Cultural Relativism and Cultural War

All this talk of Cultural War on the blogsphere and elsewhere reminds me of the specific reasons I dislike Friedrich Nietzsche. He would have us believe that there are no universal truths, that great thinkers of the past are merely representatives of thought at their time and their place. Folks that adhere to this view are strict cultural relativist and believe that morality simply cannot be attached to the acts and beliefs of another while looking through the glasses of one’s own time and culture.

I do not particularly like Nietzsche and I am not a strict relativist but I do not completely disagree with him or the concept. I believe that ultimate and universal truths do exist; I believe good and evil exist. However, these truths are broad and general and applied in different flavors throughout history and across cultures.

There are a few major problems with the notion of a cultural war of good versus evil. First there is the very blatant omission of the failings and evils of one’s own culture. Second there is the carte blanche application of one’s own coloring of universal truths onto the interpretation of another culture.

It is simple, some things are just wrong and all men ought to know it. Other things are less absolute and subject to interpretation. The current dialogue in the US concerning this supposed cultural war with the East also missed another key point; Culture in the US is not homogeneous, no matter what melting pot propaganda the government schools try to preach.

John Dolan wrote piece on the entire issue of cultural relativism as it applies to the current world situation. He gets it right in several places; he also gets it wrong in numerous points (his commenters do a fair job of correcting the stray logic).

Speaking of Pilgrims without God (I wrote in the past of the legacy of the New England Unitarians and their transformation from theological tyrants into capitalist/socialist tyrants and that influence on American history and development) Dolon says:

Indeed, the evangelical mullahs' position is actually more intellectually rigorous, if you grant its starting point of divine sanction. The godless Protestant progressives of places like Berkeley lack any such foundation; theirs is an ideology rooted in a few seedy cafes near the Fine Arts building. It's no wonder that Kansas prefers the evangelicals' simple, consistent bigotry to this sub-Unitarian muddle. If we actually apply a cultural-relativist perspective to the conflict between "liberal" academics and "conservative" Christian militarists in America, it's easy to see that we're simply watching a replay of the old quarrel between the two most aggressive groups in Anglophone America: the Scots-Irish Presbyterians who settled the South, and the New Englanders whose Protestantism was always veering off into semisecular intellectual quibbles. Both are missionary groups extremely popular with themselves and willing to bring the rest of the world to heel by military force. Neither has even a taint of cultural relativism. It's just that their blood rage is stimulated by slightly different triggers, the Scots-Irish by the very existence of heathens and the New Englanders by offenses against what they imagine to be a
universal moral code.

As repulsive as his statement above might be there is truth there. The neoconservatives whose ideological base rests firmly in the halls of academia and the “reformed” liberals of progressive conservatism not only need but must have the simple, fiery, militant support of the Scots-Irish, it is from this group that the subgroup of modern evangelicals springs (the core of GOP support). Of course not all of us are neoconservative dupes!

The very base of the problem with any argument that our way of life, our culture and our morality is superior to and therefore worth fighting for is that it ignores our own faults. The leadership of this crusade are ideological descendants of the very worst ideas America has produced. The foot soldiers are the most dedicated of sorts, always willing to fight at the drop of a hat for perceived wrongs. This is a dangerous concoction and a formula for disaster.

I say simply this and I will leave the subject alone for a while. We need new leadership if we are going to engage in a cultural war, leadership that will first examine what we are fighting for, if it is for the right to have a Wal-Mart on every corner and mega-corporations in charge of almost everything then this is not a just fight. This is not even what most ordinary folks that vote GOP want. Most are simple men with simple dreams and passionate desires for ordinary things. If we are to fight a cultural war it ought to begin at home and it ought to be waged against what people really want in their communities.