My Thoughts on Sarah Palin

Just kidding. The few election-season posts I am planning will come later, and will be very high flown affairs, borne ever upwards on the gentle winds of idealism and civic-mindedness.

I'm reading a book, 1491. It's interesting, but not what I expected, and not as good as I had hoped. For one, Mann descends into the academic snake pit of estimating the size of the pre-Columbian native population. Multicultural dogma has hopelessly politicized that endeavor.

And that's not all cultural relativism has poisoned. It has also nearly destroyed moral sensibilities in certain quarters. Here's a short excerpt from the book:

The Olmec were but the first of many societies that arose in Mesoamerica in this epoch. Most had religions that focused on human sacrifice, dark by contemporary standards, but their economic and scientific accomplishments were bright.

Dark by contemporary standards? I'm sure the author, if asked, would want to emphasize that the Olmecs might find many aspects of our culture troubling, even dark. What would the average Olmec of, say, 1000CE say, given how much we spend on plastic surgery, or the pathetic level at which we fund public art? I can't even contemplate the grave disappointment the average Olmec would level at our slick commercialization of the sacred.