"PoMo" gives a philosophical basis for these actions. Your experience teaching it or working with it in Universities may not have taken it to that level, but that outlook, taught to students, provides the basis for toleration of evil, such as the terrorists, and creation of great evil. That is why you see such a hatred for it, from "pre-modernists" such as Christians, and "modernists," such as myself.
Good thing you went to SMU rather than the serious school south of there in Austin. ;-))
Neither Hitler nor Stalin, nor any despot that comes readily to mind, justified their actions by saying these justifications are the good, the true, and the beautiful because our group believes them to be so. Ask Cromwell. They justify them by resort to some transhistorical basis; God in certain textual forms (Cromwell); God (history) in certain textual forms (Stalin); and Hitler (whoops, I really don't know here--CB seems to have read Mein Kampf lately, perhaps she can help, but dollars to donuts it's a transhistorical justification.)
It's folk with more modest senses of right and wrong, with a sense of common humanity that needs to be persuaded not forced that are more likely to have some pomo in the blood.
But we've been here before, haven't we. Don't I recall a debate about something like this within the past month or so. So why are we doing this again? |
