Cultural Relativism

I've been reading a book about the Aztecs. They were among the most sophisticated of the mesoamerican tribes. Some aspects of their culture even rivaled that of Europe. And yet, despite this highly advanced society it was a culture of death that revolved around human sacrifice. Their temples were slaughterhouses where human beings were ritually scarified on a daily basis in the most barbaric way possible. Their still-beating hearts were literally ripped from their chests. It wasn't just men who were sacrificed but women, children, and babies too. In one particular ritual they cut the throats of infants. The human skins of their victims were routinely worn like garments. To give you an idea of the magnitude of these human sacrifices, the Aztecs ritually sacrificed 50,000 people per year in a population area of four to five million. That equates to sacrificing one percent of their total population annually. In modern terms it would be considered a genocide. In one particular event, during the coronation of a new temple, an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 people were sacrificed over a four-day period. To the Aztecs killing was as natural as breathing. And it wasn't just human sacrifices but they also feasted on human flesh. They had large outdoor markets where you could buy anything, including human limbs. It was a very debased occultic society.

The reason I bring this up is because it made me think of the notion of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, rather than be judged against the criteria of another. The Aztecs didn't think of human sacrifice as bad or evil. To them it was just a part of their religion, it was how they pleased their gods. They didn't do it out of malice. To them killing was natural, even necessary.

If we took the cultural relativist view we couldn't judge the Aztecs for what today would be considered atrocities, crimes against humanity. But if we took the cultural relativist view how could we judge anyone? How could we even distinguish between right and wrong? It becomes impossible to base morality on social norms and public consensus because they are forever changing. And what is right for one person may be wrong for another, and vice versa. With that criteria we couldn't judge anyone. We certainly couldn't judge someone like Hitler for the Holocaust. That is why morality must be based on a higher authority (ie. God). A moral standard that is unchanging, and set apart from human opinion. Only then can you have true justice and prosperity for all.

The Aztecs did not think it evil to commit human sacrifice, and yet an evil done out of ignorance is still evil. Those who commit evil acts rarely ever believe they are doing evil. Hitler did not think it was evil to murder six million Jews. He blamed them for the Treaty of Versailles, for their economic situation, and a variety of other things. Hitler believed he was doing Germany a favor by getting rid of the Jews. However, his beliefs did not make him any less of a monster. No, all cultures are not created equal. Some cultures are decisively better than others. A culture that values life is far better for everyone than one that doesn't. Cultural relativism is nothing more than cowardice in calling something evil, evil.

In Defense of Columbus Day

Every year in October, Columbus Day is celebrated in several countries in The Americas as well as in Spain and Italy. However, in more recent decades there’s been increasing opposition to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. According to the Left’s narrative, Christopher Columbus arrival in the New World marked the beginning of one the largest genocides in human history. But was it really? The major problem with this assertion is that the vast majority of natives, some 75 to 95 percent, were killed by Old World diseases to which they had no immunity. While no less a tragedy, it does not qualify as a genocide. A genocide requires a calculated deliberate intent to exterminate a whole group of people. The Europeans were unaware that the natives had no immunity to Old World diseases, let alone how infectious diseases even worked. Germ Theory was not fully understood until the late nineteenth century. It should also be noted that in the United States, at least, there was never a government policy for extermination. On the contrary, you don’t set up reservations and inoculate the people you are trying to exterminate.

With the call to abolish Columbus Day in favor Indigenous People’s Day, there is an implication that Native Americans are more virtuous, deserving, and noble than their European counterparts. But is that true? The Left tends to romanticize Native Americans when highlighting acts of barbarism committed by Europeans. It’s true there were atrocities done to Native Americans, but that is only one side of the story. Guess what? Nothing the Europeans did was any different from what the natives themselves did. For instance, Native Americans conquered and enslaved other native peoples. Slavery was widely practiced in pre-Columbian America, just as it was universally practiced everywhere at the time. According to the Standard Cross-Cultural Files, at least thirty-nine pre-Columbian societies in North America alone practiced slavery, and it was no different from slavery practiced elsewhere. Indian slave masters had complete control to kill their slaves if they desired. A little known fact is that in the nineteenth century Native Americas also began to acquire black slaves. In fact, the Cherokee Indians took a number of black slaves with them when they were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma “Indian” Territory. In short, Native Americans had the same sins and vices as the Europeans, and even some they didn’t have. None more highlights this than the Aztec Indians.

The Aztecs had an occultic bloodlust that was unparalleled. Some historians estimate the Aztecs ritually sacrificed 50,000 people per year in a population area of four to five million. That equates to sacrificing one percent of their total population annually. These people were usually captives taken from neighboring Indian tribes. The manner in which these human sacrifices were done were particularly barbaric. Captives were taken to the top of a temple and laid upon a stone slab. The priest would then take a knife, plunge it into their chest, and pull out their still-beating heart. The bodies would then be dismembered, the torso kicked down the temple steps, and the limbs eaten. Their heads would be placed on a pole, and their skulls kept as trophies. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who accompanied Cortés, witnessed more than one hundred thousand skulls stacked meticulously on top of each other, to which Aztec texts, frescoes, and archeology have confirmed. Most of the victims were men, but women and children were also sacrificed. Women would also have their hearts ripped out, but more often they were slowly beheaded and then skinned. The priests would often wear the skins while the sacrifices continued. In one event, during the coronation of a new temple, an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 people were sacrificed over a four-day period.

