close enough to be considered first cousins of the Christianrnfaith; while others, such as Jainism and liberalism, are so alienrnto Christianity as to make dialogue profitless. Liberalism, itrngoes without saying, is the dominant point of view of the rulingrnclasses of Europe and the United States. It is the opiate ofrnthe sophomore, who thinks he has understood a flower once hernhas stripped it of its petals and leaves.rnLiberalism has many characteristics, some of them worthy ofrnrespect—an emphasis on individual dignity and an insistencernupon reason—but the essence of liberalism lies in its claim tornimpartiality. The liberal is supposed to make his judgments asrnif he were a public official with assets in a blind trust; that is tornsav, he is to do what some “impartial spectator” would declarernto be just and fair. Lhilike the traditionalist or the man of faith,rnthe liberal cannot accord his own point of view any privilege,rnsimply because it belongs to him or just because his people havernalways believed it. The law of liberalism is toleration, becausernwhatever one claims for one’s self, the same right must be extendedrnto others, hence Robert Frost’s mocking definitionrnthat a liberal is someone who would not take his own side in anrnargument.rn^rnn our age, everyrnlearned man orrnwoman is anrnautodidad, and the only real schoolingrnfor most of us will be homeschooling.rnFrost should have said “a true liberal,” because in their quarrelsrnwith other philosophical perspectives, taking their ownrnside and ramming it down our throats is all that liberals knowrnhow to do. This is especially clear in the church/state controversies.rnIf Christianity cannot be taught or represented inrnschools, because it is a particular point of view, why should liberalismrnbe tolerated? After all, there is nothing self-evidentlyrntrue about the basic tenets of liberalism—the human race gotrnalong quite well without them for over 99 percent of its history,rnand most people today live quite comfortably without worryingrntoo much about the categorical imperative. Even if one 5e-rn/ievec/ liberalism to be the true faith, as a liberal one could not,rnby definition, ^noiv it to be true, because such certainties canrnbe given only by the kind of god that liberals do not believe in.rnIf liberals had even the smallest particle of honesty, theyrnwould insist upon applying their judgment on the ChristianrnWeltanschauung to their own point of view. And if they did,rnsuch concepts as equality, the progress of democracy, ethical rationalism,rnuniversal principles, and even the scientific methodrnwould all have to be either eliminated or else presented as onernpoint of view, with equal time given to other representative perspectives.rnFor years American Evangelicals have tried to forcernthe courts to acknowledge “secular humanism” as the religionrnof public education, and while their occasional successes arerngratifying as jeux d’esprit, theirs is a pointless crusade. Thernnumber of full-blooded secular humanists has always beenrnvery small, since the movement’s appeal is limited to villagernatheist kooks like B.F. Skinner and Sidnev I look. The real enemyrnis liberalism itself, a fact that some Evangelicals cannot acknowledge,rnbecause so many of them are, beneath the Christianrnsurface, committed liberals. It is democratic liberalism,rnnot Marxism, that has torn apart traditional societies, deliveredrnfamilies up to the state, and waged the most terrible wars inrnhuman history. It is liberals who would destroy the worid tornmake it safe for democracy.rnThere is a certain integrity about the gangster ideologies ofrncommunism and Nazism. The Nazi did not claim to be morerncompassionate and merciful than the Jews and Christians hernwas persecuting. The Nazi claimed to be their superior inrnhealth and courage and freedom, because he was liberated fromrnthe Jewish weakness that had infected the Aryan race. Hitlerrnwas a guileful politician, but he was honest and consistent inrncarrying out his announced intentions. The same can be saidrnfor the communists, who always said that truth was only whatrnserved the cause of their revolution and expressed impatiencernwith all the bourgeois niceties of fair play and independentrnjudgment. We can hardly blame Stalinists, either in thernSoviet Union or the United States, for being true to theirrnconvictions.rnIf there is honor among thieves and integrity among Nazisrnand Stalinists, what can one say of modern liberals, who praternendlessly of tolerance, diversity, and skepticism but devoterntheir lives to imposing their own point of view upon other people’srnchildren; who confiscate our incomes in order to carry outrntheir schemes; who send American boys out to kill and bernkilled in brutal wars that they insist upon calling, in the sanitizedrnand hvpocritical language that liberals always use, crusadesrnfor democracy, police actions, and rescue missions? Thernworld has seen. Lord knows, an almost infinite number ofrnbizarre religions and cults, and men have worshiped everythingrnfrom phalluses to cargo planes, but nothing has been seenrnunder the sun so bizarre and so malevolent as the triumphalistrnliberals who insist that you agree with them, even as theyrnpersecute your faith and brainwash your children. These arernmen who cannot be faithful to their wives but insist uponrnwriting the laws on marriage and divorce; who cannot believernin the Creator of the universe but insist upon infiltrating andrntaking over all the churches; who cannot read or write a foreignrnlanguage but set themselves up as experts on history and literature;rnwho will not tell the truth, even when it can do them nornharm, because a single drop of honesty would destroy their superstition,rnas a single ray of sunlight illuminates a darkenedrnroom and reveals its secrets. One of the greatest early liberalsrnwas right in his approach to superstition: ecrasez I’infdme; hernonly had the wrong religion in mind, and I hope to see the dayrnwhen the last professor dies at the hands of the last federalrnjudge.rnThe difference between liberal and conservative scholarsrncan be illustrated by comparing Martha Nussbaum withrnthe far-right classical scholar Revilo P. Oliver. One of thernfounders of the John Birch Society, a militant anti-Semite,rnand—like so many racists—a sworn enemy of the Christianrnfaith that grew out of Judaism, Oliver is among the mostrnlearned men who have descended into the arena of politicalrncommentary. Older right-wingers can amuse each other forrnhours telling stories of Professor Oliver, who used to wear a gunrnto class because of the many death threats he had received.rnWhen the University of Illinois tried to fire him for writing arncynical piece on the JFK assassination called “Marksmanship inrn14/CHRONICLESrnrnrn