Alan Moore penned a column two weeks ago about the political left and college education. I, too, have heard about the college horror stories: liberal professors quoting everything from Mao to Marx and demonizing conservatives.
While it is not a sin to be liberal, I do resent the imposition of beliefs on a captive audience of students.
Unfortunately, I have seen some subtle and some outward attempts to do just that in my short time at George Mason University.
In the past year, I have pinned down a couple of the most pervasive assumptions among liberal academia.
For the record, I’ve heard some here at Mason and others were taken from other universities.
First, on most issues it seems the liberal view is that individuals are not capable of fully living their lives, spending their money or making important life choices. This takes many forms.
Many would claim that we are simply too small in the scheme of things.
We are so little compared to the big corporations and thus need someone to always help us fight them.
While that view tends to be the most pervasive, I discovered it was only the first layer of the onion.
When you peel another layer, it reveals another reason individuals are incapable.
Coupled with their lack of political power is their lack of civic knowledge.
The line would go that the American people don’t pay attention to politics.
That’s why politicians, who presumably follow day-to-day politics, must take a more assertive role.
If you peel one last layer back you see the real reason individuals are deemed incapable: they are stupid.
In the end, the first two layers stem from the individual’s inherent lack of basic knowledge.
They are susceptible to fads, have unreasonable expectations and inherent bigotries, etc.
They buy trucks even after the elite says they’ll kill us all.
They buy guns even though they’re dangerous.
They believe in a God that elite science cannot definitively prove.
All of this is the underlying reason why we need a small intellectual elite to make decisions for the large, predominantly dumb populace.
On this point, all I can say is that everywhere that individual freedom has flourished, so has society as a whole.
Everywhere it is oppressed and eliminated, the society has failed. Americans are an amazing people.
Sure, we all make mistakes, but as a people we are capable of great things
Point to the largest innovations of the last two centuries and most were accomplished the government’s help, protection or involvement at all.
Another point I learned was that in many ways it seemed like American greatness was under attack.
Our being a large, wealthy and powerful country is to blame for almost every ill in the world, and we must humble or weaken ourselves to be liked again.
On the contrary, American success is not something to begrudge.
It is something to maintain and expand.
Like our individuality, our nation has not been perfect over the years but the scars we bear, we bear openly for all to see and learn from.
The problem comes when people harp on our small number of faults and ignore the wealth of good this nation has done for the world.
The growth or decay of our nation mirrors the rise or fall of the values we hold dear.
If we are weak, then those principles will weaken.
Whether we like it or not, we are the world’s arbiter of freedom and it is up to us to keep freedom alive and prosperous.
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