Relativism: Oppression's Ally

JAMES O'KEEFE

In examining cultural relativism, we must first ask ourselves whether or not certain cultural differences ought to be tolerated to such a point where we approve of cultural traditions that seem to us unjust or even ethically evil. Among these we find genital mutilation, the Hindu practice of suttee – burning women at the stake – and making women cover their faces like Cousin Itt from the Adams Family. The Multiculturalist connoisseurs and anthropological relativists would say yes, while the conservative intellectuals Allan Bloom, Robert Bork, William Bennet, or “neo-cons,” as they are called, would say no.

So is it morally justified for us to rescue Afghan women from their society? Absolutely.

Those who oppose the “neo-con” efforts of George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the gang include author Lila Abu-Lughad in her essay, “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” Lughad uses the justification that particular cultural traditions that “we” westerners denounce, like the practice of stoning a woman to death because she left her home without the company of a male relative, are ignorant because our disapproval itself contains hidden Western prejudices about the history of exploitation and racism that indirectly led to such savagery in the first place. Lughad, similar to most postmodernists, prefers an historical and political view of any region to a review of its religious or cultural aspects. Lughad describes how U.S. involvement is responsible for stonings and burnings due to our support of the Taliban during the last twenty-five years in our effort to fight the Soviets. If Lughad is arguing that brutality against women under Shari’a Law been caused by the Americans, then aren’t we obligated to fix this? Even if it is our actions and not religious extremism (that’s a big “if ”) that explains stonings and burnings, they certainly don’t justify such brutality. Lughad justifies not brutality but the wearing of cultural dress; this focuses on the wrong issue. It is not the burqas and
other forms of cultural dress we hope to save Muslim women from, it is their right not to be butchered, not to have their lives taken from them when they speak their minds in the home or in public. Living in the free world, Lughad takes those rights for granted. Saving women from oppressive tyrants does not constitute western imperialism; it is a confirmation of the fundamental rights of all human beings. Lughad’s argument ignores extreme forms of brutality in its attention to the burqa, and then focuses on the question of moral relativism. The notion that truth is a reflection of a certain cultural bias – the idea that what is right and what is wrong differs from culture to culture, from era to era, from person to person, et cetera – can be first understood in the context of David Hume’s distinction between facts and values. We know for a fact that the world is round, but whether or not the world is lovely is a different thing entirely, and arguably of little importance. The Comedian George Carlin made our egocentrism poignant to a modern audience with his hauntingly wise rebuttal of environmentalism: The planet Earth is fine, it doesn’t care what color or shape it's in; it is dependent rational animals like human beings, not a chunk of rock in the cosmos, that are emotive enough to make those determinations. “The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ‘cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic.”

But some emotions and values can and should be universal. There should be standards of judgment among people, ideas and events to prevent harmful perversion. Otherwise personal liberation will become on one hand the Sartre-inspired Marxist doctrine of everybody determining their own truths, and on the other the extreme libertarianism of Ayn Rand, where public virtue is ignored. Both bring about an inability to make universal judgments on anything, and we are forced to accept the extremist behavior of others. And since we are indifferent to extreme forms of tolerance, we become... bored. Worse, without a moral standard upon which to rely, we need to be given one from the cultural elites that begin to develop an excessive amount of dominance over our values. These elites may be professors at a University where the young-uns lack a common moral foundation, or worse, elites that serve selfish purposes, like the pigs George Orwell told us about on that farm of his, where society as a whole lacks a moral foundation.

Individualism has to be restrained in order to avoid undermining the traditional values of the community. To preserve these values, some universal truths are required to govern the community. This philosophy has been attributed to Pope Benedict XVI, whose philosophy echos Allan Bloom’s sentiments:

Truth is not determined from what is popular in a democracy, truth is discovered by leaving your cave and discovering what is eternal. Without God, you run the risk of tyrants making that determination. Without a compromise where individuals slightly subordinate themselves to their communities, communities will be governed by tyrants that replace God. The people should govern themselves and be given the right to do so from a divine authority.

When you deny objective values, you create what may be called "men without chests," as C.S. Lewis put it in his short book The Abolition of Man. Curious how we expect "virtue and enterprise" of these men when the organ that provides such services has already been removed.

James O'Keefe is a Rutgers College Senior majoring in philosophy.

NJO: Originally printed in the December 2005 issue of The Centurion.

I Have a Dream

Much has changed since the time of Edmund Burke. While prudence, honor, restraint, reverence, self-discipline, liberty and conviction will always be conservative, modern “conservative” declarations seem to directly contradict these classical virtues. There is no better time than now to explore how these themes have changed and how these virtues clash. This is a time when Peter Lawler believes the Republicans will become two parties split between anti-libertarians and libertarians. Former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy is the neo-conservative version of the Declaration of Independence; calling for the promotion of democracy for oppressed people’s throughout the world. Fiscally, our Republican allies are anything but conservative. As the Wall Street tycoon once said, “our trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions.”

But our universities are also at a crossroads, becoming what David French calls "islands of repression in a sea of liberty." Professors have seemed to have figured out answers to all of life’s great questions. The Academy is, without a doubt, the left’s last vast impenetrable fortress. It is an ideological monopoly on truth, which, as Victor Davis Hansen has said, “has adopted a therapeutic curriculum in pursuit of political objectives.” The pseudo-religious rhetoric of “diversity” has replaced the great rhetorical social questions of Plato and Aristotle; the relationship between God and man, virtue and vice, heroism and cowardice, and beauty and wisdom. These questions have been replaced with an obsession, not of veritas, but with skin color.

