If you love dogs, then you must hate people

Leave it to Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten to come up with whatever evidence she can to support whatever case she is making.  Those who read her know that she's a longtime foe of things like "secular humanism" or "moral relativism."  So, in the August 25 edition of the Strib, Kersten shows how the world is going to hell: one academic researcher, in one obscure study, found that, hypothetically, people might save their pet before a human being in the face of an advancing runaway bus.  From this, she concludes that humans have become increasingly devalued.  Oh my.  Although the Strib chose not to publish my response to her rant, there's always a place for rejected material at good ol' CI!  So, for the record, here is what I sent to our local daily newspaper:

I must confess to being intrigued by Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten.  Although I disagree with her most of the time, I frequently try to figure out what makes her tick.  And that sense of mystery surely surfaced again when I read her recent column, “Is puppy love turning us into misanthropes?”

Her thesis: because one academic study done in Georgia revealed that a fair number of people would choose to save their dog from a runaway bus rather than a person, we may be taking the civil rights of humans for granted.  Not only that, but we are plagued by a society that embraces the dastardly philosophy of “moral relativism.”

When faced with such a bizarre and convoluted argument, it’s hard to know how to unpack it.  One gets the feeling that she was looking for something—anything—that she could use to advance a more sweeping agenda.  And, in so doing, heaven forbid that a little common sense and balance should get in the way.

The study she cites is purely hypothetical—it can’t determine what people would actually do in “real” situations.  At best, it’s an intellectual parlor game (and one in which I’m guessing some chose to save the animal because in the abstract, animals are often viewed as more “helpless” than humans).  But equally disconcerting is her assumption that if anyone cares as much about the family pet as an unknown human being, that somehow this inevitably reduces the status of humans.  To care about animals does not mean we don’t care about humans—if anything, such a concern for all living things should be welcomed.  For Kersten to even vaguely hint that people would “love to throw granny under the bus” is offensive.  She even has the chutzpah to bring up the Declaration of Independence, arguing that humans have certain unalienable rights.  Then, if she hasn’t gone far enough off the beam as it is, she uses this study to help her rant against “scientific materialism and moral relativism.”

What, according to Kersten, is moral relativism?  Because it involves no “universal truths,” each person simply chooses what’s “true” for him or her, with the goal to simply be “happy.”  In her view, moral relativism is all about “our personal preferences and tastes”—nothing more.  Such a description is equally ridiculous and totally misleading.  It’s a false dilemma to suggest that either we have absolute standards or basically no standards at all.  Earth to Katherine: moral relativism is still based on principles, and standards; it is simply that in most situations, there are competing principles that must be carefully weighed and considered.  Even Kersten has her relativistic tendencies: for example, she lauds “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but is quite comfortable to deny those guarantees to people seeking same-sex marriages.  I think in the end what can be so galling about Kersten’s prose is its smug simplicity: take one obscure study and then conclude that Western Civilization is in danger because the Judeo-Christian framework is in peril.

Kersten is right, of course, that we must always consider morals and ethics.  But whether she likes it or not, there are lots of ways to do that, most of which are more complicated than she makes them out to be.  In looking for a nice, neat ledge to stand on, she not only trivializes the need for ethical reflection, but she also offers a caricature of those who don’t see eye-to-eye with her that’s unjustified, erroneous, and more than a wee bit unfair and paranoid.  Take a cleansing breath, Katherine: all of us care about doing the right thing; we just sometimes have more deep and nuanced notions about it.  Moral relativism, simply put, is not the lack of morality, nor is it simply justifying whatever one wants to do.