My old way of redefining a command no longer works.

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

 > I suspect that what Steve meant is that his method has always worked for non-outer commands and this is the first time he has tried it with an outer ...

Indeed. And if he really wants to do what he seems to want, here is one way:

\let\oldbeginsection=\beginsection 
\def\beginsection{\csname oldbeginsection\endcsname} 

I should have mentioned that in my first answer.

– Harald