The Enlightenment is essentially what I left home looking for, and I found it. I’m pro-choice, in favor of gay marriage, and against creationism and the war in Iraq. But I spent a little over a third of my life, including the presumably most formative years, living in the South. Mathematically, that makes me just about exactly as Southern as the American people, thirty-four percent of whom are Southern residents. Both sides of my family have been Southern for generations, I sound Southern, and when my local paper in Massachusetts announces a festival to “celebrate the spirit of differently-abled dogs,” I react as a Southerner: I believe I care as much about dogs’ feelings as anybody, but I can’t imagine that a dog with three legs minds being called, with all due respect, a three-legged dog.
I believe in the Enlightenment, I just don’t believe it covers everything. I don’t believe it would cover everything even if everybody believed in it. And not everybody does. May I repeat: Different people hold different truths to be self-evident. (Read more here.)
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