politicophile

I read Multicultural Citizenship by Will Kymlicka the other day and thought I'd probe the TFP waters for opinions about Kymlicka's project.

The question is this: what, if anything, should liberal cultures do to encourage illiberal cultures to change their ways?

The question puts the value of cultural autonomy at odds with the value of individual autonomy, which makes it very difficult to answer the question. Should liberal cultures allow, say, Saudi Arabia to visciously oppress its female citizens? Don't those women have the same right as any other human beings to basic freedoms?

Conversely, are we really in a position to take the moral highground? Do we have a right to say that Saudi Arabia's practice is wrong and ours is right? Granted, we don't like the way they live their lives, but how does that give us the right to interfere with their long-standing way of life?

After considering the normative implications of the question, one can try to explain how the policy should look in practice. We can coerce illiberal regimes to change in many ways: negociation, condemnation, embargos, economic incentives, regime change, invasion, occupation, etc.

So,
1. Is it right for liberal cultures to disapprove of the illiberal practices of other cultures, or should we keep in mind that all cultures are relative and one is not better than another?
2. What are appropriate real-world steps to liberalize these illiberal cultures, assuming that there are appropriate steps?

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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty