WorldNetDaily: Matt Lauer equates U.S. Founders with terrorists

WorldNetDaily: Matt Lauer equates U.S. Founders with terrorists, To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41396,, November 11, 2004

I considered changing the title to this blog, but I did not because I hoped some sense of outrage would draw you into the article and my comments about it. This article presents not mere folly and foolishness. It is profoundly diagnostic.

Matt Lauer, not usually known for his philosophical expertise on the non-philosophical Today Show, absolutely put his finger on the lesion most responsible for America's current decline. Lauer: "I'm just saying, but the insurgents [in Iraq] believe they're fighting for a cause as well. They don't believe any less than we believe. And yet -- " Lynne Cheney exposed him and rejoined him properly: "Well, but Matt, you're being awfully relativistic here." Later in the interview, she provided the proper context to rebut Matt.

Matt's comment reflects epistemological relativism, the fundamental lesion. "Epistemological" refers to matters of knowledge. "Epistemological relativism" is raw subjectivism. It means that truth is not objective, and your "truth" is just as good as my "truth." Afterall, this position holds, no one can know anything for sure. An example is that what is true for murdering anti-American Islamic jihadists is just as valid as ours whom they attack and kill. An outgrowth of this perspective is the leftist hatred for certainty. That is one of the major sources of Bush-hatred--Bush is certain, and all the lefties hate him for it, because it invalidates their subjective mental goo. {I hasten to add that I am not dealing with Bush's philosophy here--I disagree with most of it.}

Epistemological relativism comes from metaphysical relativism. "Metaphysical" refers to the ultimate foundations of all that exists--nothing is more fundamental, not even physics. The relativists express this as some form of "There are no absolutes," which they utter as an absolute.

Metaphysical and epistemological relativism lead to ethical relativism. You know this as Blue Nose-Blue Mind ethics found heavily in the intellectual popinjays in the Blue States. It comes out as refusal to hold moral certainty and to fight it wherever certain can be found, as with George W. Bush. You will hear that "What is right for you is not necessarily right for me or for anyone else." In short, this subjectivism says that anything goes. And that is how lefties look at morality.

These perspectives disavow reason. That leaves only one means of people dealing with each other, and that is by force. Thus, all of these relativistic lefties love governmental power--with total power as an ideal. Afterall, relativists see people as Freud's "ID". Only force can control people and their emotional appetites.

Now, I ask you. Does this describe in part the current status of society, particularly on the left?

Obviously, much more can be said about the foregoing, and the foregoing is insufficient for a total analysis of the current intellectual state of our culture.

Here is how Cheney "corrected" Lauer: "Well, but Matt, you're being awfully relativistic here. I mean, the insurgents are killing Iraqis by the hundreds, Iraqis by the thousands. It's not as though this is a matter between just 'on the one hand on the other hand.' We are on the side of freedom. We are on the side that I think that idea is so powerful and does give us wind at our back.""