Sacrificing Children To Multiculturalism

There's a barbaric ritual that's widely practiced in parts of Africa and the Middle East. This ritual is performed on female minors as young as infants and it's meant to "protect" their sexual purity by keeping them virginal until marriage. This ritual is often performed without anesthesia and with unsterilized instruments or even pieces of glass. This causes immense pain and trauma to the youngsters who are forced to endure this torture and exposes them to death from infection and/or excessive bleeding. What is this horror? It's female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision. And this uncivilized--yes, uncivilized--practice has reared its ugly head in the West.

Female genital mutilation was brought to the West by immigrants from FGM-practicing cultures. Most Western nations have been both socially and legally hostile to the practice, but just this month a prestigious organization in America has given a nod to a "mild" form of the ritual. In a reversal of its 1998 policy, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has suggested that American law allow doctors to perform a "nick" on girls from immigrant families. The AAP has compared the severity of the proposed "nick" to that of ear piercing. What's the reason for the AAP's stunning reversal? Ostensibly, it's protection. Allowing this "gentler" form of FGM, the AAP argued, could prevent some girls from being sent to Third World countries for full circumcision, thereby preventing needless suffering and even saving lives. Ah, saving lives. Sounds so humane; too bad it's a total farce.

The real reason the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed this genital "nick" was to show its cultural sensitivity. Apparently, the organization thought its previous zero tolerance policy toward FMG was too intolerant. So, the AAP chose to advocate this "modified" form of female circumcision to show its open mindedness and to appease certain immigrant communities. Let's make sure we understand what's happened here.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization dedicated to the health of children has, in the name of a dubious sociopolitical dogma, chosen to give legitimacy to a medically unnecessary and barbaric practice performed almost exclusively on children. In short, the AAP has sacrificed children to multiculturalism. To call this an outrage would be an understatement.

Female circumcision is not only barbaric and unnecessary, it's also not a part of Western civilization. The West does not mutilate its daughters. And within the borders of our own countries we, the Western people, have not only the right but the duty to preserve, protect, and promote our own culture with all its morals, values and traditions. Cutting out our daughters' genitals is not a Western value, and we don't need to apologize for that. In fact, we need to be fiercely unapologetic about practicing our own culture in our own lands and expecting immigrants to do the same.

We, the Hesperian people, must make it clear that entrance into our lands is not an unconditional right. Rather, it is contigent upon the willingness of the foreigner to assimilate. Once they enter any one of our countries foreigners should understand, in no uncertain terms, that they are now living under Western culture and their native culture no longer applies. If foreigners don't want to accept this then they should leave or, better yet, not come to the West in the first place. The one thing they definitely have no right to do is demand that we change who we are in order to accommodate them. And the one thing no true Westerner should do is make such a change voluntarily. That's what the AAP has done.

Cultural sensitivity may have some benefits (although none come to mind), but when it extends to legitimizing barbarism it's gone horribly too far. The American Academy of Pediatrics should scrap multiculturalism and return to its job of promoting the medical well-being of children. The AAP should remember the cornerstone of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. This precept of Western medicine will not only protect Western children but Third World children as well. Did you get that? Western cultural values are beneficial even to people not of the West.

Too bad the American Academy of Pediatrics is blind to the goodness of its own heritage.