Mar 29 2011

Moral and cultural relativism

Category: societyharmonicminer @ 2:13 pm

From ZOMBLOG, writing in Human Rights Imperialism: leftist satire or moral collapse?, an interesting essay on the internal contradictions of left progressivism (a redundant phrase) and the modern mania for “diversity” and “multiculturalism.”

I also know too much about history and anthropology to continue the bankrupt charade that all cultures are equal in value and equally worthy of respect and admiration. And this is where the Kinzers of the world and I have parted ways, I suppose. The accumulated Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman/Renaissance-Enlightenment/you-name-it wisdom that Western culture has integrated over the millennia is without any question the best bet that the human race has going.

The essay linked above is long, but worth reading.  And, given that the writer is evidently not particularly sympathetic with Christianity, the conclusion quoted above is all the more remarkable.

There is a fundamental question underlying all this, that the essay doesn’t quite address, though it hints at it.  Is there such a thing as “natural law“, or not?  Is there such a thing as “human nature”?  “Human rights”?  “Right and wrong”?  If the answer to these questions is basically no, if everything is instead culturally bound and defined, then we have no basis for any project of any kind that is about changing any aspect of culture, our own or others, other than that we want it to be a certain way.   On the other hand, if there is natural law, human nature, and some irreducible minimum of human rights, if right and wrong actually exist, then on what grounds do we decide that “non-interference” in human suffering is better than trying to do something about it?

The left is basically schizoid about this.  On the one hand, the left thinks everyone should have universally funded healthcare and access to abortion and same sex marriage.  On the other hand, the left thinks that the US and the west should not impose its values on other nations/cultures that deny these things, and which in fact actively persecute large sectors of their own populations, even unto death. 

No wonder they want universal healthcare.  Psychotherapy is expensive.


Mar 29 2011

The most insulting comparison

Category: societyharmonicminer @ 9:24 am

In Five myths about why the South seceded, from the Washington Post, we learn that non-slave owning supporters of the institution of slavery in the pre-Civil War south were like currently poor supporters of the George W. Bush tax cuts.

In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy now.

Can these people be serious?  Low income people who support the tax cuts of the Bush administration aren’t mostly expecting to be rich some day.  They’re hoping to get or keep a job this year, and they understand that when the government takes money from the wealthy, the wealthy will employ fewer people.  And the poor may have figured out that the government does not create jobs, despite the misleading rhetoric of the Left.

In any case, it’s risible to conflate the moral status of being allowed to keep more of the money you’ve earned through work or investment with the moral status of keeping slaves or supporting slavery.

Here’s a better comparison.  Some people who have not had an abortion (or been involved with someone who had one), and don’t plan to get one anytime soon, nevertheless support abortion-on-demand.  Why?  For many, they want to keep the door open that someday, just maybe, they might want to get one, or push a woman they’re involved with to get one.

Like the poor southern subsistence farmer who doesn’t really expect to be able to buy a slave, but might want to sometime, and so supports slavery, these “pro-choice” supporters don’t want to arrange their lives and behavior to obviate the “need” for abortion to be available to them.

The moral status of abortion and slave-holding are far more comparable than the silly comparison quoted above, as is the reality of the “maybe someday” thinking that enabled both.