IN DEFENSE OF OBJECTIVE TRUTH. At Commentary, Peter Wehner writes:

As it begins to dawn on students how ludicrous this all is – are they really unable to tell Backholm that he’s not a 6’5” Chinese female who should be able to attend first grade? — you can see, in their hesitation, how they are struggling with where the logical endpoints of their assumptions and worldview eventually bring them. And yet they are unable to offer any intellectual or moral stopping point. As one of the female students put it, “I feel like that’s not my place as like another human to say someone is wrong or to draw lines or boundaries.”

I understand the problems of legalism and censoriousness, the dangers that accompany a spirit of condemnation and lack of empathy, the temptation to mock those who struggle with problems we never even imagined. And I appreciate as an American the value of a live and let live attitude. But I know this, too: If a civilization cannot draw lines or boundaries – if it believes there are no objective truths, no givens to the human condition, no realities that transcend our own subjective interpretations – it will lead to chaos and eventually to great human suffering.

Revolutionary regimes that “Start from zero” and conclude that 2+2=5 will tend to do that.