Friday, June 10, 2005

Militant Feminism: A Bad American Export

I am all for exporting goods from America to other nations, especially the more needy ones. However, seeing a McDonalds in a little town in Italy or out in the country of Mexico is not my idea of the exports I had in mind.

Militant feminism is another such regrettable export. However, sometimes the locals rise up and resist. Good that they do. This is from Karl Zinsmeister's article in The American Enterprise magazine (April/May 2005 issue):

Besides, there are plenty of social questions where modern Western solutions may not necessarily be the best ones. If Islamic nations choose to ban pornography, if they want a different balance between work and leisure, if they prefer their own patterns of family life, Americans should be perfectly satisfied to let them follow an alternate path. There are some forms of "enlightenment" that other nations could be better off without, as this amusing anecdote from Deepak Lal's new book In Praise of Empires indicates:

In 1995 I was staying in Beijing with the Indian ambassador to China. Beijing was hosting a U.N. Conference on Women, and the large number of female delegates were housed in a large tent city. One night the ambassador was woken by an agitated Chinese official asking him to rush to the tent city, as the Indian delegates were rioting. On getting there he found that the trouble began when some American delegates went into the tents of their Third World sisters and tried to initiate them into the joys of gay sex. With the Indians in the lead, the Third World women chased the American women out of their tents, beating them with their slippers.

Yes, sometimes the US is wrong and the "Third World" is right, especially when it comes to moral values.

Notice the date, 1995, when Clinton was President. Enough said.

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