Transcript of the Auster-Hesperado Discussion

This transcript was copied from its source, the comments field of an article at a blog called Mangan's Miscellany.

[note: at a couple of points I posted as "Erich" rather than "Hesperado"]

1. Me to Auster:

At 11/15/2008 02:12:00 PM, The Hesperado said...

I haven't read enough of Auster to definitively analyze what he's doing, but provisionally I would say that he has been trying to grapple with the odd and paradoxical -- and relatively recent, historically -- phenomenon (and spectacle) of conservatives manifesting symptoms of various forms of Leftism.

I too have noticed this phenomenon, but I prefer to frame it in terms of a massive sea change in Western consciousness that has occurred in the past 50 years (approximately) -- a sea change by which politically correct multi-culturalism (PC MC) has become dominant and mainstream throughout the West.

This process of PC MC becoming dominant and mainstream could not have occurred had not a majority of conservatives undergone a change in heart and mind, becoming, in effect, true believers in the PC MC paradigm & worldview.

Concomitantly and logically, this change in heart and mind in turn could not have occurred were not the PC MC paradigm a considerably diluted version of the Leftism whence it originated: I.e., PC MC is a "Leftism Lite" -- sufficiently "lite" that the majority of conservatives have not felt they have betrayed conservatism by adopting it.

Where Auster goes wrong, in my view, is that his analysis goes into strange taffy-like contortions and permutations trying to explain the phenomenon of the "false conservative". The crux of these intellectual contortions in Auster is that he bases his analysis on the conviction that conservatives have willfully betrayed conservatism, whereas I think it is more helpful, more elegant, and more accurate to see the overarching phenomenon as one of people of intelligence, good will and good faith actually undergoing (and/or participating in) a sea change in consciousness that itself has many good aspects to it.

That is, in essence, the complexity of the phenomenon in question: PC MC has many good aspects bound up tightly with harmful aspects, and the good and the bad cannot be easily disentangled. But Auster tends toward a relatively simplistic demonization of the people and thoughts he considers bad and this tendency, combined with his otherwise perspicacious intellect, produces the odd result of his analytical contortions.

2. Auster to me:

At 11/15/2008 03:20:00 PM, Lawrence Auster said...

Hesperado writes:

"Where Auster goes wrong, in my view, is that his analysis goes into strange taffy-like contortions and permutations trying to explain the phenomenon of the "false conservative". The crux of these intellectual contortions in Auster is that he bases his analysis on the conviction that conservatives have willfully betrayed conservatism, whereas I think it is more helpful, more elegant, and more accurate to see the overarching phenomenon as one of people of intelligence, good will and good faith actually undergoing (and/or participating in) a sea change in consciousness that itself has many good aspects to it."

Hesperado admits he hasn't read enough of me to understand me well, but this doesn't stop him from saying that I commit "strange, taffy like contortions" in my criticisms of leftward moving conservatives—contortions of which he doesn't offer a single example. May I suggest to Hesperado that if you're going to make such a criticism, you ought to back it up.

The starting point of my critique of today's conservatives is that they always end up giving up the positions they claim to hold. For example, the people who made opposition to race preferences the highest principle of American politics went stone cold silent at the time of the Grutter decision, the greatest single advance of race preference, instead of denouncing it. The people who said fighting the culture war was the great challenge of our lifetime, accommodated themselves to the cultural left. The people who stood for assimilation and the American common culture and opposed multiculturalism stopped talking about America's common culture, went along with the idea of that America is essentially diverse, and supported presidential candidates and presidents whose professed goal was to Hispanicize America. The people who say that the expansion of Islam is a mortal threat to our society don't speak a single syllable about reducing or stopping Muslim immigration.

It's easy for Hesperado—a professed non-conservative who says that he supports political correctness and multiculturalism and applauds conservatives' surrender to these things—to criticize a principled conservative who holds conservatives to their professed ideals and shows why they always end up surrendering them.

