E Relativismi Absolutus

We've all heard the cliché that "we are a nation of immigrants." First of all, we're a nation of settlers. The immigrants came later. But the relationship of nation to immigrants is that of whole to part. You cannot add up a bunch of diverse immigrants and hope that a nation will emerge. That is the way of Balkanization, strife, and violence.

Rather, vice versa: one begins with the nation to which the immigrants must adapt. In short, we assimilate immigrants. It is not up to us to be assimilated into their strange gods, beliefs, practices, and sports.

That thoughtlet was inspired by a passage in an essay by Schuon, A Sense of the Absolute in Religions. You could say the emergence of what is called "modernity" is characterized by the discovery of the Other(s). Especially the really weird and/or annoying ones. We're not just talking about an Englishman meeting a Frenchman or what have you.

Most people prior to modernity -- and well into it -- passed their entire lives without ever encountering a genuine Other. But in the so-called Age of Discovery we met all sorts of strange beings, for example, when Columbus bumped into Native Americans.

Anyway, Schuon highlights the problems that occur "when the diversity of traditional perspectives gives a pretext to those who wish to destroy the very idea of the absolute and the values connected to it."

Now, there is a valid, healthy, and necessary form of relativism; and a sick, twisted, and even demonic one. Leftism, of course, champions the latter, because it is an ideal pretext to attack and undermine the Absolute, AKA God.

The valid form of relativism is encapsulated in the motto of the United States, e pluribus unum. But look at how the meaning has been changed by the left:

"The traditionally understood meaning of the phrase was that out of many states (or colonies) emerges a single nation. However, in recent years its meaning has come to suggest that out of many peoples, races, religions, languages, and ancestries has emerged a single people and nation -- illustrating the concept of the melting pot."

What a nefarious sleight of hand! Because of this verbal legerdemain -- word of the day, legerdemain -- the leftist can say with a straight face that this or that recently arrived immigrant is JUST AS AMERICAN AS GEORGE WASHINGTON or whomever.

Well, it depends, doesn't it? If they just want to recreate the third world socialist craphole from which they escaped, then they're not really American at all. I used to live in the San Fernando Valley, parts of which have been slowly transformed into Mexico.

But if Mexico is such a great place, why did they leave? Likewise, if Islam is such a wonderful religion, why not live in an Islamic country infused with Islamic values? Why come to a Judeo-Christian nation, of all places?

Because of what the left has done with diversity: which is to say, deployed it as a Trojan Hearse to sneak in their death culture and normalize their absolute relativism, a relativism that has severed itself from its very reason for being, i.e., the Absolute.

Absolute relativism does not, as the left suggests, elevate every culture to equal value. Rather, it just undermines the sane, decent, and functional ones, i.e., ours.

What is the solution? "Confronted with a relativism that is growing ever more intrusive, it is necessary to restore to the intelligence a sense of the absolute, even to the point of having to underline for this purpose the relativity in which immutable things are clothed" (ibid.).

Go back to what was said above about e pluribus unum. The first English-to-Latin translator I googled suggests per diversitas immutabile, or "through diversity, the immutable." We could equally say e relativismi absolutus or something.

But the purpose of religion is to disclose the absolute beyond religion. If it doesn't do that for you, then you're doing it wrong. But in any event, don't be like a dog or a liberal and stare at the finger to which religion is pointing! (Or the Absolute to which their relativism properly points.)

For "with God, truth lies above all in the symbol's effective power of enlightenment and not its literalness.... The uncreated Word shatters created speech while at the same time directing it toward concrete and saving truth" (ibid.).

In other words, the One, by its very nature, cannot be contained by speech, certainly not on any one-to-one basis. Rather, it pours itself out in diverse manifestations.

But don't confuse the appearance -- the diversity -- with the reality of which it is an inevitable expression! That's just stupid, for the expression is not as real as the reality it expresses.