The Right-Wing Relativists

There was a time when conservatives used to commonly insult liberals with an accusation that they were empty "pomo relativists." Lynn Cheney, in particular, made a point of it when she was the chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities and even wrote a book about it called "Telling The Truth," if you can believe that.

CHENEY: It's postmodernism, the notion that there is no such thing as truth. There's only your version of events and my version and Charles' version and Harry's version, and the one that prevails will be that of whoever is the most powerful. This seems to fly in the face of the way scholarship has proceeded for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

It takes your breath away, doesn't it? The exposure of the conservative movement as extreme epistemic relativists has been one of the most fascinating (and frustrating) stories of the Bush years.

The simpler concept of hypocrisy (never very strong in the political world) had been retired some time ago, of course, when all the family values adulterers worked themselves into a lather over Bill Clinton's furtive indiscretions (although at the time we never could have anticipated the antics of the Foley, Vitter and Craig faction.) But when the Bush administration took over, the right wing went far beyond hypocrisy to a denial of reality itself — a post-modern conservatism, as oxymoronic as that sounds. It was perhaps best encapsulated in the famous quote captured by journalist Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

(The Bush administration's "up-is-downism" was discussed in depth in a trenchant article from 2003 by Josh Marshall called "The Postmodern President".)

I'm not sure if it's that we've become used to it or the administration has used less of it recently, but I don't find myself pounding my head on the desk as often I once did at some Bush official (or often the president himself) essentially saying "you can believe me or you can believe you lying eyes." Creationism, the denial of global warming (indeed, all scientific inquiry), the Enronization of the budget, even the continuing insistence among many that there were WMD in Iraq — there are examples around us everywhere of conservatives(particularly regular Fox News viewers) who, because they are delivered by a "trusted" source, believe things that have long since been proven wrong or make no sense.

But just as I've become somewhat inured to this right-wing epistemic relativism over time, I've become more and more astonished at the right's simultaneous rejection of some of the great moral taboos of human history. After all, even more than their assault on liberals for rejecting rationalism or universalism, for years they characterized liberal social tolerance as despicable "moral relativism" and excoriated those who sought equality as threats to the foundations of civilization itself. It's more than a little bit stunning to see these so-called conservatives suddenly dancing on the head of a pin trying to defend the immoral act of torture by saying it all depends on what the meaning of waterboarding is.

“Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is."

or...

ABRAMS: All right. Let me ask - Pat, you just real quick, I want to move on to—Pat, do you think it‘s torture?

BUCHANAN: I think when you have people on the table and make them think like they‘re drowning and they don‘t know if they‘re ever going to get up, that comes very close to it in my judgment. Certainly with this exception, if you‘re going to end it before something critical happens — I don‘t know.

Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the old "it depends on who's doing it" excuse doesn't work very well with the rule of law. This is why we have spectacles like this taking place now:

The top legal adviser within the US state department, who counsels the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on international law, has declined to rule out the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens. John Bellinger refused to denounce the technique, which has been condemned by human rights groups as a form of torture, during a debate on the Bush Administration’s stance on international law held by Guardian America, the Guardian’s US website. He said he would not include or exclude any technique without first considering whether it violated the convention on torture.

This is the crowd that prided itself on its so-called moral clarity. Why, "virtues czar" William Bennett even wrote a book about it called "Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War On Terrorism" in which he said:

The comparative study of culture and civilization is a quintessential product of western curiosity. It ought to fill us with complex but securely founded confidence in our own culture and civilization --- in its particular values and universal values...But the terrible effect of contemporary relativism --- a debased and decadent product of that same western impulse of curiosity --- is that instead of imbuing us with confidence, it fills us with self-doubt and debilitates us instead.

Bennett was trying, as usual, to snidely blame liberalism for everything that is wrong in the world, but his words, when seen through the prism of right wing contemporary relativism ring true. When you have lost your moral moorings to the extent that you no longer can say with any "clarity" that tying someone down and repeatedly forcing them to inhale water into their lungs until they almost drown is torture, then I would suggest that you are indeed a moral relativist in the most pejorative sense of the word.

Read this amazing article from someone who knows it inside and out, on whether waterboarding is torture.

All those terms that conservatives used to love to use, the proud, patriotic words like Honor, Decency, Honesty, Morality no longer apply to them. The right-wing relativists have faced their own ultimate test and they have failed it in every possible way.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future