Rutgers Professors and staff gave 104 times more money to John Kerry than George W. Bush in the 2004 election cycyle. One Hundred and Four to One. This ratio is comparable to the political diversity present under the rule of Genghis Khan.

In our beloved Academy; a supposed citadel of intellectual brilliance, its commanding officers have become intellectual sloths; unchallenged by any principled conservative opposition and unbridled to invite speakers to campus to compare Bush to the Ku Klux Klan, or rant about how the war to liberate the middle east is morally bad in a class completely unrelated to international relations or its relating philosophies.

From a journalistic standpoint, THE CENTURION is an avowedly conservative magazine. We implore our detractors who demand political balance to weigh us on the scale against other student publications including The Medium, the Green Print, The Review and The Caellian. Let’s not forget The Daily Targum, a newspaper from which I was once fired. Worry not my Leftists; the academic fulcrum still tips in favor of you; if not in print (we’ll take this potential newfound conservative leaning as a testament to our success), then decidedly so in the classroom. THE CENTURION arrived on the scene last November to a blazing fire, extinguishing it with guerilla tactics; awards on doors, sensitivity complaints, racist cereals and needed muckraking against local political cronyism. This sardonic approach seems to have had more efficacy and influence on our student body which cares as much about truth as Muslims care about Jesus.

On our campus common sense is blurred by obfuscation; the p.c. patrol, the diversity police, the self-esteem deans, the speech codes, and the professors violating core tenets of academic freedom, etc.

I founded THE CENTURION because I have a dream...

I have a dream where diversity refers to more than just the melanin in one’s skin; where conservatives are not to be called “fascists” for advocating pluralities of methodologies, perspectives and common sense views.

I have a dream that Lucky Charms is thought of as a breakfast cereal rather than a symbol of Leprechaun oppression.

I have a dream where the banning of “offensive” Grease Trucks sandwich names is of little consequence compared to the rapes of women off campus.

I have a dream someone realizes Rutgers’ financial woes just might be due to dozens of committees and caucuses “devoted to advancing our common purposes” as well as pork programs and counselors and their Deans that believe self-esteem is more important than the process by which you earn it.

I have a dream where we realize guns are no more responsible for Columbine than spoons are responsible for Michael Moore’s obesity.

I have a dream where we lay our presents under Christmas Trees, not holiday shrubs.

I have a dream at least one building or program or committee or scholarship will be named after our Rutgers’ Nobel peace prize winning graduate Milton Friedman, RC ’32. His axiom that political freedom requires economic freedom is a lesson learned only by visiting the graves of the innocent women and children butchered to death by bloodthirsty tyrants; economic atrocities condoned by the applause of Paul Robeson's supporters.

I have a dream where bureaucrats, uneducated in matters relating to life’s great questions, stop putting restrictions on what I can or can’t say, stop enacting policies that arbitrarily prohibit behavior, and stop making value judgments on what I believe.

I have a dream where conservative faculty are free from ideological witch hunts; where political opinions and/or skin color is prohibited from being considered in the hiring of university professors.

I have a dream where the unfair employment practices and accusations against one of our nations most gifted sociobiologists because of his conservative leaning, is prosecuted by the fullest extent of the law.

I have a dream where they will introduce a biology prerequisite for women’s studies classes.

For we the conservatives, ironically, have become the modern day Henry David Thoreaus, albeit in a less revolutionary way. For we, the silent majority, “stand athwart history yelling stop” in a place and at a time when our professors and peers call for radical change.

None of us knew each other a year ago. A man I considered my best friend last year betrayed me over chalk yielding, gown wearing overly ambitious students buying into their own hype. I have met others since then. The unappreciated wisdom of the encyclopedic Wesley James Young; whose civility is only matched by his compassion. The southern legal language of Jeff Erickson. The untapped artistic genius and patience of Justine Mertz. The editorial prowess of my successor, Dan Whitney, who spent late nights (and their accompanying early mornings) at production meetings curbing his enthusiasm, as well as the timely alarm on his wristwatch. The honor in Alan Marrero’s eyes. The steadfast morale of Greg Walker. The Enigmatic Matt Klimek, consummate but withdrawn...

We publish onward, not in the name of our friendship, but for the love of our cause. We have nothing to offer but a slightly naïve, scant knowledge of modern conservatism from our readings in outside publications, books and recently, online journals. The intellectual sloths and anonymous cowards at the pulpit in the ivory tower at Rutgers who read this sentiment will post on their blogs, with relief, our efforts are not nearly enough to dethrone them! For we do not have the required experience, cannot battle student apathy and have not read as much third-rate Marxist hogwash.

But our superior ideas have been time tested, consecrated by the blood of martyrs, victorious in the world of reality strife-torn by a century plagued by revolution. Our naiveté is offset by our courage, bound not for each other but for our cause on a campus that unites in condemning us. I have been hated more in the last year of my life than in the past 20 years of my existence combined, and most likely more hated than you readers. And if that seems somewhat dramatic, you’re damn right it is. So entrenched are we in our cause, Matt, Justine and I forfeited characteristics of coyness and prudence long after we received the anonymous death threats, to prove a point that we weren’t even certain would turn out to be effective.

Transcending all of this; we decided to do something about which we cared. We challenged people to see our version of the truth. It is my contention we have succeeded.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us about the hottest thing in town.

James O'Keefe

Originally printed in the December 2005 issue of the Centurion.

The Centurion Goes Caroling at Rutgers

NJO: Video and blurb from the Rutgers Centurion's YouTube account.

Uploaded on May 3, 2009

It was December and pretty gloomy around campus, so we decided to go out and spread some Christmas cheer to everybody at the University.