An Argument against Moral Relativism

I'd like to say I've always held that moral relativism is an illusion, but I can't quite be certain about that--there may have been some places in high school that I succumbed to the pressure of liberal peers all participating in Model United Nations. However, somewhere between all the reading of C.S. Lewis and growing up, I've come to believe that so-called moral relativists are mostly in denial. They fixate on an aspect of morality that most people have known about since biblical times and claim that it's new and enlightened, while those who practiced it in the past were hypocritical.

I bring up this topic because of a very interesting review of Batman: The Dark Knight that I just read in the Wall Street Journal. Quotage:

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of their analysis of the film, but the moral argument rings true to me.