On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , R.R. Reno reflects on the 9/11 memorial:

Two large, sunken pools, fed by what the official literature describes as the largest man-made waterfall in North America, drain into central shafts meant, it seems, to conjure the infinite abyss of death and loss. They are rimmed with bronze panels into which are inscribed the names of those who died a decade ago. The rest of the grounds of the 9/11 Memorial are filled with trees and stone benches.

The architects and designers have created something akin to the verdant lawns and quiet groves of suburban memorial parks, places we visit in our private journeys of loss, grief, and remembrance. It was this individual, private sense of memorial and remembrance that was emphasized by the official ceremony weekend before last.

Also today, Fr. Edward T. Oakes on “ coercive liberalism ”:

The Vice President’s nod to what I will call here “coercive liberalism” is unfortunately not an isolated case. In the August 29, 2011 issue of National Review, the vigorous and witty polemicist Mark Steyn collected a veritable rasher of examples of secular liberalism at its most heavy-handed, including the cases of Lars Hedegaard, a Danish journalist convicted of “racism” for questioning Islam’s treatment of women, Stephen Boissoin, a Canadian convicted of violating a “human rights” law for writing a “homophobic” letter to his local newspaper, and Dale McAlpine, a British street preacher arrested for publicly promulgating Christian teachings on homosexuality. Perhaps what is most disturbing about this trend is that these attempts at micro-tyranny are coming from liberals , who used to be the ones most hyper-reactive to restrictions on free speech.