Some people define "moral relativism" as the attitude or belief that 'everything is permitted'. This is not necessarily the best definition of it. I have collected some examples of people using it this way.
"[Veit] Bader is concerned to avoid both the temptation to “universalise particular moralities” and on the other end of the spectrum the problem of moral relativism which implicitly condones anything. In order to avoid these poles, Bader proposes that the state should seek to secure a moral minimalist position. * * * He regards the minimal morality required in liberal-democracies to be more demanding as it includes such things as equal civic and political rights, equal legal rights and political autonomy."
"Book Review: Secularism or Democracy? by Veit Bader. Stumbling through the Past. April 11, 2011.
"Upholding the world's diversity as the norm, [Sergey] Lavrov is at the same time immune to the fashion for relativism in handling value system issues. His strongly held view is that contemporary societies should be built on solid moral foundations which alone can cement relationships between nations, peoples and ethnic groups. Lavrov is open about his aversion to Pontius Pilatus-style indifference expressed in his famous reply “What is truth?”. Rather, he sees the crisis of the European society whose value system were eroded by what Z. Brzezinski described as “a civil war within the West” as the root cause of most of the XIX and XX century tragedies."
"Notes of a Diplomacy Professional." Armen Oganesyan. The Voice of Russia. Nov. 2, 2011.
"Astonished, I asked them how could they not think that this ["open relationships"] was wrong. I got answers like: “well, since it is all out in the open and everybody knows that everybody is doing it, there is nothing fundamentally wrong. No one is cheating on a spouse because the spouse was also swinging.”
I said to them: “what about the seventh commandment – do not commit adultery.” One student answered that these people are really not religious. What the students didn’t seem to understand was that whether they were religious or not, there is a moral code that is rooted in the Bible which defines for us what is right and what is wrong. The problem is that when pressed, many of the students simply said that if it feels good and if it feels right then who am I to judge? I told them I wasn’t suggesting that they go over to somebody who is engaged in swinging and chastise them, but that they had to have an opinion on this practice. They looked at me with some disbelief."
"Living in a post-moral world." Rabbi Haskel Lookstein. Sermon for Parshat Noach. Oct. 29, 2011.
"For the advocates of redistributive policies and antidiscrimination policies the answer is clear: the freedom to "do your own thing" entitles a person to the resources to support them, and immunity from criticism for their chosen lifestyle – it is just their own thing after all! This is precisely the vision of the modern moral-relativist welfare state. This is what the advocates of redistributive and antidiscrimination policies have in mind when they hide behind this innocuous phrase. How dare you refuse to contribute your earnings to others who are just trying to do their own thing? How dare you deign to criticize the actions of other people, or discriminate against them – don't you realize that they are just doing their own thing?
In this corrupted sense, the notion of a society where people are free to "do their own thing" becomes a cruel joke, a nightmare tyranny in which this peaceful slogan belies a rigorous system of coercion and control. In such a society, people are not free to do their own thing at all. Not if "their own thing" happens to consist of thinking and telling the truth about the people and institutions around them, objectively assessing and judging the ideas and actions of others, and trying to live their own lives free from egalitarian molestation. In such a society, people are free to do their own thing only to the extent that they avoid objective reasoning and kowtow to the tenets of moral relativism, adopting the mushy "nonjudgmental" thinking." (Lew Rockwell)
"Moral relativism is the ideology that we can do, essentially, whatever we want. “It can be right for you but not right for me, and that’s okay”. As you said, “Also, morals are just opinions of what’s right and what’s wrong. As a result, you cannot say that your morals are superior to anyone else’s.” That’s MR at its finest." Tumblr
Paul Tournier:
“…the worst thing is not being wrong, but being sure one is not wrong. Nothing is more dangerous for us than to believe ourselves to be the authentic interpreters of the divine will. This is the source of all illuminism, of all brutal intolerance, of all proselytism and fanaticism. See how delicate a problem it is: objective criteria tend towards overbearing moralism…”
Paul Tournier. The Violence Within. Translated by Edwin Hudson, 1978. New York: Harper & Row, 1982, (originally Violence et Puissance, 1977) pp. 64–65.
Elites inside the GOP (up and coming “intellectuals” like Nate Hochman or former Rubio chief of staff Mike Needham) are eagerly adopting fascistic rhetoric to draw voters to Trump. Such rhetoric doesn’t just reflect what exists, it also has the power to shape. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:04 AM
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Fascistic propaganda works, especially when well-funded & made by smart, shameless elites with the connections and resources to get that propaganda in front of a lot of eyeballs. In a free society, elite restraint plays an important role in limiting the production & spread of fascistic propaganda.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:10 AM
When a party of the right is in the process of radicalizing ever more rightward, the name of that furthest right polestar toward which they are oriented and headed is “fascism.” One of the defining features of fascist political cultures is that they almost never adopt that label. But fascism exists.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:14 AM
People on the left who are socialists will happily and openly use that term . Same goes for the smaller number of Americans who call themselves communists. But since the 1930s, American fascists have called themselves pablum names like “Christian patriots” or “nationalists.”
