Thanks from a reader

In response to my thank you note for his donation to VFR, a reader writes:

You are very welcome Larry. Without VFR I never would have identified this seeping nerve gas called liberalism or been able to defend myself against it. But as you so often warn it is not enough just to rail against it. We need to challenge it. God grant me the courage to do that!

I remember reading one of your posts concerning the radical individualism of our age with the resulting decline in civility and the breakdown of all the norms that makes civilized life possible. I took a short drive uptown later that day and these horrors were on display: intrusive cell phone conversations, children running around screeching with no parental discipline, drab and slovenly dress, you name it.

However, I no longer felt just a vague discomfort without any conscious idea of what was wrong. I was able to identify and begin to conceptualize the problem.

Similarly with the political scene. There is no conservative party in this country.

I’m also grateful to VFR for linking to people such as Alan Roebuck, Jim Kalb, and Laura Wood, the thinking housewife. We should have a traditionalist conference with these and similar thinkers—now there’s an idea!.

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LA replies:

Thank you so much for this wonderful statement, which is also what my own intellectual quest for the last almost 30 years, when I started to become a conservative, has been about—the attempt to make sense of the world around us. In that process, we go from “feeling just a vague discomfort without any conscious idea of what is wrong,” to “being able to identify and begin to conceptualize the problem.”

Jane S. writes:

On the traditional conservative conference, count me in. I already have my sleeves rolled up and I all set to pitch in and get started. I have event planning experience: site selection, PR, catering, audio/visual, on-site management. I have references. I brought a *conservative* speaker to San Francisco State University for the first time in 40 years, amidst 350 jeering, heckling rabble-rousers. I have nerves of steel.

LA replies:

We’ll keep that in mind.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 28, 2010 02:24 PM | Send