Good thoughts from David Hart
Posted by: Seth Ben-Ezra in Links, Politics, Quotes and Whatnot, Theology and SpiritualitySome quotes from “The Pornography Culture” by David Hart:
We are already, as it happens, a casually and chronically pornographic society. We dress young girls in clothes so scant and meretricious that honest harlots are all but bereft of any distinctive method for catching a lonely man’s eye.
One of the high achievements of Western civilization, after all, was in finding so many ways to celebrate, elevate, and admire the feminine; while remaining hierarchical and protective in its understanding of women, of course, Christendom also cultivated—as perhaps no other civilization ever has—a solicitude for and a deference towards women born out of a genuine reverence for their natural and supernatural dignity.
We are devoted to—indeed, in a sense, we worship—the will; and we are hardly the first people willing to offer up our children to our god.
But perhaps the COPA [Child Online Protection Act] decision can provide some of us, at least, with a certain salutary sense of alienation: it is good to be reminded from time to time—good for persons like me, with certain pre-modern prejudices—that our relations with the liberal democratic order can be cordial to a degree, but are at best provisional and fleeting, and can never constitute a firm alliance; that here we have no continuing city; that we belong to a kingdom not of this world; and that, while we are bound to love our country, we are forbidden to regard it as our true home.
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