Columnist Robert Novak has ties to Anti-Kerry book

I read the article cited above, mostly because I felt I owed my friend Blatham at least that in this discussion (and earlier ones). First, let me say that I do like and admire Blatham for his evident good nature, wit, and intelligence. We think differently about this matter and several other things, but have always been able to communicate beyond our opposing views and occasionally enjoy the humor and irony we could find in the debate.

Our disagreements often arise from our different perspectives on what might be 'right' or 'progressive' social and political behavior, and on the manifestations of what he regards as some 'wrong' such forces in American life. I take a more conservative and tolerant view of these things., placing much less emphasis on the somewhat abstract distinctions that worry him. Interestingly I found in the article a description of precisely the kind of abstract, elitist (in my view) slicing and diceing of the stuff of the lives of the "common people", who are evidently the object of the analysis of the Hofstadter's of this world, that I believe lies behind the issues over which Blatham and I constantly differ.

Here is a sample, which I believe illustrates the key elements;

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In many ways, Anti-intellectualism in American Life was a commentary on the increasing influence of Protestant evangelicalism, political egalitarianism, and the rising cult of practicality as the new criteria for assessing our private and public worlds. Hofstadter accused religion, politics, and the public schools of fostering in common people a resentment and suspicion of intellect, of the life of the mind, and of those who devote their lives to it. He charged that local evangelical preachers and small town lawyers and businessmen masked their bias against intellect with the rhetoric of morality, democracy, utility, and practicality
……

However, though Hofstadter deplored the anti-intellectualism of village life, "he sympathized with those whose way of life was being swept away by the rush of events" in the latter half of the twentieth century.14 He noted the "patience and generosity" of the common American in the face of monumental change. He suggested that the animosity between intellectuals and the common people was not solely the fault of the commoner. He recognized that the life of the villager was at odds with the life of the mind. Where common folk lead hard, belabored lives, intellectuals lead elitist, leisured ones?-lives that involved extensive education and time to read, think, and write. Finally, Hofstadter confessed that, intellectuals were at odds not only with their fellow Americans but, quite often, with their democratic beliefs.
Intellectuals in the twentieth century thus have found themselves engaged in incompatible efforts: they have tried to be good and believing citizens of a democratic society and at the same time to resist the vulgarization of culture which that society constantly produces. It is rare for an American intellectual to confront candidly the unresolvable conflict between the elite character of his own class and his democratic aspirations.

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The object of the political system we have created is to enable the people, such as they are, to live their lives with as little intrusive government interference as possible, and to themselves choose their leaders and judges.

The object of our political system is most assuredly not the perfection of the people - according to the abstract constructs of a self-appointed "intellectual elite" - by the architects of the political and social system, no matter how "progressive" these self-appointed elites may be, or consider themselves to be.

This sort of crap has repeatedly led to the most awful tyrannies that have beset mankind, ranging from "the elimination of the irreconcilables" of Lenin, to the "Cultural Revolution" of Mao Tse Dung and Hitler's racial purification of the Nazi state. Happily we are not slaves to a self-appointed intellectual elite in this country. The excerpt quoted above fully illustrates the self-centered elitism of the so called "intellectuals" who presume to guide the lives of lesser mortals.

You forget about the manadorty humanities classes that people have to take to fulfil requirements for degrees. It is the poly sci classes that have to be taught, the into to soc classes that have to be taken. Don't try and confuse the issue with classes that you know don't require a point of view. There are others that do and you know it.
Few universities I know of have mandatory courses in political theory or in sociology even for a Bachelor of Arts degree. For other degrees, often none at all. History requirements are common, as are english and math and often a science, but that's about it for mandatory.
So you've got the picture wrong, because of what you are reading and listening to (and it is false or misrepresentative) but even if you didn't, so what? You haven't turned into a commie.



