Relativism, the philosophical position that there is no objective standards of rationality, and that truth can only be defined with reference to some conceptual framework, has led to the position, championed by modern Leftism, that reality is a social construction. A classic article defending even the most extreme forms of relativism is D. Edwards (et al.), “Death and Furniture: The Rhetoric, Politics and Theology of Bottom Line Arguments Against Relativism,” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 8, 1995, pp. 25-49. This article was essential reading in my daughter’s Psychology methods class.
The paper by Edward (et al.), attempts to knock over the two main bottom-line arguments given by common-sense realists against relativism. The “furniture” argument is that there is a bottom-line physical world that we live in that does supply an objective basis for existence. The relativist philosopher attacks this by attacking the notion of material objects; if really educated they may refer to quantum mechanics, which shows that there is no objective world outside of observations, and observations are social constructs. It is clear that such a line of attack cannot be defeated by appealing to common-sense. However, we should ask; why stop with the social construction? What is this mysterious entity “society’ from which all in the universe flows? Who says that even this exists, even relativistically? Surely the idea of social constructionism is itself, a social construct, and true relativistically only within that paradigm or frame of reference. Outside of that framework, it can say nothing. Ergo, we critics are free, by the Leftoids own standards to ignore it.

