ok interesting. You were of the Lutheran church I of the Catholic as I suppose you might have guessed. Here's the thing. While I am eternally grateful for the Catholic education and upbringing (the trajectory of my life would have been completely different otherwise and not for the better) I have long since moved away from organized religion in general. I am not atheistic mind you. I believe my faith in God is indelible. I just don't believe God is a Catholic, or a Lutheran, nor a Muslim...etc. I believe there is one true God/Creator and that is where our innate sense of right and wrong (morality) comes from. If I had school age children I would send them to a private school and I would have no reservations sending them to a Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian school or church. Nevertheless I would teach them to think about the doctrine of that school / church and to understand that God does not hate nor does He love any person more than nor less than any other person regardless their given or chosen religious tradition. I highly value the influence of faith based academic schools because they provide a solid foundation of spiritual awareness and simultaneously teach academic discipline and insist upon proficiency in the various diciplines of mathematics, language, reading comprehension, etc. At least that was my experience and I would want that for my children. It gives them a proverbial moral and humanistic compass with which to navigate as they move through life and into old age. The foundation is the critical component. They can work from there much better than they might have without it. I would not have a problem if they walked away from organized religion as adults as I have done. Now to the post-modernist thing. I suspected PM was pretty much all about what we know as moral relativism - a philosophy that I detest and think of as really having boiled down to a purely secular ideology to the utter rejection of any notion of "morality" and God. This to me is dangerous thinking and can only lead eventually to chaos. Human beings must have "something to hang our proverbial hat on" and it must be something we perceive to be greater than us - greater than our mortal human condition. I am intrigued by what you say about post-modernism influencing conservative thought. Perhaps post-modernism is not at all what I imagine it to be. ?? Based only upon my armchair observations I would have attributed post-modernism more toward leftist liberal thought - not to be confused with classical liberalism. go figure. So is Post Modernism really the effluent of The Enlightenment?

@iThink I'll add that I also attended a good public school and would like everyone to have that opportunity. I have 7 Catholic aunts and uncles who are rather right-wing, which I believe is partially a product of a poor public school experience after a family move in the middle of desegregation, which required them to switch to a Catholic school. I understand why they are how they are, but I don't agree with their conclusions. This is what I'm getting at when I say post-modernism influenced conservatives: [theatlantic.com] . I don't know if it's the effluent of the Enlightenment, because I think it came later, but it's certainly diametrically opposed.

"This is what I'm getting at when I say post-modernism influenced conservatives:" - given the context in which you make this statement it seem a bit disingenuous to me. Like saying the event of my house burning to the ground influenced my decision to move..ha!
A "good public school" is a rather uncommon thing. I can tell you from experience that the Catholic education environment not only provided that foundation of religiosity it also made me a good student who wanted very much to learn the curricula but it also was somewhat of a cloistered place. It took me in off of the street in a manner of speaking. All of my activities were related to the Parish school and with fellow students. I really did not consort much with neighborhood kids who were in the public school and given the neighborhood culture I was much better off for it. I don't feel elitist at all and I NEVER looked down on kids who were not in the Catholic school but I was always glad to have it. I embraced the formalities and the structure of it. The public school and many of the public school students seemed disordered and almost chaotic or wild to me. I felt safe there. what would you say are the basic principles that rose out of The Enlightenment. I always thought the Enlightenment was more of a movement whose basic motivating factor was to establish a practical and true separation of Church from the political power structure ie the Monarchs of Europe mostly.@WilyRickWiles

thanks