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Our -isms or Theirs? |
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by Gregory D. Foster
(No verified email address) |
10 Jul 2006
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There’s a war going on this country—and it isn’t the so-called global war on terrorism. It’s an Incivil War of cultural fratricide. If you’re in denial on this count, ask yourself how many times a day you hear the sanctimonious mudslingers who dominate the airwaves accusing others of liberalism. Or secularism. Or humanism (as in secular humanism). Or relativism (as in moral relativism). Or revisionism (as in historical revisionism). |
There’s a war going on this country—and it isn’t the so-called global war on terrorism. It’s an Incivil War of cultural fratricide. If you’re in denial on this count, ask yourself how many times a day you hear the sanctimonious mudslingers who dominate the airwaves accusing others of liberalism. Or secularism. Or humanism (as in secular humanism). Or relativism (as in moral relativism). Or revisionism (as in historical revisionism).
In some cosmic objective sense, these terms are nothing more than harmless rhetorical gnats: innocuous labels that may—but all too often don't—accurately reflect what their alleged practitioners or adherents actually believe.
These labels lose their harmlessness, though, when they are used—as they so often are—as terms of disparagement similar in their rancorous intent to racial or sexual slurs. Those who shamelessly sling such epithets consider themselves, of course, to occupy some superior intellectual and spiritual terrain to the targets of their derogation.
Ironically, revealingly, these sanctimonious accusers are themselves captive of a constellation of -isms that betrays their hypocrisy and reveals them for what they truly are.
They are unthinking practitioners of an inbred parochialism hiding behind a mask of responsible conservatism.
They are programmed devotees of religious and ideological dogmatism that regularly mutates even farther into extremism and fanaticism.
They are prideful adherents of a suffocating moral absolutism that rejects tolerant universalism in favor of anti-intellectual totalitarianism.
They subscribe to an oppressive theism that they seek to impose, lymphoma-like, on all walks of life.
They conflate the hypocritical moralism they practice with the true morality they incessantly preach to the rest of us.
And they espouse an unhealthy patriotism that is nothing but crudely disguised chauvinism and jingoism.
Anyone who stands in opposition to such antagonists and their -isms should feel a sense of pride and exaltation. Why for a moment, for example, would anyone in her right mind be the least bit uncomfortable or ashamed about being accused of liberalism? Think about it.
Consider the roots of the word: liberal, liberty, liberate; library even. Why do we call repositories of information that can be converted into knowledge libraries rather than conservatories? Because we're not just talking about preserving stuff. We're talking about freeing our minds, our souls, our very selves, from the bondage of ignorance and socialization and oppression and blind obedience to impersonal authority.
Liberalism is about being open to, even enthusiastic about, change rather than being unalterably wedded to the status quo. It is often about idealism—searching and striving for what could or should be rather than uncreatively perpetuating what is or has always been. It is no less about altruism—concern for The Other as much as, if not more than, The Self.
What's wrong with being accused of secularism? Secularism isn't atheism, notwithstanding the incessant rhetorical drumbeat of the theocrats in our midst, who maliciously equate the two. It isn't a rejection of an almighty—or even The Almighty. It's a rejection of the fusion of what's properly private and what's properly public. It's about maintaining that wall of separation between religion and politics, religion and economics, religion and education. It's about that liberal notion: freedom of, and from, religion.
What's wrong with being accused of humanism? Humane, humanity, humanitarian, humanize. You're human, I'm human, all of us distinguishable from other species by our purportedly unique capability to reason, to make moral judgments, to exercise free will. Why wouldn't we want to place human well-being at the center of our concerns? Why wouldn't we want to expect more of humans than we do of other species? Why wouldn't we want to treat human beings as ends in themselves rather than as mere means? Why wouldn't we want to accept the self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal in deserving to enjoy their inalienable natural rights?
What's wrong with being accused of relativism? If we humans in fact have the capacity to think for ourselves, to reason, to make choices (admittedly dubious propositions where some of us are concerned), then it would seem appropriate, even necessary, to take the inevitable and highly variable differences of circumstance, time, and culture into account in making the decisions that confront us in life. The alternative, absolutism, assumes away such differences as irrelevant and instead calls for imposing one particular “truth”—mine, not yours—on reality. Is that what you want?
And what's wrong with being accused of revisionism? That suggests to me a willingness to recognize that the truth of the past is no less tenuous and subject to error, distortion, and manipulation than the truth of the present or future. Those who accuse others of revisionism do so only when their reality is brought into question. They don't hesitate to endorse revisionism that supports their preconceptions. Nor do they decline to engage in revisionism themselves when it suits their purpose.
We are surrounded on all sides by our enemies: ourselves. Intolerance to our front. Ignorance to our rear. Irresolution to our Left. Ill-temper to our Right. We attack at dawn.
Gregory D. Foster is a professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., where he previously has served as George C. Marshall Professor and J. Carlton Ward Distinguished Professor and Director of Research. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at fosterg (at) ndu.edu.
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