miker:
"The reason they sympathize with Montressor is that they have
been taught that morality is simply a personal opinion, and
that making moral judgements is a prejudicial act best
avoided. Criminals become victims. Terrorist become freedom
fighters. By spoon-feeding them this thin gruel of postmodern
pablum, this is the impasse that academia have brought to
education."
I'm not so sure postmodernism is solely at fault here, since
this criticism long predates it. It has long been the
accusation that the religious right has thrown at the "moral
relativism" of "secular humanists" and/or liberals. In fact,
a response to it dates back several centuries, to Samuel
Johnson (which I first read as the title epigraph of a very
good Donald E Westlake book):
"If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his
hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our
primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We
should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards."
Mark
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