One of the rules in submitting essays for criticism is that you don't get graded on the essays you write later. As I said, your "parliaments, universities, courts of law, learned societies, the press, and the free market" are not under attack, nor are they a hallmark of either "conservatism" or the past several millennia. To addend that the present is informed and molded by the past is trite. To adduce these pretty examples of how the past is relevant to the present is to grind your axe on a truism, and is an attempt to deflect the criticism to an area which is innocuous and unchallenged.
The "dignity of the individual, the duty of government towards its citizens, the rule of law, the centrality of rational discourse, and the value of progress" and such are not "distinctly conservative"; and, yes...you did present everything in your essay under the stated or implied rubric of conservatism.
It is for THAT reason you objected when I inserted the word "LIBERAL". It is for THAT reason you objected to the word "LIBERAL" being inserted in your essay wherever the word "Conservative" had been. If your present backpedaling and dancing and lessons on Spinoza and Euclid (Spinoza is the only one who has done so, btw, so even that was a reference which went against you) is sincere, then you would have had no objection to "liberal" being used BECAUSE you are NOW claiming that you intend it to be understood that you are in fact talking about both conservatives and liberals.
You are turning so many inside circles on that bike that you could probably give Euclid lessons... |
