How To Survive a Liberal Education

...But what about the "values" the students received from the professors...

...Yet where, oh whore can a student hear this view on campus...

...Perhaps young conservatives might enlist the aid of enlightened liberal classmates to demand that professors who hold dogmatically liberal, radical or leftist opinions present a reading list and guest lecturers to even things out...

...Yet every poll indicates that the public is managing to remain blissfully ignorant of his campaign...

...Joe and I got along rather well...

...Good Chap, Can't make it over the high hurdles of rationalism, but he has spunk, bless him...

...But media man does not only hold to his lies because of mankind's inherent appetie for falsity...

...So who cares...

...What is wrong, of course, is not that the student has learned ways to challenge the beliefs of his parents...

...therefore the student concludes that both the method and the beliefs of the two groups are somehow distinct: if you believe in God, you must believe in God the way Uncle Louis does...

...Take the idea of God, for example -- you can believe in God the way Uncle Louis does or the way Bill Buckley does...

...Nor is the campaign interesting merely because the candidate's brass is suggesting that he ought to sit in Lincoln's chair...

...It is - - say the professors - - only their intellectual duty to help shake these kids up, to have them "question" the values they bring to school...

...9 All this is very obnoxious and, understandably enough, it does not appear to be moving him an inch toward the nomination...

...He taught what is called "an honors course...

...His liberalism is of the most predictable sort...

...After all, there is a large stockpile of such brass on Capitol Hill...

...I ex...

...this stage usually is not reached unless the person attends college or comes into contact - - through magazines or books- with persons who question the responses made to the basic worksl An example: a freshman will react to "patriotism" by equating it with simple, unexamined prejudicesabout the flag, Valley Forge, etc...

...he now realizes that reality is much more complicated than the parentgroup even told him...

...Some Washington reporters know why Mr...

...He felt it was something I just never could overcome, like some physical deformity...

...They come to school with the prejudices of their homes and the church and they just don't think...

...Who will help shake up these kids about those ideas...

...Certainly today's media man positively cherishes whole heaps of spurious truths...

...Although I'll admit it was a little odd in a high school situation, it is anything but odd if you take the educational world as a whole...

...This has even held true of the lower forms ol man...

...William G. F r e d e r i c k s So powerful is mankind's yearning to believe a lie that he w/ZZ cling to it even though it is not particulorly useful...

...If this sounds as if I'm making it up, believe me, it's true...

...indeed, they find those values and beliefs ludicrous, biased, bigoted, etc...

...Thinking" meant to Joe adhering to certain skeptical and even cynical attitudes towards popularly held middleand working-class beliefs...

...They were told at age fifteen the virtues of questioning, but no one ever told them to question the worth of eternal question...

...The intriguing aspect of the Bayh...

...Stage One: He is passive, accepts views of parents and those who most closely affect his daily life - - church, school, neighborhood comrades...

...He had done his intellectual duty...

...But Buckley believes in Him after a rigorous analysis and thorough meditation...

...I suggested that this might be a little bit much for fourteen and fifteen year old children, who weren't emotionally or intellectually prepared for say, No Exit or Candide...

...Maybe we need somebody who can articulate across that spectrum of thought...

...Where had all that hate come from...

...They are no different from anyone else...

...He is a shoulder-squeezer and knee-prodder...

...But his campaign is intriguing nevertheless...

...pect Heidelberg man thrived on rumors about the buxom lady from the dave down the mountain, and the rumors were palpable pappycodk...

...Senator Birch is spending enormous sums of other people's money in order to tell the Nation that he would rather like Birch to become Chief Executive and the leader of the free world...

...it's the same GOd...

...These kids have to be shaken up...

...What matters is whether or not such views are true -- and it is the conservative potation that the traditioanl views are, for the most part not only true, but demonstrably so...

...Wrong, Joe said...

...Ironists will note that teachers who say this never say that one must question the absolute virtue of an open mind or have an open mind about questioning as an absolute virtue, An open mind is usually held by this kind of liberal to he that state of the intellect which rejects all traditional morality and especially belief in a Supreme being...

