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IN TERRORISM’S WAKE: COMMUNITY FORUM ON
MORAL RELATIVISM AND THE CONFLICT OF VALUES

Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor, Barnard Hall, 6:15-8:15 p.m.
28 January 2002

Taylor Carman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Barnard College, Introductory Remarks

Katalin Makkai, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Barnard College, "Conversation and Moral Encounter"

Stephanie Beardman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Barnard College, "Tolerance and Moral Relativism"

Alexander Cooley, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, "Principles and Ethics in International Relations After September 11th"

Taylor Carman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Barnard College, "Pluralism, Hypocrisy, and the ‘War on Terror’"

Open discussion

Taylor Carman, Introductory remarks

It has been less than five months since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, but somehow it seems like much longer than that. This is probably because, as many people have remarked, those terrible events changed our world and our consciousness in such profound ways. The feeling of a momentous shift in our collective self-understanding is unmistakable and seems to grow more evident in retrospect, as time passes.

But what has changed, and what hasn’t? On October 1st then Mayor Giuliani addressed the United Nations General Assembly and announced, "The era of moral relativism between those who practice or condone terrorism, and those nations who stand up against it, must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion and debate." What did he mean? Had we until then been living in an era of moral relativism? If so, is the untenability or perniciousness of relativism any more obvious now, in the wake of those atrocities, than it was before? And do we in fact have a clear understanding of which nations "practice or condone terrorism" and which "stand up against it"?

Giuliani continued, "On one side is democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human life; on the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions, and mass murder. We’re right and they’re wrong. It’s as simple as that." With regard to the perpetrators of the atrocities of September 11, the point was self-evident: they were wrong. But the "they" standing over against the "we" was clearly not restricted to the few fanatics and criminals responsible for those massacres. How far, then, does the "they" (who are wrong) extend, and at what point does it begin to blur into the "we" (who are right)? It is common knowledge that since World War II the United States and many of its closest allies around the world have routinely committed acts of "tyranny, arbitrary executions, and mass murder," to use Giuliani’s words. Have we in fact renounced and condemned all acts of criminal violence on the international scene, wherever they occur? Clearly not.

Of course, Giuliani’s reference to "us and them" served another, subtler purpose. In addition to drawing a sharp distinction between the forces of good and the forces of evil, it also in effect placed anyone unwilling to draw such a sharp distinction between good and evil on the side of evil. In this he was echoing what President Bush had already announced to the world in his address to Congress on September 20: "Either you are with us, or you’re with the terrorists." For Giuliani, as for moralistic pundits like William Bennett, Lynne Cheney, and Irving Kristol, anyone who would resist drawing such easy moral distinctions and such sharp battle lines is a "relativist." In popular discourse, that is, "relativism" means an unwillingness to recognize salient moral differences, a refusal to call good "good" and evil "evil," a collapse of moral courage and conviction, which is dangerous to society, and in effect evil. Such moral ambiguity, such unprincipled equivocation, so the logic goes, is complicitous with, thus no less reprehensible than, tyranny or murder itself.

But what is relativism? Who is a relativist and who is not? How do current anxieties about relativism relate to worries philosophers have had about it for the last 2,400 years, at least Plato confronted it openly in such characters as Callicles and Thrasymachus? What principles, if any, are now in effect in our practices and policies, and to what effect? A few of our colleagues from the Philosophy and Political Science Departments are here today to talk about these questions — perhaps to answer them, but also just to help us begin to articulate them in the right ways. Katalin Makkai and Stephanie Beardman will talk relativism itself: what it is, who believes it, or asserts it, and why, and what its consequences may be. Alex Cooley will then talk about ethics and moral principles in international relations since September 11. I will then say something about what I take to be the political uses and abuses of the language of relativism, and how I think they ought to be understood. Finally, I hope there will be plenty of discussion from the floor, especially from students. In this conversation today, as much as possible, we want to talk with you, not at you.

Katalin Makkai, "Conversation and Moral Encounter"

Last semester, I taught a course in moral philosophy. Though the course was generally oriented towards particular classic texts and schools of thought, it started off with a couple of meetings devoted to the topic of moral relativism. The first class on moral relativism fell on September 10th. We didn’t meet again that week and had the second class on moral relativism the following week.

