Brazil Revisited

as prejudice and superstition, but find the meaning of human life in and with and through them. At heart (and the heart, too, has its reasons) even the most sophisticated conservatives are peasants, Norman Rockwell types.

4. Far from being a paradox, then, selectivity is a built-in feature of conservatism. A conservative is selective in his attitude, feelings and conduct toward other human beings. And so, naturally, is everyone else, liberals, radicals, fascists and anarchists as well as conservatives. But there is a small difference, a distinction, to be mentioned. Liberals (I will omit the others) are, like all other men, selective in their human dealings, as Prof. Berger recognizes, but, unlike conservatives, they can find no authorization in their doctrine, in liberal ideology, for being so. On the contrary, their doctrine, in its rationalist way, insists on the universality of all the dos and don’ts, the rights and duties and goals and privileges. So when liberals overlook Mao’s crimes in their joy that we are now playing ping-pong with him, or tell us how awful the Greek colonels are but can’t wait to be invited on a cultural visit to Russia, or, like Princeton’s President Goheen a couple of weeks ago, are unable to find a violation of free speech when it is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose speech is being violated, or call publicly for busing other parents’ children in order to integrate schools while they send their own children to private sanctuaries, then we do indeed confront a paradox (not to say a flaw) in liberalism’s moral stance. Since liberal theory has no place for the selectivity that will nevertheless characterize liberal conduct, liberals must be surreptitious about their selecting, hiding it from others and, more damaging, from themselves. Hypocrisy and guilt, as a result, are often companions even of the liberal’s most innocent and natural bias.

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Selden Rodman

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as prejudice and superstition, but find the meaning of human life in and with and through them. At heart (and the heart, too, has its reasons) even the most sophisticated conservatives are peasants, Norman Rockwell types.

4. Far from being a paradox, then, selectivity is a built-in feature of conservatism. A conservative is selective in his attitude, feelings and conduct toward other human beings. And so, naturally, is everyone else, liberals, radicals, fascists and anarchists as well as conservatives. But there is a small difference, a distinction, to be mentioned. Liberals (I will omit the others) are, like all other men, selective in their human dealings, as Prof. Berger recognizes, but, unlike conservatives, they can find no authorization in their doctrine, in liberal ideology, for being so. On the contrary, their doctrine, in its rationalist way, insists on the universality of all the dos and don’ts, the rights and duties and goals and privileges. So when liberals overlook Mao’s crimes in their joy that we are now playing ping-pong with him, or tell us how awful the Greek colonels are but can’t wait to be invited on a cultural visit to Russia, or, like Princeton’s President Goheen a couple of weeks ago, are unable to find a violation of free speech when it is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose speech is being violated, or call publicly for busing other parents’ children in order to integrate schools while they send their own children to private sanctuaries, then we do indeed confront a paradox (not to say a flaw) in liberalism’s moral stance. Since liberal theory has no place for the selectivity that will nevertheless characterize liberal conduct, liberals must be surreptitious about their selecting, hiding it from others and, more damaging, from themselves. Hypocrisy and guilt, as a result, are often companions even of the liberal’s most innocent and natural bias.