The other day I started reading the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. I do this from time to time to keep my senses alert, to make sure I'm not getting soft. I'm trying to avoid a situation where I feel like the guy in NOFX who says "society don't bother me and there's something wrong with that." Then again, I'd have to be pretty unconscious for the Journal's editorial page not to bother me.
Anyway, Peter Berkowitz cought my eye with an op-ed titled Bush Hatred and Obama Euphoria are Two Sides of the Same Coin, which says a few things that got me thinking. Such as:
Some will speculate that the outbreak of hatred and euphoria in our politics is not the result of the transformation of left-liberalism into a religion, its promulgation as dogma by our universities, and students' absorption of their professors' lesson of immoderation. This is unfair to religion.
There are some obvious starting points here (e.g. the weaselly "some will speculate" intro;the disingenuous/retarded notion that there is some left-wing political force in this country that 1. exists, and 2. is somehow responsible for the fact that George Bush is a bad man and Barack Obama is not). But I don't want to give Berkowitz too much credit. He's just repeating the party line. And the party line, for probably 60 years, has been: higher education in America is a breeding ground for dirty commie traitors.
Now, it might seem silly to spend some time dissecting this, since it's just propaganda, but it's very powerful propaganda, which serves a purpose that is both pretty sinister and somewhat hidden from view. To begin, Nixon was saying this shit back in the 1950s, and while he may have been motivated by a very personal resentment based on his college experience, the left-wing professor meme has since become a crucial play in the Republican playbook, and that's because it works. It taps into that natural American working-class resentment, the resentment common people feel for the unfairly privileged that was unspeakable back when only the rich went to college and is so speakable now it's become a political philosophy: fuck you, college boy. Yeah.
...By assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life.
But, more importantly, is it true? Now, to anyone who has actually attended college, or even one of those evil elite liberal arts schools, this picture he paints of rabid left-wing professors, angrily stifling dissent might seem a bit strange. Rather, it seems safe to say that professors, particularly those on the faculty at the top dog schools, tend to prize rational, dispassionate thinking and reasoned argument. They get to where they are because they’re brilliant, inquisitive, open-minded teachers who want their students to be as open as possible to worldly knowledge and experience. Now, that said, it’s true that some professors suck. Some are intolerant of opposing arguments. Some professors get to where they are by advocating a particularly challenging or contentious view of history, or literary criticism, or politics. Some are classroom bullies. And there are plenty of horror stories (some more true than others), collected by conservative "watchdog" groups accusing professors of displaying political biases in class.
But the thing is, the professors who do this are bad professors. They're losing their heads, letting themselves get tripped into a battle for control, and forgetting that the whole point of a free and open exchange of ideas in a liberal education is that you don't dismiss people out of hand. You listen to what they have to say. If their argument lacks polish, but is based on evidence, and accurately describes the situation and points towards a valid interpretation or understanding, then the professor should say so. If their argument is flimsy, or lacks supportive evidence, or is simply not based on fact then it should be dismissed as such. Those are the rules of the game. It isn’t about being nice or trying not to hurt people’s feelings. I remember vividly my first day in Harry Williams’ African-American History class, fall of my freshman year at Carleton. We were talking about David Walker’s Appeal against slavery. I raised my hand, nonchalantly, and said something like “Oh, it’s so eloquently written. He’s so laid back. He never loses his cool at all, even though he’s talking about slavery. I like that.” Silence. Professor Williams stared at me, rose out of his chair and waddled his six foot four, 250 pound self towards me. His black face was twice the size of mine. He stared down at me. “Oh really. Calm. Laid back, you say.” He looked around the room. “Does anyone else agree with this statement?” And for the next 5,000 minutes everyone in the class took turns calling me a fool. Everyone got a chance, even the hot girl sitting next to me (her sad smile and head shake said it all--we might have had something there. If only.)
Harry Williams was a dick, but he was absolutely right. I was wrong. In fact, if there’s one way to describe David Walker’s Appeal, it’s probably as the exact opposite of what I said: it’s angry, semi-coherent in spots, with long spittle-flecked sentences in all capital letters. What I said was demonstrably, empirically wrong. And I got called on it.
Woah woah, slow down there, Berkowitz says. I’m not talking about facts. I’m talking about opinions, political opinions! I’m trying to get liberal arts professors to live up to their calling and be inclusive of all points of view, even if they disagree personally with some of them! Well, that’s a nice sentiment, except the examples he uses don’t actually fall under the “opinion” category. Bush v. Gore? There’s nothing wrong with saying you like the ruling, but the facts of the matter are 1. that conservative, “states’-rights” justices overturned the Florida State Supreme court and decided that the presidential ballots cast by the citizens of that state should not be counted; and 2. that they did so by affirming Bush’s rights (as the plaintiff) against discrimination as cited in the fourteenth amendment. Anyone cognizant of these facts has pretty clear justification for attacking the ruling, perhaps even vehemently. As for the “oft-refuted allegation that Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq,” I don’t think “oft-refuted” means what he thinks it means. Now, reasonable people (e.g. criminal lawyers) can debate whether or not Bush’s words fit the narrow literal definition of “lied,” (or whether he admitted culpability for the torture of U.S. prisoners in an interview on national T.V.). But to angrily dismiss these topics as evidence of some liberal conspiracy theory is not just disingenuous: it is to angrily dismiss the idea that objective truth has value whatsoever. To Berkowitz and people like him, truth and lies are just opinions, and who are those damn “left-liberals” to say that their opinions are better than anyone else’s? You don’t need facts, or lucid arguments, or any other pussyass words to prove truth. Power makes truth.
