When Joe Patrice explained his deepest thoughts as to why it was horrifying, it became clear that there was merit to the idea.

This actually tells you everything you need to know about the laughable swill these two dropped on an unsuspecting public this week. This dynamic duo of dumb spend the op-ed concocting a theory as terrifying as it is bereft of factual support when they posit that all of America’s woes really do stem from failing to live up to the ideals of an era when (white) men were men and everyone else kept their goddamned mouths shut. Make America Great Again indeed.

What could possibly be so dumb, so laughable? Two lawprofs who argued that America was paying the price for the breakdown in “bourgeois culture.”

That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

These basic cultural precepts reigned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially when backed up by almost universal endorsement. Adherence was a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.

Or as Joe calls it, white man’s culture. And, let’s be frank, of course it is. So 18 lawprofs responded.

Our profession prides itself on civil discourse even when we disagree. There are rare occasions, however, in which the opinions expressed by another law professor display both a moral toxicity and an intellectual bankruptcy that require us to put collegiality aside, and to call out such opinions for what they are.

Such is the case with the opinions expressed recently on Philly.com by University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax and University of San Diego law professor Larry Alexander. In that piece, the authors lament the breakdown of the hegemony of what they call “bourgeois cultural norms,” a list of lifestyle imperatives that, according to the authors, were undermined by the liberalization of culture in the 1960s.

And just how horrifying is it?

The opinions expressed by Professors Wax and Alexander…do not deserve our respect. They are dehumanizing, inherently racist, and ultimately irrational.

While the specifics offered by Wax and Alexander fly in the face of both the reality of the time (it wasn’t all that great) and progressive dreams of equality, there is a point that neither seems to grasp. Without norms, a shared culture, we cease to have a reason to be a nation.

There are assertions, however, which are divorced from intellectual rigor and serve no purpose beyond coddling the existing prejudices of their speakers and listeners who wish to justify similar prejudices….

Nor, in these times, do these opinions deserve our silence. Silence is an especially pernicious response to overt expressions of racism. The silence of respectable people has enabled bigotry and injustice of all varieties to flourish in this country for far too long. Silence is no longer an option.

American culture developed organically, for better or worse. and there are certainly “worse” aspects to it that we’ve all known about for a long time. But norms provide the boundaries that serve to restrain us from going full Lord of the Flies on each other. On the one side, you have a couple lawprofs extolling the virtues of the restrictive cultural norms that reinforce a great deal of bad along with the good, even though we’ve watched as things deteriorated and began to fail.

The good old days weren’t as good as our romantic memories suggest, and even if we all agreed to do so, we can’t go back to 1950. Not even if we wanted to do so, but this time for everyone, from blacks to transgender people included. Those days came and went on their own, and no amount of wishing and hoping will bring them back.

What makes these dueling op-eds between the most genteel of colleagues significant is that if there is any group that should be able to find mutual ground, it’s academics. And yet, the Group of 18 has ripped Wax and Alexander a new one, calling them racists, irrational and undeserving of respect. There can be no discussion once these words are uttered.

The Group of 18 would have their vision of equality plopped down in the middle of America, fully blown despite being unformed. We have become a less racist society, but not quickly or far enough, and not in the way they demand. They want the tail to wag the dog, the minority to dictate the new American culture to the majority, and the majority to happily and silently abide the demands of the most marginalized.

This, of course, will never happen. All it can possibly produce is the rift reflected by the dueling op-eds here, one calling for a return to an age that never really existed and we wouldn’t really want even if it did, and the other for a fantasy where the majority of people smile as they hand over the keys to the Porsche to the next intersectional black lesbian who comes along.

What should America look like, believe in, going forward? We have to believe in something, to have our bourgeois culture, our accepted societal norms, or we will just crash into each other. We drive on the right side of the road not because it’s the better side, but because a side must be chosen or we have chaos. We are now staring chaos in the face as a society.

If there is to be an America, there must be mutual agreement as to what the norms of America must be. Neither side of this naked lawprof mud-wrestling gets to dictate to a nation what it wants to be, but the Group of 18, wrapped up in its own self-righteousness of equality and justice, is just as wrong in its own way. A nation without norms, without a culture, is no nation. The bourgeoisie may not be charming, but a nation without them doesn’t exist.