Moral relativism has got to go. The relative witch-hunt

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- brucepig
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Moral relativism has got to go. The relative witch-hunt
OP - March 20, 2009, 04:30 AM

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A state-sponsored witch-hunt has begun in Gambia where as many as 1,000 people have been kidnapped from their villages and taken to "secret detention centres" then stripped, beaten and poisoned.

The campaign launched in the tiny West African nation is the latest manifestation of the increasingly brutal and bizarre rule of President Yahya Jammeh, who has claimed he can cure people of Aids. Now the President is thought to believe he is under attack from witches.

Witnesses and victims of the abductions told Amnesty International that the President's personal guard, along with armed police and intelligence agents have accompanied witch doctors brought in from Guinea to round up suspects. Many of those taken from their homes were elderly people who have then been held for up to five days in appalling conditions, made to drink hallucinogenic concoctions and forced to confess to black magic powers.

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I think it is extreme examples like this that test the notion of cultural relativism and find it wanting. What starts out as a discussion about funny hats or which animals are too cute, too sacred or too dirty to eat, inevitably gets bogged down when it comes to human rights. Until we get to this point - where only the insane can argue that if there isn?t some objective standard by which behaviour can be judged wicked and stupid, we shouldn?t assert one of our own.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/gambia-gripped-by-fear-as-leader-scours-country-in-search-of-witches-1648414.html

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/03/19/the-relative-witch-hunt/
- osmanthus
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Re: Moral relativism has got to go. The relative witch-hunt
Reply #1 - March 20, 2009, 10:51 PM

Yup. Cultural relativists love arguing until you confront them with the really harsh cases, then they go all evasive and snappy. They don't really believe their own arguments when it comes to the crunch but they're reluctant to admit it. Standard human behaviour, really.

It's rather like the people who try to argue that reality is an illusion and the world is only how we think it is. They have difficulty explaining why people who think they can fly end up dead when they jump off buildings.

Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West.
- brucepig
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Re: Moral relativism has got to go. The relative witch-hunt
Reply #2 - March 21, 2009, 01:33 AM

Moral relativists tend to be very good hearted people who's moral relativism has come about not from a serious intellectual and philosophical search but as a reaction to a deeply held shame of our colonial past.

From the Archbishop of Canterbury to the countless liberal university professors, Left wing journalists and politicians who are so considered and thoughtful that they end up being verbal jellyfish. They are incapable of forming an opinion or asserting their views lest they be accused of being opinionated cultural imperialists.

They are so fearful of causing offence or sounding like some kind of racist colonial throwback that they are rendered useless. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights incapable of getting the fuck out of the way they are unable of forming a coherent view about anything.

They might weakly condemn these witch hunts but qualify their tepid condemnation with an understanding that the root cause of this barbaric ignorance is colonialism and poverty. So really it's our fault.

These bufoons flip flop on almost every subject unless it's self criticism.

The problem is they are the journalists, teachers and politicians. These quivering wimps are the ones who create public policy, populate our universities and write for our newspapers.

You hear them on Radio 4 twittering on with this apologetic stuttering middle class accent. They sound like they are afraid of their own shadows.

It's funny that the people who are most remorseful about colonial oppression are the most spineless chinless wonders who would be incapable of oppressing a group of nursery school children let alone the world. Someone said to me that Britain was turning into 1984. With the DNA register, CCTV and the introduction of identity cards but I had to laugh because our leaders are so liberal the idea that we are living in an Orwellian nightmare is just a joke. In Orwell's book our leaders are brutal dictators who convict you of thought crime and send you to the torture chamber for reeducation. Britain is a country where in the name of multiculturalism and social cohesion our leaders have given privileged positions to Islamists. How far from the iron fist of Ministry of Truth can you get?

The only time you will hear the moral relativists say anything of substance is when they criticise themselves, their culture/history or America and Israel. Otherwise they are pretty much redundant on every subject under the sun.

Good hearted people in privileged positions but lets face it they are redundant.
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