TDB | Mislabeling Obama: Admirably Modern, Not Postmodern

In his column today, Jonah Goldberg makes the following argument: 

Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is "being out of alignment with my values." Statements such as this have caused many people to wonder whether Obama has a God complex or is hopelessly arrogant. For the record, sin isn't being out of alignment with your own values (if it were, Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be a sinner because his values hold that it's OK to eat people) nor is it being out of alignment with Obama's  — unless he really is our Savior.

By ‘Postmodernism’ Goldberg means the movement’s worst tendencies – nihilism and (moral) relativism.  And there is, no doubt, a risk of nihilism where there is an absence of values by which to judge things (moral or otherwise).  In such a case, there’s no wrong or right in any meaningful sense – there’s certainly no sin. 

But to say that sin is ‘being out of alignment’ with one's values implies that values do still exist in some sense.  This isn’t nihilism – such a situation falls well short of the worst of postmodernism, though Goldberg would have us believe otherwise.

When the believability of religion - especially religious dogma - sinks to unsalvageable levels - which, for many people, it already has – there remains something precious and beneficial (with regard to values).  There's still our innate sense of being human, which for most of us involves strong convictions – which tell us when we would be doing right or wrong, when we would be speaking truth or lie, when we see good or evil.  This feeling is strong in many people – including myself.  If you want to call it inkling or a remnant or a pathway to god, so be it.  But it isn't necessary.

Even Postmodernists like Richard Rorty, with his ironic understanding of morality and values, isn't totally without a basis for judging - there's something, as opposed to nothing - even if that something is a piece of literature, Nabokov in Rorty's own example, that 'teaches' us to be more human.

I think Goldberg is flat wrong when he assumes that Hannibal Lecter thinks what he's doing is okay.  Lecter is a frightening character - not a misguided character.  (The misguided tend to invoke pity, not fright).  Lecter gets under our skin and scares us because he knows how wrong his actions are but does them anyway.  There's something wrong with flagrantly affronting the natural 'values' we are inclined towards as human beings - our humanity.  

But beyond Hannibal Lecter is an even more frightening world - a world of nihilism where there are no values, no right no wrong, no truth or lie, no good or evil.  This horror world threatens to become reality (and then normality) as the religion-based values we've long held slip away into the abyss of the unbelievable.  The only thing that stands in the way is our humanity - the inherent values Obama referred to above.  Let's not mistake our savior for our enemy: the postmodernism that Goldberg brings up is a real possibility - a probability if we destroy (even mistakenly) the only values that stand in the way.