Finally, he gets me spectacularly wrong when he says that my main criticism of liberal conservatives is that they have "willfully betrayed" conservatism. What an ignorant trivialization of my position. To the contrary, my central point is that the dominant belief system of modern society is liberalism, and that almost all people today, including most conservatives, are basically liberals whether they realize it or not, and that unless people understand and hold to consciously non-liberal principles, they will, whatever their professed ideals, inevitably end up drifting with the liberal tide. But of course, Hesperado admitted at the start that he hasn't read enough of me to understand me.

3. Me to Auster:

At 11/15/2008 06:52:00 PM, Hesperado said...

Auster wrote:

"Hesperado admits he hasn't read enough of me to understand me well, but this doesn't stop him from saying that I commit "strange, taffy like contortions" in my criticisms of leftward moving conservatives—contortions..."

I couched my observations in terms like "provisionally I would say" and "in my view". Even though it was I myself who admitted my relative lack of complete knowledge of Auster's writings, that doesn't mean I in fact lack sufficient knowledge of Auster's writings to at least form an impression of them with regard to the issue in question, nor that this impression is to be summarily dismissed.

"of which he doesn't offer a single example."

True, I didn't. Perhaps I will at a later date, but that would involve considerable time and tedium, since Auster's statements that, in my view, reflect this contortion are sprinkled throughout a vast corpus and not, as far as I know, conveniently located in one essay.

"The starting point of my critique of today's conservatives is that they always end up giving up the positions they claim to hold."

At least in the area of multiculturalism and Muslims (since that's the primary area of my interest and focus), I would agree. But the question is: Why do conservatives do this? What has changed? Conservatives 60 years ago wouldn't have done this. Now the vast majority of them bend over backwards to "respect" Islam and Muslims. What happened? Perhaps Auster has already written about these questions. It just seems that whenever I read him on issues that get close to these questions, I never see any sense or indication that he has ever asked them and come up with a reasonable explanation. All I see are various different permutations of labels that try to capture that animal the "false conservative", who seem to be sprouting up all over the place, often in highly unlikely places to boot, which makes the puzzle all the more puzzling, one would think. One alternative explanation that might be implicitly lurking in Auster's paradigm is that of the "ecclesiola" -- i.e., the "pure remnant" who alone know the truth, while the vast majority have gone astray. This would be an impermissible explanation, unless one were -- either willfully or unwittingly -- succumbing to the Gnostic temptation to damn the Western cosmion. I tend to think Auster is not doing this, but I'd like to see more tangible and copious indications to make sure.

"For example, the people who made opposition to race preferences the highest principle of American politics went stone cold silent at the time of the Grutter decision, the greatest single advance of race preference, instead of denouncing it. The people who said fighting the culture war was the great challenge of our lifetime, accommodated themselves to the cultural left. The people who stood for assimilation and the American common culture and opposed multiculturalism stopped talking about America's common culture, went along with the idea of that America is essentially diverse, and supported presidential candidates and presidents whose professed goal was to Hispanicize America. The people who say that the expansion of Islam is a mortal threat to our society don't speak a single syllable about reducing or stopping Muslim immigration."

I'm painfully aware of such tendencies among conservatives, but the level at which I'm focusing here is the broader etiology of this. It's a matter of principle for me to avoid etiologies that would condemn too much, that would cut too deeply, for then we sacrifice the West itself in the name of some Gnostic wisdom only a small minority of special individuals have. So if we avoid a radical etiology, then how do we explain this phenomenon? The only alternative, it seems to me, would have to acknowledge the good of liberal progress -- that liberal progress is part of a larger process that contains malignancies as well. Like a body with cancer, we don't want to cut out too much and kill the patient, or mistake a healthy organic system in the body for the cancer that is attacking it. Indeed, even the conception of "cancer attacking the body" may be to botch the reality of the phenomenon, over-simplifying it as an exogenous process (where Leftism and/or "liberalism" -- and then the majority of false conservatives -- are seen as inimical outsiders to the ecclesiola), rather than an endogenous process intimately bound up with healthy growth and healthy state.

