Posted on 05/17/2005 1:14:46 PM PDT by Fam4Bush
Every few weeks, on my way to visit my grandchildren, I drive by the garbage dumpster where 24 months ago terrorist Eric Rudolph was finally captured after eluding the FBI for the previous five years. Mr. Rudolph, of course, has now formally admitted his guilt in the murderous bombings of the Olympic park in Atlanta, an abortion clinic in Birmingham, and a homosexual nightclub, also in Atlanta. He awaits formal sentencing.
I look at that garbage dumpster and wince. It is so normal, nothing like the big military tank that was so vivid a symbol at Tiananmen Square. It is not like the nuclear-armed ICBMs that scared the daylights out of us as kids back in the '60s and '70s. The dumpster obviously occupies a coordinate on somebody's Global Positioning System—but for years, nobody had a clue to punch in the x- and y-values that might have led to that particular dumpster.
Is this the new shape of warfare? Or should we call it the shapelessness? [snip]
What has primarily changed is the worldview of our culture. Ambiguity reigns. Relativism as a philosophy of life, and pluralism as a means of accommodating that relativism, sound wonderfully attractive until you stop to recognize this irony: The more we have adopted relativism and pluralism as laudable goals, the tougher it has become for us all to live together. The boundary lines that used to mark out the good and the bad are all blurred now, and keeping an up-to-date map of the progress of the allies and the defeats of the enemies has become all but impossible. [snip]
...our enemies slip regularly and easily in and out of the places we used to claim as our own not because we're badly guarded at the borders—but because definable borders no longer even exist.
It would be one thing if modern multiculturalism taught only that you should tolerate A and B and C and D. But when it goes on to insist that you should espouse A and B and C and D as equally true and equally important—then get ready for confusion. When a society gets as mixed up in sorting out its own identity as our culture is today, we shouldn't be surprised that some of its citizens do the immoral and criminal kinds of things that Eric Rudolph did. We've concocted an explosive mixture of thinking—and when that explosive mixture erupts right in our own neighborhoods, it's hardly honest to pretend it caught us altogether off guard.
oops - jWorld Magazine = World Magazine :)
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This sounds more like rationalizations from the Left than clear reasoning from the Right.
Worldmag *ping*
Disagree. Not very well written, but he makes some good points.
If we all just decide for ourselves what is right and wrong (for us), who can say with assurance that Eric Rudolph made the wrong choice?
Goes back to the beginning. We ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and we've been deciding for ourselves ever since.
It's just accelerated over time to the point where the downward spiral is evident ... kinda like a toilet bowl.
If Rudolph was responsible for the Olympic bombings, which apparently he confessed to, then it suggests that he has a crazy streak, which extends to more than bombing an abortion clinic and thus trying to support life by killing people.
But on a scale of 1 to 10, he strikes me as being about in the middle, in comparison to other notorious killers. His killings were not sadistic or gratuitously vicious. Indeed as I understand it he didn't intend to kill anyone when at the abortion clinic, although when you set off a bomb you are responsible for any deaths that may occur.
Why is it that if a murderer is annointed as a "right wing extremist" he is automatically assumed to be so much worse than other murderers, including left wing extremists? Why did the FBI assign several hundred agents with helicopters and elaborate equipment to look for him for months, when there are so many worse criminals out there?
Sorry, rhetorical question. Right wing criminals deserve the death penalty. Everyone else should be let off.
Yeah, but we didn't use to have the most influential members of our society trying to pound it into our heads that we should each decide what is right and wrong.
Not that they really mean it. What they really mean is that their beliefs are absolutes and ours are relative.
well hell, he should be punished for sure, 1 out 3 is not good as criminal records go at doing something right
I both agree and disagree with this article.
On one hand, it's navel-gazing; on the other, it's time to trim my nose-hairs.
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I don't agree that we are all deciding for ourselves. Many here and in our society at large are religious, and believe that it is God who dictates what is right and wrong.
Link to the article; the omissions will tie it together.
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That was a funny movie, and made more sense than this article.
Steam vents on a household iron always need attention... and shoelace repairs...
My point was that the opinion leaders in our society have reached consensus that there are no absolute values, or IOW that each person must decide for himself what is right and wrong.
Some, such as you and me, reject this idea, but we are swimming against a very powerful current running in the other direction.
What is fascinating is that nobody really believes the "everything is relative" garbage in practice. As can be seen by the denunciation of Rudolph and the utterly non-relative system of political correctness.
Almost without exception, what "everything is relative" really means is "everything sexual is relative." The proponents of this idea pick a single group of issues out of the mix and designate that group of issues as one on which discussion of right and wrong is out of bounds.
The classic example is the vapid statement, "You can't legislate morality." The fact, of course, is that we don't legislate anything else. What they really mean is, "You can't legislate sexual morality."
Why only one topic? Why that particular topic?
I think we all know the answer.
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