Monday, December 18, 2006

Dissecting relativism: After crisis point (I)

My heroin Ayaan Hirsi Ali has surfaced at the American Enterprise Institute. She debuted with an article on the Muslim ignorance of the holocaust for the International Herald Tribune. Haven't had the time to read it yet, so I am reserving judgment. Afraid I'm a bit biased, though, so the verdict will surely be that it's very laudable indeed. Ayaan, I am so proud of you!

Speaking of which, on CNN I heard in passing the other day somebody say something original and worthwhile on the Iraq war situation for a change. Danielle Pletka is Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and apparently a girl with her head screwed on the right way (they seem to collect them at AEI). I've looked in vain for articles of her hand on the subject. Much a pity, but perhaps she'll publish at a later date. Her opinions are certainly worthwhile.

Time to go on with an instalment of Dissecting relativism:

Dissecting relativism: After Crisis Point (I)
In this setting, where the environment provokes litte more beyond the realm of pain or pleasure (there are lab rats with a deeper spiritual life), where life gravitates around amassing material wealth and where on a bread-and-butter level life is dominated by trivialities passing for events of world shattering importance, where parental intellectual guidance is left to teachers and education is debilized (downgraded to moron level) to unsustainable depths, there are hoards of relativists who radiate their message of equality of all and sundry relentlessly, therein aided by philosophical demolishers who finish the job of declaring an end to our civilization as we know it.

The principle of equality as a exclusively legal term has long been forgotten and is applied to well, basically everything. The message instead being that everybody is right in their own way and objective truth doesn't exist. Furthermore it is maintained that pluralism is good and healthy and not divisive and alienating, that multi-culturalism is a given fact so why fight it, and that tolerance is the remedy for keeping the peace in this cultural hotchpotch. Those that delude themselves with the thought they are truer than others, are either rather intolerantly put away as fundamentalists* or thrown together in a box marked "right-wing riffraff".

In the meantime, under influence of relativism, we adopt our enemies' terms ("North Korea is now a proud nuclear power" instead of "North Korea is under the mistaken impression that blackmail through nuclear weapons adds prestige to their image") and apologize and appease objectionable regimes of all plumage.
To be continued.

* Has anybody thought to find out what the definition is?

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