No because it is the liberal view that already has a voice in such places as the schools. We have no strong voice in the evangelical churches, and we demand 50% What do you call it when entering freshmen are forced to read a book about Islam and then right a paper on it? That's the reddest herring I've ever seen. You find me the instance where this occured. Not a link to a right wing source of ridiculous surmise, but to the university program where this occured. What the hell do you think is education? It's about learning NEW things, about expanding your noggin, about fresh ideas. You, probably more than anyone else on this thread ought to read Muslim scripture. Would this same thing have happened for the Bible or even the Torah? No people like you would scream about "Seperation of Church and State". Nah. What I'd like most of all is for muslims to study the bible and Buddhism and for christians to study the Qur'an and Hinduism.

Here's a article about how liberal schools keep conservatives from teaching certain subjects.

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Mediator's Ruling Favors Conservative Professor in Dispute at U. Montana
By Jennifer Jacobson--Chronicle of Higher Ed--08/27/04

A law professor at the University of Montana who said he had long been denied his wish to teach constitutional law because of his conservative political views will now get a chance to teach it, under a ruling issued by an outside mediator.
The professor, Robert G. Natelson, had appealed the School of Law's most recent decision to deny his request, charging that the administration had allowed only liberal professors to teach the course.
However, Donald C. Robinson, a Montana lawyer who mediated the case this summer, did not consider the question of whether Mr. Natelson had been discriminated against based on his politics. Mr. Robinson found only that the professor had been treated unfairly and decided that he should be permitted to teach constitutional law, on a trial basis.
"The decision of the hearing officer was really a clarion call for fairness," Mr. Natelson told The Chronicle after Mr. Robinson announced his ruling, on Thursday. "If everyone is treated fairly in academia, there will be no political discrimination."
Mr. Natelson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for governor in 1996 and 2000, said he was "really happy" about the decision. "It's good for the law school," he said. "I really look forward to working with students in constitutional law."
In a letter to Mr. Natelson and E. Edwin Eck, dean of the law school, G.M. Dennison, the university's president, said he accepted Mr. Robinson's recommendations. Those include that Mr. Natelson be allowed to teach constitutional law in the spring semester and that Mr. Eck establish an independent committee to evaluate Mr. Natelson's teaching, scholarship, and service, and to decide whether to assign him to the course permanently.
In his grievance, Mr. Natelson, who has taught courses in property and real-estate law and legal history, argued that allowing senior faculty members to move from courses they have taught into vacant ones was a common practice.
On Thursday he said that he welcomed an objective evaluation of his performance, and that he had struggled for years to get one. Four times the law school had denied his request to fill a vacancy in teaching the course, he said.
Montana officials praised Mr. Robinson for choosing not to judge the dispute's political dimension.
"I was pleased to see the president noting there was no finding of political discrimination," Dean Eck said, referring to Mr. Dennison's letter. In it, the president wrote that Mr. Robinson had found "personal animus" on the part of several law professors toward Mr. Natelson, but not political discrimination.
Even so, "there's no question I am disappointed," said Mr. Eck, who described himself as a conservative Republican. The mediator's recommendations, he said, limited his discretion in considering teaching evaluations in assigning professors to teach courses. Some evaluations, he said, had criticized Mr. Natelson for a lack of collegiality with both students and professors.
Even so, Mr. Eck said that he and his colleagues plan to put the dispute behind them.
"Fairness is a good beginning for building a collegial working relationship," Mr. Natelson said, echoing his dean's sentiment. "My hope is we can go forward at the law school with such a relationship. I'll do everything I can to foster that
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The same thing could have been said 50 years ago of blacks, just because it wasn't found doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Interesting to see how this one turns out.
Did you bother to read this piece you pasted? "the president wrote that Mr. Robinson had found "personal animus" on the part of several law professors toward Mr. Natelson, but not political discrimination."
[/quote]

For anyone else who is following Baldimo's tortured arguments here, you might want to read up on Clint Bollick. He was a young lawyer working for Bork when Bork was refused. That event set him on a passionate crusade and probably more than anyone else, he's responsible for this legal and public relations strategy of hijacking civil rights language (baldimo's use of the segregation and racial intolerance metaphor) for use in forwarding the conservative ideology through the courts (eg against affirmative action). A common trick is portraying the person or group as a victim. In the affirmative action cases, the white guy is really the victim of racism, not the black guy.

george

I have never met a man so willing to walk many miles in order that he might not have to move even an inch. You took from this essay (and it is a good essay) what you hoped to find, and you left aside that which did not fit, for example


Hofstadter didn't concern himself with the 'perfection' of people, george, no more than does anyone who works towards a good school, or a good curriculum, or no more than anyone who thinks education a positive influence on an individual and community.

