Beautiful piece, Dave, thanks for sharing.

While I did not belong to a sorority, I knew several women who did.  They seemed to be nice people whose Greek experience dovetailed with what Emily describes.  My guess is the letter that went viral has little to do with sorority life per se and a lot to do with a general coarsening in the culture.

Beautiful piece, DT, thanks so much for sharing!

Actually I am not a professor, but I thank you for your comments.  We are all blessed to have Ricochet as a forum in which to engage in these conversations.

The trouble with arguing that sentience is the characteristic imparting moral worth is that sentience is basically an emotional, rather than a rational category.  Put another way, the claim is that if the person doesn't feel bad about being killed, it's OK to kill him or her.  This premise is, to put it mildly, at least as dangerous as a heated discussion.

While of course I do not know anyone's motivations to a certainty, I suspect that the following lies behind this line of argument:  the premise that a measured, rational discussion is politically healthier than an angry one.  The premise behind that might reasonably be that angry discussions lead to the type of political environment in which people get killed.  The premise behind that might be that killing people is bad.  That last premise starts to sound awfully pro-life.

While this discussion has been heated, I would submit that a heated political discussion is OK as long as it maintains an ethical foundation.  Pro-choice advocates have failed to provide much, if anything in the way of an ethical foundation for their views.

Perhaps what is ailing marriage in the United State today is the view that it is primarily about emotional gratification.  NFD reinforces this view because it makes it possible to terminate the legal relationship unilaterally for no other reason than the absence of emotional gratification.  While the other factors (abortion, contraception, economic issues) mentioned by some of the commentators have done their share of damage, NFD has done its share as well by giving legal sanction to a fundamental misunderstanding of what marriage entails.

The larger political point is that advocates of "reproductive rights" essentially gave this monster a green light.  As a society we need to take a look at the facts of this case, get real, and call evil what it is.

Admittedly my experience is limited and this comment is anecdotal, but I have observed that suicide is a pernicious evil.  One case of which I heard appears to have been copycat, and in another case, the grandson of a woman who killed herself was feeling depressed decades later and started thinking a lot about what his grandmother did.  Suicide obviously destroys the person who does it and deeply wounds the people close to him or her, but it also seems to have insidious long term effects that might not be so apparent.  One can hope that anyone feeling bad enough even to think about this would get some help.

You sound like a great doctor.

btw someone called me a professor--I am married to Professor Rahe but am not myself a professor.  :)

One of the things that Mother Teresa's life taught us is that the destitute and the dying have a purpose in being here something to give to us during the time they remain with us.

Excellent post, Mr. Hennessey.  My hopes are not up.  The very fact that the Church takes the positions that it does on controversial subjects makes us a target.  The pseudo-religion of progressivism is inconsistent with notions of pluralism.

Totally different story if the girl in the commercial said "No," or "Get lost," or even just registered distaste.  That is not what happened.  So rape is not the issue.  In fact what happened is that the Audi guy got punched because he kissed the other guy's girlfriend.  Perhaps the boyfriend had a point.  But that is between them.

While there is such a thing as genuine sexual harassment, in my observation it's extremely rare.  Molly's point (I hope I am not putting words into her mouth) seems to be that there's no need to pathologize it when a normal, decent guy takes the initiative.

One of the striking things I have encountered in discussing politics with progressives is how little they understand of the debates that take place within conservative circles (libertarianism vs. traditionalism vs. neoconservatism, etc.).  This itself is evidence that they many progressives live in a kind of intellectual enclave.  Whether, as TNCO asks above, this is new or not, is anybody's guess.