Why do professors tend to have left wing political opinions anyway? Well, consider some questions: Can a terrorist act be justified? Does Karl Marx make valid observations about capitalist society? Are there ways to understand the exercise of American power in ways that are different from those accepted and approved by our government and by the mainstream media? To all of these questions, a liberal education does not give a single correct answer. A good liberal arts student may well discover that the answer in each case is "No." But according to the theory of liberal arts education, they are at least worth pursuing. The student recognizes these as questions that, when explored, will serve to expand his understanding of the world in which he lives. Berkowitz, however, doesn’t have any questions. They’re unimportant, uninteresting, and subversive questions. He already knows the answer, and that is "No," or more accurately, “fuck you." When confronted with a multiplicity of meanings, he denies that these differences of interpretation exist in the first place. And then he accuses anyone who addresses these questions honestly, anyone who recognizes them as worthy of investigation, of seeking to impose "leftist indoctrination" on all those poor little Berkowitzes in classrooms across the country.
. . .
At this point it might be time to ask, ok, well what’s the harm of this? After all, it’s just propaganda. It’s not like conservatives are trying to shut down colleges or even kick liberal professors off campus. It’s just red meat for the fanatic fringe, to keep them pissed and voting Republican. What effects does it really have?
First, it’s clear that in the 60 years since Nixon began railing about pinko professors, the value of a liberal education has declined dramatically. Bachelors degrees are a necessity, but they barely earn a foot in the door at most companies nowadays. But alongside this tangible slide is a more philosophical slide. As the free exchange of ideas is confined to ever smaller reservations, it becomes ever harder for a society to conceive of real progressive change. Nixon was right; professors have always been left-wing, and it is those left-wing professors we can thank for much of the intellectual lifting that paved the way for every progressive victory that occurred throughout history. Before abolitionism, women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, social security and medicare went mainstream, they were debated on college campuses. Before the American Revolution was fought, its ideals were debated by teachers and intellectuals. What kind of country could Jefferson and Madison have created if they’d had to spend all their time arguing for their right to imagine it?
More importantly, these attacks help keep these progressive ideas emasculated and confined to the reservation, and in so doing they keep our public discourse from reflecting the full range of possible reactions to the present crisis. For example, ask anyone who isn’t a banker or a politician what should be done with the $800 billion stimulus money, and they’ll say it should be given to the taxpayers. And then they’ll laugh, because everyone knows this could never happen. Well, why not? Because there is no real public debate about just what our values and priorities should be regarding this or any other matter of public policy. The debate has two sides: Democrats, who say that we need to bail out the bankers who in their greed screwed over a couple hundred million people in this country alone. And Republicans, who say: “No,” or more accurately, “fuck you.”
And in the meantime, people are seriously pissed off. During the last few weeks of the presidential campaign, when McCain decided he was a populist rabble-rousing truthseeker sent by the people to go change Washington, he started passing off the mike to Ordinary Americans at campaign events, and things got scary. There was the woman who called Obama a Muslim terrorist. And there was the guy who grabbed the mike and said, “I’m mad.” McCain nodded, and started to say something, but the guy cut him off: “I’m really, REALLY mad,” he growled, and the crowd cheered in agreement. McCain looked surprised and frightened by this; those last few weeks, indeed, it seemed it was all he could do to stay afloat as all the seething resentment Republicans had been stoking for half a century blew up in his face. They’ve fed into it, harnessed it, ridden it to victory, but despite all the electoral success, these lower middle-class voters haven’t seen their lives get better, but worse. They’re against the stimulus, but they have no idea what they’re for, because they can’t reason critically, and they have no access to a culture in which reasonable alternatives can be discussed.
But just because they can’t talk about it doesn’t mean their anger isn’t real, and it doesn’t mean they don’t represent a real and growing threat.
Obama should take note. Revolutions don’t happen during times of maximum oppression. They happen afterwards, when the screws are loosened a little bit, when a little light peeks through. Obama campaigned on Change, and whether he meant it or not, voters now believe that he will really change the entrenched, unreflective thinking that’s dominated our discourse since Nixon. If he doesn’t produce results soon, the new alternatives might not be debated in an ivory tower classroom, but in the streets.
. . .
Orwell said that the British ruling class had two options: they could read Marx, and thereby understand that their position was immoral and untenable. Or they could flee into stupidity. The upper class survived as the British empire decayed in the ‘20s and ‘30s because they were simply too dumb—or pretended to be, but what's the difference?—to admit that they had no legitimate claim to political power. This had drastic consequences, not the least of which was their complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Fascist threat.
It's safe to say that our Democratic party today has chosen Option 2. Meanwhile, the Republicans have chosen option 3: "No," or more accurately: you know what it is.
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