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No, no, no... I'm not saying that! :) That's how you're interpreting it. You're almost there. I understand that you, yourself, do not think that raising IQ is rational and sensible -- that if we just give Nigeria a few billion dollars more in aid, it's going to look like Westport, Connecticut. The joke is that when you condemned something as Western, the thing you condemned was actually a pretty good idea, so calling it Western really sounded like Western was a nice thing. Maybe a different example will make it clear. If two American political partisans are arguing, and you hear: "Raising taxes on the rich is so typical of liberals," and then "But when Clinton did it, our economy performed incredibly well. So you must mean that liberals are typically pretty damn awesome!" You can follow the joke, right? That is the joke I'm making. Indeed, that very behavior is "Western" in style because you are assuming that what you think is good is good for everyone else too. I notice it's been pretty good for the rest of the world, actually. Lots of countries have adopted market systems and the rule of law to some extent, and they've really benefitted from it (not to mention Western technological advances -- the West, of course, has done plenty of the same in the other direction). And when we adopt communitarian values, or try to support collectivist compromise over individualism, it tends to lead to stagnation at best and disaster on average. |