A Dime a Dozen Blog

I have nothing that I can add to this other than to say that I agree with it entirely. It’s a piece from the Guardian written by Daniel Johnson, the editor of a new magazine called ‘Standpoint‘.

The truth is that we owe to brave people from both left and right those values and principles that until recently were common to most people in both camps. To squabble over the ownership of western civilisation is as absurd as it is philistine.

The need to defend that civilisation arises only because the consensus has broken down, with some (but by no means all) intellectuals on the left blaming the west for all the troubles of the world.

This is where Byrnes and I really part company. He takes exception to my statement that our toleration of minority cultures should not come at the price of moral relativism. Well, I am happy to fight on this ground. Like most people of left or right, I believe that it is possible to make objective, normative statements about right and wrong, good and evil.

I believe that there are limits to the toleration British society should extend to traditions that conflict with our laws and morality. The harsh treatment of women, children, homosexuals and apostates, though normal in some Muslim countries, is unacceptable here.

There is nothing imperialist about condemning genocide, whether deliberate or by neglect, merely because the victims and perpetrators live in non-western civilisations.

“The standpoint of others is not the same as our own,” declares Byrnes. No indeed, but the deaths of 130,000 Burmese cyclone victims are not merely a matter of “standpoint”, nor is one standpoint as good as another. The Burmese junta is immoral and our duty is to help these victims, within our power and short of upsetting the peace of the region.

Rejecting moral relativism is not “rightwing”.