My point, though, is that I’ve a hunch that what’s driving Linker is his distrust and contempt for (let’s call it) Bennetism. When he reads Bacevich taking inventory on the culture of choice, what Linker hears is the idea that we need a Culture Czar to clamp down on all this nonsense, and what he thinks is that we just exited the era of a Republican President who snorted cocaine, but now that there’s a Democrat who did same (with a darker skin colour to boot), now the party’s over?

Of course Linker’s blind spot, probably, is that guys like Bacevich have been saying this all along – that, and Bacevich is probably equally frustrated with whatever hypocrisy and double standards Linker sees.

I’m some kind of member of the genus Liberal – not sure exactly what species (an odd one, no doubt). Folks like me, who are sympathetic to both the ‘crunchy project’ and to the paleoconservatives (we are liberals who have read Lasch in between advocating surrender and of course, hating America), folks like me I think are deeply suspicious of the mainstream right. People who tend to be idealists (and liberals have that tendency) are also keen about detecting hypocrisy, and rigorous in unraveling the motivations for that hypocrisy. It’s a character trait of the genus.

Which is where Linker comes in. I’m not that sympathetic to a lot of his output; I think he’s written some obtuse things. And I deeply agree that his imagination is limited, that he can’t see an alternative between moral laissez-faire and state action. But it isn’t just that Linker is a symbol of the overall decline in our public discourse. Could it be that Linker is responding to the rhetorical environment? He, like other liberals, myself included, is suspicious in the way that srv is suspicious of conservative discourse on public mores. He uses the “authoritarianism” brush to paint in overly broad strokes because he doesn’t think anything good can come out of this line of inquiry, and so starts painting away, trying to cover it up. It’s not the most fruitful action, but it’s understandable, and it’s understandable because, well, I mean, look at what we’ve witnessed in the recent past: the William Bennett fiasco, for one, and well, the life and career of Bush, Junior makes a pretty damning exhibit B.

So it’s kind of what one is up against, if one is a paleoconservative exploring these questions with a liberal. I don’t know if it can be overcome, but it’s part of the reality.

“There is no such thing as ’society’” — Margaret Thatcher.

Why stop there? Why not repeal laws against racial discrimination? Why shouldn’t people be “free” to form self-segregating racial and ethnic communities?

Oh, I know. This pesky thing called “democracy”. The problem is that all these anti-discrimination laws are actually quite popular. For some reason, a large majority of people actually think that racial and religious discrimination in housing is “unnatural” and, and has no basis in our natural human life. They even think it has something to do with justice! What naivete.

The problem is, how are we going to convince the majority of people in this country who have been brainwashed to believe in equality and equal rights and other unnatural nonsense to change their minds and overturn all these anti-discrimination laws? It seems like we may just have get rid of the core problem, which is “democracy” itself. What do you think? Any ideas of how to do this?

Since this conversation seems to circle around sex, here’s one simple proposal: repeal anti-discrimination laws which treat marital status as a protected category in private housing.

Landlords or even the little “dictators” of neighborhood associations can then decide whether or not they want to be “respectable” and keep out cohabiting unmarried couples, and people can decide whether or not they wish to live in such communities.

As it is now, the state actively supresses stigmatization through permitting lawsuits on such bases.

Eliminating some anti-discrimination laws based on religion could also have a similar effect, thus allowing people to self-segregate.

Liberalism thinks this self-segregation is an utterly horrible vice and, echoing Republican conservatism, argues that permitting it will automatically lead to intolerable strife and social disorder. This is because Liberalism views itself as the only way of salvation from a brutal state of nature.

In a Liberal order, individuals are free to do anything except live in a society.

I can understand why conservatives might eschew authoritarianism, seeing it as an even worse moral course than liberal “chaos”. But I can also understand why conservatives who want to live in a world as you describe are willing to use an authoritarian state as the vehicle to bring it about, because frankly, there’s no other way for it to occur in anyone’s lifetime.Of course, I’d rather live in a world of paleocon dreamers than paleocon realists. But I live in this world, and I can’t see how this kind of “world” can be created except in the small sense of simply choosing to participate in a smaller society of like-minded individuals within the greater context of the modern world, just as ultra orthodox Jews do in some parts of New York, or the Amish do in Pennsylvania, or various evangelicals do in certain parts of the south, or Mormons in Utah, etc. These groups do indeed function in the manner you describe, but willingly submitting themselves to communal authority. But they of course have no chance of becoming the dominant culture in this country, and can only exist because of the extreme liberalism of the surrounding culture, which allows them the luxury of being illiberal within their own set of choices, all of which is protected by the liberal state they claim to eschew.

Personally I never really understood this viewpoint from religious types. Choosing virtue has no meaning if the choice was already made for you by society. Not to mention that in the rose-tinged olden days, society wasn’t any more moral. People were just more duplicitous and there was more private suffering (you had to protect the family reputation, after all). You can enforce politeness, but you can’t force people to betray their nature without it harming someone down the road.

After observing conservatives for four decades, and speaking with many from the Greatest Generation (and them talking about their elders in the 20’s), I realized conservatives complaints really aren’t about liberal’s permissiveness. It’s that too many now enjoy the kinds of liberties that they exclusively held. The liberal masses spoiled their party when they too got the option to embrace the nasty bits of Classical Liberalism.

I can agree that there might be a few conservatives (literally, I’ve met no more than a handful my entire life) like Bacevich who may actually live what they preach.