with all things being relative

Who am I? Or perhaps the question should be, “Am I?” There is no need to ask who you are for you are nothing but a figment of my imagination, that is of course assuming my imagination isn’t just my imagination, yet then again it’s all relative, isn’t it. Perhaps I exist only in some dystopian reality such as depicted in the film The Matrix and I am nothing more than an energy source and what I see and feel and experience isn’t real at all but rather merely what I imagine it to be.

Where’s the Justice?

All things being relative, what is real is only real because I believe it is real. There are no absolute truths, no moral principles upon which I must feel obligated; neither can truth be determined by my mind and reason. Everything that I see, feel, and experience, all that I know and conceive is relative to my perception of reality, to my frame of reference, to my point of view. What is of any value is subjective; it is what I perceive it to be. If reality fails to meet my expectations or needs, all I have to do is take a pill, blink an eye, nod my head, or sneeze it into a new reality. After all, it’s all relative.

In 1992, in the matter of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.” Imagine that! Not only is the U.S. Supreme Court a bevy of superior legal minds (relatively speaking, of course) but of even greater import they are, at least in their own minds, extraordinarily gifted for their metaphysical acumen.

More recently, in the decision to Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice and self-aggrandizing metaphysicist Kennedy doubled-down on his earlier endorsement of metaphysical relativism and squared it with identity politics by declaring that “the Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.” Apparently, without this extra-judicial constitutional promise, our identities would be existentially undefined, unidentified, and null.

Now compare and contrast Potentate-for-life Kennedy’s unabashed adoration and sycophancy upon the altar of relativism with what Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life): “Freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim.”

Relativism, called the “dictatorship of relativism” by then newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, is undeniably antithetical and incompatible with Christianity, and Justice Kennedy, who calls himself Catholic, should know that. But then again, this isn’t real, is it?