The Dartmouth Observer |
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Commentary on politics, history, culture, and literature by two Dartmouth graduates and their buddies
WHO WE ARE Chien Wen Kung graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 and majored in History and English. He is currently a civil servant in Singapore. Someday, he hopes to pursue a PhD in History. John Stevenson graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a BA in Government and War and Peace Studies. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He hopes to pursue a career in teaching and research. Kwame A. Holmes did not graduate from Dartmouth. However, after graduating from Florida A+M University in 2003, he began a doctorate in history at the University of Illinois--Urbana Champaign. Having moved to Chicago to write a dissertation on Black-Gay-Urban life in Washington D.C., he attached himself to the leg of John Stevenson and is thrilled to sporadically blog on the Dartmouth Observer. Feel free to email him comments, criticisms, spelling/grammar suggestions. BLOGS/WEBSITES WE READ The American Scene Arts & Letters Daily Agenda Gap Stephen Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker and Posner Belgravia Dispatch Black Prof The Corner Demosthenes Daniel Drezner Five Rupees Free Dartmouth Galley Slaves Instapundit Mickey Kaus The Little Green Blog Left2Right Joe Malchow Josh Marshall OxBlog Bradford Plumer Political Theory Daily Info Andrew Samwick Right Reason Andrew Seal Andrew Sullivan Supreme Court Blog Tapped Tech Central Station UChicago Law Faculty Blog Volokh Conspiracy Washington Monthly Winds of Change Matthew Yglesias ARCHIVES BOOKS WE'RE READING CW's Books John's Books STUFF Site Feed    |
Sunday, February 22, 2004
"Asian" values, again What the heck are "Asian values"? Those who frequently invoke the term to justify censorship, oppression, and other very silly policies seem to have no idea just how heterogeneous and plural Asian traditions are. Worse still, proponents of Asian values imply every time they use the phrase that Western values are, by contrast, immoral and corrupting. Have these people actually read and synthesized the texts and thinkers -- Confucius, the Buddha, Muhammad, the Vedas, and so on -- that constitute Asian intellectual history (or histories)? Have they read seriously in the Western classics, or are they deriving their views of the West from Britney, Janet, and other specimens of American pop culture? Are they aware that the cultural relativism that underlies their statement is just one of many Western ideas/values that they've appropriated but conveniently forgotten? Judging by the consistent stream of ill-informed appeals to authority that flow from lawmakers in that region of the world, I guess not. |