Last week I wrote an article entitled The New American Patriotism, with the subscript "Americans should unquestioningly accept the President's policies." I felt shocked by the response the article incited from my peers on Grounds. The feedback I received was a hodgepodge of negativity mixed with confusion. A few conservatives lambasted me for supposedly declaring blind support for Obama, while a collection of liberals created a small tirade over my inability to appreciate satire. The general confusion surrounding my article bemused me. Upon completion of the work, I felt that my message was perfectly clear. We live in America after all, not the former USSR. I therefore never dreamed that an educated reader could peruse my article containing such absurdities as a call for "instituting a modern version of the Alien and Sedition Acts" and ever interpret my words as anything less than parody.
Initially, I internalized the reader's criticism. I must be a horrible writer, I thought, since I am unable to convey even the simplest message of irony to my reader. Even now, I am sure that my writing skills are nothing out of the ordinary. After having a week to mull over the response to my article, however, I began to wonder if the confused reaction to my writing was actually an indication of our culture's desensitization to extreme political ideas.
Historically, universities have been hotbeds for radical idealism primarily because under-occupied youthful energy dominates those centers of learning. As Poet Robert Frost once said, "I never dared to be a radical when I was young, for fear it would make me conservative when old." Collegiate culture purposefully molds youth to embrace new ideas and accept divergent opinions, even those bordering on the absurd. The principle of open thought is imperative for any dynamic society. Radical ideas become dangerous, however, when the society loses a common ideological viewpoint from which to analyze the merits of varying proposals. The university communities began to lose this common philosophical bond with the rise of relativism.
Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, describes relativism as a philosophy that "includes three claims: That morality is first of all changeable; secondly, subjective; and third[ly], individual." If a community wholeheartedly ascribes to these principles then it possesses no collective culture at all, since each individual has a right to determine his or her own moral foundation. Under this philosophical system, the moral landscape of a society inevitably degenerates into the chaotic anarchy described in Hobbes' Leviathan as the "war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place."
The diffusion of relativism causes the precipitous death of satire. For satire to be understood and appreciated, the individuals receiving the communication must share a common cultural base. Unfortunately, under the iron weight of absolute relativism there is no collective culture, only individual opinions. I suspect that this is why many readers failed to grasp the meaning of my message last week. They were confused, not because they fail to identify with a shared culture, but because the educational system taught them that they cannot assume others are operating from the same philosophical base. Since no common absolutes can be taken for granted in the community, all opinion must be considered equally valuable and consequently taken literally.
There was a time in America's past when citizens would have immediately recognized the mocking irony in any writing which urged its reader to "forget the old, archaic model of American patriotism characterized by two-way dialogue and citizen dissent" and told the reader "there simply is no room for political disagreement." Knowing that the author held similar cultural values, the reader could plausibly assume that the author's tone was facetious. An implicit understanding existed between the author and the reader that both shared an appreciation for the basic principles which comprised the foundations of the American government. Modern university youth no longer afford themselves the intellectual luxury of a belief in shared American or human absolutes. The destruction of those helpful mental schemas can be traced back to the intellectual establishment which indoctrinated students with an overwhelming responsibility to reverence relative world-views.
Students fail to embrace the most basic Constitutional principles like a belief in individual rights and the supremacy of the collective political will, simply because they are afraid of offending an intellectual minority who oppose those ideas. The only accepted absolute in correct society today is the concept that morality and common sense are relative. Satire cannot exist in a world that holds no common absolutes. The essence of comedy is the paradox which is created when a comedian acts or speaks against a reality that is held by the audience to be true. Therefore, the fact that students did not understand the satire in my piece last week is not surprising. As a society, we no longer recognize any basic political principles as absolute. The absence of even the most basic communal political values makes identifying satire impossible.
Ginny Robinson is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.
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