Academic Bill of Rights??!!

Every now and again you run across something on the net and just can't resist opening a can of worms. Today seems like a good day for worm-can opening, however, so here goes .....

On a friend's blog I ran across a rather negative review of the so-called Academic Bill of Rights, which is actually taking the form of legislation in a number of states. In a nutshell, this is an attempt by disgruntled conservatives (and especially religionists) to strong-arm universities into what they call "balance" -- i.e. giving the conservative/religionist viewpoint equal time and equal exposure. Since, according to the sponsors, the lefties absolutely control US academic institutions, this legislation is needed to restore an open and free exchange of ideas at American colleges and universities.

If you ever needed yet more proof that the right and left in this country are two sides of the same coin, here it is. For decades the lefties used the law to force their agenda upon the citizenry, and now the righties are ripping the same page out of the playbook. If the politically correct "language police" were a violation of notions like "freedom of speech" and "freedom of expression", then what the hell are "balance police" going to be like?? Regardless of the intentions of the sponsors and supporters of this idea, it sounds to me like just another excuse to turn loose lots of lawyers.

On the other hand, I'd like to see a little more honesty on the part of the lefties. If they can claim with a straight face that academia is NOT a sanctuary for their ideology and a haven for their supporters, they're either a.) woefully ignorant of reality or b.) deliberately lying through their teeth.

As someone who's been in and around American universities since 1981, I can attest to the following generalities about academia, regardless of where my sympathies lie on individual issues:

* If you're conservative, you don't have a different opinion, you're morally deficient or just plain stupid.
* If you're religious, you're often dismissed out of hand as hopeless/brainless. (This may indeed be true - but there are better ways of dealing with the issue -- like rational confrontation).
* The overwhelming majority of my colleagues are well left of center, and many of them are old hippies (or young hippie wannabes).
* Political correctness is the unquestioned standard by which everything is judged (yet another example of lawyers run amok).
* Being a white male makes you inherently bad, and always suspect.
* "Progressive" and "enlightened" are practically synonyms - and both mean "socialist"
* The individual is always secondary to the collective, and capitalism is seen - at best - as a necessary evil that must be severely limited. Curiously, no one feels this way about government.
* It is very rare to find a conservative, libertarian, or individualistic speaker booked for speaking engagements.
* Most disturbingly --- and very reminiscent of conservatives in other areas --- it's all about the power to push an agenda with as little opposition as possible, and steamroll whatever opposition exists.

Where the conservatives go terribly wrong is to assume that this is some kind of orchestrated conspiracy. I think there's a much simpler explanation. If you're conservative (and/or religious), 4 years of college will probably leave you with a bad taste in your mouth - for the reasons listed above. Plus, by virtue of your political outlook, you're probably more concerned about earning a good living and getting ahead than you are about wrestling with ideas and philosophy. This almost automatically cedes academia to people concerned about ideas and philosophy, who are more interested in how they live than how much they earn (although there's plenty of griping about pay, but that's another issue). Hence, socialists, greens, libertarians, and other dreamers naturally congregate in academic settings. That's one of the main reasons so much of what goes on at universities is so alien to anyone with a real job in the real world. The inmates are indeed running the asylum.

And they do often get rather pushy and intolerant of opposition. When the radicals of the 60's and 70's moved into academia, they may have gotten rid of the policies of their arch-conservative predecessors, but they saw the power of the old system, and maintained it to use it for their own purposes.

Ultimately, a university is supposed to be an open marketplace of ideas. That means that no point of view, however repugnant should ever be silenced or repressed. Confronted? Yes. Dissected? Absolutely. Refuted? Go for it. Censored? No.

And therein lies the real problem. The politically correct, hypersensitive lefties who believe they have some magical, mystical dispensation from ever being offended (see 24 August entry) have created this problem by declaring so many issues taboo that they've finally managed to motivate the conservatives/religionists and their political hacks. Moreover, by being dogmatic in an almost Orwellian sense about what people are allowed to think and say, they've lost sight of what constitutes a "marketplace of ideas" and instead substituted a "marketplace of acceptable ideas".

The real tragedy of all this is that government, which cannot do something relatively simple like build a levy that doesn't crumble, certainly can't insure "balance" in university discourse. The only way for that to happen is for administrators, faculty and students to remember that freedom of speech applies equally to all citizens, not only those who practice "goodthink". Like so many other aspects of life, it's about individual responsibility and a respect for liberty.

But that's so hard to remember when you're fighting for the chance to force others to think and act "properly".

New Orleans, Poverty, Michael Moore & George Bush

Since everyone else has been opining about the situation in New Orleans, I figure it's only fair if I jump into the fire as well. After about of week of news and commentary, I've once again concluded that the human love of drama has once again far outstripped the human capacity for reason.

For instance, a friend of mine sent me a copy of a letter from Comrade Michael Moore to our fearless leader - a.k.a. Shrub. I find this fascinating, insofar as I think Moore and Bush are two sides of the same rotten coin: statism. Both are enthusiastic tax-and-spenders at heart, convinced that your money and property should be sacrificed to their own notions of what's right for America. I doubt either of them have bothered to read the constitution very closely, and quite honestly I suspect neither of them would be very fond of large parts of it (albeit different parts). The main difference between them is HOW they wish to use your money and the guns of government to run your life for you.

