[Tolik]

The problem with the relativist non-judgmentalism they themselves don't realize, is that they do judge, but overtly. When they refuse to judge terrorist as bad and those who fight terrorism as good, they, in effect, make a judgment that terrorist is not that bad, and his enemy as not that good. This is a huge ethical error they don't want to know about.

Trying to stay open-minded they refuse to judge. To me it makes them more close-minded because they refuse to evaluate real life facts. Refusing to deal with the facts is a betrayal of scientific method, they claim to subscribe. .

I judge them unworthy of their places in academic world.

[JasonC]

I understand the issue you raise, but you are wrong that they don't realize it. They do realize it. But they are involved in a "personal stain" type morality in the matter. They do not care what its consequences are for objective encouraging of evil. They do care about remaining personally unstained, in their own eyes, by contact with that evil even through judgment of it.

This is not due to any inability to see it as evil. They are oppressed by it, psychologically. They are running away. They ascribe powers of moral contagion to evil, and think they are consciously resisting that contagion. Judgment involves assuming a role of power and responsibility that they fear will corrupt them.

Is this an ethical error? Yes. An epidemic one. But then, error is the ordinary state of mankind. They can't be reached by telling them their moral sense in the matter is intellectually flawed. They can't be reached by calling them to responsibility, when they consciously shrink from it. What they need is a way to combine moral judgment of men and things with underlying respect or love of them.

This is not an obvious point, either philosophically or ethically. It is something they simply have not been taught by the reigning philosophy they are constantly exposed to. At bottom it is a misdiagnosis of totalitarianism, and because of it a misformulation of the principle of tolerance. They think they must leave open the possibility the other side is right, or deny that right exists, to avoid annihilationist political consequences.