"It's easy for Hesperado—a professed non-conservative who says that he supports political correctness and multiculturalism"

Actually, I have written about 100 essays condemning PC MC (politically correct multi-culturalism) on my blog -- mainly within the nebula of how it relates to the irrational elevation of non-white non-Westerners and the irrational denigration of the white West, and this furthermore precisioned to a focus on the problem of Islam, my main concern.

"and applauds conservatives' surrender to these things"

And as part of my some 100 essays condemning PC MC, I have integrated lots of criticism of conservatives for having succumbed to PC MC. If Auster didn't admit, as I did, that he hasn't familiarized himself sufficiently with his interlocutor's writings to form a sufficiently complete appraisal of them, that hasn't seemed to have stopped him from completely mischaracterizing my position on PC MC. At least I know that he and I can tango...:)

"Finally, he gets me spectacularly wrong when he says that my main criticism of liberal conservatives is that they have "willfully betrayed" conservatism. What an ignorant trivialization of my position. To the contrary, my central point is that the dominant belief system of modern society is liberalism, and that almost all people today, including most conservatives, are basically liberals whether they realize it or not..."

Then that would properly expand the problem beyond "willful", which is good. However, once again, why has this occurred? And what will the explanation of the "why" imply about the vast majority who have succumbed? To me, if one continues to believe in the West, one cannot assume that the vast majority are not good, decent and intelligent. If the vast majority of the West are not good, decent and intelligent, then we might as well jump ship now, hunker down in a militia compound and stockpile weapons for the Counter-Revolution.

So if we don't assume that the vast majority are not good, decent and intelligent, then how do we explain this strange phenomenon of the sea change in consciousness that has occurred in the past 50-odd years, this major paradigm shift? And how do we characterize it? As a simplex malum, or as a complex, interpenetrating paradox of both bonum and malum?

4. Auster to me:

At 11/16/2008 07:26:00 AM, Lawrence Auster said...

Hesperado evaluates my writings not on the basis of what I actually say, but on the basis of his own private theory that I am a gnostic thinker! It's clear what has happened with Hesperado. Being a student of Eric Voegelin, who is the main critic of modern gnosticism, and not liking my criticisms of liberalism and conservatism, Hesperado picks up this handy conceptual tool from Voegelin and declares that I'm a gnostic. It's a high-fallutin' way of putting me down and dismissing my work, without having to engage in a fair evaluation of what I actually say. It is, in short, the intellectual version of a smear.

My criticisms of modern conservatives are not based on some hidden gnostic truth that only I and small coterie possess and that can only be known through some secret method; they are based on the conservatives' own stated ideals and positions that, as I've observed, they fail to live up to and steadily surrender. The reason the conservatives do this is that modern liberalism with its principle of non-discrimination has indeed completely dominated the modern world, and, therefore, unless one has a principle that is the opposite of liberal non-discrimination, one will inevitably move in the liberal direction.

Now, the fact that I'm standing against the accepted idea of the modern world may seem to a superficial and glib intellect to make me "gnostic," since an aspect of gnosticism is the idea that the entire society or cosmos is under a false idea and that only oneself has the "real truth," which is accessible only to those who join the gnostic brotherhood. In fact, unlike a gnostic, I do not say that the world is under some illusion or cosmic conspiracy and that only I have the "real truth." To the contrary, and UNLIKE many mainstream conservatives who think liberals are acting in bad faith, I always insist that liberals have good-faith and sincere reasons for believing the things that they believe, and that the only way traditionalists can win is to persuade liberals that liberalism is false and destructive and leading to the extinction of our civilization. The gnostic, by contrast, does not grant the rationality and good faith of other people and seek to persuade them; the gnostic says that others are toiling under the false consciousness of a cosmic conspiracy, and that the gnostic alone is in possession of the secret truth which cannot be known by ordinary people.

By Hesperado's logic, anyone who argues that the prevailing beliefs of his society are mistaken and destructive is a gnostic! Which would make any intellectual dissent to prevailing beliefs "gnostic" and thus illegitimate and suspect. It's a rotten game that Hesperado is up to. Instead of dealing with my ideas as I actually state them, he sticks a cheap negative label on them that has no other aim than to discredit my entire work.

