Exaggeration and Denial

Relativism is central to the myth of neutrality. Modern reporters go to great lengths to legitimize the opposition to every idea or action, no matter how inane. A tiny handful of pickets will be given equal time with a crowd of thousands, such is the imperative to appear neutral and objective. This has led to a vicious cycle of exaggeration and denial, both legitimized by the media's professed desire to "present both sides."

In recent years, the American press lionized the late Croatian ruler Franjo Tudjman, a man whose writings attempted to employ Biblical grounds for ethnic cleansing. Later, these same news agencies would recount "reported mass genocide" by Serbians against ethnic Albanians.

It is difficult to imagine that anyone can deny the reality of the mass slaughter that characterized the twentieth century, whether it be the Armenian millions murdered by the Turks, the Jewish millions murdered by the Nazis, or the untold millions murdered by the communists in China, Russia, and Cambodia.

In my Institutes of Biblical Law, I noted that the scope of such mass murder had so numbed the modern conscience that the murder of a "mere" thousand, or ten thousand, no longer shocked, tempting some to inflate the scope of lesser atrocities, lest they not seem sufficiently horrific.

It was not my purpose to enter a debate over numbers, whether millions were killed, or tens of millions, an area which must be left to others with expertise in such matters. My point then and now is that in all such matters what the Ninth Commandment requires is the truth, not exaggeration, irrespective of the cause one seeks to serve. It is as wrong to exaggerate in order to shock as it is now clear happened in early reports of Serbian "genocide" as to deny the reality of what the Nazis did, and in the case of the Communists, what they are still doing.

Historical revisionism condemns the future to play by the dangerous rules of exaggeration and denial. As I noted then, this will inevitably lead to even greater horrors as the bar of the capacity to shock is continually raised. This is the true danger of the myth of neutrality, where God's law is viewed as merely "one side of the debate."