Moral Relativism

By Ben Cohen

Andrew Sullivan writes on his political evolution in regards to foreign policy:

My own loathing of theocracy - because of my respect for both politics

and religion - is unabated. I am fully aware of the distinction between

Israel's civil society and Hamas'. But simply reiterating these

differences and holding that mere expression of them in military terms

will be enough to win this war seems foolish to me. That much I have

learned. You could, I suppose, call this a descent into relativism and

nihilism, and I certainly see the reason to be vigilant against that.

But I would prefer to think of my adjustment as maturity, as long as it

too never becomes complacent or impervious to new facts.

Sullivan's transformation from strict conservative/libertarian to a more pliable mindset has been interesting to watch over the years. It took a gigantic bloodbath in Iraq for him to understand that wars of good vs evil are never what they seem, and a financial meltdown of epic proportions to finally comprehend the limits of free market capitalism. I'm not going to heap praise on him for his new found intelligence (he supported Bush in 2000, and helped sell the war in 2003), but it's a sign that our political classes can acknowledge their failures. Sullivan's evolution came a little too late, but it came nevertheless. America, it seems, is following in his footsteps and finally acknowledging the horrors of the Bush Administration. Change, however slowly, is coming to America, and only because the past has proven so awful. As Churchill once remarked '"America can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities."