A Sound of Sheer Silence

Two stories came through the pipeline in the last couple of days that caught my attention.  The first was a piece by Ross Douthat arguing for some sort of extensive ban on pornography .  The other had to do with Shane Claiborne, one of the organizers of an anti-Trump revival in Lynchburg, Virginia , who received very strong push back due to his non-affirming stance on LGBT questions ( example here , see also Bill Lindsey here ), as well as the corresponding backlash to the backlash.  The backlash to the backlash primarily took the form of "how can you shun or criticize Claiborne and claim to be a classical liberal?," an example of which can be found here .  The link between these two stories is a discussion of classical liberalism, and so it is worthwhile talking about that for a bit. We can think about classical liberalism as having two dimensions.  The first is political--a particular area of human life will not be regulated or otherwise coerced by the stat...

Something of a recurring theme on this blog is my war stories from Catholic middle school and high school, as seen here and here and here and also here .  In doing so, I know I am presenting that experience in the worst possible light.  I got a very solid education during those six years, and I know I would not be where I am, and who I am, without the middle school and especially high school experience I had.  So, when I tell negative stories about that experience, there should be an unspoken caveat that, on balance, my experience was very positive. With that necessary caveat out of the way, I have another high school story, one that relates to a story in the news.   Maddi Runkles is an 18 year old senior at Heritage Academy in Hagerstown, Maryland.  Runkles is also pregnant, and as a result of her pregnancy, she was not allowed (or will not be allowed--it's not clear from the story when graduation will be) to participate in graduation ceremonies.  I ...

I have , on a couple of occasions , told war stories about sex ed in a Catholic high school in the South in the middle 90s.  What is interesting to me about that program, looking back with the benefit of adulthood and hindsight, is the way in which it balanced (or, really, attempted to balance) two entirely different sets of objectives.  On the one hand, you had what you might call the "Catholic objectives"--don't have pre-marital sex, don't use birth control, abortion is the worst thing ever, maybe if we don't talk about gay people they will just go away, etc.  But, at the same time, it was also trying to communicate what you might call "ambitious middle class objectives," which focused on the message "if you have to raise a child before you are financially secure/fully educated, your life will be over." To that end, the big senior year religion project was that you partnered up with a classmate (of the opposite gender, natch) and had to tak...