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What does liberal mean? Surely it depends what's on the test - "culture" could mean anything. Take a liberal policy (no guns, no death penalty etc) - now test people who fail to adopt those cultural values; are you less liberal for testing people, or more liberal for testing them on liberal values? Seems like one word is being used to describe multivariate dimensions. In this case the opposite of not having these kinds of tests are racism/xenophobia, because you implied not having them would be a counterpoint to such a reputation. TBH, I think people cling too much to ideals and maxims to avoid the complexity of reality, then something happens, reality catches up, the maxim weakens, and the pendulum swings the other way. It's easily possible to be too (or naively) liberal, there are many examples of this e.g the existence of an Italian mafia dismissed as anti-migrant xenophobia - until the FBI proved they existed; anyone who dismisses such issues as "price worth paying (for liberty)" has no plan, and quickly find many of their countrymen disagree. The truth is, culture needs to adapt to environment, and if society doesn't do that by conscious design, it'll happen anyway through social economics. The truth is, multiculturalism is a massive generalisation over "cultures" that suggests we might all get along, if X, and without losing individual group cultural identity - truth is, not all cultures are alike, not all values are beneficial, and even the multiculturalism has implicit maxims that make it a kind of culture in itself; How can you tolerate the intolerant? How can you promote freedom, and avoid Eurocentrism, if freedom is a Eurocentric value (or at least, the source of you definition of "freedom"). |