Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Bloom-bashing

Liberals are apparently permitted to criticize the private lives of homosexuals who take some conservative positions, and to call the toleration of this private behavior by other conservatives hypocrisy, at least if this screed is any indication.

Discussions - 6 Comments

I am not sure that posthumous "bashing" of anyone is particularly helpful. But is Bloom's homosexuality irrelevant? I don't think it is.

Bloom in no way was a conservative. Even he himself said he was not a conservative (in Giants & Dwarfs) and called himself a leftist. Like Strauss, he was a mediocre scholar and he was a leftist in disguise, engaged in the revisionist project of wallpapering over the REAL western tradition with Enlightenment universalisms and liberal abstractions, always using "historicism" as the bogeyman.

But is Bloom's homosexuality irrelevant? I don't think it is.

Why is it relevant? What is it relevant to? The ideas he discusses in the book don't hinge on his sexual preferences.

John, can one be a conservative feminist? No, because tradition supports gender roles (inequality) which is what feminists are against. Well neither can one be fully conservative and homosexual, because homosexuality flies in the face of traditional moral, cultural, and Christian norms. What is conservatism trying to conserve if not traditional norms?

A nasty business!

A "screed" indeed. No attempt is made to engage Bloom's thought, not to mention the serious critique of that thought by Harry V. Jaffa, who does not shrink from noticing what is conspicuously absent from Bloom's indictment, vix., homosexuality. But at least Bloom had the decency to be discreet.

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