In his tribute to Paul Johnson's epic history of the 20th century, Modern Times, in the 50th Anniversary issue of National Review, Roger Kimball wrote:

One of the great triumphs of Modern Times is Johnson’s capaciousness: His embrace is Whitmanian in its generosity (though not in its sobriety and judicious wisdom). Modern Times is a book with a theme and a moral.

The theme revolves around relativism — moral, epistemological, metaphysical. The Modern World, Johnson writes in his opening flourish, began on May 29, 1919, when Einstein’s theory of relativity was experimentally confirmed, thus shattering the complacent confidence of the Newtonian worldview. Of course, the theory of relativity is not the same thing as relativism. Johnson acknowledges this. And yet, like the second law of thermodynamics (which popularized the term “entropy”) or Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the theory of relativity was science that cast a large metaphorical shadow. Was it misunderstood — even un-understood? It didn’t matter. Johnson is right that the popular appropriation of Einstein’s theory is a good illustration of the “dual impact” of scientific innovators: Their theories change our understanding of the physical world; “but they also change our ideas. The second effect is often more radical than the first.”

The embrace of relativism was a harbinger, a symptom of a seismic shift in the way people view the world. People? Well, educated people, anyway, of which we have a greater and greater supply. (I say “educated”: I mean “schooled.”) It is often said that relativism is the conviction that, when it comes to morals, there is no such thing as absolute values and, when it comes to knowledge, there is no such thing as absolute truth. It is worth meditating on the use of the word “absolute” here. Someone should contact OSHA about its being unfairly overworked. What a relativist really believes (or believes he believes) is that 1) there is no such thing as value, and 2) there is no such thing as truth. The word “absolute” is merely an emollient, a verbal sedative intended to forestall unhappiness. What after all is the difference between saying, “There is no such thing as absolute truth,” and saying, “There is no such thing as truth”? Take your time.

Dr. Sanity, aka Dr. Pat Santy, an MD in psychiatry / aerospace medicine, picks up on The Theory of Moral Relativity:

Much as the Left (who as a group are heavily invested in the whole postmodernistic touchy feely thingy) would like to believe that they have exclusive rights to the truth, they have actually dealt themselves out of any contest for discovering truth by insisting that truth is relative. If it IS relative, they they must agree that I am as correct in what I think as they are.

OTOH, if truth is NOT relative, but exists outside of whatever one side or the other feels is true, then by all means, let's get down to the evidence which will prove which side is correct. I'm game.

Do you begin to see what a house of cards they have built for themselves? If truth is relative, then by their own standards, it is not possible for anyone to be self-deluded-- since self-delusion (they call it "emotional truth" ) is their only reality.

What is most laughable is that their entire way of dealing with the world is based on a fundamental self-delusion - the denial of external reality.

When you live in a world where objective reality is unacknowledged, is it any wonder that from your perspective noone can every prove that what you feel is true, isn't really true? That is why the same distortions and creative fabrications resurface time after time in political discussions these days. The entire "Bush lied about WMD" for example. No matter how many times this is debunked, it gets recycled by the reality-based deprived community. Or, take the case of the pathetic Mary Mapes, who continues to (religiously) adhere to the belief that the forged TANG memo represents truth and deny the reality of any facts to the contrary or to her fundamentally illogical position. Her behavior is entirely consistent with the philosophy that if you feels something is is true, it is true.

In other words, she is engaging in self-delusion.