[Ian]
Cortez, Cortez, what a killer !
[Arlo]
Si, amigo.The funny thing is that opening sentence to the Preamble of
the American Declaration of Independence is an homage to
multiculturalism, as Pirsig points out in LILA.
"And yet, although Jefferson called this doctrine of social equality
"self-evident," it is not at all self-evident. Scientific evidence
and the social evidence of history indicate the opposite is
self-evident. There is no "self-evidence" in European history that
all men are created equal. There's no nation in Europe that doesn't
trace its history to a time when it was "self-evident" that all men
are created unequal. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is sometimes given
credit for this doctrine, certainly didn't get it from the history of
Europe or Asia or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World
upon Europe and from contemplation of one particular kind of
individual who lived in the New World, the person he called the
"Noble Savage. The idea that "all men are created equal" is a gift to
the world from the American Indian. Europeans who settled here only
transmitted it as a doctrine that they sometimes followed and
sometimes did not." (LILA)
Viva Multiculturalism!
Now I am going to go squeeze a lime into my Dos Equis Amber and wait
for someone to tell me how my "individual liberty" is threatened or
the collapse of America is imminent as "our population becomes more
Hispanic", and for the time being at least have one or two more
slightly inappropriate thoughts about Salma Hayek.
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