Some years ago I wrote an editorial
column for a local newspaper, which explained the harmful effect of moral
relativism on our culture. Moral relativism is the popular notion that there is
no such thing as absolute truth. Instead, all moral values are merely personal
opinions, and no one opinion should be judged as better or worse than another.
I wrote that this mindset is the true source of the violence and chaos and
polarization we see in our society nowadays.
That column generated a fair amount of
feedback, and many of the email notes I received can be summarized as follows: You
claim we need firm values, Mr. Dunn, but WHOSE values? Will it be your
right-wing conservative Catholic values? No Thanks. Fanatical Jesus freaks like
you just want to impose a theocracy on the country.
First of all, Christians in America,
at least the ones I’ve met and prayed with, do not want a theocracy. The genius
of the Founding Fathers was their ability to keep specific religious doctrines
and dogmas separated from the governing of the country. But many people do not realize
our nation was built on a firm foundation of traditional Judeo-Christian values
and virtues. There was a clear moral consensus throughout the country.
Regardless of a person’s particular religious affiliation, or no religion at
all, the citizenry acknowledged a basic moral code.
Honesty, hard work, discipline, and
courage were good. Deception, laziness, promiscuity, and cowardice were bad.
Everybody agreed. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified, John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and
religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the
government of any other.”
Most conservative Christians or
traditional Catholics, such as myself, understand the wisdom and common sense
of Adams’ words, and for the sake of the nation we simply want to return to a
clear moral consensus. However, my email friends raised a very valid point:
WHOSE values? WHICH moral code will the citizenry acknowledge and follow?
The late Arthur Leff, a Yale law
professor, coined the phrase, “The grand sez who.” Leff realized that moral
relativism has a fatal flaw. If there are no absolute truths, if all moral
values are merely personal opinions, then there is no transcendent authority as
the source of values. Every single claim about specific morality or virtue can
be answered with an indignant, “Sez who?!”
Without a transcendent authority as
the source of morality and values, there never will be a societal consensus. In
cultures without a moral consensus there are only two possible outcomes: either
a chaotic mish-mash of competing personal opinions, which is our situation
today; or totalitarian oppression imposed by a ruling elite to bring order to
the chaos, the scenario I fear will happen in America within a decade or so.
Either way, true freedom and liberty are lost.
Thomas Jefferson identified the
transcendent authority for morality and values. Jefferson, no friend of
organized religion, cited in the Declaration of Independence that this source
is the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.” He knew the source was far weightier
than mere human opinions.
The fact that people nowadays are
indignantly demanding, “Whose values?!” and “Sez who?!” shows how much trouble
we are in. If we as a society do not find a moral consensus—and fast—we will
continue down the path of greater and greater cultural chaos.
At some point soon, frightened
citizens will demand the government “do something!” to restore order. You don’t
want to be around when that happens. Just ask people who lived behind the Iron
Curtain, or who live in North Korea today—if they haven’t already starved to
death.
The only way for America to avoid the
inevitable chaos-then-crackdown fate is to reject moral relativism. This is in
no way a desire to impose a theocracy. It is a desire to see our nation
survive.
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