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At one level I understand what you area saying but at another level I think your statement undermines what it means to relinquish one set of ideas in favor of another.

It is perhaps a hindrance that we don't have an ethnic-neutral term for the set of ideas associated with "western values" but "western" is descriptive of the origin not the applicability of the ideas.

In order to genuinally adopt and espouse "western values" you have to at some level abandon "non-western values". This of course has as a pre-requisite that you've discarded the notion of multiculturalism -- at least the version of multiculturalism that insists that avoiding value judgements between cultures as a virtue unto itself.



What makes it tough is that many more cultures have a concept of "fundamental human rights" than ones that agree with western countries on which specific rights are fundamental.


You have to add in a lot of other ideas though to come close to the basket of ideas associated with "western values". For example: limited government, representative government, scientific inquiry, equality of women, due process, free markets, private property, contract law, and so on.




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