The Beauty of the Liberal Arts

Some critical comments about Illinois College have appeared recently on the online Open Line in our newspaper. While much of what is said on Open Line is not worth discussing, those comments reveal a much wider issue.

The comments began on October 25: “A student cannot speak up in a classroom that is run by a left-wing radical. There is no freedom of speech with radicals.” There was escalation the next day: “If Illinois College actually discourages open discourse and debate, then it’s really not a college at all. It’s more like the re-education/indoctrination camps of the former Soviet Union.” The next day these claims were generalized: “Freedom of speech doesn’t apply to the college campus. Students are indoctrinated with socialist ideology.” Finally, on October 29: “It is the left-wing liberals at the liberal arts colleges that do not tolerate a difference in opinion.”

We don’t know who wrote these comments, or if it’s all the same person. Although there is nothing to prevent a commenter from signing their name, these critical voices always hide behind anonymity. It’s clear that they have never been in an Illinois College classroom. Their fears about what happens on campuses come from somewhere else: right-wing fears of liberal arts colleges.

Liberal arts colleges compare favorably with business organizations. Colleges are less hierarchical, with power being distributed horizontally: faculty, even newly hired professors, have extraordinary control over what they do every day. Colleges are more democratic in their decision-making, as students and faculty enjoy unusual powers of self-government through egalitarian institutions. Colleges offer more protection against arbitrary firing of employees. Colleges are less likely to engage in corrupt financial practices, which is clear from the comparative histories of higher education and big business. Perhaps most important, colleges emphasize learning for its own sake, pay attention to the progress of individual students, and constantly seek to improve the delivery of knowledge.

Colleges are partnerships among trustees, administrators and faculty, who each play a crucial role in creating a safe place where students can mature, question, and discover themselves. Trustees bring financial experience and fiscal responsibility; administrators develop the mechanisms which ensure that the enterprise runs smoothly; faculty provide specialized expertise in every possible subject.

Liberal arts colleges are remarkable islands of discovery and democracy in American society. Young adults grasp responsibility for the first time – they organize their own education, they create and run organizations of the most varied kinds, they vote for and lead their own governing bodies, they publish their own newspapers.

So why does the right wing hate institutions of higher education? One reason is that many courses deal with subjects that make extreme conservatives uncomfortable. Biologists teach evolution, not creationism. Scientists believe that global warming is caused by human action. Men and women are treated equally in the content of our courses.

Topics like race, class, and gender upset conservatives. Dealing with those subjects inevitably means discussing our history of slavery and segregation, and of the dispossession of Native Americans. It means studying how women have been subordinated by law and custom until very recently. It means looking critically at the darker sides of our history, alongside the idealism of the American revolutionaries and the triumph of democracy, addressing both the good and the bad.

I admit to having taken particular positions on race in my own teaching. In the course on the 1960s which I team-taught with another professor, we were clear that we thought that segregation was wrong, morally and constitutionally, and that the civil rights movement was justified. Should we be teaching our students something different than that?

Here’s an example of the “indoctrination” that occurs at Illinois College. In a classroom used for political science courses hang several posters urging our students to vote. During the Presidential election, students were encouraged to see the primary debates, the Party conventions, and the election night reporting. I have never heard any professor tell any student how to vote.

In fact, the right wing is not against indoctrination, it is against institutions that do not indoctrinate students with their own ideas. William F. Buckley, Jr., argued in his 1951 book, “God and Man at Yale”, that higher education in America was hopelessly liberal, and then turned around and suggested “banishing from the classroom” all professors who did not advocate the ideas of Adam Smith.

Conservatives, according to their own words, prefer colleges which stress political indoctrination: Young America’s Foundation (motto: “The Conservative Movement Starts Here”) only approves institutions which “emphasize principles including smaller government, strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values”, which “proclaim, through their mission and programs, a dedication to discovering, maintaining, and strengthening the conservative values of their students.”

