On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , Peter J. Leithart explains why human relations need an intrusive third party if they are to be healthy:

Our erotic imaginations have been captured by what Yale’s Paul W. Kahn has called the “pornographic.” The pornographic imagines sex without the most elementary use of language—no names, please. It promises freedom, not only from moral rules but also from the responsibilities, powers, and pressures that result from sex. The pornographic represents a secular sacred, an erotic mysticism, an “ecstatic moment shorn of religion.” It is sex out of time, sex beyond the constraints of history. It promises, in short, to liberate sex from the intrusions of children.

Also today, Matthew Schmitz explains why David Frum is wrong about abortion :

The reason Frum wants the pro-life movement to fade away is that he believes the issue is tearing apart the Republican party. But today some 68 percent of Republicans identify as pro-life. Compare that to the 65 percent of Republicans who think the Iraq war was worth fighting, 54 percent who disagree with the GOP leadership’s “no new taxes” line (favoring increases on the wealthiest Americans), and 60 percent of Republican voters who disagree with their leadership on free trade, saying that it has been bad for the country.