That is not the way to go. For example, I've strongly criticized Steve Sailer's thought (see my 2005 article "Biocentric Yuppiedom versus the West"). But I do not just stick a label on him; I evaluate his biocentric approach and show why I think it's both mistaken in itself and bad for conservatism and the West, even as I underscore Sailer' value in certain areas.

5. Me to Auster:

At 11/16/2008 01:32:00 PM, Erich said...

Auster wrote:

“Hesperado evaluates my writings not on the basis of what I actually say, but on the basis of his own private theory that I am a gnostic thinker!”

I never said I have a theory that Auster is a Gnostic thinker. What I wrote was:

“One alternative explanation that might be implicitly lurking in Auster's paradigm is that of the "ecclesiola" -- i.e., the "pure remnant" who alone know the truth, while the vast majority have gone astray. This would be an impermissible explanation, unless one were -- either willfully or unwittingly -- succumbing to the Gnostic temptation to damn the Western cosmion. I tend to think Auster is not doing this, but I'd like to see more tangible and copious indications to make sure.”

Note my first sentence there: "...that MIGHT be lurking implicitly in Auster's paradigm..." and note my last sentence there: “I tend to think Auster is NOT doing this...” [emphasis added for those whose reading glasses need a new prescription]

“It's clear what has happened with Hesperado. Being a student of Eric Voegelin, who is the main critic of modern gnosticism, and not liking my criticisms of liberalism and conservatism, Hesperado picks up this handy conceptual tool from Voegelin and declares that I'm a gnostic.”

Again, I never “declared” that Auster is a gnostic. Auster often makes a big deal about how other people aren’t reading him carefully and end up criticizing a straw man rather than what he actually writes (and Auster in fact is complaining here about me doing this to him)--and yet he turns around and perpetrates the exact same thing he is accusing me of!

“It's a high-fallutin' way of putting me down and dismissing my work, without having to engage in a fair evaluation of what I actually say. It is, in short, the intellectual version of a smear.”

It certainly would be that, if what he claims I was doing were actually verifiable from my own writings. But it's not, as anyone with a lick of sense can plainly see by reading my previous comment Auster is complaining about.

”My criticisms of modern conservatives are not based on some hidden gnostic truth that only I and small coterie possess and that can only be known through some secret method; they are based on the conservatives' own stated ideals and positions that, as I've observed, they fail to live up to and steadily surrender.”

This just reiterates the assertion, but that’s a tangential problem anyway. As I said before, I tend to think Auster is NOT indulging in this kind of Gnosticism. Indeed, that's why I think his analysis on this issue tends to go into taffy-like contortions, precisely because he might be avoiding the easy out of the Gnostic explanation; but there is another vector pulling at his analysis, I think, one that needn't be there, in my view, which has its source, in my estimation (jeez louise, I find myself having to write like a frigging defense attorney whenever I'm engaging in a discussion with either Auster or Robert Spencer, for fear of setting off their hypersensitivity!), in a failure to reasonably account for why so many -- indeed, a majority if not a vast majority -- conservatives have had a sea change in hearts & minds. I mean, the reality is paradoxical and complex enough, without having to twist it further into pretzels. (Speaking of Spencer, he sort of evinces the opposite problem: instead of going into contortions in response to the paradox, he just avoids it, then pops in now and again with broad statements of the phenomenon that reveal a rather simplistic and naive grasp of one of the most important obstacles in our time to dealing rationally with the danger of Islam -- which one would think would occupy Spencer's interest a little more.)

At any rate, I’m more interested in Auster’s next sentence, which broaches on the etiological problem I mentioned in my previous comment:

“The reason the conservatives do this is that modern liberalism with its principle of non-discrimination has indeed completely dominated the modern world, and, therefore, unless one has a principle that is the opposite of liberal non-discrimination, one will inevitably move in the liberal direction.”

This sentence, of course, does not actually answer the etiological question, and only makes that question more pressing, and underscores the baffling nature of the reality in question. He begins the sentence with an apparent promise of some kind of answer:

“The reason the conservatives do this is that..."

