[Ecommerce] George Will op-ed in the Washington Post: Dimwitted Nod to 'Diversity'

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR200510110=
1320.html



*Dimwitted Nod to 'Diversity'*

By George F. Will
Wednesday, October 12, 2005; A17

Louise Oliver never did anything to injure George W. Bush, yet in 2003
he named her ambassador to UNESCO in Paris. For that presidential
cruelty we, although not she, should be thankful.

Not even the delights of Paris can compensate for the tiresome work of
tempering the excesses to which the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization is prone. Just now UNESCO is
reverting to the sort of mischief tinged with anti-Americanism that
caused President Ronald Reagan to withdraw the United States from the
organization in 1984. Fortunately, Oliver is alert to the defects of the
proposed Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions, negotiation of which culminates in the next few days.

It is not a good idea badly executed; it is a pernicious idea executed
about as you would expect it to be by people capable of conceiving it.
And capable of using words such as "interculturality," and of creating
an International Fund for Cultural Diversity to finance UNESCO whims.
The pernicious idea is that 191 governments can be trusted to sensibly
define and prudently cultivate the proper content of culture and
artistic expression.

Not even democratic governments should be trusted to do that. And as for
unsavory governments, why should they be /encouraged/ to engage in
cultural fine-tuning?

UNESCO, which Oliver says was supposed to be "the intellectual balance
to the Marshall Plan," was born of the sunny postwar faith that,
whatever their cultural differences, all people want essentially the
same things. Therefore wars must arise from misunderstandings. As the
American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote for the preamble of UNESCO's
constitution, "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds
of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed." So UNESCO
responded to Sept. 11 by sonorously declaring that "intercultural
dialogue is the best guarantee of peace."

All bromides are banal, but not all banalities are harmless. The
convention on diversity is an attempt to legitimize cultural
protectionism, and to cloak it in Orwellian rhetoric praising what the
convention actually imperils -- the autonomy of culture left free to
flower and evolve without the supervision of governments.

In the convention's windy preamble -- the entire document is clotted
with the D words, "diversity" and "dialogue" -- the ninth, 10th and 18th
paragraphs suggest the document's surreptitious point. The 18th says
that "cultural activities, goods and services have both an economic and
a cultural nature" so they must not be treated "as solely having
commercial value." The 10th emphasizes "the importance of culture for
social cohesion." The ninth recognizes "the need to take measures to
protect the diversity of cultural expressions including its content."

Translation: Nations can "protect" their "cultural expressions"
/against/ diversity arising from cultural imports that can be
stigmatized as threats to social cohesion, and can use means that would
be forbidden were the movement of cultural goods and services covered by
the World Trade Organization's rules governing the movement of other
goods and services. Meaning: Nations such as France and Canada can
interfere with imports of U.S. films, television programming, music and
publications.

Oliver says that in the 1990s, as the liberalization of world trade
increased, so did some nations' interest in a "cultural exception" to
allow interference with the free flow of cultural goods and services.
Under President Jacques Chirac, France, whose vanity about the glory of
its culture is not matched by confidence in the power of that culture to
thrive unless protected, has been especially interested in removing
cultural goods and services from inclusion in the regime of free trade.

By elsewhere defining cultural goods and services as crucially unlike
goods and services that are "solely" economic, the convention implicitly
establishes that cultural protectionism is not inhibited by standard
free-trade agreements. And, worse, it leaves latitude for individual
nations to declare some goods -- wine, coffee, textiles -- as cultural
"expressions," hence eligible for protectionist measures.

Hollywood films earn 65 percent of the French box office -- and 90
percent in the rest of Europe. Canada has fretted about Canadians
reading U.S. magazines that absorb Canadian advertising dollars. China
and many African and Latin American countries think as France does. But
Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela are exporters of soap operas.

Oliver says nations should have the right to "protect" culture if to
protect means to nurture it, but not if to protect means to shield it
behind barriers to competition from cultural imports. UNESCO's cultural
protectionists think she does not play well with others -- proof that
Bush picked the right ambassador.

/georgewill@washpost.com <mailto:georgewill@washpost.com>/

=A9 2005 The Washington Post Company