A liberal education
It doesn’t mean ‘teach liberal politics’.
But it does at an increasing number of institutions of higher learning.
The political science departments at elite private universities such as Harvard and Yale, at leading small liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore and Williams, and at distinguished large public universities like the University of Maryland and the University of California, Berkeley, offer undergraduates a variety of courses on a range of topics. But one topic the undergraduates at these institutions — and at the vast majority of other universities and colleges — are unlikely to find covered is conservatism.
There is no legitimate intellectual justification for this omission. The exclusion of conservative ideas from the curriculum contravenes the requirements of a liberal education and an objective study of political science.
What’s going on here?
Political science departments are generally divided into the subfields of American politics, comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Conservative ideas are relevant in all four, but the obvious areas within the political science discipline to teach about the great tradition of conservative ideas and thinkers are American politics and political theory. That rarely happens today.
They’re throwing in a token chapter here & there on something like The Federalist Papers or de Tocqueville…
But most students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism’s relentless overturning of established ways. It also recognized early that communism represented an implacable enemy of freedom. And for 30 years it has been animated by a fascinating quarrel between traditionalists, libertarians and neoconservatives.
On the other hand, liberalism is well covered. Blanketed, if you will.
While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.
These august institutions are thus declaring that there’s only one worldview that matters, and they’re giving their students an incomplete education.
Without an introduction to the conservative tradition in America and the conservative dimensions of modern political philosophy, political science students are condemned to a substantially incomplete and seriously unbalanced knowledge of their subject. Courses on this tradition should be mandatory for students of politics; today they are not even an option at most American universities.
What they’re getting is revisionist history.
But there is no reason why scholars with progressive political opinions and who belong to the Democratic Party can not, out of a desire to understand American political history and modern political philosophy, study and teach conservatism in accordance with high intellectual standards. It would be good if they did.
It would also be good if every political science department offered a complementary course on the history of progressivism in America. This would discourage professors from conflating American political thought as a whole with progressivism, which they do in a variety of ways, starting with the questions they tend to ask and those they refuse to entertain.
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I went to Northwestern, which some will call the Harvard of the Midwest. Thinking back on all the history and theology courses (yeah, a Catholic in John Wesley’s court!) I can think of only one course that was Marxist. The Latin American history prof started things off by saying that we might not agree with her views, but if we ever had to work in Latin America or represent the country there, it might be good to understand public sentiment. She was a passionate Marxist, but I couldn’t buy into it.
Most of the time what I learned from my history courses was how to research the past and find the answers to my own questions. If Northwestern did anything for its students it was to teach them to research. Get the raw data, put it together and then get your conclusion. I guess that’s why I spent four years studying Protestantism and came away a stronger Catholic (albeit with a deeper respect for Protestantism).
Maybe the reason why there is not more respect for conservatism on campus is the fact that those who are ambassadors of conservatism are more entertainers than historians. The titular heads of the Conservative movement today pride themselves on their lack of formal education, are quick to condemn university studies as useless, and promote their viewpoints based not upon objective truth but the truth as they, themselves, devise it.
By the way, it is hard to see Teddy Roosevelt as a Conservative. He was a Progressive. He did believe that corporations were neccessary but that they could only be prevented from doing harm to the country by strong regulation and a firm hand from the executive branch of government. TR would have looked at Obama’s taking control of the banks and the auto industry as not anti-American socialism but a logical reaction in times like these. I’ll bet he would have even loved Obama’s speech today regarding banking oversight. I don’t think TR would be pleased being called a Conservative at all.
“Catholic” leaders have abdicated their responsibility, and that is a major reason why we conservatives are badly losing the American Culture War to liberals. This war is not even close. It’s an out and out slaughter. With media firmly planted in the left pocket, conservatism is getting thoroughly destroyed. Conservatives are silenced, but much of it is actually our own fault.
We need to focus on our local communities!
There are two good examples I’d like to point out. Archbishop Charles Chaput, in his excellent book “Render Unto Ceasar”, correctly, and profoundly says “A public life that excludes God does not enrich the human spirit. It kills it.” He also says “But for Catholics, the common good can never mean muting themselves in public debate…”.
The Archbishop quotes one Jedediah Purdy who brilliantly commented on the abdication of our civic responsibility which “tends to discourage civic involvement of all sorts. From local school boards to congressional campaigns, politics means taking public stands, throwing in one’s lot with a standard bearer, and constantly risking being caught out as a hypocrite, a sucker or a naive minority of one.” The Archbishop responded “In other words, for too many of us, it seems safer to be a smug coward than somebody with a spine who might lose.”
The other leader I’d like to mention is Father Frank Pavone of Priests For Life. Fr. Pavone is an awesome leader in explaining “Political Responsibility of Christians”. He is perhaps the best individual in our nation on the critical topic of abortion and also on the culture war.
“We the people” are the first 3 words in our constitution. Our constitution was written with morality and conservative foundations. Today our constitution is virtually gone as local “leaders” are driven by power, greed and an obsession with being re-elected into our government offices. At the root of all this is one thing — money.
Take Chicago, Illinois for example. Rich Daley, supposedly the mayor of Chicago, calls himself a “Catholic”. He promotes the absurdity that a male can “marry” another male, and that a female can “marry” another female. He promotes the killing of a pre-born human being in the mother’s womb. He also gets millions of dollars in re-election campaign donations from liberals who “hate” Christianity and the discussion of morality and conservatism. That money gets spread around. That money corrupts.
What do the masses of otherwise good conservative people do? They keep quiet. They may not be radical liberals marching in Daley’s public homosexual day parade down the Chicago streets, but they do not voice their outrage at such an outrageous government display.
People are afraid to speak up, and so 1 thing leads to another. Before you know it (as the frog in the frying pan), you have a deranged man in as mayor of Chicago for over 20 years, turning our government upside-down. You have a mayor who simply says absolutely anything. He is unhinged. When confronted with one scandal after another, he simply shrugs his shoulders. The complicit media is largely in on this game!
It is not just that Rich Daley scandalizes our Roman Catholic Church; the point is that our entire society, as a whole, refuses to rightfully protest against this pseudo-dictator. Over the years, all 50 of the council members are rubber-stamps. All 50. Fifty of fifty! Next, as I said, the general public remains silent!
We want to be accepted in the “in” society. We do not want to be ostracized. We grossly wrongly think that to have a job and make money, that one must be enslaved to the Daley Political mob network.
It was from years of community organizing in local Chicago politics, and years of otherwise good people ignoring what we knew was wrong, that our United States of America has an extreme liberal, and champion of abortion, Barack Husein Obama, as President and leader of the free world.
It has been said that all politics is local. We must take our streets, neighborhoods and towns back. We must stop idolizing and emboldening folks such as Daley. We must stop aiding and abetting guys such as Daley. We must stop voting for people like Daley. We must stop “hiring” the Daleys of the world as our government leaders.
All we have to do is responsibly speak up.
We must do our part. We already have leadership in Fr. Frank Pavone, Archbishop Charles Chaput and Sheila Liaugminas.
We must stand up and be heard and as old as this sounds, and it is old: Stick up for your principles!
Carl Segvich
Chicago’s 11th Ward Republican Committeeman
http://www.Segvich.US