The China Syndrome
June 9, 2011
Robert Royal
The Internet brings us relentless cataracts of overwhelming, undesired, and often unwelcome information. But once in a great while the immense swirl of digital 0s and 1s assembles itself into something surprising—and leads to unexpected truths. One such moment materialized recently when I came upon a news story that the University of Notre Dame bans sales on campus of objects made in China and even forbids companies like Nike from putting the ND logo on sports items made in that country. The reason? China does not permit independent labor unions.
Now, depending on your political inclinations, you will probably think that this news item falls somewhere between, on the one hand, an all-too-rare effort at social justice for poor workers in developing areas (only ND has implemented such a ban), and on the other hand a pretty weak and misdirected gesture over economic rights when Chinese Catholics and other Christians, together with Tibetan Buddhists, the Falun Gong, and even traditional Confucians, are continually harassed and sometimes even killed for exercising what many believe to be the first human right: freedom of religion.
I confess to falling closer to the latter end of the spectrum, though I hope I bow to no one in my anger over the full range of violence, oppression, and sheer human abuse meted out by the Chinese Communists to whole swaths of their own people, religious and not.
For me, the offense of China’s human rights abuses is compounded by the smooth-talking spin doctors from China who show up periodically in Washington with some of newest and lamest excuses for what is in fact straightforward, old-fashioned tyranny. Except for the “smartest man in the world,” Henry Kissinger, who is still defending—and profiting from his relationships with—prominent Chinese leaders (see his new On China), anyone literate enough to follow even our dumbed-down news sources can easily learn about the repeated brutality and strong-arm tactics in the allegedly civilized Middle Kingdom.
Consider abuses engendered by the One Child Policy alone: In China, women who become pregnant a second time can be forced to abort even months past the point of viability. Parents who somehow succeed in having a second child anyway are fined, usually an amount equal to five years salary, and children born without a birth permit are officially designated “non-persons.”
Cultural preferences for boys have led to 40 million more baby girls than boys being aborted, and the resulting imbalance has made marriage for tens of millions of future Chinese men an iffy prospect. As in the rest of the world, the lowering of the birth rate now also threatens both traditional arrangements by which there were enough younger people to care for the elderly, and the newer social programs that require large numbers of active workers to pay for support of the poor, marginalized, and old.
In response to criticism, the Chinese government has called connection between such problems—which have also included trafficking in stolen children—and the One Child Policy, “ignorant and simplistic.”
How fortunate that Chinese children actually allowed to grow up and enter the workplace at least will know that they have a labor relations advocate in South Bend, Indiana.
Why hasn’t Notre Dame, an institution that likes to believe it is where “the Church thinks” thought about its responsibilities to its co-religionists and many others suffering at the hands of one of the few truly brutal Communist regimes still in existence? And why aren’t many more Christian and other socially aware campuses in an uproar over Chinese mistreatment of religious believers of all kinds?
I have the feeling that if you went to Notre Dame and followed out the case far enough, someone would say that putting pressure on the Chinese over religious persecution might foul up the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts with the regime. And indeed it might—just as John Paul II’s more muscular stance towards an equally persecuting Soviet bloc upset the ineffective Ostpolitik put together through careful diplomatic measures by his predecessors. And brought down Communism.
But Notre Dame and other Catholic colleges show little deference towards Rome in many other areas. And when the Chinese bad guys are not just holding down workers’ wages or denying them collective bargaining powers, but killing believers over what Chinese authorities know might become uncontrollable social initiatives—they studied the whole Solidarnosc phenomenon very carefully—what’s really holding you back?
I’m sorry to say that it’s something like academic etiquette. Defending workers’ rights is what good liberal academics ought to do. Defending religious rights is, well, kind of parochial. Besides, the gay alliance and women’s groups (despite forced abortion and anti-female sex selection) and no doubt some members of the theology department probably don’t much want to be involved on the side of protecting the institutional Church, much less to see it portrayed as some kind of victim—even if its members are victims in the literal sense, not the campus-bound Pickwickian sense.
