Relativism for thee but not for me

When Christians try to evangelize someone, offer an opinion on public policy, or engage in an act of persuasion, the cultural left tries to silence them by invoking the doctrine of relativism. What we think of as true is really only a personal or a cultural construction, so the argument goes. This is true of religion, and it is certainly true for morality, which varies according to different people’s choices and values. To impose one ideology on everyone is an act of power and a violation of people’s rights and freedom. We must instead practice tolerance by accepting people’s different beliefs and values.

These now-commonplace notions are exploded in a new book, The Truth About Tolerance by Brad Stetson and Joseph Conti (InterVarsity Press, 2005, paperback). In a scholarly but lucid analysis that traces the virtue of tolerance all the way back to the Bible, the authors show that tolerance requires disagreement. Otherwise, there is nothing to tolerate. And toleration depends on objective truth.

While exposing the intolerance that passes for the virtue today, the authors make an illuminating point: “Relativism is bankrupt as a moral philosophy, and no one is actually a real relativist, including the contemporary secular liberal. Secularists today make a whole host of moral judgments, and they do so unhesitatingly,” they write. “The relativism of the secular liberalism ... is only relativist when it is resisting traditional Judeo-Christian morality.”

Actually, say Mr. Stetson and Mr. Conti, secularists engage in selective relativism. They invoke relativism when arguing against Christians and other cultural conservatives. But they treat their own beliefs and moral principles as objective, absolute, and universal truths.

More here

Posted by jonjayray on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 at 10:09 AM in Liberalism & the Left
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Comments:

Posted by James Bowery on May 17, 2005, 01:28 PM | #

This gets into what I’ve been thinking of christening (not that I’m a christian) calling ‘the principle of least supremacy’.

Multicultural supremacists continually point out one can, for example, be a Christian supremacist—believing in the supreme authority of Christianity which should be universally recognized by all humanity and, if necessary, use state powers to to spread it to all of humanity. The belief that people should live in multicultural societies is a belief like Christianity. It can be turned into a supremacist belief by the simple expedient of proclaiming it to be universally enforceable due to its moral superiority.

The principle of least supremacy places freedom of association above any other principle. This is, of course, a supremacist principle, like all others that aren’t doomed to be dominated by other supremacist principles.

The difference is that it is the princple of least supremacy.

The fact that state powers are used to enforce racial immigration (even racial integration), is a violation of the principle of least supremacy and all those who do not actively support racial separatism are, in the present context of state opposition to racial and ethnic self-determination, supremacist tyrants.

Posted by Guessedworker on May 17, 2005, 01:57 PM | #

I agree, James. The complacent, the ignorant, the weak, the suggestible, the fearful ... all who do not clearly and actively oppose the Multi-Cult stand with it in the war against Western Man.

There is no middle way, no option for change from the political right. The speed of the declension may vary from time to time. But the final outcome is not negotiable in a liberal zeitgeist.

Posted by John S Bolton on May 17, 2005, 09:00 PM | #

Relativism of truth or of the good is also an obvious contradiction in terms. If such relativism is an absolute universal, it is invalid as a relativism.

Posted by jonjayray on May 17, 2005, 10:12 PM | #

Dave

I think you meant “decline” rather than “declension”. Sorry to be an awful old pedant. Pleased that you know some Latin grammar anyway

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