Pluralism, For What Reason?

AmConMag has its token liberal - Noah Millman, who responded to Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan regarding Islam. Front Porch Republic has Russell Arben Fox, whose essay The Problem of Undertheorized Agrarianism in Most Actually Argued Localism also is a response to Rod Dreher, but a different topic, and is germane to his review of Mark Mitchell's book. Someone should respond to Fox, but I didn't want to do so over at FPR as I am at the moment more interested in asking the question posed above. I will say that the reason why any permanent shift in accordance with "localism" has to have an agrarian component is due to natural limits and the availability of cheap energy. Megacities are just unsustainable, and they are tied to a form of political economy (with its concomitant laws) that is opposed to the recovery of community and [extended] family.

Anyway, what are these websites trying to achieve by having contributors who have different moral or philosophical perspectives? It might be said that FPR is trying to be "ecumenical," being primarily focused on localism and communitarianism, but the actions and behaviors which anti-traditionalists seek to legitimate (for example, those which involve sexuality and marriage) cannot but have an impact on social bonds. And the sharing of a moral outlook, worldview, or customs/mores is a part of identity, and any attempt to cultivate civic friendship/community that ignores this is doomed to failure.

AmConMag may wish to appear broad-minded and open to dialogue, but Millman is a magnet for those who will disagree with any semblance of tradition or conservatism that is preserved at the website; I see very little evidence of the minds of anti-traditionalists being changed, or of Millman being persuaded by those conservative interlocutors who exert the effort to engage him.

Some might appeal to the university community, where supposed "academic freedom" reigns, as a model for these websites and others - a bunch of people who may differ on various questions but are nonetheless united in their pursuit of truth. But the fact is that in a modern university there is very little sharing of a common life - and so there are no real repercussions for the anti-traditionalist who seeks to replace traditional morals. How much more is this true of a website, the contributors to which do not even see each other on a daily or weekly basis? Only a liberal would defend the notion of a university as a place where one can radically critique tradition in the name of "reason" - discussion and inquiry in the medieval university had its limits, and the university was at the service of the political common good (and the broader common good of the Church). It did not place itself above the community as an arbiter of tradition or as a moral authority simply by being the "voice of reason."