erry Falwell, and folks of his convictions, present a fascinating problem for liberals.  Falwell, as we know, has just died.  He will be remembered, undoubtedly, for his inflammatory remarks regarding gays.  He held that gays were a veritable blight upon America; and, like many other Christians, he held that his beliefs were warranted by none other than the Bible.  What is manifestly incontrovertible is that Falwell said many controversial things about gays, not the least of which is that he blamed gays for 9/11.  There can be no doubt that this was a most vicious thing to say.  For these words, he was rebuked by many Christians, a point that shall become relevant below.

Well, here is one of my problems.  I come to another more important problem momentarily.  As far as I can see, liberals are no strangers to vitriolic comments.  The proof of this, ironically, is Falwell himself.  Since his death, liberals have made some of the nastiest and most vicious comments that I have ever read about someone immediately after her or his death.  At her blog, Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte writes:

The gates of hell swing open and Satan welcomes his beloved son

These words occur not even 24 hours after Falwell’s death.  There is an indecency here that is surely beyond the pale, notwithstanding the horrendous things Falwell has said.  How much more hateful could a person be?  My God: let the man be buried.   

To their credit, both Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson both had kind words to say about Jerry Falwell, though it is manifestly clear that these two had difference with Falwell. 

It is simply indecent to attack a person with unbridled viciousness within moments after his death.  And if conservatives should do so, given the death of a liberal, I shall say exactly the same thing.

But there is a sense in which I have digressed.  Many liberals, who viciously attack those on the right, hold that there is no objective truth.  And there is the rub.  Once objectivity is abandoned, then what we are left with is none other than a kind of moral free for all.  Indeed, free speech reduces to none other than a kind of shouting match that is armed with ad homonyms. 

As far as I can see, both liberals and conservatives are equally adept in the use of ad homonyms.  They only differ is in which ones they use.  For liberals, the words “racist”, “sexist”, and “homophobic” are de rigueur; and these words have become ad homonyms in that the point of employing these words nowadays is not so much to provide an accurate label of a piece of behavior, which would be rather acceptable, but to vilify and silence opponents.  Indeed, the word “racist” is now used so cavalierly that it is beginning to lose its force at the personal level: “Oh, I am a racist.  So, what’s new?”  When it comes to ad homonyms, liberals have the upper-hand.

Now, it is most significant that as liberals seem to conceive of free speech nowadays, it is far removed from what John Stuart Mill had in mind.  For him, free speech was not about the skillful employment of ad homonyms to silence others but rather the skillful employment of reason itself—not to be confused with merely relying upon feelings.  In fact, if there was one thing that Mill unquestionably detested, it was relying upon feelings to make an argument.  Why?  Because he recognized that inappropriate feelings are a common feature of humanity and that relying upon them can readily lead to bad outcomes.

The surprise, then, is that liberals cannot make much sense of free speech precisely because they tend to reject the idea of objective truth.  Conservatives, by contrast, do believe in objective truth; and that is one reason why they regard free speech as so valuable: it provides an opportunity for truth to be given a hearing and so for reason itself to prevail.  

Notice something extraordinarily sublime here: To believe in reason is to be logically committed to the possibility that one can be wrong.  Who then is more open-minded: She who insists that there is no objective truth, but fiercely advocates various views, or he who vigorously defends a view asking for detractors to prove him wrong?  Obviously the latter.

Jerry Falwell believed that his opposition to homosexuality had a basis in the Bible.  This means that someone could in fact show him that his opposition to homosexuality was unwarranted or, in any case, stood in need of modification.  After all, how to weight this or that passage in the Bible can be, and has been, a matter of great debate. 

By contrast, consider those who simply insist that homosexuality is justified and is on a par with heterosexuality, because that is just the way it is.  Well, the surprise is that this is tantamount to saying that reason is utterly irrelevant to the view. 

Liberals may be right about homosexuality and conservatives wrong.  The quite fascinating point, however, is that both the liberal and the conservative arguments on this issue tend to be equally problematic.  Conservatives seem way too eager to turn homosexuality into the worse possible sin; and there is no evidence in the Bible for that.  Liberals, on the other hand, see a justification for homosexuality in just about any instance of same-sex behavior in the animal kingdom, as if two fish or two dogs might be homosexual in the sense in which humans are.  If that were true, then dogs humping human legs would imply that inter-species sex is just fine. 

Liberalism does not have adequate moorings.  This is because liberalism has essentially come to be associated with the indisputable truth that claims to objectivity have done considerable harm to society.  Slave holders, be they Muslim or European, made claims to objectivity in justifying slavery.  Hitler made claims to objectivity in justifying antisemitism and before him there was the Inquisition.  Then there are all the so-called objective claims regarding the inferiority of women. 

But here is the problem.  Is it that the belief in Nazism or slavery just ran out of steam?  Is it that men simply got tired of claiming that women are inferior because this was an impediment to having sex?  Or is that in all of these cases compelling reasons prevailed against each view? 

Needless to say, one hopes that a resounding “Yes” holds across the board: compelling reasons prevailed.  But if that is right, as surely it is, then the retreat on the part of liberals from objectivity is, alas, doing more harm than good.  For it now looks as if liberals have gone from acknowledging that there can be irrefutable evidence that a point of view is wrong to the quite bankrupt approach that a point of view is wrong because we say so and, in any case, we have the ad homonyms to silence you. 

Perhaps nothing brings out this latter point more than the following: Shortly after Falwell made his horrendous remarks about who is responsible for 9/11 he apologized.  He understood that he had overstepped his bounds.  Indeed, other Christians were able to make that abundantly plain to him.  There were standards that Falwell had transgressed.  We may question the sincerity of his apology.  But even an insincere apology counts as a very significant gesture. 

Who among liberals will apologize for their despicable and utterly distasteful remarks about Falwell in fewer than 24 hours after his death?  None I suspect; and here is why: Liberals have pulled the rug of right and wrong out from under them and tore it into shreds.  There is no overstepping bounds for them.

A movement that eschews reason may very liberate us.  Alas, it does so at tremendous costs, namely by denying our humanity because it denies the worthiness of the reasons that anchor our liberty.  This amounts to none other than a Pyrrhic victory.

Give me a John Stuart Mill liberal any day; for his brand of liberalism had nothing whatsoever to do with either conservativism or liberalism as we define them nowadays.