By John Mac Ghlionn, Crisis Magazine - Moral relativism, put simply, is the belief that right and wrong depend on personal opinion or cultural perspective. It sounds tolerant. It flatters our desire for autonomy. But it crumbles under the force of its own contradictions. If all morality is relative, then there can be no condemnation of anything, anywhere—not genocide, not slavery, not rape. If morality is just a cultural costume, then the Nazi uniform is no worse than a business suit, and the gulag is no worse than a schoolhouse. Relativism, when stripped of its disguises, defends nothing and permits everything.