After the arrival of the Spanish and the ensuing conflicts, the Spanish witnessed some of their own being taken captive by the Aztecs. The Spanish prisoners were stripped naked, brought to the temple, and forced to dance naked for an hour. Afterwards, the Aztec high priest sacrificed them alive, ripped out their hearts and dismembered them. Up until that point the Spanish had been fairly mercifully towards the Aztecs, but after witnessing those horrific events the gloves came off. When Cortés finally conquered the Aztecs, much of the slaughter that ensued was done by their Indian allies who hated the Aztecs. Say what you will about the conquistadors, but not even the worst among them engaged in human sacrifice and cannibalism. If there ever were a civilization that deserved to be conquered, it was the Aztecs. The Aztecs were not alone when it came to human sacrifice. The Mayans, Incas, and other tribes also practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice, including sacrificing children and infants.

When Columbus discovered The Americas he encountered good natives, but he also encountered bad natives. Upon his second trip to The Americans, he encountered the Caribs (from which the word “cannibal” is derived, as in Caribbean). According to historian Samuel Eliot Morison, in deserted huts the Spaniards found human limbs and cuts of human flesh partly consumed, as well as young boys who were being fattened to eat. The French explorer Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano was said to have been eaten on the beaches of Guadeloupe by Caribs while his companions looked on from their ship in horror.

To preface, not all Native Americans were cannibals and practiced human sacrifice. There were good and bad natives just like there are good and bad people in every society. The purpose of this article is not to vilify Native Americans, but to point out the one-sided arguments made by the Left. They paint with a broad bush when vilifying Europeans of that era. Meanwhile, they ignore atrocities committed by the Native Americans themselves. Not once will you hear about the genocides committed by the Aztecs or a condemnation of the Mayans for their human sacrifices. These details do not fit their narratives. Nor will you hear about attacks upon white civilian settlers. During Pontiac’s War, for example, Indian warriors entered a schoolhouse, killed the schoolmaster then tomahawked and scalped eight children. Contrary to popular belief, Europeans did not teach scalping to the Native Americans. Archeological evidence indicates that scalping existed in pre-Columbian America.

Ultimately, the attack on Columbus Day is by association an attack on Western civilization. But rather anyone likes it or not, Columbus did discover America and it did change the course of world history. Ignoring this fact will not change events, nor does it make it any less of an historic event. But let’s suppose Columbus never discovered America. It would be naïve to believe it would remain undiscovered forever. Sooner or later it would be discovered, if not by the Europeans then by somebody else, probably the Chinese. And the outcome would have been the same. The Native Americans would still have died by the scores from diseases which they had no immunity to, there still would have been conflicts, and they still would have lost. It is an unfortunate outcome, but a predicable one. When a more technologically advanced civilization comes into contact with a primitive stone-aged civilization, it never fares well for the latter.

Who is a Nazi?

On The Morning Joe show, MSNBC commentator Donny Deutsch recently likened Trump voters to Nazis. Speaking in regards to the latest manufactured outrage of separating illegal immigrate children from their parents, Deutsch said:

    I wanna attach what you just said to the question that Carter asked John about; politicizing; I could put an exclamation mark about everything you said. It was particularly reprehensible when Ivanka said, “It looks a certain way.”

    What has to happen now is this can no longer be about who Trump is. It has to be about who we are, if we are working towards November. We can no longer say Trump’s the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you are ripping children from parents’ arms. The mistake that we’ve made in the past, is “Look at that bad guy over there. Look at that bad guy.”

    What the Democrats have to do is make the next election a referendum on not who Trump is, but who you are. That’s the big difference. You can no longer now as a voter — because it’s not about taxes, it’s not even about some abstract term of immigration or nationalism; if you vote for Trump then you, the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border, like Nazis, going “You here, you here.”

    And I think we now have to flip it and it’s a given, the evilness of Donald Trump. But if you vote, you can no longer separate yourself. You can’t say, well he’s okay, but — and I think that gymnastics and I think that jiu-jitsu has to happen.

This is just one example of many of how the Nazi label has been thrown around so casually these days, that it's necessary to define exactly what a Nazi is, and what they believe. For this we look to the National Socialist Program. This was a 25-point plan of the National Socialists German Workers' Party presented by Adolf Hitler in 1920. I wont be going over the whole 25 points verbatim, you can read those for yourself. These, however, are the main points of what it means to be a Nazi:

-You had to be a member of the Nazi Party. This seems like a no-brainer, but the Nazis were a political party.

-You have to be ethnically German.

-You had to be ethnocentric. The Nazis believed only a member of the "race" (someone of German blood) could be citizen.

-You had to be a nationalist. Nationalism is defined as loyalty and devotion to a nation. It should be stressed here that nationalism is not the same as patriotism. In the words of George Orwell, "Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."

-You had to be an isolationist. Non-citizens were prevented from immigrating, and all non-Germans already living in Germany were forced to leave the Reich.

-You have to be a socialist. The Nazi party called for the nationalization of all public companies, and a division of profits of all heavy industries. That they were socialists should be obvious, but this fact has often been overlooked by many. It also indicates that contrary to what some have asserted, the Nazis were not right-wing. Socialism and Communism are two sides of the same coin, and it should be remembered that the Nazis had a pact with the Russians until they broke it.

-You have to support national healthcare and nationalized education.

-You have to support control of the press. All writers and employees had to be German. Non-Germans were forbidden by law to exert any influence, or publish material that the government deemed counter to the "general good".

-You have to be a fascist. Execution of the 25-point plan was to be executed with a strong central power, with unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich.

In summary, in order to be a Nazi you had to meet ALL these qualifications. Cherry picking one or two things, misconstruing them, and then using them to mischaracterize someone because you don't like their political beliefs does NOT make them a Nazi. Just Remember this the next time someone calls you a Nazi.