power to somehow ennoble the uncivilized in the eyes of the suitably disposed.
CWO Soh finds himself asking the question "What makes one culture more right than another?" Well, to quote Ayn Rand "A culture that values freedom, progress, reason and science, for instance, is good; one that values oppression, stagnation, mysticism, and ignorance is not." If CWO Princeton Soh and the rest of our fighting men in Afghanistan continue to find themselves unable to draw a distinction between the two, then we'll either follow in the footsteps of the mythical John Frum leaving the Afghanis waiting patiently for the return of the mechanical black dragons that drop Snickers bars and soccer balls from the heavens or at the mercy of another anachronistic Islamic regime.
CWO Princeton Soh's story should serve as a lesson to us all of how cultural relativism inevitably drags moral relativism in it's wake. If what is wrong for one society can somehow be right for another, then what is wrong for one generation can justifiably be right for the next. If we continue to find ourselves compelled in the "spirit of multiculturalism" to accommodate and appease these "noble savages" and feel that our culture is no better than theirs then perhaps it's high time that we pack up the rest of our soccer balls and just head home.
HT - LGF and Michelle Malkin
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