The Obama Administration’s Church of Relativism

If I were a betting man I would wager that very few people who have ever known, or worked around, President Obama are surprised by his incredibly offensive comments at the recent National Prayer Breakfast. In case you missed them, while speaking about terrorism, the President stated:

“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”

Sadly, the President was not kidding with this outrageous statement. Is it really getting “on our high horse” to condemn beheadings and setting people aflame while they are still alive?

As a former Secret Service agent and, more recently, as a candidate for public office myself, I have heard some really dumb things exit the mouths of people in the political class but this one may take the cake. Incredibly though, to many of the Obama administration acolytes, this outrageous statement makes perfect sense. It makes sense to them because they too worship in the church of relativism and the pews of this church are packed with today’s far-left liberals.

Relativism is the bedrock of modern liberalism because the far-left can neither recognize nor abide by any standards of behavior, and when standards are “relative” they’re really not standards at all. Standards of behavior are a necessity for any society that codifies and respects individual liberty. And individual liberty is the bête noire of the far-left.

The far-left cannot acknowledge that there are standards of behavior, which all of us should strive for, because it would dismantles their core belief that individual malevolence is caused by larger societal failings, not individual ones. The far-left has always run from the idea that genuine evil exists because that would require them to acknowledge that good exists as well, and admitting this would open up Pandora’s Box and expose their nonsensical ideology. Once the far-left’s Pandora’s Box is opened, they would be forced to acknowledge the existence of other “troublesome” individual characteristics such as individual effort, individual aggression, individual competitiveness, individual extraversion, self-reliance, and other traits which may lead to a person’s success or failure in life’s journey. More importantly, it would reject their assertion that humanity is fixable if only we would let them “fix us.”

The ideology President Obama subscribes to is one where individual characteristics are to be ignored ideologically and subjugated legislatively. This is why people close to him, who are believers in the same ideology, were not surprised at all by his relating of 21st century Islamic beheadings and immolations, to the Crusades beginning in the 11th century. To them, these recent ISIS atrocities are the result of some societal ill which can only be cured by visionary academics, intellectuals, and a political aristocracy not bound by the limits of a constitution. Individual liberty is seen by them as an obstacle to be overcome, not a gift from God to be cherished and defended. They see individual liberty as nothing but a vehicle to express a human greed which can only be suppressed through the path to “progress” which only they can guide us on.

Not coincidentally, this is why the far-left reserves most of its enmity for any culture, state, religion, or organization associated with success. Success to them is a zero-sum game and it must have been earned at the expense of some subjugated population who they will vigorously defend, facts be damned. Wealthy entrepreneurs, successful free market states, and competitive sports have all seen the bull’s eye of the far-left appear on their chests at some point yet, special vitriol is reserved for Israel.

A successful free market democracy in a region marked by sectarian strife, war, and economic hardship cannot be allowed to persist with the far-left because it would disprove their rigid belief that prosperity is zero-sum. The far-left is absolutely committed to the idea that prosperity must have been taken from someone else in the region, and Israel’s success in the same neighborhood as their neighbor’s legendary failures is an eyesore for them.

When you consider all of this, it’s no surprise that President Obama and his followers saw no problem with his incredibly offensive statements at the National Prayer Breakfast. To the far-left, evil is always going to be the by-product of some societal failing. President Obama blaming the Crusades, and the Inquisition, was a natural starting point to uncover blame because one of the world’s most successful and generally peaceful religions, Christianity was a dominant societal force of the time.

The real tragedy in all of this is that the far-left is corrupting an entire generation with this relativism and deconstructionist nonsense. If it continues, there will be no celebration in the future of the incredible American success story as every tale of the heroics of George Washington will be accompanied by an asterisk.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review. Featured image of President Obama is by Jacquelyn Martin/AP.