The Open Line writers imagine that everybody believes in substituting persuasion for teaching. I invite anyone who thinks that open discourse is discouraged at Illinois College to attend a class and see for themselves. We don’t try to strengthen either the liberal or conservative values of our students. We try to help them think about what their values are, test those values against the widest variety of human experiences, and realize that other good people have other values.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, November 5, 2013

Keep Religious Beliefs Out of State Laws

Politics and religion make a dangerous brew. For centuries, political rulers and religious leaders created state-enforced religions, ranging from Aztec high priests to African tribal chiefs to European kings. The gradual shift toward democracy since the French and American revolutions at the end of the 18^th century has been accompanied by the slow demise of state religions. More liberty has inevitably meant more freedom from states enforcing the beliefs of one religious denomination.

American revolutionaries led that change. Although most of them believed in a supreme being, they also believed that the state should not enforce any particular religious beliefs on Americans. Thus the First Amendment to our Constitution begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ....”

But separating Christianity from the American state has been a constant struggle. The First Amendment restricted only the federal government until the Supreme Court decided in 1947 to also apply it to the states.

In that decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote, “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another.” Liberals tend to interpret the establishment clause as creating a high barrier, a “wall of separation between Church and State” in Thomas Jefferson’s words. Conservatives have argued that the state can encourage general religious belief, such as by allowing prayer in schools, but they agree that the beliefs of a particular denomination must not be favored.

The danger of using the state to enforce narrow religious ideas was apparent last week in the rally against same-sex marriage in Springfield. The demonstration was conceived as a religious event, organized by the Illinois Family Institute, which calls itself a “ministry” that “promotes and defends Biblical truths”. The IFI’s website listed 16 sites for participants to find buses to Springfield, including 11 churches and one religious school. More than half of the scheduled six hours were designated as prayer rally and prayer walk.

Opponents of same-sex marriage are no longer able to count on broad popular hatred of homosexuals. The traditional claims that gay people are sick and evil are no longer persuasive, as more Americans realize they know, work alongside of, and may even be related to homosexual men and women. That didn’t stop Jim Finnegan, a board member of IFI, from describing gays as “deviant” and “disease-filled”.

But such language will not win any votes. At the Springfield rally, and at other similar events across the country, opponents of gay marriage have been reduced to one argument. The organizers displayed a large cross in front of the Capitol with the words “God Abhors Civil Unions”. Bishop Larry Trotter of a Chicago Baptist church said that same-sex marriage is “against the will, plan and the word of God.”

Like all such claims to know what God likes and doesn’t like, they really mean “I Want to Enforce My Beliefs on You”. That’s exactly what Bishop Thomas Paprocki did within the entire Springfield diocese. He barred anyone wearing a symbol supportive of gay marriage from attending Catholic Mass. Paprocki said that anyone who prays for same-sex marriage would be asked to leave the Springfield Cathedral.

Monsignor Carl Kemme of Springfield called marriage “God’s design, not man’s”. But he’s wrong. In the US, marriage is a state institution. No religious intervention is necessary to get married and then to enjoy the significant benefits of being officially recognized by all public entities as a couple.

There is no agreement among religious Americans about what God thinks of civil unions or same-sex marriage. While some religious leaders proclaimed in Springfield that God stood behind their beliefs, others have proclaimed the same thing for their opposite beliefs. Many major Protestant denominations support same-sex marriage, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the largest Lutheran denomination in the US, as well as Unitarians, United Church of Christ, and the Quakers. Some denominations are divided about homosexuality and gay marriage, like the United Methodist Church. Although official Methodist doctrine does not allow same-sex marriage, retired Bishop Melvin Talbert officiated on Saturday at a gay wedding in Alabama.

Bishop Paprocki’s own spiritual leader, Pope Francis, appears to be moving the Catholic Church away from its harshly critical stance toward homosexuality. In an interview last month, the Pope said, “If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge....We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.... it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” Most Catholics in America who attend weekly Mass support legalizing same-sex marriage, including about two-thirds of those aged 18-64.