To be fair, hardly none of this means anyone on America’s campuses condones the persecution of Chinese believers. In the abstract—and especially if it’s a question of non-mainstream American faiths, not Catholics loyal to Rome and Protestants faithful to the Bible—our campuses stand for tolerance and respect. And were the question put directly, I have no doubt they would even denounce persecution of traditional Christians, Protestant and Catholic.
But it’s telling that the question is rarely asked. There was a time when Christianity was considered a foreign invader in China. In 1900 alone, during the Boxer Rebellion, 100,000 Christians were killed for their beliefs. In the more than century since, however, indigenous Christian churches in China have survived and grown rapidly, despite all pressures, even recent sharp spikes in arrests and repression.
Most Americans just now are more concerned about the amount of money we owe the Chinese. Still, there are debts and debts. We owe Chinese believers a lot more than money. Trying to get workers a fair deal for their labors is an honorable effort, in its way. But if we fail to defend religious freedom, we haven’t really understood the core of human dignity, and we will inevitably distort or ignore other freedoms as well. Without an understanding of religious liberty, we don’t really know what freedom is, or what it’s for.
Robert Royal is president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of, among other books, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century.
Comments:
6.9.2011 | 12:37pm
Pastor Spomer says:
Would it not be grotesque if back in the 1930's an international group would have condemned Nazi Germany, because the smoke from the concentration camp ovens caused pollution?
6.9.2011 | 1:17pm
Craig Roberts says:
Wow...good points. The moral obtuseness of some of our Catholic elites is shocking. But isn't the very idea of a communist regime allowing labor unions ridiculous to begin with? How can a society that doesn't allow rights like voting and free speech somehow allow collective bargaining? And let's not forget the conservatives that think China is our pal because free market reforms have put them on the path to western material prosperity. The strength of the west are the morals and wisdom that have been handed down to us. Not our wealth.
6.9.2011 | 1:35pm
Craig Roberts says:
Pastor Spomer, your analogy is perfect. So true it's painful...so painful that I have to laugh. Maybe that's why it's so hard to take evil seriously.
6.9.2011 | 2:08pm
Chris says:
Mr. Royal,
I've got to say, I think you're reaching. Badly. Did it never occur to you, once, that the reason that Notre Dame took the stance it did on the issue it did because how its apparel is made is within its control? Or, put a differnet way, because the choices made in terms of how ND's apparel is made implicates ND morally. China's choices regarding other human rights do not.
If Notre Dame publicly condemned China for not allowing its workers to unionize in some speech or something of the sort and ignored the abuses you are talking about, then you might have a point. But that is not what is happening here. There is a professor there -- Todd Whitmore -- who travels to the various factories making ND apparel and ensures that the factories meet with certain standards in terms of how they treat their workers. Because ND is addressing something that we as American's don't take seriously enough -- that we are morally responsible for the means by which stuff we buy and sell is made.
I've got to say, I think you're reaching. Badly. Did it never occur to you, once, that the reason that Notre Dame took the stance it did on the issue it did because how its apparel is made is within its control? Or, put a differnet way, because the choices made in terms of how ND's apparel is made implicates ND morally. China's choices regarding other human rights do not.
If Notre Dame publicly condemned China for not allowing its workers to unionize in some speech or something of the sort and ignored the abuses you are talking about, then you might have a point. But that is not what is happening here. There is a professor there -- Todd Whitmore -- who travels to the various factories making ND apparel and ensures that the factories meet with certain standards in terms of how they treat their workers. Because ND is addressing something that we as American's don't take seriously enough -- that we are morally responsible for the means by which stuff we buy and sell is made.
6.9.2011 | 2:57pm
GemmaVA says:
Mr. Roberts,
In a worker's paradise such as that afforded by the Chinese communist party, why would a worker need collective bargaining rights? Everything is designed for the good of the worker, is it not? Surely the worker has all the power he needs already, and his life is so good thanks to the party's ministrations that he lacks for nothing anyway.
