Sunday, March 20, 2011

Justin T. Caught in the Underbrush

John Robson of the Ottawa Citizen comments on Boy Trudeau (admittedly, not the brightest of bulbs) getting entangled in the thickets of moral relativism:
...Modern liberals don't seem to hate women. You can take serious exception to their entire feminist agenda, from no-fault divorce to abortion on demand to universal daycare, without denying their genuine outrage at violence against, discrimination against or even demeaning language directed at women. But why, then, do they instinctively recoil from a robust denunciation of those who do hate and harm women?

The problem is that they are also committed to a mentally and politically paralyzing cultural relativism, driven more by sentiment and snobbery than serious thought, that renders their core beliefs unredeemably incoherent.

It was in that intellectual mess, not "semantic weeds," that the hapless Justin Trudeau so wretchedly entangled himself when he said, "There's nothing that the word 'barbaric' achieves that the words 'absolutely unacceptable' would not have achieved. We accept that these acts are absolutely unacceptable. That's not the debate. In casual conversation, I'd even use the word barbaric to describe female circumcision, for example, but in an official Government of Canada publication, there needs to be a little bit of an attempt at responsible neutrality."

Why? Why does there need to be a public attempt at "responsible neutrality" between those who think you should destroy women's genitals early so they won't enjoy sex and those who call this practice revolting and wicked and don't want it practised here? Clearly what "barbaric" achieves that "unacceptable" does not is to express indignation. The question is why someone would find such a thing shocking, especially when he'd said it himself privately...
No, the question is why anyone would think a mental lightweight like Justin, who, after all, is only toeing the Liberal line, was fit for office just because his dad was Pierre.

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