But then we find he is just restating the problem that needs explaining. The question remains, and now becomes: Why have the vast majority of conservatives -- for it certainly is a vast majority when it comes to the problem of Islam -- Why have the vast majority of conservatives accepted this domination of liberalism? Surely, conservatives aren’t that mealy-mouthed and passive that a majority of them would just bend over for a domination of modern liberalism? Why would so many of them do that? This doesn’t say much for conservatism, that it inculcates a culture so ready to succumb.

Auster goes on to write:

“...In fact, unlike a gnostic, I do not say that the world is under some illusion or cosmic conspiracy and that only I have the "real truth." To the contrary, and UNLIKE many mainstream conservatives who think liberals are acting in bad faith, I always insist that liberals have good-faith and sincere reasons for believing the things that they believe, and that the only way traditionalists can win is to persuade liberals that liberalism is false and destructive and leading to the extinction of our civilization.”

This again completely avoids the gigantic and baffling phenomenon of the vast majority of conservatives becoming liberalized, so to speak. I can understand liberals being liberalized; what needs explaining is so many, perhaps a vast majority, of conservatives succumbing so easily to a paradigm shift that apparently goes against most of their core beliefs.

“By Hesperado's logic, anyone who argues that the prevailing beliefs of his society are mistaken and destructive is a gnostic!”

I never said this. I only framed the particular arguments of Auster as possibly implying the gnostic pathos as one possible explanation for an etiology that would make sense, given the nature of the phenomenon, coupled with the apparent etiological lacunae in Auster's writings. And it's not the possibility of a Gnostic motivation in Auster that interests me -- indeed, it was parenthetical in my previous comment, and ended up being tentatively dismissed by me ("I tend NOT to think Auster is doing this") -- it's the more interesting possibility that what I notice as apparent contortions in the generation of multiple species of the "false conservative" in his analysis with regard to this issue might have its source in his failure to think about and offer a reasonable explanation for such a monumentally odd phenomenon.

“Which would make any intellectual dissent to prevailing beliefs "gnostic" and thus illegitimate and suspect.”

And I never said this either. In fact, I have been engaging in intellectual dissent against the prevailing PC MC of our time, which I describe as “dominant and mainstream” regularly on my blog for over two years. I wouldn’t do that if I thought my inttellectual dissent was illegitimate and suspect.

“It's a rotten game that Hesperado is up to. Instead of dealing with my ideas as I actually state them, he sticks a cheap negative label on them that has no other aim than to discredit my entire work.”

It’s a curiously emotional reaction from Auster, when I didn’t label his ideas as anything, I only raised sincere questions about what they might imply and/or what might motivate them, given the apparent absence of an etiological explanation in his writings for what is otherwise a major concern of his, the phenomenon of the false conservative. And it's a queerly paradoxical reaction from Auster, since he's doing to me exactly what he's complaining about me doing to him (i.e., blatantly mischaracterizing his content and motives without evidence from what I have actually written -- indeed, in ostensible contradiction to what I have written only a few centimeters above him)!

6. Auster to me [on his blog]:

Dennis Mangan’s blog, where I have been busy replying to an attack on me by Hesperado, a.k.a. Erich. He argues that my account of a ubiquitous liberalism dominating the West is so strange, “paradoxical,” and “pretzel-like” in its “taffy-like contortions” that the only possible explanation he can find for my odd behavior is that I am a gnostic thinker who is damning our entire civilization in favor of a hidden truth. Basically, it’s a higher-IQ version of the usual attempts to discredit me. It would really be fun sometime to have a chance to respond to intelligent, good-faith criticism of my writings that attacks what I’ve actually said, rather a fun-house version of what I’ve said. I can dream, can’t I?

7. Me to Auster [re his blog post]:

At 11/16/2008 06:20:00 PM, Hesperado said...

