Chapter 5, A Crisis in My Mental History. One Stage Onward
For some years after this I wrote very little, and nothing regularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which I derived from the intermission. It was of no common importance to me, at this period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind only, without any immediate call for giving them out in print. Had I gone on writing, it would have disturbed the important transformation in my opinions and character, which took place during those years. The origin of this transformation, or at least the process by which I was prepared for it, can only be explained by turning some distance back.
Note from KBJ: I know whereof Mill speaks. My conversion to conservatism a few years ago, and consequent rejection of progressivism (in particular, feminism), has required a period of digestion and maturation. This blog has helped in that process, for it allows me to explore, analyze, experiment, and articulate. Most of my publications now seem alien to me, as though they were written by a different person. My future publications will be in moral and political philosophy rather than feminism and philosophy of law. Rape, about which I have published a great deal (too much?), lies at the intersection of feminism, philosophy of law, and social philosophy. It's not that I'm uninterested in these fields, but they seem less important to me than they did between 1983, when I began graduate school at the University of Arizona, and 2003, when I became a conservative (or rather, realized that I am a conservative). By the way, I have an advantage over my colleagues who have never been conservatives. I know both progressivism and conservatism from the inside. They know only progressivism. Think about Mill's test for the quality of a given pleasure:
From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final. (Utilitarianism, 1861, chap. 2)
How can someone who has never been a conservative be fair to it, especially in a setting (academia) that is dominated to the point of suffocation by progressivism?
Note 2 from KBJ: It will be objected that, by this logic, I, a lifelong atheist, cannot be fair to theism. There's a sense in which that's true. Perhaps it comes to this. If you've never been "inside" a particular doctrine, ideology, normative theory, institution, or worldview, it takes a great deal of sympathetic imagination (as well as effort) to be fair to it. I do my best to be fair to theism. I have the utmost respect for theists. Indeed, because I've never been a theist, I bend over backward to be fair to theism. In my experience, progressives do almost nothing to be fair to conservatism. Many are proudly unfair to it, treating it as something to be crushed (like a cockroach, as I used to put it) rather than as a source of arguments to be criticized. This, of course, is antithetical to scholarship. Can academia recover from this sad state of affairs? Only if administrators make a conscious effort to ensure that conservatism is well represented on faculties. They can do this only if they receive support from progressive faculty members. Will they get it? Probably not. Progressive academics put solidarity ahead of robust inquiry and vigorous criticism. It's too bad, because they would be better scholars, and even better progressives, if they had colleagues who disagreed with them. If everyone you talk to shares your beliefs and values, you learn nothing from them. It's like talking to yourself. How much have you learned from yourself lately?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 