;-)
In a worker's paradise such as that afforded by the Chinese communist party, why would a worker need collective bargaining rights? Everything is designed for the good of the worker, is it not? Surely the worker has all the power he needs already, and his life is so good thanks to the party's ministrations that he lacks for nothing anyway.
;-)
6.9.2011 | 3:06pm
Austin Ruse says:
Chris,
But wouldn't it be even more edifying if Notre Dame did not do apparel business with China because of the persecution of the Church there or because of China's forced abortion policy?
But wouldn't it be even more edifying if Notre Dame did not do apparel business with China because of the persecution of the Church there or because of China's forced abortion policy?
6.9.2011 | 3:31pm
Craig Roberts says:
Gemma,
Exactly! If the 'workers of the world unite' how can they complain when they all belong to one huge corrupt 'union' called The Party.
Exactly! If the 'workers of the world unite' how can they complain when they all belong to one huge corrupt 'union' called The Party.
6.9.2011 | 4:13pm
Jack Carlson says:
As a college professor and ND alum, I often spend summer days at my computer dressed in an Irish t-hirt and casual pants. So it is today. Upon reading Robert Royal's piece, I immediately checked the label on my shirt. I am happy to report that it says: "Made in the USA." (Of course, it is a very old shirt.)
Regarding the substance of the piece, with which I agree, I would offer one set of remarks related to Royal's final sentences. What is freedom for? As Servais Pinckaers, O.P., has emphasized, freedom is for excellence. The rational person cannot fail to want to achieve the true good, or to live an excellent life. Our recognition of the call to pursue such a life is a feature of our shared human dignity. But how are we to know what such a life involves? Our natural moral lights give us some insights--concerning the significance of honesty, justice, etc. But these lights are dim and flickering; thus we need, if such is available, guidance from the Source of all good. Religious freedom guarantees that we can respond to such guidance, supposing we think we have encountered it. That is why it is the most important right from the standpoint of our being able to achieve our human good.
Regarding the substance of the piece, with which I agree, I would offer one set of remarks related to Royal's final sentences. What is freedom for? As Servais Pinckaers, O.P., has emphasized, freedom is for excellence. The rational person cannot fail to want to achieve the true good, or to live an excellent life. Our recognition of the call to pursue such a life is a feature of our shared human dignity. But how are we to know what such a life involves? Our natural moral lights give us some insights--concerning the significance of honesty, justice, etc. But these lights are dim and flickering; thus we need, if such is available, guidance from the Source of all good. Religious freedom guarantees that we can respond to such guidance, supposing we think we have encountered it. That is why it is the most important right from the standpoint of our being able to achieve our human good.
6.9.2011 | 7:14pm
Rick says:
All well and good, except the sneering caricature of academics at Notre Dame as hypocritical liberals eager to support workers while winking at religious repression is seriously off-base. Some of them are my friends, like Prof. Dennis Jacobs (Vice President and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies). At least among the ones I know personally, the liberal broad-brush treatment is so innapropriate as to be ludicrous.
I probably view the concern for workers' rights in China to be more weighty than you do because I have a background as a common factory worker myself. It was hard enough in this country, never mind the appalling conditions inflicted on tens of millions of migrant workers by the Chinese. (Did you know that the children of migrant workers from rural areas of China cannot attend school in the cities because they lack the proper residence credentials, and therefore go uneducated?) What makes the issue more salient for Americans is that a preponderance of the daily goods we buy and use is made by their hands.
I probably view the concern for workers' rights in China to be more weighty than you do because I have a background as a common factory worker myself. It was hard enough in this country, never mind the appalling conditions inflicted on tens of millions of migrant workers by the Chinese. (Did you know that the children of migrant workers from rural areas of China cannot attend school in the cities because they lack the proper residence credentials, and therefore go uneducated?) What makes the issue more salient for Americans is that a preponderance of the daily goods we buy and use is made by their hands.