I said I wouldn't bring this book up again, but you just tried to write an exam using a cheat sheet, and I won't be giving you a mark. Read the book.

Nice turns of phrase - as usual. However, Bernie, I have seen you too run a few good 880s to avoid moving even a millimeter. (Note the very Euro-conventional use of the metric system in my metaphor).

Permit me to observe that what now passes for the Liberal Arts in most modern citadels of education ain't what it used to be. It now has heavy doses of the contemporary orthodox cant of multiculturalism and all the attendant baggage - instead of the classical canon of history, philosophy, what was called rhetoric, mathematics, and physics. It isn't fair to blame this on the Babbits of American culture. It is the very product of the "intellectuals" whom you so admire. They don't offer a solution - merely a different, elitist version of the problem

I just might read the goddamn book! However you should engage this issue yourself,instead of through surrogates.

george

How do you know this to be so, and in what specificity?

My most recent studies ran 87 through 92. In those five years (undergrad...triple minors in Education, English, and Humanities) my curriculum included the key works of nearly every notable classical writer (greek and roman) in drama, philosphy, and history. It included courses in philosophy from Aristotle through Aurelius through Locke, Hume, etc and through the English and American philosophers of this century. I studied math (bare bones, I hate the subject) and geology and geography. Lots of history studies...actually beginning with the pre-history of the Mediterranean basin though greek and roman history, through the Euopean history and new world history, and more literature courses than one could shake a metaphorical stick at. And on top of all that, a bunch of courses in studies of other cultures around the world. Add in some ten courses in archaeology. And courses directed towards religious philosophy and practice.

And yes, I've read Bloom's book front cover to rear. And I've read D'Souza where, following Bloom, he said what you said above and where he coined the term 'political correctness'. And I've read much subsequent critique of both those two writers.

In my university (SFU) both classical studies and philosophy were strong and healthy departments. There were challenges to certain orthodoxies from, particularly, feminist studies and the French deconstructionists but any suggestion these two new disciplines had overwhelmed the more classical curriculum is simply false. Not only are they false (and still are, I am in infrequent contact with a couple of my old profs, one recently dean of education...smart classical bugger out of Oxford...about 6'5' and one of the funniest people I've ever met) but they are completely blind to how much feminist studies, particularly, has enriched and broadened our understanding of countless academic disciplines. Just for one instance, take early north american history. As a kid, I'd studied the history of the trapping trade and how it opened up the whole continent. Women? Not a one to be seen in the whole story. Feminist address to this area brought to light the absolutely essential role of native women who had been taken as wives (usually not married, of course) by the trappers and who functioned as liason between the trappers and their companies and the native peoples who knew where the fur animals were to be found. Critical history, previously completely invisible.

But the thing is, you numbskull, old orthodoxies are always challenged by new ideas. And that is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is how we broaden our understandings, how new knowledge is achieved, and how we learn. The old orthodoxies are not subsumed, they are merely altered.

And just what the bloody hell is your beef with 'multiculturalism'?? What the hell is ANYBODIE'S beef with it?? You are going to get stupider from learning about another culture???

This is about change, george. This is about fear of change and the reactionary urge. You know your history. You know that the golden age of fifth century BC Athens ( and it certainly was that) would never have happened - could never have happened - without the cultural stressors that arise when cultures and ideas intermingle and old orthodoxies are challenged. You know that the Rennaissance could never have happened without the cultural stressors of burgeoning trade and communications and with the flood of new ideas (or recovered old ideas, which looked damned new) that poured into europe and upset every apple cart in every village and every head.

