What road got us here?

A friend of fifty-three years (we were high school classmates, he went on to become a judge, now retired) wrote me last night (from California):

Read the October 12, 2009 edition of The Los Angeles Times ["Fired commissioner in Texas execution inquiry says governor's aides pressured him": "The panel is looking into disputed arson forensics that convicted Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in 2004"], page A-11.
    For the political crowd that pushes execution as good politics, science means nothing and they will stop at nothing to give it their own spin. Governor Perry is both trying to keep the truth from being published and spinning the denial with the same sort of dismal rhetoric and junk science that led to Willingham's execution in the first place. The trouble is that the country is full of people who don't want the truth. "There is no global warming or if there is it's a cyclical thing and not the result of human activity." "There is no credible evidence of evolution; evolution has been guided by divine intelligence." "Obama does not meet the constitutional requirements of being a naturally born American." Etc., etc.
    When it became intellectually fashionable to believe that all truth was the product of culture and that therefore there was no absolute truth, we got started down this path. Is there any turning back?
    Everyone I talk with agrees it's crazy, yet the public remains apathetic and caught up in celebrity baloney or worse yet, exhibitionism through Facebook, YouTube, etc.
    In the same vein, we learned today that Michael Pollan (the movie "Food Inc.") was prevented from speaking at Cal Poly [California Polytechnic Institute, in San Luis Obispo] because the Harris Ranch Beef Company threatened to withdraw a $150,000 grant unless some allegedly disinterested scientists (food experts hired by the company, no doubt) would also be allowed to present countervailing views at the same forum.

I agree with my friend on where we are now, but was cultural relativity the road that got us here? The vehement certitude with which people argue their positions sounds anything but relativist. When Texas Governor Rick Perry characterizes as "latter-day supposed experts" the scientists attempting to investigate the true nature of the fire that killed Willingham's children (for which he was convicted of murder and executed a dozen years later), he gives the impression of believing absolutely that they (rather than he) are charlatans.
    Those who utter the howling falsehoods quoted by my friend ("...no global warming or...not the result of human activity," "...no credible evidence of evolution...," "Obama...not...a naturally born American") utter them as absolutely true. Ironic if this came about because of cultural relativism. It seems rather the opposite, but with little more than raised voices and red faces to argue for a babble of preposterous absolute claims.
    I'm not up on the literature of cultural relativism, but I did read two classic, influential books that argued against relativism and for objective truth. They are William F. Buckley, Jr's God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom (1951) and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987).
    I don't know how we got here, but I don't think it was by the road of cultural relativism...unless what we're seeing is a reaction to (even a backlash against) cultural relativism. That would tend to explain the raised voices and red faces, I think. "My position isn't just culturally relatively true, it's absolutely true. So there, and screw you into the bargain!"
    But loudness and redness won't gain anyone admittance to Buckley's¹ or Bloom's truth bandwagon.
_______________

1. By the way, according to Buckley's son Christopher, in his memoir, Losing Mum and Pup, Buckley himself had a way of "raising his voice" in debate—by never yielding even an inch, even with his son—that struck both his son and me as curiously inconsistent with a proper regard for truth.

The sadness of glad

I was surprised and more than simply glad to receive this morning an email from a close relative nearly my age, for I don't receive too many commendations. The email said:

I completely agree with what I have read so far [on your blog] and find your stuff delightful and inspiring. Don't tell my..., who would be sure to say I'm going to go to Hell. I...have been a liberal Democrat for many years. So glad I have found you! [altered to try to keep my relative's...from finding out]

    But it's sad to think that the writer and I were both in our thirties the last time we saw each other and haven't been in touch for more years than either of us has left on this green Earth. (And sad to think there are people who believe that reading my blog is sufficient reason for someone to go to Hell. Or is it being a liberal Democrat?)

My wife and I (and Siegfried) had to go over to Chapel Hill later in the morning. I was glad that Carolina's home game wouldn't start until evening. The streets of the town were still passable. Sadly, to quote a headline in the sports section of a local newspaper this morning, "It's that time of the year again." I.e., football. Intercollegiate athletics. Caravans of flag-fluttering automobiles on weekends. In fact, we saw a car with a little dark blue flag on either side on the interstate—Duke? At least it was headed for Durham and not Chapel Hill.

On the drive over, my wife told me about Cameron Todd Willingham. We're glad to know that he was an honorable man. He said he wouldn't plead guilty to avoid the death sentence because he was innocent of the fire that burned down his house in Corsicana, Texas on December 23, 1991¹ and killed his three young children. So the great State of Texas executed him.
    Sadly, they killed an innocent man. From an August 26 Associated Press account of the inquiry that exonerated Willingham:

Willingham's stepmother, Eugenia Willingham, called the [fire investigation] report another step in the "long, drawn-out process" of clearing his name.
    "He lived 12 years on death row," she said. "He went through hell, I'm telling you. It was probably worse than hell."
    She said her husband died in 2005, the year after his son's execution, of prostate cancer and "a broken heart."

_______________

1. The fatal fire occurred five days before the murder at the CBS Lounge in Phoenix for which Ray Krone was wrongfully convicted and spent three years on death row before being wrongfully convicted a second time and sentenced to "life" in Arizona prisons.