At that first meeting, quite a few members of the class voiced a belief in moral relativism, and others thought that they could see where its appeal lay. Now the reading that we had done for this class was directed towards critiquing moral relativism by exposing various kinds of problems internal to the very idea of moral relativism. (Problems of implausibility, of internal inconsistency, and so on.) But such critiques are apt to seem merely academic unless you go on to ask another kind of question: What is attractive about the idea of moral relativism? Why does one feel its pull, its draw, if one does? — and, as I said, many of us in the room did.

And the kind of motivation that I most wanted to bring out was what you might call a desire to avoid moralism, that is being moralistic. Repelled by the thought of manifesting arrogance, parochialism, naïveté, self-righteousness, prejudice, or xenophobia in one’s moral judgments, there is a kind of natural tendency these days to turn to the notion of moral relativism. So that the phrase "moral relativism" — as in the self-declaration, "I am a moral relativist" — is used as a kind of shorthand for a commitment to refusing moralism — for refusing the vices of arrogance and parochialism — and for a corresponding commitment to being broad-minded, tolerant, sensitive, imaginative, and respectful in one’s moral judgments.

Having exposed this kind of motivation, I then wanted us, in the class, to ask ourselves what moral relativism is supposed to be, and most importantly whether it satisfies these kinds of motivations. Is it by espousing moral relativism that you avoid arrogance and parochialism in your moral views of the world?

The answer, I think, is no. So in the few minutes that I have left I want to do two things: explain why I think that it is precisely not through moral relativism that you avoid moralism, and suggest what that means about the threat of moralism and the commitment to avoiding it.

But before going on, I want to say upfront that while I’m doing something like bringing into question the notion of moral relativism, I’m not sympathetic to the remark about moral relativism that you heard in Taylor Carman’s quote from Giuliani’s address or similar sorts of remarks that have been made in the past months. The main reason for this is that it seems to me that those who are being singled out under the charge of moral relativism are in fact simply those who condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon while at the same time recognizing that there is a need for subtle and productive analyses that will help us to understand what happened and why, and what a peaceful and just future calls for — analyses more subtle and productive than, for example, slogans that offer "evil" as an exhaustive explanation for action (or as a replacement for an explanation). There is nothing relativistic about that. That’s just the position of someone whose nonrelativistic moral judgments are accompanied by an acknowledgment of the complexity of the situation and the importance of not turning away from that complexity in favour of the comfort that quick slogans and simplistic, and sometimes disingenuous, distinctions provide. Which is to say that entered as a charge, moral relativism is a red herring, and a worrisome one at that.

What is moral relativism supposed to be? There’s lots of room for philosophical distinctions here, but I want to focus quickly on the conception of it that I think is most intuitive. Moral relativism amounts to a claim about morality. It says that any moral judgment is relative to some particular moral framework or point of view, that is, is made from within a moral point of view, where different moral points of view are incommensurable: there is no independent or absolute moral basis for choosing between them. (Cultural relativism is just one form of this — where different fundamental points of view are culturally identified; and that raises all sorts of difficult questions about what amounts to a culture in the first place and how cultures are distinguished. I won’t say more about that now.)

This little clause about the fundamental frameworks or points of view being incommensurable is really important. Because without that all that so-called moral relativism would be saying is that people have different points of view and their judgments reflect those points of view. And that’s just a truism. A nonrelativist would be happy to assent to that too. It’s only with the addition of the idea that there is no independent standard for assessing points of view that you get something beyond that truism, something that merits the name of moral relativism.

What does this mean about the stance that the moral relativist takes towards her own and others' judgments? It means that to be a moral relativist I would have to meet moral judgment that is issued from within a different framework or point of view with nothing more than a demurral on the order of: "Well, thatís your view." A gesture that is a kind of surreal radicalization of refined society's mannered veneer. And to be a moral relativist I would have to implicitly append to all of my own judgments the caveat, "but that's just my own view; think of it what you like." The effect of this stance is that it casts moral sensibility as having the logical status of something like a matter of mere taste.

But to portray the situation of morality in this way is to legislate away the very possibility of genuine moral conversation and moral encounter between different points of view. Instead of conversation and encounter there is just the separated venting of differing tastes. And it is exactly because moral relativism legislates away this possibility that there is no room in its picture for the attitudes of broad-mindedness that I mentioned as ostensibly driving the turn to moral relativism in the first place.

And it is exactly because moral relativism legislates away this possibility that there is no room in its picture for the attitudes of broad-mindedness that I mentioned as ostensibly driving the turn to moral relativism in the first place.

