Western moral imperialism

This is rich.

Margaret Hodge, a British cabinet minister who claims to have disagreed with Tony Blair’s foreign policy since 1998, has accused him of following a policy of “moral imperialism”—i.e., “exporting British attitudes and ideas to other countries,” according to The Times (London), which also reports that she later denied having made this remark.

Whether or not she actually said this is, frankly, irrelevant. It’s what Blair has been challenging, in speech after speech, as stubborn and bizarre Western “opinion.” Implicit in Hodge’s controversial remark is her perspective—that the West’s values are alien and unwelcome in the rest of the world and that we’re bullying people and trying to shove these things down “their” throat.

I was going to write a high-toned, morally outraged post, with links to Tony Blair’s most recent speech in defense of Western values and Shelby Steele’s Essay “White Guilt and the Western Past.” Oops—I guess I just did.

Perhaps I can make amends by offering up an example of what I consider to be moral imperialism: MSNBC’s breathless Special on Scientology, featuring TomKat, the Camera-ready Castle at Bracciano, fashions by Giorgio Armani, guest list by [insert name of Cruise's PRopaganda (TM) Team here: they have just earned themselves a gigantic bonus, 'cause The Glamorous Scientology Wedding of TomKat has totally hijacked the airwaves], with stupendously reverent questions by anchor Alex Witt and soothing responses from the Rev. John Carmichael (”Church of Scientology”)