The opponents of same-sex marriage wish to do what our Constitution forbids: have their minority religious beliefs be state law. Governments which enforce one interpretation of religious doctrine are inherently undemocratic. Those who advocate other beliefs are not only excluded from worship, but become enemies of the state. The law of the land must be for everyone.

Steve Hochstadt

Los Angeles, CA

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, October 29, 2013

Is the Crisis Over?

As a national sigh of relief greeted the end of the government shutdown, and the narrow averting of a national default, the question lingers: is the crisis over? Or will we go through the same political brinksmanship in a few months, when the debt ceiling is reached again in February? The answer lies within the Republican Party.

The compromise which ended the shutdown depended on Democratic votes. Every Democratic Senator and Representative voted for the bill to avert a default. But most congressional Republicans voted against it. Although a majority of Republican senators voted for it, 28 to 18, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly against it, 144 to 87. Nothing had changed among Republican ranks during the shutdown, except that Speaker John Boehner finally allowed such a bill to come to a vote at all, during which, as had been predicted from the beginning, enough Republicans voted yes for it to pass. Despite the billions in damage to our economy that the shutdown caused and the unanimous warnings from economists across the world that a government default would create much worse damage, Republican politicians did not budge.

Many Republicans in Washington not only sought the shutdown and default, but they now want to make that position a defining characteristic of true Republicanism. John Boehner said on WLW radio in Ohio, “We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win”. Veteran Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, and national business groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, argue that the shutdown strategy was a failure. McConnell said, “It was not a smart play. It had no chance of success.” Scott Reed, political strategist for the Chamber, agreed: “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.”

But the leaders of that “silly” effort are now seeking to purge the GOP of anyone who voted to reopen the government. Tea Party conservatives are gunning for their fellow Republicans, planning primary challenges in 2014.

The ideological splits within the Republican Party align with geographical differences. Five of the six House Republicans from Illinois voted to end the shutdown, while all 24 Texas Republicans voted no. More generally, House Republicans from below the Mason-Dixon line, from North Carolina across to Texas, voted for default by 75 to 17. Republicans from the rest of the country voted 70 to 69 to end the shutdown.

The conservative plan to attack all Republicans who showed any signs of moderation may continue the geographical narrowing of the national party. There are no longer any Republicans in the House from New England. Half of the New Jersey House delegation is Republican, but that might shift in 2014. Twice as many New Jersey voters blamed the Republicans in Congress for the shutdown as blamed Democrats. In Virginia, Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s run for governor against Democrat Terry McAuliffe has been damaged by popular anger at the shutdown, where a majority of voters blames Republicans for the disruption.

Across the nation, voters hold Republicans responsible for the shutdown, a judgment they have earned by their votes and words. Mitch McConnell, leader of Senate Republicans, says it won’t happen again: “Shutting down the government, in my view, is not conservative policy.” No, it isn’t, it’s not policy at all.

The government shutdown demonstrates the bankruptcy of Tea Party politics. Tea Party politicians have pursued only destructive policy ideas. Their economic plans don’t get further than shutting down public programs. They offer no coherent foreign policy to deal with a complex and unpredictable world. They appeal to angry and ignorant voters by making them angrier and more ignorant. Many of the darlings of the Tea Party, like Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, and Ted Cruz, are themselves remarkably ignorant, are consistent public liars, and don’t care. Now they have vowed to destroy their own party, as their public approval ratings drop, even among Republicans.

But mainstream Republicans, like McConnell and Boehner, created their own monster. By demonizing government, they successfully angered their own supporters. By calling global warming a hoax, they tarnished science and urged their voters to make up their own facts. By pretending the Affordable Care Act was some socialist plot, instead of a Heritage Foundation idea supported by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, they encouraged conservatives across America to look towards the most radical and simplistic political ideas. Now their Frankenstein has turned against them. Ted Cruz’s hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, regrets its 2012 endorsement of him. Too late.

We may not have another shutdown soon, but we will continue to have political crises, until the Republican Party decides again to participate in governing, recognizes that compromise is necessary in a two-party system, and stops pretending that Obama is a socialist and Democratic politics are treasonous.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, October 22, 2013