If you do not comprehend that this period of time is similar and that the reactionary urge you and others feel (me too, sometimes on some things) is just what folks went through when the old classical texts emerged in the Italian cities and flowed slowly up north ("My goodness...humans are beautiful and can think for themselves!"...just find me one single piece of art from europe before this period which doesn't portray human subjects as devoid of all humanity) or what folks went through when the Church split apart, or, or, or....if you don't comprehend that the movement you are supporting above is simply a reactionary response to what telescopes and satellites and brain scanners and the internet and air travel have suddenly laid open to us, then you are the biggest ninny south of Baldimo.

ps
And I have important life matters to attend to for the next week or two. Have a lovely day and week and get your ass down to the bookstore.

Um, I think you are somewhat mistaken.

I recently graduated from a liberal arts program, and we didn't have any multiculturalism. The closest thing I took was a class on African-American history.

My classes (in order of number taken)

History
Philosophy
Various Sciences
Psychology
Mathematics
Spanish


So, for my LA degree, the vast majority of my classes were... history, science, and philosophy.

Just because you, yaknow, BELIEVE that something is true George, doesn't make it true.

Cycloptichorn

You are a product of that education Cycloptichorn, I think you have proven George's theory...

I know plenty of conservatives who were in my classes.

My point, however, is that the claim that Liberal Arts doesn't focus on history, philosophy, and science in lieu of 'multiculturalism' is just silly. It shows that the poster is talking out his ass on this one.

I think there are a lot of complaints about the 'liberal' teachers in many universities. And it's true, most of my profs were liberal. But is that such a bad thing? They didn't teach economic policies, or talk about abortion in class; they did talk about helping people and the importance of environmentalism. They talked about their opposition to war. These are bad things for teachers to teach?

Why are most professors liberal? In my opinion; most conservatives are too busy trying to make money to become professors. Greedy bastards.

Cycloptichorn

I got my masters degree in adult education so that I can someday teach at college level... Imagine me teaching at one of those pansy liberal arts colleges...

Whew. What topics would you like to teach McG?

Cycloptichorn

I didn't say that contemporary Liberal Arts Programs have changed the nomenclature of the classical curriculum; rather they have, to a large degree - not entirely -stripped it of content.

The canonical texts are too often replaced with various surveys and "comprehensive" studies written by "professional scholars" on the tenure track. Students emerge with no foreign language capability, and often even a rather limited ability to speak and write our own correctly.

I had several years' experience in part-time teaching for the U.Va. Mathematics department. A few interesting courses in Linear Algebra and differential equations, but most were the undergraduate math courses for LA majors who needed a math course but didn't want to study math - odd surveys of algebra, symbolic logic, game theory, and linear programming, but all at a sandbox level. It was all a mile wide and an inch deep.

I see the effects of all this in some of people we hire, both engineers and Liberal Arts graduates..

It's not that I wish to challenge your experiences, George, but my LA experiences here at UT were much different.

I had Calc 1 and 2 as my math credits. I didn't like doing Lemnas. These weren't required, but you had to at least take a few simple maths. So what? They didn't go to college to learn math, and beyond a basic understanding of math and a little statistics, there's no real need for it in our society for the majority of people.

UT requires 4 semesters of a foreign language. Don't see how it gets much better than that for foriegn language requirements.

The 'canonical texts' that you refer to are many times, frankly, pieces of **** with little historical accuracy. I took a course on the changing attitudes and positions of the modern scholar a few years back, and the largest conclusion of our class was that the outdated writing and modes of thinking apparent in many history texts written in the pre-1960's period actually hold students back from a true understanding of the time period.

I can tell you this; this is hardly the first time I've seen liberal arts denigrated by a member of the engineering or science community, and your arguments are as hollow as those I've heard before; you don't have the first-hand experience with a modern LA program, so please, don't comment on it as if you do.