6.9.2011 | 7:56pm
Sheridan says:
I agree with Chris. I do not understand Mr. Royal's argument. Why is he criticizing Notre Dame for caring about the conditions of factory workers? Is that a bad thing? And what does he want Notre Dame to do with respect to the human rights abuses in China? The ND administration and faculty do not have any sort of sway over the Chinese government. Also, ND and other Catholic schools (even Georgetown) do have centers of study that promote human rights, including religious freedom -- ND has the Kroc Center and Georgetown has the Berkley Center. These schools are by no means perfect, but they are doing pretty well in this area.
6.9.2011 | 10:30pm
Tony Esolen says:
Sheridan and Chris do not understand the point.
It is rather like saying, "I shall have nothing to do with Mr. Hitler, because he breaks the Sabbath." I'm not making light of Sabbath-breaking; I think it is a far more serious sin than we suppose. But if one had to think of a reason for cutting ties with Mr. Hitler, I'd guess there would be others that would come more readily to mind.
Or it is like saying, "We shall buy none of Mr. Stalin's corn, because we do not believe he has instituted adequate policies for his farm workers once they have become pensioners." Wouldn't we notice, first, the small matter of his having starved millions of his Ukrainian farmers to death?
Leave it to academics to preen themselves for taking "brave" stands that cost them absolutely nothing. Leave it to them also to look demurely away from the horrible sins of their confreres on the left. Oh, I'm not saying that they are Communists. They certainly aren't. You have to be brave (and half mad) to be one of those. But they make a habit of excusing their worst sins, or not noticing them. When Malcolm Muggeridge decided to report honestly on what Stalin was doing in the Ukraine, of course he knew he wasn't going to be a reporter in Russia anymore; but he also guessed he wouldn't be in much demand either in Great Britain, all while the liar Walter Duranty was lionized in both the east and the west, winning a Pulitzer (which the New York Times has never repudiated) for his lies.
When I was at Princeton (1977-1981), we heard plenty of calls to divest ourselves from companies that did any business with South Africa. That was on account of apartheid. I hold no brief for South Africa, but weren't there a few dozen far wickeder countries at that time? But John Paul II was criticized for his "aggressive" attitude towards the Soviet Union. I guess ol' Russia was too big a playground bully to challenge. Or maybe the left kind of liked the bully after all. When they invaded Afghanistan, there was no outcry at Princeton. "It's their New Jersey," said a fellow student to me.
In fact, I do not recall, since I was a freshman in 1977, a single secular professor criticizing the leftist secular states for their breaches of religious freedom. Not once.
It is rather like saying, "I shall have nothing to do with Mr. Hitler, because he breaks the Sabbath." I'm not making light of Sabbath-breaking; I think it is a far more serious sin than we suppose. But if one had to think of a reason for cutting ties with Mr. Hitler, I'd guess there would be others that would come more readily to mind.
Or it is like saying, "We shall buy none of Mr. Stalin's corn, because we do not believe he has instituted adequate policies for his farm workers once they have become pensioners." Wouldn't we notice, first, the small matter of his having starved millions of his Ukrainian farmers to death?
Leave it to academics to preen themselves for taking "brave" stands that cost them absolutely nothing. Leave it to them also to look demurely away from the horrible sins of their confreres on the left. Oh, I'm not saying that they are Communists. They certainly aren't. You have to be brave (and half mad) to be one of those. But they make a habit of excusing their worst sins, or not noticing them. When Malcolm Muggeridge decided to report honestly on what Stalin was doing in the Ukraine, of course he knew he wasn't going to be a reporter in Russia anymore; but he also guessed he wouldn't be in much demand either in Great Britain, all while the liar Walter Duranty was lionized in both the east and the west, winning a Pulitzer (which the New York Times has never repudiated) for his lies.
