September 26, 2004
" there is no objective truth -- neither side is right or wrong."
Ace of Spades points out this 2002 article, which gives us an interesting window into the minds of the people who bring you the news....
...After Dan Rather left, I spent some time with his producer, discussing her viewpoints of what was currently happening in Israel. After seeing the tone of her news segment, I was concerned. I began to question her about accuracy in reporting.You should read the article. One interesting thing is that this unnamed producer, who confidently opines here about the Palestinians, is totally ignorant of what's going on. The author is trying to explain to her what the Temple Mount is, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Golden Dome, and the Western Wall. Amazin'. Probably learned in college those clever and slippery Post-Modern ways to say it's OK to kill Jews, and hasn't had to rev-up her brain cells since.... Posted by John Weidner at September 26, 2004 05:13 PM | TrackBackHer answer was even more shocking than what I had already observed. "The thing is," she told me, "it is impossible to be objective in this situation. The fact is that there is no objective truth -- neither side is right or wrong."
"Wait a minute," I asked her. "When a Palestinian straps on a belt of dynamite lined with nails and walks into a pizza shop, blowing up innocent people, that wouldn't be objectively wrong?"
"Of course I would think that is wrong," she answered me. "But the Palestinians believe this is a legitimate form of warfare. And they would say the Israelis are doing the same to them by killing innocent civilians when they retaliate militarily. Who am I to say what is right or wrong? Who am I to say that the Palestinians are wrong in their beliefs?"
"But don't you think there's a difference between a person blowing himself up in a restaurant, and a military that responds by searching for and killing terrorists. Granted that innocent civilians are killed in both circumstances -- but in one situation the innocents are targeted, and in the other situation they are regrettably caught in the line of fire?"
"Well, that's a very Western way of looking at things. You see I'm Christian and American. I see things the way you do as an Israeli -- we have the same moral framework. But the Arabs view things differently, and who's to say that we're right and they're wrong?"....
This person has merely become an efficient parrot for the current wisdom that rules the intellectual "elite," which is that the idea that humanity is governed by the same absolute moral standards no matter what their country of origin or their income is has been replaced by the idea that the only thing that matters is political and economic power, and that there is an inverse relationship between moral rightness* and the amount of political and economic power you have. Therefore when a rich, economically and politically powerful nation like the US takes action against an enemy, it is looked at skeptically and criticized and often condemned; but when perceived "powerless" oppressed people do something that would once have been considered beyond the pale -- such as blowing up unsuspecting civilians out doing their grocery shopping -- they are now given all sorts of sanction based on their supposed lack of political and economic power. Never mind that this attitude is less and less attached to reality: in truth Yasser Arafat has a great deal of money, and plenty of political power, and it might also be said that someone wired with explosives certainly has just about every advantage over an infant in a carriage.
*or righteousness, goodness, whatever -- I am a bit muddled today so I can't think of the right term.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at September 27, 2004 09:39 AM