Nonetheless, even a blind pig can find an acorn occasionally, and I think Moore has a couple of good points. Were we not pouring billions of dollars and thousands of American lives into Iraq and Afghanistan, there would no doubt be more money, fuel and people to direct toward the massive domestic crisis in New Orleans. Also, Shrub was rather slow to react to things -- although to be fair so was virtually everyone else involved. Call it a hunch, but I suspect that "leaders" at all levels of government genuinely had no idea of just how bad things could get. In fact, it really goes against the grain of the American mentality to plan for every contingency. We're a nation that reacts to things rather than proactively trying to avoid them (i.e. Pearl Harbor, 9/11, that baby that somehow wound up in our girlfriend with our DNA, etc.) Hence, everyone from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin right up to old Shrub probably would do things differently (and hopefully better) if they had another shot at it.

On the other hand, Moore really reminds me a lot of the Republicrats who used to flood the internet with emails about how Bill Clinton was a rapist, murderer, trilateralist, and christ knows what else. It's just so abundantly clear that Moore and his ilk are driven first and foremost by an intense, blinding, unreasoning, personalized hatred of George Bush that it's hard to take them seriously. I've always thought that if Bush could really do everything his detractors claim he can, Michael Moore would probably be pushing up daisies right now instead of writing letters.

Aside from that, however, Moore trots out an old leftie argument from the early 60's (and probably before) that really annoys me -- regardless of how good it makes everyone who believes in it feel:

"No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black!"

Yes friends, once again it's the good old, tried and true double assumption that 1.) it's the government's obligation to meet people's needs and 2.) if people are poor it's someone else's fault. Ever since LBJ kicked off his "Great Society" programs, lefties happily regurgitated this one, regardless of changing political and economic circumstances.

I think it's time to face up to some decidedly un-touchy-feely realities regarding poverty. First of all, poverty is not a disease. As economist Walter Williams points out, avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. Poverty is the result of a long series of bad decisions, usually coupled with a refusal to learn to make good decisions. For years it's seemed apparent to me that the government doesn't make people poor, people make themselves poor.

However, after watching the chaos in New Orleans for a week and listening to the people wandering out of their flooded government-funded projects, I think I've changed my mind. The government does in fact make people poor. The more I think about, the more it seems that pandering leftist politicians (and corpulent, wealthy, anti-capitalist filmmakers) have created an irresponsible, dependent, and woefully undereducated underclass that wallows in government-subsidized poverty for generations.

This perennially poor underclass seems to share some common traits:

1. Rejection of education: Federal and state governments provide free, public education up to and including 4 years of college in many cases, yet the culture of poverty rejects this avenue for advancement. No matter how much we dumb down our educational system and subsidize anyone who wants to partake of it, there are still people who simply refuse to avail themselves of it.
2. Illegitimacy/irresponsibility: Knocking out babies no one can afford, an inability to comprehend (much less create and follow) a budget, perpetual debt to the local check cashing store, drug and alcohol abuse, etc., etc., etc. These are all bad decisions with demonstrably negative consequences, yet seriously challenging them is "culturally insensitive" or some such nonsense.
3. A highly developed entitlement mentality: I'm ceaselessly amazed at home these people seriously assert that they are "entitled" to be taken care of and provided for with no effort on their part. But, politicians have been nurturing this kind of thinking since FDR, so it's not all that surprising, I suppose.
4. A belief that poverty is somehow noble: For a week now I've heard about how these poor people didn't have transportation to leave New Orleans before the storm. According to the media and political types, their poverty absolves them of any responsibility for their plight. I wonder how many of them were at least 16 years of age. Any fairly healthy 16 year old with an IQ over 80 can manage to afford a car with a little bit of self-discipline and work. It's not like these people were magically deposited in New Orleans the day before the hurricane --- most of them have been there for years. The problem is that they never planned for such a catastrophe, they never saved a damned dime in their lives, and they never took responsibility for their existence because they never had to.

Now please note that I have consistently said "poor" here --- not "black" --- so let's not play the old race card. Moore's insinuation that somehow the race of the majority of the victims is the real reason behind the slow response is a really cheap shot that ignores all of the above -- not to mention the outpouring of help (financial and otherwise) that has been directed toward the region by those evil white people Moore and his ilk are constantly running down.

The real lessons of hurricane Katrina are, I think, common sense lessons that need to be articulated loudly and often.

1. Life is inherently dangerous, and decisions have consequences. The universe is a dangerous place, and the earth is no different. Hurricanes have formed and devastated land for millions of years, and will continue to do so. Ultimately, no force on earth -- not even the government -- can protect you from them -- especially if you make bad decisions.
2. Throwing money at poverty and lionizing the poor does not make poverty go away. Poverty is cured by work, thrift, responsibility and education. If we're going to spend money to help the poor, let's at least encourage them to stop being poor rather than enabling them to stay that way for generations.
3. Large metropolitan areas below sea level need to plan for such natural disasters far more thoroughly than New Orleans did. Whining about the lack of federal funds is also no excuse. If the city government and the state of Louisiana knew that such a disaster was possible, they should have put their own money into it. Charity, after all, begins at home.
4. The media are a bunch of whores who will kill for human drama yet ignore relevant facts in the name of ratings. While this is hardly a revolutionary observation, this endless quest for drama helps fuel the irrational thinking so many Americans embrace. For every story we've seen about the poor slobs who are knocking themselves out to save people from rooftops (while dodging the occasional sniper bullet) or running triage centers, we've seen at least six "human interest" stories designed to stimulate the emotions while ignoring the fact that is a really huge disaster that cannot be put right over night.

My real regret is that the poor folks in New Orleans who are suffering the most really don't grasp to what degree they've been enslaved and exploited by local, state and federal government officials, as well as the Michael Moores of the world. If they did, they'd be taking up arms against these parasitic poverty pimps and working hard to set their lives right. The day that happens, I'll be right there with them.