Morning, visionaries,
The remarkable thing about relativism is that, for all the advertising hype, it really isn’t that elastic. It never stretches very far, and only stretches to the left.
Jim tells Timothy to keep his “simple minded insults against women” to himself. Timothy’s attitude is apparently the “real obscenity.” Really? There is such a thing as real obscenity? By what standard? Not only is this is the case, but Jim tells Timothy that if he called any woman a “slut,” he should get a response commensurate, etc. Jim, if I were the owner of a restaurant, could a commensurate response be kicking someone out?
You all are in a hopeless bind here. Standards are inescapable. Imposed standards are inescapable. You want to pretend that this is not the case, all the while vigorously telling us how you would impose them. The funniest thing about this is that you cannot see (or will not admit) what you are doing. We (conservative Christians) have a standard, we know the basis for it, and we are willing to live by it and defend it. You have a standard, you are willing to impose it on the rest of us, but when called upon to defend or explain your standard (and why it is authoritative over all of us), you surround yourselves with a cloud of cliches. But no society can exist unless the adherents of the worldview in power are willing to act via the law as though the adherents of various minority views are just flat wrong. Just admit that this is what you are currently doing to us. The rest of your day will be sunny and filled with epistemic relief.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.