Such explorations are important. Each of us—at least implicitly in the way he acts—has some general view of life that provides him with a system of answers. The same is true of society as a whole. A society that deals collectively with a wide range of human concerns through a network of enduring, complex, and authoritative institutions of necessity adopts some comprehensive view of man's nature and good. That necessity applies all the more when the institutions are supervised, rationalized, and brought in line with each other by the state.

English contrasts liberal society to my desired society, “unified by a shared understanding of the good.” The contrast makes little sense. The “good” is simply whatever it is that makes something worth doing. Western liberal society believes there is something definite that makes things worth doing: preference satisfaction, at least with respect to tolerant and therefore legitimate preferences. It thus has a specific theory of the good, one that it views as authoritative. That theory recognizes the equal validity of a variety of preferences, but not a variety of beliefs about the good. (Its apologists, of course, try their best to erase the distinction.)

As I discuss in the book, the central beliefs of Western liberal society constitute a religion—a system of ultimate beliefs about man and the world—that is backed by what amounts to a system of religious authority. In a perverse way, that system represents a reversion of Western society to type. After a post-Reformation period in which authoritative religious principles were determined by the prince, and a bourgeois liberal period in which they were mostly unspoken and determined by inherited convention, the West is falling back into an older pattern in which dogmatic and disciplinary requirements are determined for everyone everywhere by transnational institutions. Instead of pope and catechism we have human rights tribunals and treaties.

In Europe and Canada there are now even heresy and blasphemy trials that impose criminal penalties for finding fault with homosexuality or Islam or downgrading the importance of the Holocaust. Penalties are of course much milder than in the medieval and early modern periods, but that is true of penalties generally. If everyone is an isolated individual who lives by large institutions subject to a comprehensive web of regulation then the state does not need to burn heretics, chop the heads off troublesome noblemen, or hang those who steal goods worth more than twelve pence.

In an age that claims enlightenment, and insists on bringing social practices in line with the principles considered authoritative, it is important to discuss the accepted principles and think them through. If on reflection they seem wrong, it is necessary to propose something better. My book tries to do both.

The alternative to comprehensive discussion, it seems to me, is dogmatism and irrationality on a grand scale. And that, I think, is what we see around us. What the book attacks is an understanding of rational social organization that pretends to be neutral because it pretends to avoid the largest issues. In fact, it does nothing of the kind but rather imposes its own mindless answers as supposedly neutral default positions. Academic discussions of politics typically facilitate that process through their specialization and their presuppositions.

Beyond the nature of the book, I think the big reason for English's frustration is a basic difference of perspective. He is evidently at home in liberal academia (no doubt in his own critical and nuanced way). He therefore views liberal thought and institutions from the inside. I view them from the outside. He sees our dominant social and political understandings as normal and adequately functional, with perhaps some problems and difficulties. I see them as the contrary. With such a difference in perspective, it is hard to avoid talking at cross purposes or seeing the other's views as simpleminded or distorted.

Perhaps for that reason, English greatly oversimplifies my treatment of liberalism. I do not say that it is a “unitary, progressive ideology.” I present it as a complex that evolves over time and takes different forms. That complex involves various practices and institutions, a consensus regarding the ends and means of government, and the abstract understandings that make all the rest seem to make sense.

The argument of the first part of the book is that the abstract understandings are basically an understanding of rationality. (I say it is a scientistic understanding.) As such, it is able over the centuries to drive the rest, with the current public social and moral order the natural outcome.

So it is not liberal ideology that is unitary and progressive so much as the understanding of reason and reality that motivates it. In a functional society the accepted understanding of reason tends strongly toward unity, just as the grammar of a language does, because it is the general form of how people make sense of things. If it were not coherent the people who run things could not talk to each other or even think consecutively. And it is progressive, if it differs from the understanding that preceded it, because a change in what are thought the abstract demands of reason takes a very long time to permeate and transform social understandings and practices.

To the extent my argument is correct, and the destructive features of liberalism come out of limitations of the dominant understanding of reason, then it is likely we have big problems right now that are hard for those who have been educated into the dominant understanding to see and assess properly.

It seems to me we do have such problems, and I mention sex and family as an obvious and topical example. In America, I would say, marriage has basically disappeared as an authoritative social institution. I would add that its destruction as such is inhuman, because it is radically at odds with basic necessities of a tolerable social order. Liberals, in contrast, view the developments that have destroyed the institutional authority of marriage as a matter of basic human rights. And in any event, many would say, we can all have a “real marriage” if we want simply by taking thought and willing it.

Taking the basic liberal outlook for granted makes the issues less visible. As an example, English asserts that “liberalism is in fact the combination of democracy and markets.” I would say rather that it uses democracy and markets when they make the world more rational from a liberal standpoint but not otherwise. People, especially people with serious responsibilities, accept what they think makes sense. If popular sentiment wants to restrict abortion, limit immigration, put prayer in schools, or shut down “affirmative action,” responsible liberal people in positions of authority make sure it does not happen. If markets result in discriminations or even differential outcomes that seem irrational from the standpoint of liberal individualism and equality, liberal governments intervene as needed to suppress them.