Why not? Well, what, after all, is it to be broad-minded, to not be arrogant or parochial in one’s moral thinking? For one thing, it is to allow that conversation and encounter with another might lead you to refine or to change or to give up your standing sense of things, either because it has introduced you to new thoughts that you had not come across before, or because in finding yourself unable to make your point you are led to wonder whether you are as clear about it or as convinced of it as you had thought — and so on. That’s not the same as hedging all your judgments. It’s a matter of whether or not you imagine that exchange and the reflection it inspires can teach you something.

In short, then, it is nonrelativism that makes room for the possibility of broad-mindedness.

Of course the irony of all this is that it turns out that the posture of the moral relativist expresses its own troubling form of arrogance and parochialism. Because, to put the point metaphorically, moral relativism seals us off from others. As I’ve been sketching out, the moral relativist must view herself as mired in her point of view, separated from other possible points of view that are forever doomed to remain alien.

I want to close today by offering a kind of diagnosis of the turn towards the banner of moral relativism when it is driven by a desire to avoid moralism. I don’t think that this turn is just a mistake, that it represents simply a failure to understand the term "moral relativism." I think that the matter lies deeper. Let me read a little exchange in Plato’s Euthypro, a passage from a dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro:

Socrates: But what kind of disagreement, my friend, causes hatred and anger? Let us look at the matter thus. If you and I were to disagree as to whether one number were more than another, would that make us angry and enemies? Should we not settle such a dispute at once by counting?

Euthyphro: Of course.

Socrates: And if we were to disagree as to the relative size of two things, we should measure them and put an end to the disagreement at once, should we not?

Euthyphro: Yes.

Socrates: And should we not settle a question about the relative weight of two things by weighing them?

Euthyphro: Of course.

Socrates: Then what is the question which would make us angry and enemies if we disagreed about it, and could not come to a settlement? Perhaps you have not an answer ready; but listen to mine. Is it not the question of the just and unjust, of the honorable and the dishonorable, of the good and the bad? Is it not questions about these matters which make you and me and everyone else quarrel, when we do quarrel, if we differ about them and can reach no satisfactory agreement?

Socrates’ point is not that morality is relativistic. Rather, it is that entering moral judgment and engaging in moral conversation are, or can be, fraught matters. They involve particular kinds of risks and burdens — as all passionate exchange involves risks and burdens. Risks of provoking emotion, anger in particular, and of allowing anger or confusion to cloud one’s vision. Risks of succumbing to, and of letting oneself resort to, modes of persuasion that do violence in one way or another — through bullying, manipulation, or propaganda. Risks, especially, of moralizing — arrogance and parochialism and the rest. These risks, and the responsibilities that they usher in, are internal to the conditions of ordinary moral judgment and conversation. And the temptation to take on the mantle of moral relativism comes, I’m suggesting, in part from anxiety about these risks. Anxiety about the fact that there is no protecting against these risks once and for all leads us to transform this fact into a theoretical problem about the absence of an independent standard — the absence of an absolute point of view, a view from nowhere — in morality. Thus do philosophical intellectualizations sometimes serve as escapes from the pressures of ordinary life.

Stephanie Beardman, "Tolerance and Moral Relativism"

Guliani and Bush and many figures in the media have linked the condemnation of evil with the condemnation of relativism. Of course these people know that the planners of the September 11th attacks are not themselves relativists. Far from it. In fact, the backbone of Al Qaeda, as with the Taliban regime, is a religious fundamentalism which, ironically, sees America and its government as espousing the most dangerous and vile forms of moral relativism. They share the "if you’re not for us you’re against us" mentality of the Bush administration. Be that as it may, when American leaders warn us not to slip into moral relativism, they mean that we should stay steadfast in our support of America’s response to the attacks. They seem to see any serious reflection, criticism, and attempts to understand the motivations of those who hate us, as an expression of moral relativism. As a form of propaganda, this seems to be working. But as a matter of fact, the propaganda is based on a confusion. The confusion is allowed such a large voice in the media because it persists in the minds of many Americans. Relativism, it is thought, is necessary for tolerance and respect of others’ values. And, it is thought, this is not a time for tolerance. But, in fact, relativism does not guarantee tolerance, and tolerance does not require relativism, as Katalin Makkai explained.

