ting on the corpse. Each of these exotic points of icw—the artifactsrnof ancient traditions, as dehcate as sculptured crystalHnern—must be gathered up with the old fruit jars and nonreturnablernbottles of Middle America—and ground into roadbedrnmaterial for the interstate highway system.rnI n liberal societies there is littlerntoleration of dissent on fundamentalrnquestions.rnAll modern ideologies—international socialism, national socialism,rndemocratic globalism—are inherently genocidal, becausernthey exclude the possibility of a legitimate alternative.rnThis is what makes the language of American liberals and neoconservativesrnso frightening, their smug determination to turnrnthe wodd into a hall of mirrors in which thev will see nothingrnbut their own reflection.rnAny universal creed, including Christianity in its variousrnforms, may be tempted to treat its competitors not only as inferiorrnor illegitimate but as abominations to be eliminated. Somerneariy Christians were nai’e enough to regard their pagan neighborsrnas demons in human form, and even Augustine—who certainlyrnknew better—dwells lovingly on all the legendary crimesrnof the Romans, while ignoring the barbarities and abominationsrnof the Old Testament. Missionaries going to convert thernheathen have sometimes identified the Christian gospel withrnthe philosophical and material culture of their native land, therngreatest exception being the Jesuits who recognized that thernChinese and Japanese or even the Iroquois, in converting tornChristianity, did not also have to become mock-Europeans.rnChristian nations have been aggressive in proselytizing, andrnon occasion they have expelled or persecuted competing sectsrnand other faiths, most often for reasons of state. It is all too truernthat Christian universalism, when carried to an extreme byrnCalvinist zealots or fanatical Catholics, is responsible for muchrnhuman misery, because the zealot, in identifying his own limitedrnpoint of viev’ with that of his Creator, feels justified in goingrnto any lengths to carry out the divine will.rnIt is no paradox to say that the only restraints on Christianrnuniversalism derive from Christian faith in a supernatural creator.rnStripped of its belief in Heaven and Hell, in the Cod whornbecame man and suffered all that a man can suffer, the Christianrnpoint of view saps ordinary human affections of their italityrnand annihilates the individual as thoroughly as Buddhism orrnIslam. The proper name for this denatured Christianity is liberalism.rnBy liberalism, I mean the tradition of modern philosophy,rnfrom Montaigne and Descartes to Hobbes, Locke, and the classicalrnliberals of the 19th century, all the vay down to the libertariansrnand socialists whose battles over gun rights, schoolrnvouchers, and Food Stamps comprise the principal distractionrnfrom the political reality in which we li’e. This liberalism isrnbased on a lie; the lie is individualism. This is not to say thatrnliberals have not made a good case for individual rights, butrneven more basic to the creed of liberalism than the doctrines ofrnnatural rights is the assumption that liberals are individualistsrnwho speak for the individual and in defense of the first-personrnsingular point of view. This is a bare-faced lie: built into thern er core of liberal philosophy is a radioactive poison that rotsrnout all peculiarities, reducing individual men and women to ciphers,rnerasing national frontiers, and destroying all distinctiverninstitutions that reflect and transmit differences of culture, religion,rnand—for want of a better word—formation.rnEven other liberals are aware that socialists despise the indi-rnN’idual and want to grind him into the dust of social classes andrnoppressed minorities, but, at the other extreme, most libertariansrnbecome livid whenever some little group of individualsrnwants to defend its distineti e point of view against the greatrnundifferentiated mass of hpothetical individuals.rnIf liberals were really individualists, they would embrace therndictum of Dr. Johnson (the greatest antiliberal of his dav); “Everyrnman has the right to speak his mind, and everv other manrnhas the right to knock him down for it.” One of the most originalrnof liberals did say something about defending to the deathrnouT right to say what he disagreed with, and another declaredrnthat error of opinion (that is, a nonliberal position) could berntolerated so long as reason (that is, liberal rationalism) was freernto combat it. But, paradoxically, it is the liberals’ commitmentrnto defending other points of view that is responsible for theirrnanti-individualism, because to privilege (in theory, of course,rnnever in practice) all points of view is to deny all of them, exceptrnthe point of view that tolerates and therefore trumps thernrest.rnIn liberal societies there is little toleration of dissent on fundamentalrnquestions. A writer who impugns the legitimacy ofrna democratic regime will be declared either a fascist or an anarchistrnand shunned by the decent godless people who work atrnthink tanks and live off foundation grants. In America alone,rnthere is a long list of peoples whose points of view are treated asrnillegitimate: black and white separatists. Christian reconstruetionistsrn(who, if they constituted a majority, would reimposernBiblical law), people who want to wave the Stars and Bars, parentsrnwho want their children to pray in school, people who joinrnsocial clubs in order to be with “their own kind,” if their definitionrnof kind involves ethnicity, sex, or religion. Milovan Djilasrnonce said of Marxists that they wanted to eliminate all forms ofrnproperty except their own, but this is only one example of arnmore general rule, that liberals wish to eliminate all points ofrnN’iew except their own.rnThe very heart of liberalism is the principle of indifference.rnA good liberal, in making ethical decisions, is supposed to lookrnat himself and his friends from the same objective perspecti’ernfrom which he would view the actions of strangers. Some usedrnthe language of the impartial spectator; others have spoken ofrnthe veil of ignorance; William Godwin speaks of taking the perspectivernof an angel; and Thomas Nagel (echoing Godwin tworncenturies later) thinks we should try to view our decisions fromrnthe perspective of an extraterrestrial.rnTo viev all humanity from the Martian point of view is to reducernhuman beings to the level of the microbes found in allegedK’rnMartian rocks. From the divine (or angelic) perspective,rnno other point of view is tolerable. Error of opinion may not berntolerated, because no alternative point of view is conceivable,rnmuch less permissible.rnThe liberals’ nonjudgmental world is a nightmare, in whichrnmothers love all children as well as their own; where soldiersrn10/CHRONICLESrnrnrn