On Being Relatively Moderate

My friend PSoTD reported today on the latest moronicism of Rush Limbaugh, who is annoyed by Voinovich and Chafee about the Bolton nomination unraveling. It seems the Great Mouth said:

Moderates do not have principles. They stick their finger in the air and go whichever way the wind is blowing. Moderates have principles? It is an oxymoron.

Yeah, that'll help the nation see sense, Rush.

Actually, the Mouth is simply parroting other figures from the authoritarian Right or from authoritarian religious groups who have incessantly attacked moral relativism using the same words. To these people, it is important that there be a single, one and only true, TRUTH - because they claim to have it, either as a result of speaking to God or as a result of their superior policies.

The trouble is, they have all missed the boat simply by living in the modern world. As one commenter on the BBC article linked above said:

Society changes, it has to to survive. This, by definition, means that all societies that want to prosper over long periods of time are 'relative'. If you lived in an 'absolute' world, we would still believe slavery was fine, that monarchs were divine beings and we should never leave our place.

Q.E.D.

If TRUTH were an absolute, then we would never advance as we discover knew philosophies, new ways of thinking. We would still hold slavery as acceptable, heresy as a burning offence, tortured confessions as admissable, the establishment of the Christian Church as automatic, the right of Kings as divinely mandated. The founders of America, all informed by their knowledge of the Enlightenment, realised that a practical relativism is the most sensible course for a democratic and free government "of the people, by the people".

That's why they wanted a seperation between State and religion, never imagining that some would manage to make political beliefs into their religion. That used to be the job of communists - now it's the job of Bushite Republicans. I blame Ayn Rand.