Relativist Fundamentalism, What's Next? (I)

Today's post is devoted to the challenge of analyzing Professor Paul Cliteur's article Falling Prey to Relativism. With it, he really puts the culture-clashers on notice. Inter alia, what I said about the spinal problem, still stands.

The point that he's making, is that the post-modern relativistic position makes Western societies an easy prey for the ideology of radical Islamism. Digest that for a second, if you will! Well, he is right and it is stating the obvious with feeling for under-statement. But one or two other reasons could be added in re of the dangers of the pseudo-philosophy of high fashion.

As the conclusion must be that relativism (and all its derivatives) is another fruit of the Enlightenment, it again goes to show that the revolution eats its own children. Post-modernity has now turned against Liberalism - as it must, for every truth is one too many for relativism. As Cliteur points out:

"For multiculturalists, European civilization has been fundamentally on the wrong track since the Enlightenment. The Holocaust, Nazism, communism, slavery (Ed. !) - these are seen not as deviations from the generally benign development of Western culture but as inevitable products [sic] of the European mind, which is inherently oppressive."

We are reminded of young Dev's representative of the Union for the Suppression of the Metaphysical: "The inherent violence of the Catholic position is really no different from Islam's!"

As relativism inevitably must turn against Liberalism, so it must turn against any other ideology and belief system, against universal values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and all the other things we hold dear, simply because these imply truths and objective values that it denies.

What an awful disappointment this must be for the subscribers of The Euston Manifesto, but they could have known! The Left may be fond of adopting relativist and multi-cultural notions, they are hence informed that to the post-moderns, they are just another fundamentalist ism with blood on its hands, deserving to be relativized out of existence. Relativism is nobody's friend or ally!

The attraction of cultural relativism to the Left is, that it provides a convenient "intellectual" basis for Bush-bashing, thereby taking it at last beyond the realm of the school-yard. Cliteur states that to multi-culturalists "it is preposterous and a manifestation of cultural arrogance [sic] ... to invade foreign countries to export democracy and other Western ideals; it is likewise ridiculous to expect that religious and ethnic minorities in Western societies should be expected to adopt these ideas and integrate into liberal democracy".

The conclusion is of course that relativism is incompatible with anything human beings can ever think up. Relativist proponent Stuart Sim, Professor Critical Theory in the Dept. of English Studies at the University of Sunderland (U.K.), goes just one step further. He makes a vain effort at sublimation, calling relativism, radical skepticism, which sounds a lot more scientific than *#@k Bush! That may convince some he's a relativist, but make no mistake, he's a fire breathing fundamentalist. To Professor Sim Anything That Is Not Relativist, is Fundamentalist.

To be continued.