Massachusetts News 
By Paul Moreno 

July 2 -- Relativism has become the dominant point of view of those who control American institutions. 

A poll by Boston's Christian Science Monitor and a new book by a Boston University sociologist show this tendency. 

What Public Opinon Says 

The Christian Science Monitor poll showed that most Americans think that our moral standards are falling and that we ought to strengthen religion and the family. 

This is one of a number of curious indications of the state of “public opinion.”  A clear majority of Americans say that abortion is wrong, but do not support political efforts to outlaw it.  Most Americans say that they oppose racial preferences, but do not want to end "affirmative action" programs.  Many who believe that President Clinton committed perjury do not want him to be punished for it. 

Similarly, though Americans tell pollsters that we need stronger churches and families, they don’t support policies that would do so.  They fear and reject political appeals based on morality, religion and family values. 

One answer to this anomaly may be that Americans do not grasp the connections between their beliefs and particular policies.  So they do want some abortions, like gruesome partial-birth ones, outlawed, and they do want to “mend” preferential policies, and they do want the president to be “censured.”  And so interest groups are able to mollify public opinion by explaining that partial-birth abortion is a “rarely used” procedure, or that "affirmative action" differs from quotas and preferences, or that Congress can censure the president. 

Another possibility is that Americans do not trust politicians who use the language of morality, religion and family.  American voters may believe in all of these things, but may not think that elected officials are sincere or understand these terms in the way they do. 

There is probably some truth to both of these explanations, but they are by-products of a deeper phenomenon:  The American people no longer understand what “morality” means.   This is the lesson drawn from a book by a Boston University sociologist, Alan Wolfe, in his latest book, One Nation After All. 

One (Relativist) Nation After All 

Wolfe’s book is a portrait of the American middle class, based on in-depth interviews designed to discover what Americans think about vital public issues. 

The most salient trait among late twentieth century Americans is “nonjudgmentalism,” Wolfe discovered.  Americans will not judge because they do not accept a standard to judge by.  But in giving up judgment they must give up morality, for morality cannot exist without judgment.  In the “culture war” between traditionalists, who base their political and moral positions on a transcendent, absolute standard of right and wrong, and progressives, who believe that truth and morals are personal, subjective, contingent and relative, the progressives have prevailed. 

Wolfe describes American religion as “quiet faith.”  The people he interviewed believe in God, but not in His commandments.  Putting inclusion, tolerance and acceptance above all, Wolfe says, “middle-class Americans redefine religion to make it more suited to their tastes.”  It is difficult to see this “quiet faith” as other than the loss of God as an absolute lawgiver and source of morals.  “I think everyone inside has their own persona of God,” said one of the people he interviewed.  The hollowness of this Christianity-lite was captured sixty years ago by theologian H. Richard Niebuhr.  He described, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into His kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.”  This is the position among “progressives” in most American churches. 

Applying their “quiet faith” to society, when Americans say “family,” they can mean many things.  “On few other issues in America has public opinion experienced so profound a shift over so short a time as over the acceptance of new family forms,” Wolfe tells us.  Americans do not believe that families should have any power over the individuals who compose them.  “Middle class Americans, for all their uncertainty about the family, are nonetheless fairly certain about what moral principle should guide it,” Wolfe says.  “Families should be organized to fit the needs of the individuals who compose them, rather than fitting the needs of individuals to some preestablished family structure.”  As with so many things, Americans do not want to choose, for choosing requires judging.  They want the benefits of community without giving up any of the individualism that erodes it.  They want the romance without the heartache. 

Other American character traits show the same pattern of moral deterioration.  Wolfe’s description of “mature patriotism” suggests a favorable sentiment toward one’s country, but not to the point of sacrificing or fighting for it.  “Ideas should never be taken so seriously that they lead people to uncivil, let alone violent, courses of action,” is the general rule.  As with all of their opinions on right and wrong, right is never absolute enough to impose on others, and wrong is never wrong enough to prohibit.  Their patriotism is so conditional and limited as to be unrecognizable.  The “ordinary duties” that Wolfe says Americans respect are similarly hollowed-out. 

So when Americans talk about morality, they simply do not know what they are talking about.  “In complete contrast to Immanuel Kant, middle-class Americans develop their moral philosophy anecdotally,” Wolfe says, which means they have no moral philosophy at all.  “Morality” is by its very nature objective and binding, not subjective and optional.  There is no such thing as your or my morality; there is only morality.  The people he interviewed reject the idea “that morality is a duty commanded by a will that lies beyond immediate experience and interpretation.”  One of them says, “Values [an inherently relativistic term] are something you learn through induction.”  Induction, a chimera even in natural science, is if possible even more inapplicable to moral philosophy. 

Wolfe calls the American moral philosophy “morality writ small,” but this is a euphemism for plain old moral relativism.  “Reluctant to impose their values on others, they are committed to tolerance to such an extent that they have either given up on finding timeless morality or would be unwilling to bring its principles to earth if, by chance, they came across it,” he says. 

What's It Mean? 

So Americans can tell Christian Science Monitor pollsters that the country needs higher moral standards—provided I can choose the morals that suit me.  They can say the country needs more religion—understood as worship of a God of my own imagination who makes no demands on me.  They can say that families should be stronger—so long as they’re never so strong as to stop anyone from doing whatever he pleases. 

Individualism, of course, is an important American trait, a large part of what has made America and Western civilization great.  But it clearly has gotten out of hand in late twentieth century America.  The Americans who answered the Christian Science Monitor’s poll (like the Americans whom Wolfe interviewed) seem to sense of this, but they will need to recover a proper understanding of morality in order to do anything about it. 
   

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