>>28644
Yeah, that's good stuff, but….
>and most people to this day still respect sound logic and rationality over the post-modern garbage.
No they don't. Post-modernism is not the simple rejection of external reality and convoluted, retarded writing style that most make it out to be. It is more completely the rejection of the idea that any set of values is objectively correct (it is most often combined with Marxism and social constructivism though). The idea of tolerance is the very definition of relativism, and how the west views it is through the lens of postmodern thought. If there was a single set of moral values that could be proven to be correct, then it would be immoral to allow thoughts and behaviors that violate that to exist. If you take the Platonic view that there "exists" a correct way of living, then things must answer the question "why should X be allowed?". Even if X doesn't harm anything, if there is an objective moral that excludes it, or doesn't mention it at all, then it should not be allowed. Western, and increasingly non-Western, societies ask the inverse: "why should X not be allowed?". Behavior is allowed so long as there is no reason why it shouldn't be, which implies that there is no objective morality. Asking for tolerance towards X is the antithesis to arguing that it is right. Most people don't like having an overlord (except God, who is pretty safe to ignore) telling them what they can and can't do when their actions harm no one else. Plato's Republic is a city where all things serve the Good. That sounds nice, but to do so he gives absolute power philosopher kings, and locks the city in time, allowing no progress, since any change might deviate from the path to achieving perfect morality, and that would be immoral. There's no art in the Republic, and philosophy and math are limited to a select few, since it might lead to dangerous thoughts and deeds, like giving a monkey a gun. You will find very, very few who are actual moral objectivists (nothing to do with Ayn Rand) in this age, for good reason.
Well, that's moral relativism. The postmodern influence on that comes in in a trickier role. The ordinary argument against relativism is that there are no logical limits where it can stop being applied. Why assign it to cultures instead of individual nations? Why assign it to nations instead of regions? Why regions instead of individuals? Why should I judge my actions today as I did yesterday if there is no "right" way anyway? But under postmodernism, logic is just another value that cannot be objectively considered the right one. Typically Marxist power-struggles is brought in the judge values (side with whoever the fuck you like more! I can condemn the bourgeoisie for killing the proletariat, but give the proles a pass for killing the back), but it need not be. There need not be any logically consistent system for determining who to tolerate and who not to tolerate, but it is determined by social processes.
So on the topic of pedophilia, suppose you go the route of trying to prove that it is Right (in the Platonic sense), on a objectivist society. Well, that's very, very, very, very hard to do. So hard, in fact, that it's probably impossible. It may be simple to prove that it is not Wrong, but so long as suppressing it is not also Wrong, then there is no reason for society to change anything at all. Now suppose you try to argue that pedophilia should be tolerated in a post-modern relativist society (which, if my argument above holds, we live in). The change of what is considered moral is is at the whims of the crowd and the pressures that they apply to each other. Any appeal to the fact that gays got rights can be ignored because "that's different"!
And by the way, there are some extremely good arguments that this is how things work. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions does an excellent job at showing the irrationality of the transitions between different paradigms in science. It pertains to science and it's values, naturally, but there is no reason why the same paradigm model would not work for other values systems. It's very convincing. I mean, I disagree, but it's one of those ideas that just seem stupid intuitively, but you can't say exactly why it's stupid.