Now We Know
By Jonah Goldberg joins the excitement for Pope Reactionary The Umpteenth over at the Kiddy Korner:
In all the talk about Dean V. Ratzinger, I’m surprised I’m the first to point this out. On Friday, Dean declared: “The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?”
And yesterday the former Cardinal Ratzinger decried a “dictatorship of relativism” which “does not recognize anything as absolute and leaves as the ultimate measure only the measure of each one and his desires.”
It seems to me that Dean and Ratzinger aren’t merely dissimilar, they’re polar opposites.
Yes–they are polar opposites. Howard Dean believes in the secularism and pluralism of American constitutionalism. Ratzinger, like Goldberg, staunchly opposes it. Good we’ve cleared that up.
On the other hand, Goldberg–probably unlike both Dean and Ratzinger–hasn’t the slightest idea what relativism means. You see, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is not relativist. It is not neutral; it takes a clear position in favor of Dean’s position and against Goldberg’s position. (Conversely, the belief that torture is OK as long as it’s done by the American government in other countries; now that’s moral relativism.) Contrary to the National Review, what moral relativism most certainly does not mean is “opposition to the idea that secular states should be governed by the doctrine of sectarian religions.”