I just noticed now that Auster on his blog characterizes my comments about him as "an attack on me by Hesperado, a.k.a. Erich" and elaborates thusly:

"He argues that my account of a ubiquitous liberalism dominating the West is so strange, paradoxical, and pretzel-like in its intellectual contortions that the only possible explanation he can find for my odd behavior is that I am a gnostic thinker who is damning our entire civilization in favor of a hidden truth."

Up above, I already refuted this mischaracterization of my position with regard to my critique of Auster, and before that, there is another lengthy comment by me that clearly shows that Auster is mischaracterizing my position.

Auster's post on his blog is stamped at 7:38 pm, while his latest post above me here is 3:03 pm (a post completely unrelated to our ongoing dispute), and my post which should clear up the mischaracterization is stamped before that, at 1:32 pm. Auster has thus had plenty of time to see my refutation. Instead of actually addressing my refutation of his first mischaracterization of my position with regard to my critique of him, and offering a counter-refutation point by point, he has compounded his misunderstanding by formally reiterating and reinforcing it on his blog, hours after I already provided my refutation, which he completely ignores.

That's for the record. People of elementary intelligence and reason playing the home game and following along by actually reading what I wrote here (instead of relying upon Auster's characterization, as "Gintas" does on Auster's site) will see what's what.

Auster's hypersensitive personalizing of intellectual disagreements by others does make the debate fun, I admit; but also irritating as hell.

8. Auster still fails to respond to my last post (see #6 above, where I already noted prior to this that Auster was failing to respond):

At 11/17/2008 06:25:00 AM, Lawrence Auster said...

[But Auster here posts a comment directed at "TGGP" -- totally unrelated to the discussion he has been having with me: this is 6:25 am, some 17 hours after my post which attempts to refute his mischaracterizations of me.

Furthermore, I checked his blog late this morning, and his blog entry noted in my #6 above stands with no alteration or recognition of my last couple of posts on Mangan's Miscellany.

Auster is continuing to ignore my last posts, both #7 and more importantly #5 above (not to mention #3 which he never really addressed).

9. Update: Here is Auster's subsequent response to me:

In reply to Hesperado's a.k.a. Erich's comment of 11/16 at 1:32 p.m.:

I missed the phrase in his earlier comment where, after saying that he is drawn to the explanation that I'm a gnostic who "damns the Western cosmion," he added the qualifier, "I tend to think Auster is not doing this." The reason I missed it was that the whole drift of Hesperado's argument was to present his reasons for believing that I am a gnostic. If, in reality, he tends not to believe I'm a gnostic, why did he write an entire comment setting forth his reasons why I am?

He even has the audacity to write, in response to my criticizing him for calling me a gnostic:

"It’s a curiously emotional reaction from Auster, when I didn’t label his ideas as anything,"

Such is Hesperado's technique. He says something loud and clear, then claims he hasn't said it ("I didn’t label his ideas as anything"), and then claims there's something strange about me (a "curiously emotional reaction"), for thinking that he had, ahem, said what he had actually said.

Here's another example of the same technique. Initially Hesperado clearly expressed his approval for multiculturalism:

"I think it is more helpful, more elegant, and more accurate to see the overarching phenomenon [of conservatives buying into multiculturalism and politically correctness] as one of people of intelligence, good will and good faith actually undergoing (and/or participating in) a sea change in consciousness that itself has many good aspects to it."

So, Hesperado says that the spreading dominance of our society by political correctness and multiculturalism "has many good aspects to it."

But then, when I, in responding to his approving comments about PC and multiculturalism, described him as "a professed non-conservative who says that he supports political correctness and multiculturalism," he comes back and says, "Actually, I have written about 100 essays condemning PC MC... And as part of my some 100 essays condemning PC MC, I have integrated lots of criticism of conservatives for having succumbed to PC MC."

So he really wants it both ways, doesn't he?

And here's yet another example where he denies saying what he plainly said. He stated that he had an "explanation" for my strange, "twisted like a pretzel" ideas, and the explanation is that I am a gnostic. But when I, simply characterizing what he had said, wrote that he has a "theory" that I am a gnostic, he retorts, "I never said I have a theory that Auster is a Gnostic thinker."

