Progressive World Review

In Bush’s speech welcoming the Pope’s arrival he made the following statement,

We need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth.

What exactly is a “dictatorship of relativism?”  Sounds more like an oxymoron than a coherent statement.  Relativism is about making judgments in the context of the situation. Relativism is an all inclusive philosophy that looks at the whole picture before making judgments, what could be more democratic than that?  Certainly not Bush’s philosophy of authoritarian absolutism.  Moral absolutism may have a comforting appeal to it, the notion that there are absolute standards by which to follow but the problem is; who’s standards?

With absolutism, whoever happens to be in charge is the one determining the rules and while there are some rules that are essentially universal, like laws against murder and robbery, not all the rules have the same consensus.  In fact, moral absolutism has always been about rationalizing morally deviant behavior like slavery and the subjugation of women.  The powers to be, including the church and the government, simply declare Africans to be sub-human and therefore enslaving men, women and children becomes morally acceptable.  Women are decided to be the “weaker” sex so denying them basic constitutional rights is also acceptable.

The moral absolutists love to paint relativists as being for “anything goes,” claiming that without absolute rules to guide us then it’s possible justify anything you want.  But in fact, it’s the other way around.  When one believes that their morals are absolute, divinely inspired as is often the case, then that permits an “ends justifying the means” attitude that leads people to kill abortionists to end killing or to start wars for, well, any reason that’s convenient.

What is so strikingly hypocritical about Bush’s words is, right or wrong, it’s the absolutists that are dictatorial.  While the relativists try to understand the nature of the problem in order to find the answer, it’s the absolutists who look for the answers from god, or who they believe speaks for god, or the president, or whomever they deem as their leader.  Which one sounds more like a dictatorship?

–Paul Wilden

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