...What is wrong is that he has not learned ways to challenge the beliefs of those professors who challenge the beliefs of his parents: no one on campus has ever said to him: "Yes, it is true your parents don't think in the sophisticated ways the professors do...

...Now the student is faced with a dilemma...

...Challenge" meant that he would do everything in his power to start a child "thinking" about, say, the possibility of atheism...

...Is it the professor's belief that his values can he challenged only by methods and viewpoints of the workhag,class parent...

...The brightest of the bright were allowed to take...

...Stage Three: Again, the student is active...

...Joe showed me his reading list for the course...

...Thus, you might go on to stage three...

...this course after undergoing careful screening to make certain only the best got in...

...Bayh's olfide, and they are too busy pressing their pants in the Washington saloons to find out...

...It's our job as teachers to challenge them, to start them thinking...

...8 The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 A few years ago when I was teaching English in a suburban high school, I had a colleague named Joe...

...Stage Two: He is active...

...Three Democratic functionaries cannot meet for lunch without Bayh jetting in to administer his hail-fellow-well-met-brand of courtship...

...But the significant thing is not that Bayh is obnoxious, but that he is everywhere...

...Now this stage is quite complex and difficult to transcend...

...Bayh's disingenuous withdrawal that we are publishing a report received last month from William G. Freclericks on the truth about this great man's exit - - ~ust ascribe it all to our noble desire to "shake up the system.'" RET Quickly now, before it sinks beneath the foam, consider the Bayh-forPresident caper...

...There are millions of students who have been led to believe that there are two important things a person must do if he is to be intellectually respectable: the first is to have an "open mind" and the second is to "question" everything...

...Bayh lost his avidity for the sdaffold on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but they also know how people relish a good, solid lie...

...He told me once he respected my mind, which meant, I believe, that he made allowances for the fact I believed in the God of the Church Fathers, the God of Athanasius and Thomas More and the God of John Henry Newman...

...I'm in between...

...This is simply not the truth...

...I'm no prude and I'm no saint...

...Thus, a college student is confronted with what seems to him to he an insurmountable problem: if he continues to hold on to the method of belief of his parents, he cannot live with himself, f o r he knows that such a method is intellectually disreputable...

...But that isn't the case at all...

...His most remarkable characteristic is his hands...

...He is constantly told that the battle is only between what he came to school with and what he is getting now...

...This, I think, is why we see the alleged irreversible shift from conservatism to a perverse form of liberalism among college students...

...he questions the methods and the documentation and, ultimately questions the competence of even the most articulate men m areas of conduct and belief - - all of this using the professors' very own tools...

...Uncle Louis believes in'a way that is uninformed, bigoted, not at all intellectually sophisticated and - - therefore - - not only his way of believing but the Concepts he believes must be erroneous...

...P a r t o f it comes from the realization o n the part of many students that they have been "had...

...It included works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus and Voltaire...

...No one will tell him that there is another battle: that of questioning the stuff he is getting now without reverting to the kind of argumentation his parents "taught" him...

...What has happened...

...Still most reporters have no idea what has taken plade in Mr...

...But it does not therefore logically follow that the views held by your parents are undesirable and the views held by the professors desirable...

...they do not accept the beliefs and values of the parents and the neighborhood...

...yet how can he also hold on t o t he Content of their belief, since his professors, day in and day out, demonstrate that if one is to think "intellectually," one arrives at certain conclusions about God (he isn't The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 9 there), patriotism (it's a sham), and right and wrong (there are only shades of gray - - except the war, that is immoral...

...It was a status symbol for two reasons: honors courses meant prestige in themselves and Joe was a gifted teacher...

...So it is because of the mantle of tommyrot that has covered Mr...

...The professors speak a different language...

...The dogmatic assertions that pass for argument among the average families come to seem to the mind of a college student vulgar, irrational and shameful when placed next to the admirable exercises in logic, demonstration and irony that are the marks of the best liberal professors...