According to one formulation of ethical relativism, whether a person’s actions are right or wrong is determined by the ethical standards of that person’s society. Regardless of whether this is correct or incorrect, nothing follows from it about whether we should tolerate or condone or allow these actions, or about whether we can judge them.

The central pieces of evidence for moral relativism are that different people have different values, and that there often seems no way to reconcile these: they are, as it were, incommensurable. So the view would be significantly undermined by the discovery that different people’s values are actually not incommensurable, or that there is a plurality of universal goods. One of the central motivations for the truth of moral realism, on the other hand, is the belief that moral judgments are subject to rational criticism. That is, when we have moral disagreements, we seem to be arguing about the truth of some value judgment. We don’t think we are simply saying, I have my values and you have yours, and neither one is better than the other. We actually think that there is a fact of the matter about which values matter. If we were to say that our moral disagreements were just like disagreements about taste, say, whether one should like strawberry or chocolate ice cream, then we would essentially be calling an end to the need to justify our views.

There are, however, two different forms of realism: dogmatic and nondogmatic. The difference between these has to do with one’s epistemic frame of mind: with whether one is certain one knows the truth, and whether one is responsive to reasons for believing what one believes. Being a relativist would do a good job of putting you outside of the pale of rational discourse, of the need to offer justifying reasons for your views. But being a dogmatic realist would accomplish the same end.

You can comfortably be a dogmatic realist and silence all rational criticism if you think you have special, infallible, access to moral truths. And this is in fact the position adopted by religious fundamentalists, including the religious right in this country. This particular combination of beliefs is common to all extremisms. To argue against them is not to espouse relativism — quite the contrary, it is to think that they have the wrong values, or do not properly appreciate the right means to their valuable ends, and to think either of these things is to take up a realist stance of another sort. "Nondogmatic thinking" does not entail relativism. Just think about science: a realist about physics is not a dogmatist; she doesn’t assume she knows the final answer, but neither does she refuse to think that certain scientific claims are justified and true.

Now, you may ask, am I saying that it’s an open question whether the attacks of September 11 were morally wrong? Not at all. To be a nondogmatist is to think that there are reasons for one’s beliefs. And I do think the moral evidence for settling that question is overwhelming. But there are other questions — such as what is the proper response to the attacks (both morally and prudentially speaking), or whether state terrorism is morally permissible — that are not similarly settled: ongoing discussion is still required, because reasonable people can and do disagree about the answer.

I want to speak about what is so threatening to the dogmatist (and what is thought to be the heart of moral relativism): the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes, to gain an understanding from their point of view.

The first thing to note is that admitting that there are different points of view does not itself commit one to any form of relativism. Just think: it may be that we share exactly the same values, say, to avoid insensitivity (or to be respectful), but that I cannot see that I have been disrespectful to you without taking into consideration your point of view, how my behavior is perceived by you. As a respectful person, of course, I will care to know how you see things. And since I value being respectful, I will not think that your point of view threatens the objectivity or truth of my value — indeed, seeing things from your point of view will in part constitute my value.

Moreover, those who want to understand the evildoers might be seeking explanations that might help in combating the evil. But sometimes it is hard for hardliners to see that explanation does not constitute justification. Others might not want to demonize other people because they think that that can lead to an escalation of violence that will ultimately be harmful to us. Neither of these attitudes involves excusing or apologizing for the wrongdoers.

This is the second important point: understanding does not involve endorsement. One doesn’t condone an act simply by describing it, or by explaining what led to its occurrence. It is only the morally and intellectually weak, as well as the thugs, who feel threatened by this. Seeing the other’s point of view may sometimes undermine one’s moral certainty. The complexities may seem too great and confusion may ensue. But to avoid this risk by steadfastly refusing to understand is to risk doing something that is quite wrong by one’s own standards. It is to prefer ignorance for fear of losing one’s resolve. It is to lack the moral courage to act in the face of the truths of enormous complexity. If one has the courage of one’s convictions, one is not afraid to listen.

