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It strikes me that facilitating the supercession of bourgeois social relations requires that we rally to the defense of the embattled system. Ardently. The more substantial our arguments in favor of people’s indivisible right to live in abject intellectual poverty the quicker will our goal be accomplished, because while faint praise can damn, majestic eulogies can murder. Liberal humanist defenses of middle class virtue have succeeded largely because they are so trite, so banal, so ignorable. They put one to sleep; they do not fire the imagination either with intended horror or ostensible warm dedication. Thus the audience learns that there are defenders, which suffices; but not that the defenders are hiding behind a moral Maginot Line.

Sophisticated conservative defenses of just about anything are generally vulnerable because they tend to be condescending, patronizing, and compromising. They like Religion because it serves a useful purpose… and just like any utilitarian they’ll succumb — or the line will succumb, while the conservatives will retreat and find new lies — when presented with an alternative. Once we start judging Motherhood, Family, Breast-Feeding, and constitutional law on their relative merits, they are doomed. Relative merit is a function of Public Relations campaigns. They corrupt what they touch, which is good. One drawback is that they are gleefully inconsistent, which means we must be quick on our toes. They can defend Community better than any communist, or welfare with more sincerity than any liberal democrat who has dealt with the recipients — for whom he has developed a thinly veiled contempt.

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