Basic liberal concepts like pluralism, multiculturalism, and democracy are best seen as cultural displays rather than political commitments. They are essentially ritualistic. But liberal ‘universalism’ is not therefore just a species of ethnic chauvinism, it’s more complicated.

Liberalism is the product of a universal transformative process. It developed in reaction to another universal transformative process: what we call the ‘scientific revolution’. Liberalism subordinates the product of the ‘scientific revolution’ to a mentalistic subjectivism.

When the liberal world attempts to convert another country to liberalism, it doesn’t simply force them to adopt liberal culture, but rather recapitulates the process that originally created liberal culture. It uses native traditions to create a liberal version of the culture.

Thus, in the Islamic world, liberals scour Islamic texts for traces of liberalism. In the Buddhist world, they selectively read and reinterpret the Buddhist tradition. In China, they try to read liberal ideas into Confucianism. In India, they search for a liberal Hinduism. Etc.

Thus, liberal colonialism, while violent and aggressive, is not merely a case of forcing a culture on another country. It is more like the facehuggers in the Alien franchise; it uses the host culture to gestate a new version of liberalism, which will violently burst out of it.