Alexander Cooley, "Principles and Ethics in International Relations After September 11th"

The events of September 11 have underscored the "global" dimensions of international politics. > Familiar theories of international relations, however, for example political realism and liberal cosmopolitanism, cannot capture those nuances. Ironically, while the current Bush administration came into office in 2000 with a resolutely realist agenda, defending its foreign policy positions solely in terms of their serving our own national interests, after September 11 Bush immediately began appealing to universal liberal principles in defense of the war on terrorism. But neither realism nor cosmopolitanism sheds light on the political conflicts in Afghanistan. For if any regime deserved to be overthrown, it was the Taliban, a medieval theocracy that routinely executed women and homosexuals in a soccer stadium given to it as a gift from the international community. Condemning the American war solely on the grounds that it violated Afghanistan’s national sovereignty is surely untenable. The globalized world in which we now live instead presents us with three challenges that we must confront if we are to build an architecture for more ethical international action: (1) codifying a set of procedures that will delineate when international intervention is and is not justified; (2) moving U.S. foreign policy from unilateralism to multilateralism; and (3) collectively delegitimizing the term "terrorism" so that it is not used to justify political repression with international impunity.

Taylor Carman, "Pluralism, Hypocrisy, and the ‘War on Terror’"

I have two things to say today. The first is a philosophical point about relativism and universalism. The second is a political, or perhaps metapolitical, observation concerning the sometimes confused, sometimes cynical, distortion of words like "relativism" and "terrorism" in popular discourse.

My philosophical point is that what might at first blush look like a choice between relativism and universalism is really a false choice. The truth that relativism approximates, but crucially misses, is that there is not just one good, as Platonism and monotheism would have us believe, but many. What this means is not just that many things are good, which is trivial. For many different particulars can be good precisely by falling under a single general concept of the good, or fitting into one overarching divine plan. In that case, though many things are good, the good remains unified and harmonious. The point is not just that the good encompasses many particulars, but that there are multiple competing, conflicting, and incompatible categories of goodness, or conceptions of the good, so that not all good things can be brought together in a single consistent scheme. As philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire have argued, traditions, institutions, preferences, and practices can vary widely, and even repel and exclude one another like oil and water, and yet each may be good in unique and incomparable ways. No one could be a Homeric hero and a Christian martyr at the same time, just as medieval values like humility and chastity were inherently at odds with modern notions of the singularity of character and the ideal of self-realization. I think people are often drawn to relativism because it seems to recognize this profound plurality and diversity of different, often irreconcilable forms of goodness.

But those peaks in the ethical terrain are surrounded, as it were, by a common perimeter of universally acknowledged evils: pain, imprisonment, disease, starvation, death. These are the same in every culture, for all people, at all times. They are culturally universal and in this sense absolute. So, people are understandably drawn to universalism because it seems to recognize this, our common humanity, our shared frailty and vulnerability in the face of unconditional horrors. This is the source of the appeal of universalism, but it also marks the limits of its plausibility. For while nature speaks loud and clear about the evils we must avoid and condemn, it falls silent when it comes to which positive goods we ought to promote and pursue. The fallacy of universalism, then, is to infer the unity of the good from the unity of evil, while the fallacy of relativism is, conversely, to infer the perspective-dependence, or even the arbitrariness, of all value judgments from the irreducible plurality of the good. Both inferences are mistaken and ought to be resisted. We should be universalists about the bad, pluralists about the good.

Now for my metapolitical point. Not long after September 11, Noam Chomsky remarked that the death toll at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may be roughly comparable to the number of deaths caused by the American cruise missile attack Bill Clinton ordered on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, on 20 August 1998. The comparison drew cries of indignation from critics on all sides of the political spectrum, in spite of the fact that what Chomsky said was almost certainly true. Clinton destroyed the factory on the false, indeed groundless, speculation that it might be involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons. In fact the plant was responsible for producing 50% of all human and animal medicines and 90% of all major pharmaceutical products in Sudan, the largest country in Africa (in area, not population). Although the ultimate effects of the attack are still hard to determine, the German Ambassador to Sudan at the time, Werner Daum, has estimated that the destruction of the plant probably resulted in the death of "several tens of thousands" of people.

Now one obvious objection to Chomsky’s comparison of Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan with the terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania is the familiar point — the point Kant placed at the center of his moral theory — that the moral rightness or wrongness of an act is a matter not of its effects, but of the intentions motivating it. What is good is not a good result, but a good will. In ordering the missile attack in Sudan, Clinton presumably did not intend to cause the deaths of thousands of people, though in effect he did. The highjackers on September 11, by contrast, were evidently trying to murder thousands of people, and they did.