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:18 AM
Fascist movements frequently fail. Fascist rhetoric only works on a limited number of people. Fascist propagandists rarely “believe” their own content. Their goal is power, not persuasion. So there’s no need to cower in fear of all-powerful monsters. But this is a time for boundary drawing.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:25 AM
Modern democracies will always have parties of the right. When such parties become hostile to religiously and culturally pluralistic democracy, rule of law, and free and fair elections, they cross the boundary from center-right to far right…and from democratic to fascistic.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:30 AM
As any American leftist can tell you, the Democrats have quite robust guardrails that gatekeep and mute the left edge of their coalition. The GOP has long stopped even pretending to care about its right edge. Nick Fuentes ate dinner with Trump and no one cared. Trump tried an actual coup and meh.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:42 AM
At the risk of venturing into the Cheney discourse, this is why GOP defectors like them matter. That’s what boundary drawing on the right looks like. It’s prominent people on the right saying “my party has crossed the line into fascism and I absolutely reject it.” This is a 100% good thing.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 8:56 AM
The current GOP is a coalition of the center-right & the far right in which the center-right is the very junior, vestigial partner. People who pay attention to politics know this, but most voters do not pay attention to politics. This is why elite-signaling (like what the Cheneys have done) matters.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 9:14 AM
I don't have much hope that the GOP is going to to change course and tack toward the center any time soon. It's hard to see where the momentum or leadership for that change might come. Thus the best strategy right now is to give center-right people permission to stop voting for a far right party.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 9:19 AM
My research focuses on the history of how the far right took over the OR GOP. It was a very long and slow process, but the result is that the GOP has become increasingly electorally unviable. It has done the opposite of course correct, & has just kept losing. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/walter-hus...
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 9:26 AM
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The same dynamic has played out in California, Washington, and Colorado. We saw it also play out in the huge losses of MAGA-weirdo candidates Mastriano in PA and Dixon in MI in 2022. We'll probably see it play out that way in NC with Mark Robinson. It might even happen to Ted Cruz?
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 9:29 AM
One thing I appreciate about Trump/Vance is that they've called the question as to what sort of party the GOP now is. VP Burgham or Rubio would have allowed the party to semi-plausibly cosplay as center-right normies. Picking Vance was a clear statement about the party's proudly illiberal future.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 9:32 AM
If Trump wins a bunch of low information voters who thought they were supporting a center-right, tax & regulation cutting Republican will soon discover that they voted for someone gleefully locking up his "enemies" and dumping the nation into a recession with his police state mass deportation plan.
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 10:02 AM
Meanwhile, a cohort of sadistic bigots and anti-democrats will be jumping for joy because they succeeded in creating just enough panic about crime at a time when crime is decreasing, and fear about economic chaos at a time of relative prosperity, to get their anti-democratic wrecking ball into power
— Seth Cotlar (@sethcotlar.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 10:05 AM
In response to Seth Cotlar's "Modern democracies will always have parties of the right. When such parties become hostile to religiously and culturally pluralistic democracy, rule of law, and free and fair elections, they cross the boundary from center-right to far right…and from democratic to fascistic...":
This distinction is key: The modern conservative movement was founded in opposition to egalitarian pluralism - something conservatives derided as “relativism” and an assault on the “natural” order. The question has always been: If society moved away from their vision, would they embrace extremism?
— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 10:33 AM
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This conflict has defined the modern Right. As the conservative movement was formed, at its core, as an anti-“Left” - meaning: opposed to leveling existing hierarchies in the name of egalitarianism - coalition, a radicalizing dynamic was constitutive: Whatever it takes to defeat “the Left.”
— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 10:43 AM
Most of the leading modern conservative thinkers of the 1940s and 50s, both from the “traditionalist” and the libertarian camp, explicitly saw liberalism and communism as merely different manifestations of essentially the same threat - and the conservative movement existed to defeat that threat.
— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 10:47 AM
Is there a line self-regarding conservatives should not cross, even as Liberals gain power and influence, even as the “leftist” project of leveling “traditional” hierarchies proceeds? Unfortunately, a whole lot of “respectable” conservatives have answered that question with an emphatic “No!”
— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 10:58 AM
Conservative philosophy may have a limiting, restraining, moderating principle. But the conservative movement as a political project formed in the middle decades of the twentieth century never did. It was not only ideologically aligned with anti-democratic extremists, but often embraced them.
— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) October 5, 2024 at 11:02 AM
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