Tonight I hate post-modernism more than usual. A quote:

“Well, you have the right to your opinion but you don’t have the right to force it on me. So we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

There is nothing wrong with the quote itself — nothing at all. Civil people sometimes have no choice but to be quiet and change the subject, and the ability to do so respectfully is something to be admired. The problem lies just behind the words. With the most heated topics, we pretend that we can agree to disagree and both of us can go on being right. It’s not that we both think we’re right. It’s not that we both feel we’re right. We just are, both of us, with our completely different positions.

I have written about relativism before, and I find it an infuriating topic, so I had hoped one attempt would get it out of my system. Maybe it did for awhile, but the post-modern mindset is so prevalent at school that the frequent barrages are more than my slim patience will stomach in silence. Not everyone is right. If two people hold two different stances on a moral issue, one of them is holding the wrong one.

So harsh! Even as I type it I hear my professors and my peers telling me how narrowminded that is. This is why I sit in class quietly crushing my pen. Either right is right and wrong is wrong, or there is no reason to ever discuss anything. We beam about tolerance and exhort one another to consider varying views, but if no one is right, who gives a damn?

But everyone is right, you might say. Each of us must choose how we will perceive the world and find the truth from an individualistic angle. Nope. Sorry. You can accept that, with any given topic, there will be some people who are right and other people who are wrong, or you can forget about debate. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not everyone is entitled to being correct. Logic simply won’t allow it.

Why am I so cranky? In class this evening we talked about abortion. The quote above comes from a recorded radio interview with a Canadian doctor who performs abortions. After listening to several minutes of a call-in from a Canadian mother who half-reasonably expressed her opinions, and several minutes of the doctor expressing his own, we discussed our reactions to the conversation. The mother was not 100% collected or prepared, but made several good points. The doctor, meanwhile, repeated several variations of the quote above (”You have no right to push your beliefs on others,” etc.) and mixed in a tangent about how aborted fetuses, like sperm and unfertilized eggs, are merely potential life.

I probably could have shrugged it off, and come home, and watched football, except that one of the students in class pointed out how “interesting” the point about wasted sperm and eggs was. No. No, you can’t connect the potential for life with LIFE. This Canadian doctor puts the capital ‘Q’ in ‘Quack,’ and one of the 20 people in class agrees with him enough to share it with the rest of us. An 8-week old fetus, with brainwaves and a pulse, is not logically or legally similar to an unfertilized egg or sperm.

Discuss. Debate. If needed, agree to disagree. But once you start blurring fact and opinion, either you can take two steps back or you can march onward into irrelevance. We talked for an hour about a woman’s right to her body, flaws in the adoption system, the injustice of teenage girls being forced to follow through with unwanted pregnancies… and never once wandered near the elephant in the middle of the room. It’s completely unbelievable how deep we will reach to justify people avoiding responsibility for their actions.

I could barrel on for five more paragraphs, but the bottom line? A woman’s right to choose, the reproductive freedom we hear about; she practices those when she decides whether or not to have sex. Exception cases - the mother’s safety, rape, incest - are the only issues that should be in contention when it comes to abortion. Mistakes can have horrible consequences, but a society which erases inconvenient lives under the guise of humanitarianism is one in desperate need of getting its priorities straight.

Today, Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004, my favorite word is ‘concession.’ Not as in hot dogs and $4 Pepsi — no, something much better. CNN announced a couple hours ago that John Kerry has called President Bush and conceded the election. He will make his concession speech at 1:00 this afternoon.

Mind you, the election was much closer than I would have liked. Do so many people honestly feel comfortable putting their faith in the United Nations? For all of Bush’s mistakes, both real and imaginary, I am sad that 48% of America would rather have John Kerry running the show. What really amazes me is the 18% Kerry victory in New York; you can’t expect a Republican to win New York, but I expected the terror attacks to make that race closer.

I am very happy that Kerry has chosen to concede this morning rather than create a drawn-out legal disaster. Considering that his loudest supporters were the loonies from MoveOn.org and the fantasyland of Mooretopia, this move gives me real respect for the senator. Maybe this is the first in a long overdue series of steps whereby the Democratic Party will distance itself from the irrational Bush-haters within the far left.

Thank you, Mr. Kerry, for doing what Al Gore would not. Thank you for putting a foot into the fires of dissension that could have (and still may) easily sprung up in precincts across the country.

Thank you, RNC, for an improved ground game. As close as the electoral vote has stacked up, it is encouraging that President Bush won the popular vote by more than 3 million.

And thank you, President Bush, for hitting the right points frequently enough on the campaign trail to make a difference where it counts. I am thrilled by your refusal to bend your position with every release of a new poll. I share your optimism and appreciate your dedication to the war on terror. Iraq has most definitely not been a distraction, and could yet go down in history as the brave move which started a domino effect in the Middle East. If we are wrong, we are wrong, but you pursue goals and allies in a way that makes me proud to be an American.

The polarization evidenced by another heated campaign season and another close election is not about healthcare or the economy. The Republicans usually do a mediocre job of convincing voters they care, and the Democrats always pull in so many union workers and elderly that it makes our collective Right Wing Conspiracy heads spin. Everyone wants a good job and a comfortable retirement, and there are arguments as to how these goals might be reached. There always have been and always will be.

Iraq, however, bares the true issue even for someone as uneducated as myself. I don’t know who would argue that war is desirable, and I haven’t met anyone who says war is beautiful. No reasonable person wants to go to war when peace is an option. But while our safety is in doubt, nothing short of a catastrophic amount of prescription drug or unemployment concerns will matter. So the question, really, is whether peace is an option.

September 11, 2001 proved that America cannot have peace through inaction. There are people in the world who hate us and want us to die. Either we can make tough decisions and try to kill them first, or we can invite them to meetings and ask them to stop. That’s it. George W. Bush has done the first, and he has been called Hitler and a fool and a crusader. John F. Kerry offered the second, and was heralded as a diplomat who was understanding and insightful.

War means admitting that American lives are worth killing terrorists for. Diplomacy at any cost means that, given time, people can always happily straighten things out. I wish the world worked that way, but it does not: politicans agree to disagree, but how is that possible in an argument where one says “let’s just leave each other alone” and the other says “all infidels must die”? Foreigners and many Americans hate President Bush for his straightforward view of good and evil. This is, ironically, one of several reasons why I love him.