Very interesting remark, Mr. Kalb! While I certainly applaud the brave fight being waged by Alan Sears of the ADF, I’ve always had a gut feeling that somehow this is yet another in the long string of rear-guard actions being fought to slow down the seemingly inexorable advance of liberalism with its ideas of radical equality. By accepting the underlying premise, we sow the seeds of our ultimate surrender. Like the neocons, Christians who accept the underlying liberal premises are doomed to taking the route of “unpricipled exceptionialism” and end up caving in on numerous issues where the pragmatic argument isn’t strong enough to counter the ideology of the left. President Bush is perhaps one of the more obvious examples of the process at work - “compassionate conservatism,” talking tough on AA while supporting the diversity argument in court, etc.

Let me urge Mr. Kalb to explain (at his leisure) how commitment is inevitable and to present his answer.

It might be effective if traditionalists considered turning the regime on its head. For example, traditionalists could organize and support one another financially while at the same time taking tech and other jobs at low wages to drive down wages in a kind of nonviolent warfare against runaway immigration.

The point of everything we think or do depends on the world in which it is thought or done. It follows that we can’t intentionally think or do anything without commiting ourselves to an understanding of what that world is. Do I murder the old pawnbroker for her money or not? If I do I display one understanding of things, if I don’t I display another, and I can’t fudge the issue. Ditto for every act whatever.

Also, we can’t avoid thought and action. Even doing nothing is — for a human being — an intentional action and therefore judges the world to be thus and such (“the world is meaningless” or whatever). So we’re stuck having beliefs and commitments, including moral and religious beliefs and commitments. That’s true for all kinds of actions, social as well as individual. If gender is a natural and beneficial principle of order then attitudes and institutions should arrange themselves in one way, if it’s an artificial construction designed to promote the illegitimate dominion of the stronger they should arrange themselves in another, and we can’t carry on life in a way that leaves the issue undecided.

The argument is from Pascal’s Pensees, by the way. ( See http://www.ccel.org/p/pascal/pensees/pensees.htm .) The book’s worth reading. It replies in advance to Nietzsche and the postmoderns. Nietzsche naturally abused him in consequence.

Through implication, this site teaches that some degree of philosophy would be as beneficial as science and history (or religion) in the schools. It is a difficult subject, but it might not be so difficult if it were taught when the student was young. Because the philosophical ideas on this site are destructive to liberalism, one wonders whether liberals have intentionally kept philosophy from being a required subject in the schools.

Forgot to say thanks to Mr. Kalb for answering my question.

I am annoyed that I was not required to take philosophy because many of the ideas here are as commonsensical as “to thine own self be true.” It seems everyone would benefit by knowing these ideas by the time they leave high school.

I think I am finally convinced that it would be more helpful than harmful to obtain a basic philosophy text. I have to be careful because I have a small compulsive problem that might be aggravated by additional living in the mind. I won’t go near the grand philosophical questions (whatever they are), but the basic ideas seem as safe as common sense, history, and geography. (For any as ignorant as me, big philosophical questions are “real versus unreal” and “are there ABSOLUTE truths.” Those are the only two I am aware of, and ignorant about.)