Who's the Moral Relativist?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, April 17, 2008

Standing alongside Pope Benedict at the White House yesterday, President Bush took a swipe at moral relativism.

"In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism," Bush said-- borrowing a line Benedict coined to underscore his commitment to Catholic orthodoxy, shortly before his election as pope.

Yet some of Bush's most defining decisions -- such as launching a war of choice against Iraq and his picking and choosing which laws actually apply to him -- suggest a highly subjective sense of right and wrong. Most notably, he defends the use of interrogation tactics that violate human dignity by arguing that the ends justify the means.

Readers noted this in the comments section of yesterday's column and in e-mails to me.

(Continued here.)