Letter: Moral relativism is dangerous and risky worldview

Jillian Johnson's latest column, "The Pursuit of Life," represents the danger posed by moral relativists: the complete inability to see anything in terms of black and white, even when it's staring them in the face. Clearly I'm not going to propose that most things in life are simple black and white propositions, but a small number are. Therefore I'd like to reply to one of Johnson's questions, "Who is right and who is wrong?" How about this for an anticlimactic and incomplete answer: Saddam is wrong. Saddam committed genocide against his own people and perpetrated an 8-year war with a neighbor in which well over a million people died. Saddam Hussein is a member of an elite group of people we can honor with the title of "genocidal dictator." If I'm having a conversation with an anti-war activist and he or she will not immediately concede the point that Saddam is the greatest threat to the Iraqi people, there is no point in continuing the conversation. They have chosen to ignore the blunt truth in front of their eyes, just as Europeans and Americans choose to ignore the truth about Adolf Hitler throughout the 1930s.

If our generation cannot make moral judgments under any circumstances, where does that leave us? Whatever your position on the current war, I implore you not to submit to moral relativism. Johnson asked, "Who is guilty and who is innocent?" Well Johnson, Saddam Hussein is guilty. I'm open to discuss anything about this war with anti-war activists at any time, providing they don't deny that simple fact. Whatever our political opinions, we shall all sleep a little more peacefully after Saddam Hussein is punished for his crimes against the Iraqi people. Until then, I won't cease to wonder at "humanitarian" activists who protest (directly or indirectly) to keep a genocidal regime in power. But maybe I'm just biased because my relatives died in ghettos, cattle cars and concentration camps.