Losing an argument can be a personal embarrassment, but it can also be an indication that you’ve sided with the wrong people, which means that you need to find a new ingroup or else learn to live with what the Marxists call “false consciousness.” (It was in hopes of avoiding this choice that Phelps-Roper cut off communication with David Abitbol, but, as we saw, she had already crossed a kind of social and intellectual Rubicon.)
