Opinion Page columns

Unless otherwise noted, these essays were published in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, CT
 

MORAL RELATIVISM PRODUCES ‘MEN WITHOUT CHESTS’

By Bill Dunn

Once again a violent home invasion in Connecticut has ended in rape and murder, the second such headline-grabbing horrific crime in less than a year. Meanwhile, inner-city Hartford has become a wild west show, with multiple shootings each and every week. And not a morning goes by without the daily paper printing yet another news story about a person arrested for a sex crime, usually kiddie porn on the computer or an online attempt to arrange a sexual tryst with a minor.

A little further from home, third graders in Georgia recently were discovered to be plotting a vicious assault on their teacher. Officials confiscated duct tape, handcuffs, a steak knife, and a to-do list that outlined what each little conspirator was expected to do, including cleaning up the blood afterward.

In 1947, the late Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man. In this book Lewis described what he called “men without chests.” He explained that modern society had produced some people without hearts, the symbolic location of the soul and conscience. In other words, these people no longer possessed an internal moral code. Their actions were guided solely by their instinctive urges and desires, and no ethical filter was present to separate the “wants” from the “oughts.”

Describing these “men without chests,” Lewis famously remarked, “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

In the six decades since Lewis wrote that book, conditions have only worsened. We now have a society that is crawling with men—and women and children—without chests. Our culture is teeming with people who no longer have consciences, people who no longer have an internal voice that analyzes each “I WANT to do that” urge by first asking the question, “But OUGHT I to do it?”

In our current society, to paraphrase Lewis, we laugh at virtue and are shocked to find rapists in our midst. We flood the culture with erotica and bid the hormones be calm.

Since the mid-1960s, America has embraced a view known as moral relativism. This view holds that all values, all definitions of right and wrong, are merely personal opinion. The net result is that each individual in society is free to create his or her own personal moral code—or lack of moral code. Anyone who objects to this view is immediately shouted down as being mean-spirited, hateful, and the worst label of all: an intolerant religious fanatic.

Are young people today being taught that it’s perfectly okay to rape and kill? Of course not. But they ARE being taught that whatever makes them feel good, whatever they feel is right, is indeed right for them. (They also are being taught that if anyone criticizes their behavior, they should hire a lawyer and sue.) Is it any surprise then, that morally nihilistic citizens, awash in porn and other violent stimuli, end up gratifying their instinctive urges in ways that cause great harm (and sometimes death) to others?

In the wake of the latest carnage, the public outcry is for more cops, more prisons, and harsher sentences. Do we actually need more cops and prisons? Well, as long as more and more people are stealing and raping and murdering others, I suppose we do. But unless our culture ends its failed experiment with moral relativism and rekindles the conscience within each human heart, unless we start raising men WITH chests, all the cops and prisons in the world won’t keep us safe.

©2008