From the Washington Post Express, 22 August 2005:
I had so many other things I wanted to think and write about this morning, and then I heard that Pat Robertson has advocated the US assassination of Hugo Chavez. I'm not a fan of Robertson (or Chavez, for that matter), and I know he's said dumb stuff before, but this has just stuck in my craw. How can someone so surrounded by, and ostensibly promoting, Christian teaching be advocating a political assassination or the invasion of Venzuela that he treats as a foregone conclusion? Or fine, put the morals aside, if you really do think that Chavez is a threat, do you think that an assassination proceeded by trumpets is the way to meet it? And this guy is an icon of the political movement that is increasingly defining the Republican party.
Please don't feel compelled to answer my questions. (A fine thing to say after throwing a lit match at the twin gasoline cans of politics and religion.) This is me venting, and you're just unlucky enough to read it.
Please enjoy the real-life titles of one UC-Berkeley faculty member:
The more I think about it, the more I conclude that these might not be horrendous concepts. But I'm pretty sure I can't stand the titles. (And I definitely want to know how they measure appropriateness at the RAEL.)
My enthusiasm for street food is typically focused on the hot-dog vendors in DC. Without a doubt, the best lunch deal in the city is two half-smokes, a bag of chips, and a coke for $3.50. (My main hot-dog guy, Mohammed, just south of Dupont Circle on Mass Ave, makes the deal even sweeter by not charging extra for a bag of Bon Ton chips. "Bon Ton means good taste", as the bag says, but a 7/8-oz bag of chips means you're eating way more chips at a sitting than any human should, never mind when partnered with two half-smokes and a coke.) But my street-food horizons were broadened yesterday while I was out for my two-monthly jog. Along the railroad tracks, I found plump, deep-purple blackberries that practically melted in my mouth. If I were truly of my family, I would have come back with a grocery sack to collect them for a cobbler, but I was satisfied with grabbing a few as I passed by. It was a real treat that only could have been improved by Kerry being home. Then she could have shared in the joy of sitting up at night with abdominal cramps and retching.
This afternoon, I heard a journalist/historian of the Catholic church claim that, as John Paul II used the Papacy to fight against Communism, Benedict XVI is taking on Western relativism. If that's really what he has in mind, I think he will be disappointed. It's difficult to see how, dealing with someone truly convinced that there are no absolute truths, only personal understandings, one can directly persuade them otherwise; there is no common ground between people from which a shared journey (or clash) towards knowledge begins. But that points out a deeper problem with this line: "relativism" itself can't be a belief that denies the existence of universally true beliefs; it does not exist as a concrete philosophy (pardon the awkwardness) that can be attacked, as the analogy to Communism suggests. The closest that comes to disbelief in absolutes is mere unwillingness to consider them.
Really, I suspect that most of what passes for "relativism" today is grounded in humility, cynicism, or both. As our vision has expanded in space and in time, we've seen truths turn out to be not always true, things done in the names of "truth" and "right" that look wrong and false. And so the "relativist" refrains from claiming truth, maybe judging that it is an issue without absolute right or wrong, or maybe suspecting that there is a right, but contrary to his hopes and intents, he's not in it. There can also be a thread of liberalism, respecting the right of others to seek the truth themselves and honoring that right above the desire to see them reach one's own conclusion. "Relativism" can even have religious roots; one may have a firm, clear, trusted revelation and understanding from God, but what person would claim to see His path and know His way for all people? Are these the "relativism" the Church will fight? (Perhaps not.)
