[T]he West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," [Geert Wilders] says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."
Wilders goes on to explain that cultures that sanction the execution of homosexuals, the beheading of women, the genital mutilation of girls, or treating women as nothing more than chattel, are in no way equal to or superior to Western culture. Many of these same cultures described by Wilders have no such thing as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of (or from) religion. Some of them also sanction genocide, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, 'honor' killings, infanticide, and a host of other customs that we in the west find heinous and barbaric. The list could go on and on.
These are not the hallmarks of cultures that are equal to Western culture. Many of them produce nothing but misery. Instead, they are cultures that either need to change or to wither away and disappear into history as have so many others well deserving of it.
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