Cycloptichorn

There are a lot of education classes I would like to teach as long as I can get a chance to hang in the Bio department.

You have made my point. Have you read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall..."?



I'm not sure exactly what are the communities to which I may be assigned, however I do believe I have benefitted from a rather broad base of education and experience. True enough, I am not a recent graduate of a LA curriculum, but I have hired and fired enough of their products to have an opinion.

I have heard/read this purported soundbite so many times from the left/right and so called moderates that it sickens me. Reminds me overly much of Plato's Allegory of the Cave which demonstrates the inability of other than the elite Philosopher-King to discern truth/reality. This insideous and un-challanged assumption has permeated virtually all political thought for the past 20 centuries. Why is it that we readily concede prostration to authority without so mush as a flickering thought that perhaps, just perhaps, the mantle of authority is no wiser than the plumber next door? are we so enamoured by the uniform of authority we pay attention as if he/she had some hidden knowledge unavailable to us mere mortals. But, we hold most in reverance those we elect to office, from Congress persons to presidents and then cast about lotus blossoms before their feet. Both conservatives and liberals say they respect the office, not the man. I think it's time we respect the actions of the body politic when it acts to embrace the horizon of mankinds future knowing fullwell that the horizon is always moving relative to our stance. Not fixed on some distant point but ever changing as does mankind itself. We are indeed an elitest society, perhaps someday even the liberals and conservatives will allow us to grow out of this dibilating condition.

Well, I agree with you Dys. (Too bad the quote was from my post.)

Plato was indeed a totalitarian. (and I suspect Hofstadter was one too.)

Perhaps our saving grace is that America is very fickle with respect to the parade of elites set before it. None lasts too long - certainly not our political elites. (although I do worry about the very low turnover in the Congress that has resulted from the diversity mandated gerrymandering of Congressional districts.). I believe the intellectual, liberal, academic & journalistic elite is a bit more entrenched than most and sorely needs challenge and competition - as do all the others.

Dys
Dys, how often in your life have you met highly educated smart people who didn't have any common sense in their daily lives? And how often have you met people with limited institutional learning, but who were astonishingly wise and managed to get along just fine?

Why isn't it possible to combine these two traits into a smart, wise, compassionate survivor in these times?

BBB

george, I do greatly appreciate your response and no, the quote I used was not gathered up to toss back at you as I stated I have heard/ read the same comment from various and sundry sources often when one has nothing else to say other than "I am right, you are wrong and if you would only open your eyes to MY truth you would see how wrong YOURS is" and that, my friend, is elitism at its worst. (and very Platonic)

To blatham:

In response to your last post to me I have found the story I was looking for.
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Summer reading causes controversy at UNC
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) ?- When Brendan Byrne heads to college next week, he'll be carrying a copy of Michael Sells' Approaching the Qu'ran: The Early Revelations ?- required summer reading for new students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The students are supposed to talk about it in discussion groups Monday. But state legislators and a conservative policy group are making last-minute efforts to stop that from happening.

It's all part of a heated dispute that has triggered discussions on religious freedom, patriotism, church and state separation, academic freedom and bigotry in this conservative state.

Detractors say the 220-page book, which discusses 35 verses from Islam's holy text, could convert Americans to the religion of terrorists blamed for the deaths of about 3,000 people on Sept. 11.

The university says the assignment is not a tool for conversion, but rather a way to help students struggling to understand a religion shared by 1.2 billion people.

Byrne, an 18-year-old from Raleigh, doesn't see what all the fuss is about.

"If they were trying to lure us into Islam they would have made it something a little more persuasive," the practicing Roman Catholic said. "I think this is more informational. I don't find it to be threatening at all to any of my beliefs."

The state House approved a budget plan Tuesday that would cut public money for the assignment unless it gives equal time to all religions, a largely symbolic stance since the school's summer reading program costs relatively little and the Legislature is weeks away from passing a final budget.

