Talk:Friendly dictator

Moral Relativity

I'm wondering if the following section that was recently added would be a case of Moral relativity whether one holds a conservative or liberal point of view:

"In debates over American foreign policy, liberals and conservatives differed over whether it was better to withdraw support for their regimes (on human rights grounds) or to support them as the lesser of two evils."

It seems that if a conservative can accept a friendly dictator as the lesser of two evils (especially when the alternatives are far worse), then this is a refutation of these statements in the CP article on Moral relativity:

• "Moral relativity is the wrongheaded idea that there is no absolute Right or Wrong, and that anyone can freely use his own conscience to decide what is moral."
• "Unsurprisingly, moral relativity is exclusively a liberal belief, as conservatives believe that God is the ultimate arbiter of Good and Evil"

I'm bringing this up because I think that the comments regarding the lesser of two evils in this article are correct, and that a revision to the article on Moral relativity is required instead. Morality goes hand-in-hand with the use of reason, and it is the responsibility of each of us to determine what the most moral course of action is when the available choices are not simple, black/white or good/evil ones. For example, if a person took the time to carefully study and consider the history of Iran and the Middle East, he might conclude that supporting the Shah was the the better moral option than allowing a radical fundamentalist government to replace him, despite the known problems with the Shah. Supporting a man who controlled an abusive secret police force is not an absolute 'right' position, so supporting the Shah over Khomeini is by definition a practical compromise with the intent of making the most moral decision possible given the options available.

I wanted to bring this point up here instead of on the Moral relativity page because of the context, and based on the feedback here suggest changes to that article on its Talk page. Thanks. --DinsdaleP 17:16, 6 January 2009 (EST)

Neither page needs to be revised. Absolute morals do exist, and are decided by God, not people. Dealing with the Shah was right, because the alternative was wrong.MBBurke 17:32, 6 January 2009 (EST)

I agree that some clear absolute choices exist, but I disagree with the two bullet-point excerpts from the Moral Relativity article listed above, which argue that there is no choice that is unclear or non-absolute, and that conservatives do not make compromise judgments like the lesser-of-two-evils example that "Friendly Dictators" provides. --DinsdaleP 17:40, 6 January 2009 (EST)