Is common sense enough?

Paul Nachman writes:

You wrote:

“We can only answer it from within a traditional moral framework that assumes the existence of objective right and wrong and the legitimate existence of national communities.”

Later, another of your correspondents wrote:

“One does not need to hate Muslims in order to conclude they should not be allowed to colonise Western countries. It is common sense, not hatred.”

I think these two statements clash, and I’m with your correspondent on this. I don’t see the need for objective right and wrong. Fundamental incompatibility (objective incompatibility?) is enough. We can even think some aspects of Muslim civilization are superior, but we don’t want to be forced to live by their rules.

LA replies:

In many situations, common sense—just looking at the irreconcilable differences for example—could be enough. But what if your common sense position is challenged by a principled consistent liberalism?

Common sense is the most common form taken by the unprincipled exception (“unprincipled” meaning that it fails to posit a principle that is opposed to liberal principle). Common sense is good, but in an ideological age, it’s not sufficient. If the very legitimacy of your country and all Western countries is challenged on the basis that Western nations are discriminatory and racist, then the statement, “It’s common sense that those people don’t fit with us,” is not going to carry the argument, because the statement will be seen as an example of the very racism that needs to be overcome. The goodness and legitimacy of nationhood, namely our own, including its particularity (which inherently involves some discrimination), needs to be affirmed. And for nationhood to be good (good objectively, not just good because we like it), there must be an objective moral order that says it’s good, a moral order opposing the false and inverted moral order of liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 25, 2006 07:10 PM | Send