President Bush and Moral Relativism

On April 16, 2008, President Bush said: "In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this 'dictatorship of relativism,' and embrace a culture of justice and truth." He was welcoming His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the White House, and he did so with appropriate grace and sincerity. It was the president's words about relativism that were off base. These were words that reflected a point of view held by at least a few who describe themselves as conservative. The problem with the President's statement is that almost no one believes in the relativism of which he speaks. I challenge anyone to come up with the name of an ethicist holding a position at a reputable university who has written that people should not or cannot make judgments about simple right and wrong. The problem with those who believe that there is a "dictatorship of relativism" is that they have a low level of reading comprehension and do not understand what mainstream ethicists are writing. Not understanding what these ethicists have written, people with opinions similar to the President's distort it. To repeat: we all must make judgments about simple right and wrong. We can all aspire to establish in our own minds a point of view as to what is a superior approximation of reality. And having done so we can try to understand the point of view of someone else without crediting him with a grasp of reality that is necessarily equal to or superior to our own.

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