Oh, I see. He didn't say that he had a "theory" that I am a gnostic he said that he had an "explanation" that I am a gnostic! I stand corrected.

In the same way, he writes at length about his explanation that I'm a gnostic, and when I replied that he had "declared" that I'm a gnostic, he complains that the word "declare" was wrong, because of all his famous qualifications (see above). Ok, so Hesperado is finally right about something in this discussion. I'll concede that I should not have said that he "declared" that I am gnostic. I should have said that he argued at length his reasons for thinking that my being a gnostic is the only explanation he can think of for my weird, twisted in a pretzel, paradoxical, intellectual gyrations.

Thus he writes:

"But the question is: Why do conservatives do this? What has changed? Conservatives 60 years ago wouldn't have done this. Now the vast majority of them bend over backwards to 'respect' Islam and Muslims. What happened? Perhaps Auster has already written about these questions. It just seems that whenever I read him on issues that get close to these questions, I never see any sense or indication that he has ever asked them and come up with a reasonable explanation. All I see are various different permutations of labels that try to capture that animal the 'false conservative', who seem to be sprouting up all over the place, often in highly unlikely places to boot, which makes the puzzle all the more puzzling, one would think."

As a writer, I have endeavored to show, as clearly as I can, the ruling liberal idea of our time, how it has been accepted at all levels of our society, and how this makes our society incapable of defending itself. And what has Hesperado gleaned from this? That my work adds up to nothing but tossing around various permutations of labels!

Then, finally, he asks a reasonable question:

"However, once again, why has this occurred? And what will the explanation of the 'why' imply about the vast majority who have succumbed [to liberalism]? To me, if one continues to believe in the West, one cannot assume that the vast majority are not good, decent and intelligent. If the vast majority of the West are not good, decent and intelligent, then we might as well jump ship now, hunker down in a militia compound and stockpile weapons for the Counter-Revolution."

This type of question has regularly been asked of me by readers: Why do I criticize almost all conservatives? Is everyone wrong? And my answer is that, given the profound, systemic crisis of our society, it's not surprising, that everyone is wrong. The West's suicide process could not have happened as a result of just one "bad" element in our society, say, the liberal elites. No, all the leading elements of our society, all the significant factions of the West, including elements normally thought of as very conservative, such as the Catholic Church and evangelicals, have signed on to an idea, the belief in non-discrimination, that spells the doom of the West, since it leads people to support, or to refuse to oppose, policies leading to the Third-Worldization and Islamization of the West. There is nothing gnostic about this insight. I'm not saying that the West is under the spell of false consciousness. People sincerely believe that discrimination is the most immoral thing and must be avoided at all costs; and further, that same idea is now embodied in attitudes, custom, and law, so that there are severe penalties for openly challenging it.

There is nothing mysterious or obscure about my argument. It is simple and straightforward. It is, however, very hard for most people to understand it, because understanding it would require them to abandon the most sacred belief in our society, an act that would make them immoral in their own eyes and pariahs in the eyes of society.

Which, by the way, may explain Hesperado's attacks on my straightforward position as "twisted" like a pretzel, as "queerly paradoxical," as characterized by "taffy-like contortions" (he even has an entry at his blog called ("The taffy-like contortions of Lawrence Auster"), and "gnostic," as well as his description of my responses to him in this discussion as "curiously emotional" and "odd." The reality is that my central idea—that the ruling liberal belief in non-discrimination is leading to the suicide of our society—is irrefutable, AND that my idea is deeply threatening and disturbing, not least because agreeing with it would require people to reject the dominant moral belief of our society. So, since my disturbing position cannot be refuted, it must be discredited by other means, among which is to try to portray me as irrational, weird, bent, or nuts, something that my attackers, including Robert Spencer and many less prominent people, have done over and over.

One final point. Regarding Hesperado's presentation of himself in this discussion as an opponent of the left, he has written at his blog:

"It is time to scrap the terms Left and Right altogether—and with them 'conservative' and 'liberal.'"

11/17/2008 10:33:00 AM