There's conservative-and then there's conservative Just got back from spending a weekend with my parents. My mother is kicking my cousin out of the house because she's been socializing with men (at 27-she's an unmarried recent immigrant and doesn't know too many people, I can't blame her for not staying in the house all day). It was sad, but it wasn't my business. It reminded me of my parent's experiences with Jehovah Witnesses back when I was a kid-they would always avoid our house after it became quite clear that my parents were well to the Right of them on social issues-in fact the Witnesses were positively libertine compared to my parent's mix of moderate Islam and south Asian culture (1). My point being-there's conservative in the context of the West, and a genuine culture of conservatism. This intersects with one thing I've noticed: liberals accuse conservatives of hypocrisy when we attack non-western cultures for their anti-feminist tendencies (2). After all-we ourselves don't support feminism in domestic politics. They fail to remember-there is being conservative in the western liberal democratic tradition-as opposed to being conservative generally as a predisposition (3). It is a distinction of kind, not degree. Western conservatives accept the pluralistic and consensual politics of the West. They accept that women should be equal under the law. But whether it is God or Nature, men and women are essentially different creatures in the western conservative view. Though there is overlap between the genders (thereby making equality before the law not always an artificial construction)-on average men and women occupy somewhat differentiated spheres. The personal is sharply separated from the public. But liberals forget that just because we oppose feminism, it does not follow that we believe women should be second class citizens. Liberal feminism is today a subset of the greater Leftist project. The tradition of Wollstonecraft and Stanton argued for political equality, and equality of opportunity-it was liberal in the classical sense. Today's collectivist feminists are preoccupied with questions of outcome-their goal is to mold society. Rather that creating a framework where individuals can flourish they demand group rights and hew to the dogma that men and women are only different on the level of gonads. Let me state clearly that I oppose government affirmative action for women. I believe that there will always be fewer women firefighters as long as humanity is only equipped with what God or Nature has equipped us with. I believe that some form of patriarchy is probably natural (the American form is rather benevolent, the Saudi form is not). I believe that women are more emotional-men are more rational. And so forth. This would place me firmly in the category of "anti-feminists" in the eyes of modern feminists. So why do I rally around the banner of women's rights when faced with the ascendence of ancient non-western norms? I am arguing for basic human rights, not women's rights! While modern feminist sees itself as a interest group that exists to extort goodies out of government and society as a whole, I believe that the original tradition of feminism (per Wollstonecraft) was based on the individual freedom that was implied by the Enlightenment project. I could argue in abstract terms of the threat to freedom from Islamic (or Chinese or Indian) cultural norms, but it is far more persuasive to point to the immediate danger to freedom's fruits. As noted recently-the threat to women's sexual freedoms is one of the first emerging out of Islamic immigration (and to be sure-it was the last secured out of the Enlightenment project) (4). The law should be blind to male or female. I believe this because I believe in equality before the law for human beings. Other cultures take a less absolutist view of the female nature's worth weighed against that of the male. In the context of my empirically driven beliefs about human nature, I believe this is understandable, but is does not mean ought. It might sound tautological, but western liberalism has arisen only once. It is a delicate thing-this worship of the individual human being and its sacrosanct nature (and yes-I believe even the most communitarian of conservative groups-say Mormons-are highly individualistic in a non-Western context). What liberals have a tendency to do is create a manichaean separation between their own virtue-their progress-and the dark ages that recede behind them. So they can not conceive of anyone dissenting from the feminist project without rejecting the Enlightenment. We are by definition the unenlightened reactionaries that bar the path to freedom. Yes, they twist the definitions out of all recognition, but they dominate the commanding heights of the Media and the Academy. We must remind them that there are more than two choices: their Enlightenment, and the reactionary past. When women lose their rights, their dignity, then the next one will fall, and then the next, and so forth. PS: The same tendency can be found when liberals demonize conservatives who question the quota-culture that is establishing itself around the totem of race. If you oppose affirmative action liberals assume that you wish to impose segregation-as if there are no other choices (ergo associating Ward Connerly with the KKK). Update: I neglected one recent liberty that a decline in western culture would be deleterious for. Homosexuality (as in the right to be homosexual without fearing for your life! See this article from The New Republic on the quaint way homosexuals are treated in the West Bank). 1-I define my parents as moderate Muslims because my mother does not cover her hair, my father does not pray five times a day, and they go to mosque (masjid) only for major festivals. My father has even defended the idea of a secular democracy as opposed to a theocracy. Nevertheless, their values would be decidedly retrograde even in Provo, Utah. 2-The irony is that conservatives are the ones defending the old liberal tradition of the West while modern liberals choose unilateral disarmament and wishful thinking. 3-There are many arguments about what conservative means. I am conservative because I oppose big government (as a libertarian) and espouse the values of western culture against the multiculturalist assault. Paleoconservatives might emphasize religion and the peculiarities of American culture, neoconservatives might focus on a expansionist foreign policy, and so forth. But we most certainly know who the enemy is. And I know that I am dismissing what some might find to be conservatism's defining characteristic-that it is more a way of life, or mode of thinking, than a principled political philosophy. So be it-we need to stop making a fetish of the old ways. The the old ways are coming back. We need to adhere to the middle path-the felicitous equilibrium between the Year Zero of Leftist utopians and the autocracies of old. 4-Many conservatives will assert that the sexual revolution was a disaster. Perhaps. I know many conservatives oppose abortion, but how many would ban the birth-control pill? Though social conservatives might exhort society toward a heightened morality and sexual probity, they are generally circumspect in legislating this. Even among social conservatives, the idea of choice has become entrenched (for them, abortion is a matter of life and death, so "choice" becomes a ridiculous point to stand upon), and even if they believe the Bible tells them that the wife must submit to the husband in matters of family, they generally balk at making this a matter of law. Personally I am not this sort of conservative. I am a cultural conservative insofar as I assert the supremacy of the Western culture and that its norms need to be made clear in the traditional geographic bounds of the West.