Artifact Seven

Bruce, Tammy. The Death of Right and Wrong. New York: Random House, 2003.

In The Death of Right and Wrong, Bruce vehemently attacks what she calls "the Left's assault on our values." She lists an exhaustive list of occurances and viewpoints that are caused under auspices of cultural relativism: college professors rationalizing George Washington's and Abraham Lincoln's acts as opportunistic, health officials engendering sexual promiscuity by marginalizing the sanctity of sexual organs by their caricaturization in safe-sex advertisement, the ability of the defense in criminal proceedings to use the "race" card or the "cause martyr" card, and so forth.

The most important thing in all of this was that throughout her book, Bruce was clearly advocating a precise point of view without giving a thought about the opposite of what she was saying. In some of the anecdotes that she shared, she didn't need to, but overall, it was clear that she was either oblivious to or completely ignoring any of the counterpoints that may be offered to her arguments. Such may be the rigidity of human opinion (I cannot be wrong).

But she is entitled to her say within her own book. Nevertheless, observe two points she raises up: 1) American society is attacking morally sound institutions because of proponents of immoral interest-groups, 2) American society is going downwards because of these campaigns. In the first, I find she makes a valid point: that appeasement of norms deemed immoral should not be in place. However, her second point: that the interest-groups are the "army of Satan", and that America is going down the drain, is too scathing to be taken seriously, but does confront with any solution to ethnocentrism: that, 1) there are always naysayers, the solution cannot be universal, and 2) any solution must be implemented progressively and not patronize. Bruce exclaims that pedagogy today focuses on the vilification of the morally just and vindicates those who oppose them.

Questions:
1) Bruce states that pedagogy today already has a goal, and that it is perverse... Would a new education be implemented differently if those who are the future decision-makers learned under this old education?
2) If stacking the deck is not objective, will any solution be objective?
3) Given the extreme of nationalism, what could prevent it that will not at the same time cause a sense of cultural self-inferiority? Oh, yes, patriotism... a very limited definition of patriotism... which I will focus on in the next artifact.