More on Paul Gottfried's Conservatism in America

Besides "Fear no continental philosophy," the other take-home lesson of Paul Gottfried's new book on American conservatism is that slinging around the word "relativism" with reckless abandon is, at the end of the day, a self-undermining thing for the Right to do:

What had to take place, if the intellectual Right were to make its case, was a debate about conflicting views of the good, both of which included values. But this debate could not be honestly waged if one side claimed to stand on the bedrock of scientific truth while the other foolishly pretended that its opponents were "relativists."

The problem he's pointing out here has two possible solutions: the Left could lose faith in its monopoly on scientific truth, or the Right could stop calling everybody to the left of Allan Bloom a "relativist." (I'm aiming for the second, but that's not necessarily where my money is.)

As a side note, I don't think the Gottfried pullquote fully drives home the fact that calling the other side "relativist" means the Right only has to stand for "values," never mind what those values are. Stand warned, though.