The second most poisonous myth about relativism (I’m coming to the most poisonous shortly) is that liberalism = relativism.<\/p>\n
Among the various charges laid against \u201cliberals\u201d, relativism is one of the most popular. Let\u2019s take a look at a couple of examples.<\/p>\n
In his inspiringly-titled Let Freedom Ring<\/span>, Sean Hannity, political pundit at Fox News, suggests that one reason U.S. \u201cliberals\u201d are hostile to the teaching of the Declaration of Independence in public schools is that<\/p>\n \u2026. liberals absolutely abhor and militantly reject the Founders\u2019 belief in absolute truth. America\u2019s Founders believed deeply in certain fundamental truths about life, liberty, and the nature of man. In fact, they believed \u2013 they weren\u2019t just inserting lofty-sounding but meaningless platitudes in the document \u2013 that such truths were \u201cself-evident.\u201d By sharp contrast, the Left embraces moral relativism with an arrogant tenacity.<\/span><\/p>\n There you are: \u201cliberals\u201d \u2013 whom, incidentally, Hannity seems to equate with \u201cthe Left\u201d \u2013 embrace moral relativism.<\/p>\n David Limbaugh author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity<\/span>, also thinks \u201cliberals\u201d are, or are mostly, relativists. Limbaugh responded in an interview to a comment about \u201cliberalism\u201d by saying that while \u201cliberals\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2026subscribe to moral relativism and no absolute truth, they betray their standards when it comes to judging Christians. They apply an absolute standard when it comes to Christians and they condemn us for our beliefs, so they’re completely hypocritical on that\u2026. The Judeo-Christian ethic is one that is undergirded by absolute truth. Liberals, by and large, don’t subscribe to any such value system. <\/span><\/p>\n Limbaugh here accuses \u201cliberals\u201d of both relativism and hypocrisy: they proclaim relativism and non-judgementalism, yet here they are making moral judgements about Christian attitudes towards, say, homosexuality or the place of prayer in schools. Outrageous. <\/p>\n But are \u201cliberals\u201d, by and large, relativists?<\/p>\n Many people who describe themselves as \u201cliberal\u201d reject relativism. Here in the U.K., many people call themselves \u201cliberal\u201d. Among those I know, I\u2019m not aware of any who would consider themselves relativists. But maybe things are different in the U.S. Maybe, over the pond, \u201cliberals\u201d do tend to sign up to the kind of hypocritical, non-judgementalist relativism of which they are repeatedly accused. But maybe not. Few of those who claim \u201cLiberals are relativists\u201d appear to have done much research into the moral beliefs of those they describe as \u201cliberal\u201d. Usually their evidence amounts to little more than a few anecdotes. Undoubtedly, some \u201cliberals\u201d do embrace moral relativism. Perhaps many do. But the suggestion that all, or most, of them are relativists seems poorly founded. Are most \u201cliberals\u201d relativists? I have no idea. But then neither, I suspect, do those making the accusation.<\/p>\n And yet the factoid that \u201cliberals are relativists\u201d has become heavily woven into the psyche of conservative America. Type \u201cliberal\u201d and \u201crelativist\u201d into Google and see what you get. I did, and quickly come up with a great deal of this sort of thing:<\/p>\n The modern liberal is a self-proclaimed relativist, who does not believe in unbiased truth. Naturally, such a person does not believe in fairness or honesty either, both being relative. I do not say this is true of 100% of liberals, but it is true of most of them. <\/span> (source here<\/a>)<\/p>\n On what evidence is this accusation made? None at all. In the U.S, the accusation \u201cRelativist!\u201d appears to have supplanted even \u201cCommunist!\u201d in terms of its popularity, vitriol and baselessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The second most poisonous myth about relativism (I’m coming to the most poisonous shortly) is that liberalism = relativism. Among the various charges laid against \u201cliberals\u201d, relativism is one of the most popular. Let\u2019s take a look at a couple of examples. In his inspiringly-titled Let Freedom Ring, Sean Hannity, political pundit at Fox News, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moral-relativism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}