The Idea That Man Is A Tabula

Where A Reputation For Intolerance Is More Feared Than A Reputation For Vice Itself, All Manner Of Evil May Be Expected To Flourish.

Nonjudgmentalism Is Not Really Nonjudgmental. It Is The Judgment That . . . Everything Is The Same, Nothing Is Better. This Is As Barbaric And Untruthful A Doctrine As Has Yet Emerged From The Fertile Mind Of Man.

There Is Something Deeply Attractive, At Least To Quite A Lot Of People, About Squalor, Misery, And Vice. They Are Regarded As More Authentic, And Certainly More Exciting, Than Cleanliness, Happiness, And Virtue.

The Loss Of The Religious Understanding Of The Human Condition—that Man Is A Fallen Creature For Whom Virtue Is Necessary But Never Fully Attainable—is A Loss, Not A Gain, In True Sophistication. The Secular Substitute—the Belief In The Perfection Of Life On Earth By The Endless Extension Of A Choice Of Pleasures—is Not Merely Callow By Comparison But Much Less Realistic In Its Understanding Of Human Nature.

If The History Of The 20th Century Proved Anything, It Proved That However Bad Things Were, Human Ingenuity Could Usually Find A Way To Make Them Worse.