In today’s world, or at least in the world of college campuses, it is almost universally accepted that there is no universal standard of good and evil, truth and falsehood.  

Where once our forebearers would have asked themselves, “Is it right?” we ask ourselves, “Is it self-actualizing?”

Much of the academic thought swirling in and around this and other institutions of higher learning is steeped in such conceptions of moral relativism.  

For example, cultural anthropology is insistent that no Westerner can possibly assert the superiority of his or her own cultural assumptions over those of another culture because after all there is no such thing as right or wrong, only different (there are many other fields of study, particularly among the social sciences, that operate along the same assumptions.  Cultural anthropology is only the most obvious example.)

Strict adherence to this kind of philosophical two-headed sacred cow of multiculturalism and moral relativism requires that we remain silent about such grotesqueries as female circumcision and honor killings.  

They are, as a matter of fact, cultural tendencies among some peoples and are therefore, according to the anthropologists’ line of thinking, beyond our right to judge.  

These behaviors do not provoke moral revulsion in the thoroughgoing multi-culturalist only by virtue of the fact that the groups committing these acts see nothing wrong in them.

There is no longer The Truth, but rather your truth and my truth.  

This amounts to nothing more than moral anarchy.  What if my truth demands that I shoot a man in the head?  That man would protest that his inalienable right to life prohibits me from pulling the trigger.

But how can anyone have an inalienable right to anything if there is no fixed moral standard that exists independent of mankind?  I could just as logically object to my victim’s objections on the grounds that he is interfering with my right to kill him.

Every one of us eats, sleeps, dreams.  

We have all protested at some point or another that something “just wasn’t fair!”  We all decry injustice against ourselves as we perceive it.  
But what appeal to “justice” could possibly be made were there no fixed standard of what is just?  

What appeals to human rights or civil rights could possibly be made if there are no transcendent, metaphysical rights belonging to a human?
The great irony is that while many claim to be moral relativists—that is they insist that there are no universal standards of morality or truth—they do not act like they actually believe it.  

In order to communicate the idea in the first place it is necessary to start with some statement like, “There is no such thing as universal truth.”  
But that in itself would constitute a universal truth, if it were true.  And then in order to continue a discussion of this idea or moral relativism, it is possible that it may be necessary to defend it in argument.

In order for an argument to occur it’s necessary that one person insists on the superiority of their opinions as opposed to the someone else’s.  
But if the moral relativist is correct that there is no such thing as universal truth, why feel the need to argue about it?  

A moral relativist could never prove the rightness of his position because he does not believe there is such a thing.

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