A more definitive strike could have come Thursday, when a federal judge heard a lawsuit against the reading requirement. But U.S. District Court judge Carlton Tilley Jr. refused Thursday to grant a temporary restraining order requested by two taxpayers, one of them an official of the conservative Virginia-based Family Policy Network, and three unidentified freshmen.

Sells' book contains commentary on the 35 Quran passages and has a companion CD with audio recitations of several verses. School officials have asked over 4,000 freshmen and transfer students to write a one-page paper about the material.

Carl Ernst, a professor of Islam at UNC, recommended the assignment in the hope that it would teach new students about a religion that puzzles many Americans.

"I don't think I would have recommended any other (book) for this kind of educational purpose," Ernst said. "(Sells is) not approaching it as a preacher, ... but he's approaching it as a text we need to understand."

It's not the first time conservatives from North Carolina have voiced objections to Islam. The Rev. Franklin Graham of Boone, N.C., who delivered the invocation at President Bush's inauguration, has publicly called Islam an evil religion.

Joe Glover, president of the Family Policy Network, agrees.

"It's almost farcical that so many people would follow it (Islam) and call it a religion of peace," said Glover, whose conservative Christian group recruited three unidentified students for the lawsuit against UNC. "It means peace through submission to Allah, and for everyone else it means death."

Sells said the book focuses on innocuous parts of the Quran, not those that call for the death of non-Muslims or the rejection of friendships with Christians and Jews.

Sells said he excluded those passages because they were too complex for an introduction to the Quran and they would confuse those unfamiliar with Islam and the history of the Middle East.

Glover argued that a thorough study of Islam would expose students to the full Quran and a range of opinions. He also said such a course should not be required.

The book on the Quran isn't the first summer reading assignment to cause controversy at UNC.

The school once assigned "Confederates in the Attic" by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Horwitz, which claimed that William Jasper Martin had deserted the Confederate Army. His wife, Alberta Martin, who was still living during the controversy two years ago, could have lost her husband's pension if he had been declared a deserter.

The university settled the dispute by creating a link on its Web site to a defense of Martin's service record.

The dispute this summer may not be settled so easily. Sells says many Americans cling to the idea that most Muslims are eager to exterminate Americans, particularly Christians.

He compares it to the backlash of the Pearl Harbor attack that resulted in many Americans of Japanese ancestry being sent to internment camps during World War II.

"(Those beliefs) can be really dangerous if we don't find out who the enemy is," he said. "If we think the enemy is really Islam we're going to be fighting on a thousand fronts."

James Moeser, chancellor of UNC's Chapel Hill campus, said the intensity of discussion surrounding the issue demonstrates a need for information.

"We need to explore our own religious biases in this country, our own fear of examination, our own intolerance," Moeser said. "The faculty has succeeded in choosing a book that is provocative in the best sense of the word, provocative of inquiry, even controversy. Universities thrive on controversy."
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Now the school backed down for forcing the students to read the book, but it is still the fact that the school tried. If no one would have spoken up then it would have been a violation of Church and State.



To try and say that only people that want to help people as liberals is wrong. A majority of churches and those churches on the right also want to help people, this doesn't make them liberals it makes them caring people. Liberals haven't cornered the market on helping people.



He describes himself as a libertarian socialist with anarchism as a founding of his belief system. I would say this isn't in holding with America's democratic history. Being a libertarian socialist/anarchist isn't being someone who supports what America was founded on. Let him speak but it shouldn't be taught in schools where the opposite views are not taught.



You can have a voice by going there, but the difference is that churches are a private domain where govt can't go. The same can't be said for the colleges and universities that are govt supported and funded. People pay to go to secondary school; people don't pay to go to a church.



Posted above. Did you also know that a school district in CA was going to force kids to take a class on Islam? They were going to learn about Islam, take a Muslim name, pray to Allah and name a Jihad. Doesn't this sound like a violation of Church and State? Is it ok for Islam but not for Christianity or Judaism?



As stated the same could have been said of about black teachers in the 50's. You can't find racism now; does that mean it doesn't exist any longer? There are different types of prejudice in the world, not just against people of different colors.