Moral Debate and Nazis

"Only 6% of all teens believe that there are moral absolutes," according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. The story goes on to bemoan the decline and fall of western civilization and fret about our chances against militant Islam.

The statistic is surely wrong. Teens--Americans generally--will of course answer the abstractly-phrased question about "moral absolutes" in the negative, mainly because our culture is infected with the ridiculous notion that saying "I think you are objectively wrong" is equivalent with "I hate you" and "I intend to persecute you". No one wants to self-identify as an oppressor.

But to conflate disagreement with hate is to reject the possibility of reasoned disagreement and treat conversation is nothing but a thinly-veiled struggle for power carried on by other means. If confronted with the implicit assumptions behind moral relativism, if asked "do you believe disagreement is an act of hate, that conversation is a struggle for power, and reason is a sham?" most Americans would surely answer no.

The easiest way to prove that teens and Americans do in fact believe in moral absolutes is to mention the Nazis. Damning Nazis is the last bastion of reflexive, absolute moral judgment in our culture (which is strange, considering the Soviets were probably even worse). As an debate tactic, the reducto ad Hitlerum is blunt and overused, but tremendously useful.

So why then do people profess to be moral relativists? The failure to connect the statement "Nazis are evil" with "Evil is real and objective" and then with "Moral absolutes exist" is simply baffling. Perhaps it stems from a lack of leadership--from parents as much as teachers, preachers, and statesmen--willing and able to defend intelligently the connection between them. (Perhaps that isn't surprising considering the generation most of our leadership is drawn from.) Your humble blogger hopes to help counter the trend.

Regardless, I maintain a bit more faith than the Wall Street Journal. Even during a national argument so divisive as that over the war in Iraq, no one stood up to defend Saddam Hussein's regime. No one argued that his crimes were just an authentic expression of a different culture to which we owed respect. That is a pretty low standard at which to aim; but that we meet it, at least, is a good sign. Now we just need the courage to advance from "mass murder and tyranny is wrong" to "helping stop it is good".