...Having "had" Joe was an experience in itself...

...Let's trace a student's intellectual progress in today's higher education...

...The Senator has been rearing around the Republic at a pace that is remarkable even for a Senator whose inattentiveness to Senate business is a minor legend...

...I was reminded of all this by the unleashing of the wolf packs on the college campuses...

...Ultimately, they don't want charm or style...

...The money and energy Bayh expends in self-promotion is inversely proportional to his devotion to Senate duties, and that is a lot of money and energy...

...Students want truth...

...He is always throwing "playful left hooks at the...

...He was what used to be called a "fallenaway Catholic" and I was - - and am - - a Catholic...

...chins of those whom he is inflicting his particularly leaden small talk...

...If that were the case, the values held by the working class would, of course, he intellectually doomed...

...They want truth, and Joe and thousands of others like him have effectively demolished the correept of truth...

...That sort of thing...

...These students can no longer believe in the beliefs of their parents and their churches - - yet they are too bright to believe in the professors...

...Their argument has always been that they must present "the other side of the argument" (the origin of the idea that an argument has only two sides is, a faseinaUng historical, puzzle) because, after all, the students have received "the only side" from parents and church and school...

...Questioning" is an exercise in methadological skepticism that seeks by unending debate to reduce to absurdity any belief in objective standards of morality or belief in a Supreme being...

...Viewed in this fashion, what passes for a liberal education in most colleges today should bring a blush to the cheek of even the most unabashed liberal or leftist professor...

...If being frantic is being serious (and more Democratic politicians think it is), then Bayh is serious...

...Media man also adcepts lies because he is too lazy to discover exactly what the truth is...

...They knew that one was supposed to have an open mind - - but they discovered that a consistently open mind could soon become a hole in the head...

...he begins by questioning the dond/us/ons of the professors...

...The professor, on the other hand, believes in agnosticism in such a way that a freshman soon comes to admire not only his method (Documentation, quotations, well-reasoned arguments) but the fruits of the method, i.e., agnosticism, cynicism about the prejudices held by the working class...

...Faced with what admittedly is the sophistication, breadth and depth of reading experience that professors have vis-a-vis students, a student would have to be superhuman to overcome the feeling that the ritualistic liberal professors are correct, not only in the way they ttfmk, but in the condlus/ons they have reached...

...It comes usually in two stages, the first coming before he enters college...

...It is part ol the truth, but it is not the whole truth, and a portion o] the truth still does not convery the truth...

...A political science teacher will challenge that response by going through a process of argument that leads to the conclusion that one can be loyal to one's nation by questioning it, by challenging "popular concepts" of patriotism, by sneering at the "parentchurch" reactions...

...Take for instance the whopper that Senator Bayh ~ust dropped our of the contest for the White House because ol his wile's uncertain health...

...he knows he cannot get away with giving the usual stock responses in class because professors can immediately destroy such a response with incisive arguments based on what seems to be irrefutable evidence...

...It is as simple as that...

...The intriguing aspect of the Bayh campaign has nothing to do with anything the candidate says...

...The student has progressed from dogmatieally-held prejudices, unexamined and half-understood, if at all, through the cynical but almost always convincing skepticism or leftist dogmatism of the professors to, finally, an intellectually based, rationally held position that is in line with the basic beliefs of the working class parents - - and of Western civilization at its height...

...It is usually the introduction for most young Americans to what might be called non-prejudicial thought...

...in all of the major areas of thought, there is a responsible, scholarly, welldocumented, rational, humane, intellectual position diametrically opposed to that of the relativists, liberal dogmatists and leftists and quite in the line with the condlusion - - if not the methods of argument - - of the parents, church, school - - in short, of civilization...

...Usually this means an unexamined adherence to what might be called the standard emotional response to words such as "patriotism, God, law, right, wrong...

...They are the busiest hands in the Western world...

...I for one cannot blame any student for reaching such a conclusion...

...They don't want cute tricks...

...Once the child started "thinking," presumably, Joe's work was done...