The attempt to split the difference – condemning individual acts while refusing to judge the cultures that produce them – is intellectual cowardice. It lets you feel moral while abandoning the people who need moral clarity most.

The progressive class abandons the vulnerable, emboldens theocrats, and prevents honest discussions about integration and social cohesion. It’s how we end up with the absurd contortions around multiculturalism. It’s how we end up with grooming gangs.

Because ultimately this is really about snobbery, a display of moral and intellectual superiority that begins in the academy and percolates through our institutions until it becomes orthodoxy. The irony, of course, is that it claims the culture of progressivism is better than the liberalism it replaced.

Why do intelligent people maintain this obvious fiction? Because admitting that some cultures produce higher levels of human flourishing means defending their own, and this has become strangely anathema to many in the Western cultural establishment. Saying that our culture is better than illiberal ones is seen as unsophisticated, unrefined, low... See more

A culture that lets you leave your religion is better than one that kills you for it. A culture that allows women to choose their husbands is better than one that marries them off at twelve. A culture that protects gay people is better than one that hangs them from cranes. A culture that investigates its own failures – slavery, exploitation – is... See more

In any case, this simple moral logic is beside the point for relativists because they don’t actually believe their own doctrine. You wore a sombrero to a Halloween party? That’s cultural appropriation, says Jemima, draped in a keffiyeh on her way to a hate march. A white person in dreadlocks? The Oxford Union will treat it as a hate crime, yet when... See more

When the relativist says we must judge Western societies by strict moral principles but not extend the same to other cultures out of “respect for diversity”, they’re obviously invoking a double standard.

If all moral claims are relative to culture then so is that very claim. Why should a non-relativist accept a relativist’s injunction not to judge? They won’t, because it’s nonsense. As Roger Scruton noted:

“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”

Relativism, he... See more

If no external standard exists, then honour killings and religious violence must count as valid, a legitimate part of the culture. When the Taliban shot Malala, they were enforcing their cultural rules. If you condemn them, you’re appealing to some universal principle that transcends culture. Once you’ve sided with Malala against the Taliban,... See more