Brent Bozell, president of the conservative-leaning Media Research Center, takes on ABC’s Peter Jennings, who recently characterized most Americans as “pretty insular people.” In “Peter’s holiday blues,” Bozell writes:

In Peter’s world, ‘patriotism’ is a laudable national spirit of unity, but ‘nationalism’ is that disturbing notion that somehow America leads the world in something; that it’s freer, or richer, or more compassionate than other countries. He’s most alarmed by the notion that some Americans think they might love their country and what it stands for more than other citizens.

Sorry, Mr. Jennings, but this writer has no intention of ‘respecting the differences that exist’ when those differences are affronts to my values.

Well, this perhaps overstates things a bit. After all, what differences are considered “affronts” to a particular value Mr. Bozell might hold dear? “Atheism,” for instance, is clearly a (principled) affront to Christianity — but Bozell’s not calling for religious imposition, is he?

Still, the force of his point — that not all values are de facto equal — is worth remembering. “Respecting the differences” does not mean we should degenerate into the lazy, dishonest, and uncritical condition of moral relativism.

—–