I’ve always been repulsed by the moral relativism that seems to plague the liberal left in North America. This is one of the reasons why I found it so cathartic when I was first introduced to the writings of Sam Harris, whom I view as the father of the New Atheist movement. In his groundbreaking treatise The End of Faith, Harris constructs a progressive, logical framework with which to criticize the political correctness that prevented so many liberals from speaking forthrightly about some of the archaic practices that are still viewed as normal in the Middle East. Like Sam Harris, I don’t believe it’s an imposition of Western cultural mores to say unequivocally that it is wrong to murder ones daughter or sister for engaging in sex out of wedlock. Even if that murder is required to restore the family honor. Nor am I being an orientalist when I say that the millennia-old religious texts that prescribe these punishments are a huge part of the problem. (And that goes for all three Abrahamic faiths by the way.)
Conservatives, on the other hand, have no compunctions about denouncing what they see as the backward morality of the Middle East and other ostensibly less civilized corners of the developing world. For them, moral relativism takes on another form.
When children in the West are taught about people like the American Founding Fathers, the fact that they were, for the most part, prolific enslavers, is typically glossed over. In fact, until very recently, this part of history wasn’t taught at all. Today we learn that these were great men, whose treatment of blacks must be analyzed and appraised through the social lens of the time in which they lived. And this view tends to be shared by people from across the political spectrum. For example, I once saw the progressive comedian, Bill Maher, scoff in disgust at the suggestion that the conduct of these men regarding slavery somehow diminishes their legacy.
Unfortunately, many blacks have bought into the scam as well. Two days ago I read an article on the history of the surname Washington among African-Americans, who, as I learned, account for 90% of all Washingtons in America. The article attributes this fact to the hypothesis that, following emancipation, large numbers of freed slaves took on the surname Washington since his was the most prominent American figure at the time, and they wanted to assert their newly elevated status within the American social landscape. It is an informative and lucid article by an insightful and competent author, except for one very annoying detail. He seemed to make every effort to rationalize, minimize, and sympathize with George Washington’s actions as slave owner. At one point, he even refers to the American patriarch, as the “greatest white Washington.”
The author also quotes one expert who euphemistically refers to George Washington as an “imperfect hero”!?!?! Now… Pardon my indignation, but I find this revisionism to be repulsive. If you wish to call the man a hero, then fine. I won’t dispute that. There is no question he was a brilliant political visionary and an eminent soldier who fought valiantly during the Revolutionary War. But to insinuate that the holding of 124 human beings in bondage (as Washington did at his peak) can be adequately described as an “imperfection”, is something to which I take great offense.
Yet it is clear why such attitudes go unquestioned. Even the article’s black author opines that “Washington was not a harsh slaveowner by the standards of the time”. And therein lies the problem. Readers are invited to judge Washington, not by today’s standards (which we know to be far superior to those from two centuries ago), but by the outdated and wrongheaded standards of Washington’s time.
I don’t question the value of this approach as a pedagogical exercise, but at its core, this viewpoint is misguided.
If one cares to look at Washington’s own pronouncements on the topic of slavery, it is clear that even by his own standards, Washington was morally bankrupt. Thus the apologists, who so readily invoke moral relativism, find themselves in the awkward position of having to defend the immorality of a man who wrote extensively and eloquently (as he was uniquely capable of doing) about the evil of the institution in which he was actively partaking.
Washington, like Jefferson, knew that what he was doing was wrong. But his appetite for free labour was like a magnet circling his moral compass. In fact, many thinkers from Washington’s time knew that slavery was wrong. This is why the United States and other slave societies concocted the pseudoscientific notion that Blacks were not human. It was a campaign designed to help whites justify - to themselves and others - that which they knew in their hearts to be wrong. For even the Aztecs understood that it was wrong to condemn a child to a lifetime of slavery on the basis of their lineage, which is why the children of slaves in Aztec society were born free. But the race-based, intergenerational slavery that defined the latter half of the second millennium (AD) required sophisticated social engineering to overcome the natural human aversion to such immorality. And the engineers knew exactly what they were doing.
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In essence, moral relativism is a form of cowardice. Whether it be fear of taking a strong moral stand that may be politically incorrect (in the case of Eastern misogyny), or the fear of confronting the ugly history of the leaders we’ve all been taught to venerate as heroes (in the case of Western racism). In both cases, the coward defends the guilty by claiming their actions were viewed as normal in their time and place, therefore it’s inappropriate to project our privileged outlook onto their reality.
I beg to differ.
