Liberal Meltdown and Single-Sex Dorms

I really wish I could get more worked up about the fact that my alma mater, Catholic University, is changing its dorms, after 20 years, from co-ed to single sex. But I can't.

The fact is, liberals are in the midst of a historic meltdown on many fronts, and the opposition they have been able to muster against John Garvey, the new president of Catholic University who made the dorm decision, has been so parlous that it's hardly worth joining the battle. (I made a video interviewing some folks at CUA here.)

In an essay in the Wall Street Journal, Garvey laid out his case for going back to traditional living arrangements. He cited studies that showed that college students are more prone to engage in binge drinking and sex if -- duh -- they live together in the same building. These studies were published in places like Environment and Behavior, Journal of Alcohol Studies, and American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

In response to this, Laura Sessions Stepp, a journalist who specializes in covering young people's issues, wrote an editorial for CNN.com. In it, Stepp attempts to refute Garvey by citing the story of a Catholic girl she knows. As Christopher Kaczor noted in National Review Online, this is what is called anecdotal evidence.

And honestly, if that's the best they can do, then liberals really are on the verge of elimination from serious political and cultural debate. It's happening on many fronts. Congressman Paul Ryan offers a detailed proposal to save Medicare and Social Security, and in response the president offers shallow mockery. The media dumpster-dives into Sarah Palin, their obsession with her growing so bizarre that Palin is defended by celebrity liberals Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.

As medicine and ultrasound technology keep making advances that produce stunning pictures of unborn babies, the pro-abortion left falls back on tired old tropes about "women's reproductive health choices." Liberalism just seems more and more of an reflex that is immune to reason.

This is not to say that conservatives don't have their blind spots. I live in Washington D.C. and, contra Rush Limbaugh and Fred "in praise of highways" Barnes, there is no way out of our traffic purgatory aside from better public transportation. More and bigger highways won't do it. I also think my friends on the right have to introduce themselves to the reality that Sarah Palin is not intelligent enough for high office.

These are small lapses compared to the religious unreality that is the fantasyland of leftism. At some point you don't get angry at the silliness of Alan Colmes or the bedwetting of Keith Olbermann anymore -- you just kind of sigh. Yes, according to every study on the topic, not to mention common sense, when young men and women are put together in buildings to live, and alcohol is introduced, the odds of them "hooking up" increase.

But then, facts are not applicable when you are talking about a group, the left, that defines itself not by what it believes but what it is against. In the June issue of Catholic World Report, historian James Hitchcock writes about "The Failure of Liberal Catholicism." Hitchcock quotes a group of feminist Catholic says "women don't need the Vatican. We don't need the bishops. That is the real threat."

Hitchcock counters, "But in fact they do [need the Vatican], because their identity is forged in obsessive rebellion against Church authority." Indeed. One question that never gets answered: If the Catholic left is so against the pope, not to mention the traditions and history of the Church, why don't they just go elsewhere?

The answer to that has as much to do with personal resentment as with any coherent ideology. When I was a student at Catholic University in the 1980s, I did a lot of the things that president Garvey is trying to prevent. But that wasn't enough. I felt a deep rage against the Church itself, specifically those who claimed to be orthodox Catholics.

When someone would mention that they were a devout Catholic, I would have the kind of pavlovian reaction that Andrew Sullivan does at the mention of Sarah Palin's name. There was one fellow who, like me, wrote for The Tower, Catholic University's student newspaper. He was orthodox, and devoted several columns to attacking Charles Curran, a liberal priest who in 1986 was prevented form teaching theology. The action was taken by Cardinal Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict.

I very easily could have gone about my business at Catholic, doing all the things president Garvey is trying to prevent. But like most liberals, that wasn't enough. For, like most liberals, I was an evangelist. I had my own religious system. Drinking and sex were the sacraments, and the Church was the devil.

I took to attacking the my conservative colleague on The Tower. When I first met him, I said, "so you're that nut who writes those editorials defending the pope." I was unthinking, reactionary, and wanted to change the world, making it a place that would validate my every base instinct and bad decision.

Of course, I failed. God is good. I now realize that I was trying to tear down a standard that I found difficult to live up to. But that didn't make that standard untrue, or unholy. And, of course, these days I'm not perfect. But you get to be a more virtuous person by making a lot of small decisions. It takes more than a day to start looking at people, especially members of the opposite sex, as children of God who deserve more than to be used sexually.

It takes a lot of small, right decisions. And it can only help if you don't have 3 am dorm access to the drunk girl you just met. At least it will for that night, and out of many such nights a certain mastery over the passions can develop.