little chance of influencing mainstream (i.e., liberal) opinion.rnChristians used to say the same thing about patriarchy andrnwomen in the clergy, and it was not long before “scholars” werernfound to “discover” that, yes, there were priestesses in thernearly Church, the Earth is flat, and the sun rises in the West.rnLiberals, because of their ideological commitments, cannot dornscience or scholarship, because they are unwilling to concedernthat facts might possibly contradict their woddview. Why elserndo they fall for the patent silliness of postrationalist literary theory:rndeconstruction, reader response, and feminist discourse?rnAs deconstructionists they can ignore the evidence of theirrnsenses, the facts of nature and history, the intentions of the authorsrnof the New Testament and the Constitution.rnThe French are quite clever at these things, but Americans,rnwho for the most part cannot read French, only parrot platitudesrnthey do not understand. A shocking case of liberal perfidyrnwas discussed recently by Notre Dame law professor CerardrnBradley in a quirky little newsletter called First Things.rnExamining the sworn testimony given at the hearings on Colorado’srnAmendment Two, Bradley notes that Professor MartharnNussbaum willfully misrepresented the meaning of a passage inrnPlato’s Laws to show that Plato did not disapprove of sodomy.rnNussbaum, a bona fide academic celebrity on two continentsrnby reason of her gender and her genuflexive liberalism, deliberatelyrncited an out-of-date edition of the standard Creek-rnEnglish lexicon in order to avoid the entry that disproved herrncase. To make matters worse, she ridiculed John Finnis, a respectablernnatural law philosopher, accusing him of relying onrntranslations out of ignorance of Greek. Rumor has it thatrnNussbaum is now trying to cover up the affair as a friendly disagreement,rnbut she not only perjured herself—which is arncrime—but, what is far worse, she prostituted her scholarshiprnto a political cause. If Brown University had any integrity, Nussbaumrnwould spend this summer going door to door in searchrnof a college without any ethical standards. Perhaps there is anrnopening at Boston University.rnThe dishonesty of liberals is routinely revealed in court decisionsrnimposing some judge’s vision of the good lifernupon his unwilling subjects. Recently in Illinois a federalrnjudge decreed that Cood Friday could no longer be declared arnschool holiday, for the usual reason of the so-called separationrnof church and state supposedly guaranteed in the First Amendment.rnIllinois civil libertarians hailed the decision as a victoryrnfor truth, justice, and the American way. If any of them hadrnever read the Constitution or studied American history, theyrnobviously had agreed not to divulge the ill-kept secret that thernBill of Rights was never meant to be applied to the states, thatrnMassachussetts had a church establishment until 1833, thatrnGeorge Washington himself refused to oppose a bill in the Virginiarnlegislature for the public payment of clergymen.rnWhat is odd about liberals is not so much their ignorance ofrnhistory and law as their capacity for forgetting what they knewrnonce upon a time. Anyone over the age of 40 remembers arntime when school days began with a prayer and a Bible verse,rnwhen Christmas was celebrated with hymns and mangerrnscenes. Were Supreme Court Justices from Marshall to Frankfurterrnsimply blind? Did they not know that Christian symbolismrnpermeated public life in the United States? What is itrnthat liberals think they know about the Constitution that neitherrnthe Framers nor the leaders of the Republic were able torngrasp until a few decades ago?rnSome liberals know these facts; they could hardly help learningrnthem, even in the mock universities of the Ivy League. But,rnas Dr. Johnson used to say, they lie and they know they lie.rnTheir justihcation for distorting the Constitution and misrepresentingrnhistory is that they are working for a better world inrnwhich no one point of view is privileged, a society where everyrnindividual has dignity. “Celebrate Cultural Diversity,” says thernsign outside our local YMCA, “One planet, one people.” If wernare all one people, asks my wife, how can there be diversity?rnBut liberals do not want diversity: instead of a symphony of differingrninstruments, they want to hear their own voice magnifiedrnby endless repetition; they want to see their own face onrnevery poster, their own party listed on both sides of the ballot.rnWhy else do liberals spend so much time writing about whatrnconservatives really ought to believe? And why is it that therntrue meaning of conservatism always turns out to be liberalism?rn^^”^y^ t is democraticrn^-^/ liberalism, notrnf _ ^ ^ Marxism, that hasrntorn apart traditional societies, deliveredrnfamilies up to the state, and waged thernmost terrible wars in human history. Itrnis liberals who would destroy the worldrnto moke it safe for democracy.rnNothing so brings out the liar in the liberal as the subject ofrnreligion. What, after all, makes religion so radically differentrnfrom other social and cultural institutions that it must bernbanned from public places? Is it because of the ceremonies andrnsymbolisms? That can hardly be the case, since all publicrnbusiness is carried on by symbolic ceremonies. The inaugurationrnof a President, the conduct of a trial, the graduation ofrnstudents, all are attended by the ceremonial processions,rnmagic formulas, and funny costumes that we associate withrntraditional religions.rnIf it is not ritual that offends the liberal’s sensibilities, it mustrnbe the beliefs held by Christians. I say Christians, because theirrnfaith is the real target of liberal persecution. If Christianity disappeared,rnthe ACLU would not bother to persecute Jews orrnMuslims. What Christians believe can be, more or less,rnsummed up in a few principal statements such as the Decaloguernand the Nicene Creed, which taken together represent arnparticular point of view about the nature of the universe (createdrnin the beginning by Cod) and about the way peoplernought to live (do not murder, steal, commit adultery, slander,rnworship false gods). It is this point of view, and its claim to bernthe truth, that liberals wish to eliminate.rnOf course, Christianity is only one such point of view. Therernare others: some of them, like Judaism and Platonism, arernSEPTEMBER 1994/13rnrnrn