Ethical relativists believe in the relativism of truth and morality. They do not, however, believe in the relativism of power. They either have it, or they don’t. And if they do not, they know what direction they want to go. We don’t need a print-out of their agenda to know what is on it.
Part of the postmodern agenda is to “reveal” that truth claims (about say, history) are claims that validate a particular group’s claim to legitimacy in power. There is no such thing, they say, as objective truth in history. National heroes have that status in order to serve as pillars of the current regime, and not because they are actually worthy of the honor.
But of course, the same thing goes for the debunkers. If all truth claims are veiled attempts to get mastery and power, then what of the truth claim that truth claims are veiled attempts to get mastery? If all writers about history have an agenda, then why should it not include those who make that particular claim? The problem with the postmodernist historians is not that they have identified the fact that no history is entirely objective. Every history is written from a place, and there is no sense in denying it. Honesty is possible as we look at history, but raw objectivity is not. To the extent that they made this clear, we owe something to the postmodernists. To the extent that they want us to ignore what we have learned from them when we turn to consider what they are up to, we owe them nothing but a horse laugh.
Where does this take us? There is an old joke about a young Southern girl who once said to her mother, “Mama, I can never remember. Was Robert E. Lee in the Old Testament or the New Testament?” The dangers of hagiography are ever present, and honest readers of history will always be on guard against it. The Parson Weems-cherry tree-“I cannot tell a lie” treatment of George Washington comes to mind. But the corrosive effects of the debunkers present an equal danger to us, and in our day, is the danger to which we are most susceptible. When we cannot recognize greatness or nobility any more, it is likely the result of long immersion in the arts and manipulations of the power-grubbers.
All things considered (this, to lure in readers who listen to NPR), Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest figures in our nation’s history. He was the kind of man that men in gray were proud to have fought for, and men in blue were honored to have fought against. For much of America’s history after the war, he was honored by the entire nation as a truly great man, which he was. But now, in recent years, his reputation has become somewhat tarnished. It seems he has fallen into disfavor with a gossip columnist in Moscow, Idaho.
But let us not forget what we have learned about power and influence. Why is a gossip columnist in 2004 worried about Robert E. Lee, who died in 1870? For you distance readers of this blog, The Moscow/Pullman Daily News is the kind of paper that prints a gossip column on the front page, but is not yet the kind of paper that tells us a Wolf Boy was found in a cave in West Virginia. This paper has rapidly become something of a joke in our town, and its weight of influence, if we might borrow from Paul Simon, is slip sliding away. Lots of people still get the paper because they want to know about ground beef specials at Safeway, but this is not the same thing as serious journalism. And what do you do when your influence is waning all by itself? You accuse someone else of trying to grab it. And you are not too scrupulous about the truth when you do.