To be radical today is to display disenchantment with all that is 'Western' - by which most mean modernism and the ideas of the Enlightenment - in the name of 'diversity' and 'difference'.

Really? I don't see too many people arguing for the virtual enslavement of women ala the Taliban's old rulings.

I thought suffrage was a "Western" concept.

And so on. Another "opinion" from and for people who don't understand what "Western" means nor what "diversity" means.

I don't see any of his mythical "radicals" trying to impose any of the Taliban's laws on the US (well, except for Ashcroft and Bush, but we expect it of them).

So, they reject "Western" concepts and "hate America", but I don't see them trying to CHANGE the US laws.

Why is it that Western liberals and radicals have become so disenchanted with modern civilisation that some even welcomed the attack on the Twin Towers as an anti-imperialist act?

I guess it would be too much to expect any substantiation for that allegation.

How things have changed. 'Permanently different' is exactly how we tend to see different, groups, societies and cultures today. Why? Largely because contemporary society has lost faith in social transformation, in the possibility of progress, in the beliefs that animated anti-imperialists like James and Fanon.

Again, another unsubstantiated statement. Anyone with any understanding of history will know that cultures are under constant change. It wasn't THAT long ago (less than one lifetime) that blacks couldn't vote in the US. That we still had segregation. And he thinks that OTHER people think that cultures don't change?

To regard people as 'temporarily backward' rather than 'permanently different' is to accept that while people are potentially equal, cultures definitely are not; it is to accept the idea of social and moral progress; that it would be far better if everybody had the chance to live in the type of society or culture that best promoted human advancement.

Ah, so we've moved from other people thinking that cultures don't change to the "fact" that other cultures are "temporarily backward" and just not as good as ours?

You see, not EVERY culture has the SAME values as our culture. That doesn't make them backward or anything.

And this is NOT the same as "hating America".

No more than drinking tea means you hate coffee.

But it's just these ideas - and the very act of making judgements about beliefs, values, lifestyles, and cultures - that are now viewed as politically uncouth.

Well, DUH! Because YOU do not find a particular value to be worthy does NOT mean that it is not to the person who holds it.

Again, because someone likes tea does NOT make him "backward" nor does it mean he hates coffee.

And it isn't just politically uncouth. It demonstrates the bigot nature of the person making such statements.

But being a bigot is not the handicap in some social circles that it is in others.

We've come to see the world as divided into cultures and groups defined largely by their difference with each other. And every group has come to see itself as composed not of active agents attempting to overcome disadvantages by striving for equality and progress, but of passive victims with irresolvable grievances. For if differences are permanent, how can grievances ever be resolved?

So, he's alternating between unsubstantiated claims that OTHER people believe that cultures are unchanging (despite historical evidence to the contrary) and political support of bigotry.

The corollary of turning the whole world into a network of victims is to transform the West, and in particular the USA, into an all-powerful malign force - the Great Satan - against which all must rage.

Again, it is other people (those ignorant people who think that cultures don't change) who say we're evil. Those bad, backwardly cultured people.

Get a grip. The Great Satan is a term used by anti-US, fundamentalist religions in totalitarian states.

Translation: a VERY small MINORITY of people.

There is a similar sense of fatalism in the way that many contemporary radicals view the USA. The Great Satan describes the world, and the world succumbs to those descriptions.

Are these the same people who don't believe that cultures change? The stupid ones he talked about earlier? If so, so what?

In this fatalism lies a common thread that binds contemporary Western radicalism and fundamentalist Islam.

This is going to be good.

On the surface the two seem poles apart: fundamentalists loathe Western decadence, Western radicals fear Islamic presumptions of certainty.

Hmmm? The multiculturalists who hate America are afraid of another culture that hates America? If they're afraid of the other culture, why are they multiculturalists?

But what unites the two is that both are rooted in contemporary nihilistic multiculturalism; both express, at best, ambivalence about, at worst outright rejection of, the ideas of modernity, universality, and progress.

"At worst"? And has anyone ever seen anyone trying to repeal woman's suffrage? I mean, they are "at worst" outright rejecting of these ideas.

Okay, if they aren't looking to repeal woman's suffrage, what ARE they trying to repeal?