Commentary How did we get here? How did we arrive at a place where an individual’s worth depends on their race, gender, or class? How did we come to believe that “equity” has moral precedent over freedom? How have we been led to accept that gender has no meaning outside that given to it by each individual, regardless of sex? The vehicle driving us to the edge of this abyss is Nominalism. Nominalism is the philosophical assertion that identity obtains only in the words we use. (In technical language, we say that “Nominalism rejects the existence of universals,” which amounts to saying the same thing: “Things have no identity outside the words we apply to them.”) It contrasts with philosophical Realism, which recognizes identity as existing inside our pre-verbal experiences of objects, physical and mental. The Nominalist doesn’t call something X because it is X; it is X because he …