During the presidential campaign, during political arguments, and during religious
disagreement, including those within the Church, this ad hominem seems to be
the ultimate card: Call your opponent “radical.” Closely followed by its synonym
“extremist,” this bit of name-calling can used nominally or adjectively to equal
advantage in dismissing the opponent and/or his argument. Its use has become so
widespread, so acceptable, that it’s never called into question, never recognized as
the ad hominem fallacy that it is.
Why is this so? Because the universally acceptable creed is relativism. It’s relativism
that’s really at work when we speak of “tolerant,” which is now used as an antonym
of “radical.” Both terms should be removed from the lexicon of public discourse
because both have lost their semantic value. (In the absence of any absolute, non-
absolute has no meaning.)
The Boston bombers have been referred to countless times as having been
“radicalized.” That means they ceased to be relativistic in their faith. Bad. We don’t
mind people being religious, as long as they don’t take their religion seriously
(radically), as long as they keep it confined to their private lives, their churches,
synagogues, or mosques, and inside their own homes. We want religious people
to put secular values ahead of religious ones. We want them to recognize our god
(the state, euphemistically called “society” lest we be recognized as totalitarian)
first. We want them to castigate those members of their faith who threaten by word
or deed to get out of line by actually living according to the tenets of their faith or
encouraging others to do so.
But there is something in every human being that longs for authenticity, for
objective truth. State/society/community can’t answer that longing. In some people
the hunger for something greater than themselves becomes so strong that they
endure incredible suffering and martyrdom; they become saints or heroes. Or
terrorists. They become radicalized.
I’m as horrified as everyone else by the Boston bombings, but I think the secular
political and sociological analyses of the bombers’ actions are superficial and facile.
It has nothing to do with politics or sociology. In denying the reality of the Absolute
a priori, such analyses can’t even approach an understanding—indeed, they ARE the
problem. The “enemy” is not America or Israel, or any country; it’s not Christians
or Jews, or any religion. These are actually only trees, and it’s the forest that is the
enemy. And that forest is collective, inclusive, tolerant “society.”
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