Regarding your editorial "David Cameron's Warning" (Feb. 9): British Prime Minister David Cameron's excellent call for a "muscular liberalism" involves important philosophical difficulties going back to the lack of logic in Karl Popper's concept of "The Open Society and Its Enemies." If a society is "open" to all ideas, how can it simultaneously define some ideas as absolutely inimical? This logical difficulty in turn goes back to the vagueness of J.S. Mill's concepts of "reason" and "civilization," on which rests his essay "On Liberty," the basic blueprint of Western liberal modernity. Mill was utterly confident that the meanings of these two words were indubitably clear, but the subsequent century of sharp epistemological arguments proved him wrong, creating what your editorial calls, "a society . . . that lacks the confidence of its own values." In fact, these values ultimately are based on the Western Enlightenment, which absolutely contradicts the core beliefs of Islam, not just "Islamic extremism." Logically implied by the idea of "the open society," so-called "multiculturalism" with its absolutization of diversity simultaneously negates the Enlightenment and Mill's concepts of "reason" and "civilization." This paradox sounds like an abstruse philosophical problem irrelevant to pragmatic political realities, but, if left unresolved, it robs Mr. Cameron's "muscular liberalism" of the logical consistency needed to refute multiculturalism. Multiculturalism then legitimizes the ingenious efforts of many, many Muslims to use the logic of liberalism to undermine liberalism. We are dealing, then, with an abstruse philosophical problem at the root of the concrete political dangers Mr. Cameron so eloquently discussed.
Thomas A. Metzger
The Hoover Institution
Stanford, Calif.
In 1991, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote a monograph "The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society." He was critical of the cult of ethnicity that was playing out in our politics, churches, volunteer organizations and schools. He cites Diane Ravitch's statement, "Once ethnic pride and self-esteem become the criterion for teaching history, certain things cannot be taught." In the forward Schlesinger wrote, "The national ideal had once been e pluribus unum. Are we now to belittle unum and glorify pluribus? Will the center hold? Or will the melting pot yield to the Tower of Babel?" He added, "The contemporary ideal is shifting from assimilation to ethnicity, from integration to separatism." Schlesinger's monograph is worth re-reading.
Frank A. Nicolai
Fort Washington, Md.
Individualism is the concept that is significantly lacking in Douglas Murray's article "Cameron's Multicultural Wake-Up Call" (op-ed, Feb. 9).
Multiculturalism is the collectivist belief that the ultimate political unit is the group, that all individuals must be classified in some group and treated according to the supposed mores of that group, regardless of any deadly consequences to the individual.
Individualism recognizes that each person is the fundamental political unit and has a right to his or her own life, liberty, property and happiness which no person or institution may violate by the initiation of force.
At root, tolerance of cultural differences is a consequence of individualism.
A full embrace of individualism is the antidote to Europe's impending plunge into the barbarism of Islamism or its own forms of deadly collectivism: nationalism, fascism and communism.
Marsha Familaro Enright
Chicago
An idealistic European Union leadership was responsible for the irreversible experiment at multiculturalism along with the inviting entitlements offered to immigrants, but the current wave of employers selectively denying job opportunity to those with Arabic names are contributory.
A significant number of the EU's population is Muslim, like it or not, and governments must deal with them by helping Muslims to integrate into their society with jobs.
Remember, hatred begets hatred.
Bob Dewberry
Dallas
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 