The liberals of the 1600s and 1700s appealed to nature because they were in the process of rejecting super-nature.

The difficulty they encountered was that man did not seem to actually live in a way that could bring meaning to a purely “natural” philosophy.

Many reacted by believing that man had been corrupted by the conditions in which he lived, which when remedied would return mankind to the happiness which a pure nature originally intended.

This is the context in which liberals once appealed to nature. The conservative appeal to nature was different. It recognised that human nature was intricate, stubborn and a mixture of good and bad.

Conservatives believed that the social structure had to be framed in the light of this really existing human nature. They also believed in a cultural defence of the higher qualities of really existing human nature (as when Burke complained to the Jacobins that “You seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road of nature.”)

It’s not clear to me that John Leo’s use of nature is not compatible with the conservative meaning of nature as well as the liberal meaning. Leo is saying that by virtue of his human nature, man has certain instincts and requirements. One of these natural needs is to congregate occasionally with members of the same sex. Therefore there is a natural right to do so. Would Mr. Richardson say that Leo’s reasoning appeals to a “liberal” or a “conservative” concept of nature?

Mark Richardson says, “This is the context in which liberals once appealed to nature. The conservative appeal to nature was different. It recognised that human nature was intricate, stubborn and a mixture of good and bad.”

Mark, what you left implicit I’ll make explicit: the conservative outlook recognized human nature was in many ways also valid and merited society’s respect.

The liberal outlook denies the validity of human nature or any moral obligation on society to respect it.

To my commment above, a leftist will reply, “Why, then, don’t conservatives recognize homosexuality [or whatever other liberal obsession], which is part of human nature, as valid and meriting society’s respect?,” to which of course the rejoinder is they do, opposing only that perversion’s imposition on society as something normal and equal to heterosexuality, which it never was or ever can be.

Unreconstructed homosexuals in or out of the closet can validly be one hundred percent conservative and many are, while unreconstructed members of the wrong social class (or, by Harvard Prof. Noël Ignatiev’s lights, the wrong race) are fit only for subjugation and extinction in the eyes of the left.

Conservatives who say they want to drive homosexuality back into the closet mean only to bring to an end the left’s project of making that vice into a normal thing, and despair of any other means of accomplishing that. They do not actually intend to drive it back into the closet, but only to get it to end its extremely aggressive attack on society’s bedrock whereon we all depend for our survival. They are trying to prevent nuts and weirdos from running around the ship we are all sailing in and punching holes in the hull below the water-line.

Note that not even they want to put homosexuals into concentration camps in order that they be more easily killed, something which, when Khieu Sampan did it twenty-six years ago to “class enemies” and succeeded in killing two million of them, was very warmly applauded indeed by liberals and leftists.

Larry Auster says, “One of these natural needs is to congregate occasionally with members of the same sex. Therefore there is a natural right to do so. Would Mr. Richardson say that Leo’s reasoning appeals to a ‘liberal’ or a ‘conservative’ concept of nature?”

Larry, your question was of course rhetorical (the answer being obvious), but I’ll reply anyway and say Leo’s reasoning appeals to a “conservative” concept of human nature, the liberal or leftist mind not recognizing the legitimate existence of any such innate natural needs which cannot be dealt with on Procrustes’ bedstead and if millions nay billions suffer nightmarish slaughter in the process well then, good riddance to bad rubbish and the fascist bastards deserved what they got.

But there’s something else. The “conservative” outlook simply accepts that there are limitations on the power of government, so that, first of all, not everything under the sun must either pass muster with government or be obliterated. Some things, such as my or Jane’s or Owen’s or Mr. Gil’s or Matt’s or Remus’ taste in people, are simply none of the government’s damn business.

Liberals think it’s very MUCH their and government’s business and intend punishing anyone who associates with someone they don’t want him associating with — punishing him lightly at the first infraction, and much more severely if he persists.

The liberals are so perverse it really is frightening. I was watching some MSNBC documentary on the Seattle riots at the opening day of the WTO in 1999, called ‘Anatomy of a Riot’. Looking past the fact that the show was decidedly liberal (blaming police’s underestimation of the potential for violence amongst people who clamor about ‘one love’ all day as the main cause for the extent of the damage), you saw the liberals at their best. Rather than civilized conduct, they rallied support for their cause by civil disobedience, getting themselves arrested to get publicity and sympathy from other smelly potheads. No, no rational political discourse here, just chaos and that which Noam Chomsky was praised for during his introduction at a speech here a few weeks ago, ‘not submitting to respectability’. It was really a beautiful thing to see enviroments, the AFLCIO, and anarchists walking side by side, yelling about their desire to ‘shut down the entire city’ as they jumped up and down on cars in early morning traffic, many of which contained parents driving their kids to school.

Another beautiful aspect of liberalism is the reversal of the government’s roles from conservatism. Liberals want the government to have more of an effect over our personal beliefs, which are the real evils in society, and give people 100% freedom to do whatever degrading (and dangerous) crap they want. Obviously we should legalize illegal drugs that can easily kill people, but not watch when a Wahhabi Muslim buys 50 bags of fertilizer and half a dozen car batteries (my imaginary bomb), rents a Hertz truck, and empties his bank account. That would be an invasion of privacy.

In answer to Lawrence Auster’s question, I think that Leo argues for sex segregation by using a conservative appeal to human nature.

Leo undercuts the force of his own argument, though, by insisting that humans have no corresponding instinct to associate within their own ethnic group.

Also, I think that Mr Auster and Unadorned are right to point out that simple forms of human association (like a sports club) needn’t be formally justified anyway.

One further point. It’s a part of human nature for men and women to feel sexually attracted to each other; it is a higher part of human nature for men and women to seek completion in marital love.

The fact that homosexuality exists doesn’t mean that it’s part of human nature; as the writer Ferdinand Mount puts it “a person can be denatured by physical or psychological pressures.”