Taboos

Jonah Goldberg:

We live in a world where violating taboos is monetizable and confers enviable status. I like taboos— not all of them, of course. But I respect the role of taboos in society. Good taboos are the guardians of settled questions. They sit like gargoyles at the mouth of dangerous caves and warn against spelunking in dark and dangerous places. …

The riot of taboo-violating and dogma-disinterring is an invitation to consequences few have the courage or the basic knowledge to apprehend.

If … you conjure a world where there is no external truth, only a riot of competing, equally valid perspectives, then you create a Nietzschean world where the only arbiter of “truth” is the one with the will and the power to impose their truth on everyone else.