Just came across this apt Mills quote in an interesting editorial essay in the NYTimes by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a native Ghanian who now teaches at Princeton. (Strangely, I had the most vivid dream the other night that I was being shown around Ghana by a woman who acted as a guide and attempted to answer all of my questions.) The essay is called "The Case for Contamination", which raises interesting points about cultural protectionism. Here's the link but you may have to subscribe (free) to gain access http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/01cosmopolitan.html?th&emc=th

"If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development; and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can exist in the same physical, atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature, are hindrances to another.. . .Unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable."

John Stuart Mill