Conservatives and moral relativism

Conservatives in all sorts of venues frequently and vehemently accuse leftists of moral relativism and denounce them for it.

A while back I noticed a minor example of what they find offensive on one of the cable news networks. The newsperson, in covering the anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma City, was able to refer Timothy McVeigh as a domestic terrorist, but in covering Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas , could only manage squishily to call Hamas a group of alleged terrorists. Conservatives make a very good point that, if one is unsure about whether those savages are terrorists, it would be hard for the term to retain any meaning or usefulness in describing anyone or anything. This sort of thing and much worse are commonplace, whether in setting up a spurious moral equivalence between radically dissimilar people and events, making a “multicultural” or “diversity” excuse for the vile or inferior, or creating fake indeterminacy to avoid obvious conclusions. Nevertheless, the conservatives are wrong .

There are real moral relativists, but I think that dedicated leftists are not usually among them. A typical serious leftist is more likely to be a true believing doctrinal absolutist. He may espouse relativism about some of the things you care about, but he will be as dogmatic as a 16th Century Dominican about the things he cares about. An apparent moral relativism can function more as a tactic than as an actual belief. It allows him to undermine his opponent’s position in situations when frontal attacks seem at present unlikely to succeed. When conservatives see leftists as morally lax relativists, they underestimate their opponents and the strength of their convictions.