I think that difference is an important one, and I believe it ought to prevent us from simply equating one horrendous act with others that have similar effects. Intentions make a difference. But I also think we tend to put more moral weight on our own intentions than on the intentions of others. The bombing of the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was not murder, but neither was it just an innocent mistake. It exhibited, at best, a cynical disregard for human life. Suppose one of our enemies launched a missile strike on one of our own vital and irreplaceable sources of medicine, thinking it was a military installation, causing thousands of deaths, and then excused the act by saying it was a mistake. Obviously, we would condemn the attack as a barbaric act of international terrorism, and the moral difference between it and murder, while perfectly real, would hardly quell our outrage. So, while I think the difference between premeditated murder and a mere callous disregard for human life is a real and important moral difference, I also suspect that we are far more likely to regard motivation as morally exculpating for our own actions than for the actions of others. But the difference remains, and I think Chomsky could have been clearer in acknowledging that point.

But what I think offended people about Chomsky’s comparison was not just the particular abstraction from the motives behind the two incidents, but his more general abstraction from context and detail. For that abstraction seemed to some to invite or imply a kind of moral equivalence between what are in truth separate and incommensurable horrors. And this is what drives the popular image, though not the philosophical conception, of the moral relativist. Relativists — or rather those who get called relativists — seem to be drawing our attention away from some putative evils in order to minimize or even excuse them by equating them with other evils, and this looks like a cynical distraction, indeed a failure to look evil in the eye and call it by its name.

Now Chomsky’s comparison would have been utterly cruel and irrelevant if its purpose had been to draw sympathy away from the victims of September 11. But that was clearly not its purpose. His point was rather to reveal the hypocrisy fueling the moral condemnations that the government and the media are currently enlisting in the service of the so-called "war on terrorism." For on most plausible definitions of "terrorism" — certainly on any definition that comes close to capturing the term’s de facto use — the missile attack on the Sudan, the CIA’s failed attempt to assassinate Sheik Fadlallah with a car bomb parked outside a mosque in Beirut in 1985, which missed the Sheik but killed 83 civilians, Reagan’s funding and training of the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, and a whole host of other operations conducted by America and its allies in recent decades count as acts of terrorism.

But in fact almost no one even tries to apply the concept of terrorism in an objective, even-handed way. "Terrorism" means their violence, not ours. People and governments use the term to describe forms of political violence they disapprove of. They have a different vocabulary to describe their own acts of terror: "resistance," "liberation struggle," "police action," "special operations," and of course "counterterrorism." Nor do terrorist organization ever refer to themselves terrorist organizations: they are instead "liberation organizations," "revolutionary councils," "resistance movements," "worker’s parties," "volunteer forces," "patriotic fronts," "republican armies." Nor is there any international consensus concerning the definition of the word "terrorism." As Judge Rosalyn Higgins of the International Court of Justice in the Hague points out, the word is "a term of convenience" with "no legal significance." Indeed, governments around the world, above all the United States and Israel, actively resist attempts to define the term, in part owing to its inherent ambiguity, but also in part because any plausible definition would apply to too much of what they do, or would include or exclude too much of the violence they either support or repress. Moreover, the concept of terrorism affords no real insight into actual instances of political violence, but only the illusion of insight. It sheds no light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the struggle for independence in Kashmir, for example, since in such cases there is terror and terrorizing on both sides of the struggle.

Which brings me back to my point about the backwardness of prevailing rhetoric about relativism and terrorism. It would be absurd to call Chomsky a relativist, and yet the attribution would be perversely consistent with the way the label is exploited in conservative discourse. If you are too willing to see more than one side of an issue, you are a relativist. If you are able to step out of prevailing commonsense prejudices and criticize your own government and your own institutions, you are a relativist. The truth, of course, is that what is genuinely relativistic is not objective comparisons like Chomsky’s, but subjective, propagandistic uses of language designed to mislead public opinion, for example the claim of the government and the media — asserted with a straight face, with no hint of irony — that the United States is currently waging a war on terrorism. Let’s not mistake propaganda for serious and responsible discourse. The Nazis were fighting terrorism during the Occupation of France in the early 1940s. South Africa was fighting terrorism when it imprisoned Nelson Mandela in 1962. Calling someone a terrorist is like calling someone a scoundrel, and declaring war on terrorism is like announcing that we’re going to start arresting scoundrels. It’s a dangerous piece of rhetoric, and we will do well in the coming months to watch closely and think carefully about the policies and practices that rhetoric is invoked to justify.

For information and transcripts from past community forums in the wake of September 11th, click here.