When I was at Princeton (1977-1981), we heard plenty of calls to divest ourselves from companies that did any business with South Africa. That was on account of apartheid. I hold no brief for South Africa, but weren't there a few dozen far wickeder countries at that time? But John Paul II was criticized for his "aggressive" attitude towards the Soviet Union. I guess ol' Russia was too big a playground bully to challenge. Or maybe the left kind of liked the bully after all. When they invaded Afghanistan, there was no outcry at Princeton. "It's their New Jersey," said a fellow student to me.
In fact, I do not recall, since I was a freshman in 1977, a single secular professor criticizing the leftist secular states for their breaches of religious freedom. Not once.
6.9.2011 | 11:40pm
edmond says:
I would think the responses of this article would ask where was ND when the banning of public prayer was railroaded. While their protestations on lack of labor unions looks noble, closer to home, have they made their indignation felt on other moral issues?
6.10.2011 | 12:43pm
Lewis says:
“Leave it to academics to preen themselves for taking "brave" stands that cost them absolutely nothing. Leave it to them also to look demurely away from the horrible sins of their confreres on the left.”
This line made me think of the thoughtful man who posted the following sentiments on a different thread.
“The average opinion piece, whether by Miss Dowd or Mrs. Noonan or Mr. Will, is short, superficial, ideological, and pretty predictable. Snideness substitutes for wit, innuendo substitutes for any genuine attempt to understand another human being.”
Perhaps the two authors should meet and have a conversation. Mr. Esolen, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Esolen.
This line made me think of the thoughtful man who posted the following sentiments on a different thread.
“The average opinion piece, whether by Miss Dowd or Mrs. Noonan or Mr. Will, is short, superficial, ideological, and pretty predictable. Snideness substitutes for wit, innuendo substitutes for any genuine attempt to understand another human being.”
Perhaps the two authors should meet and have a conversation. Mr. Esolen, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Esolen.
6.10.2011 | 1:35pm
Tony Esolen says:
Touche, Lewis. All I can say in my defense is that I've been a college professor since 1988, an instructor for three years before that, and an undergraduate and graduate student for eight years before that. I've been around academics all my adult life. I've reviewed over a thousand applications for jobs, and have interviewed dozens of candidates; I've been on all kinds of departmental committees, and over the years I've taught with 31 different professors from history, theology, and philosophy, in our Western Civ program; and that's not counting the 80-100 other colleagues in that program that I haven't taught with, and the other 20 members of my own department.
So I think I know the species well. I belong to it, after all. I know our failings, as a group. We decry what OTHER people do to the poor, but we will happily fight for raises beyond the rate of inflation, and lower course loads, so that we can pursue our all-important "research." Whenever we can, we farm out the teaching of composition and other remedial courses to adjuncts and special lecturers -- all while knowing full well that the special lecturers will be working at an hourly rate below that of the chefs at McDonald's. And don't get me started on secularist prejudice.
Typical: a few weeks ago I reviewed a course proposal for 20th century imperialism. The course would be taught by a leftist historian and a communist political scientist who loathes theology, and doesn't have much use for American Catholic students, either. All right, I'm looking over the syllabus. Now, which empire in the twentieth century was most ruthlessly efficient, and brought misery to the greatest number of subject nations? Only one guess allowed. And, which empire in the twentieth century somehow does not make it to the syllabus? One guess.
Typical: We were interviewing candidates for a job in African American literature. The candidate gave a presentation on the Black Panthers' use of humor. I'd just read David Horowitz's Radical Son, wherein Huey Newton and the Panthers play a large part, so I was especially interested. She gave as an example their cry, "Off the pigs!" -- meaning, "Kill the cops!" You're not finding that particularly humorous? Maybe you have a father or a brother or an uncle who's a cop? My department found it humorous. We laughed out loud. We were quite charmed by the candidate. We voted for her, almost unanimously. Well, the president wasn't going for that. There were other troubles in the resume. So some of the members of my department called for the three oldest men among us, the so-called "founders," to appeal directly to the president. They declined that honor.
Typical: My department again is interviewing a candidate, this time for a job in creative writing. She already has a job, quite a well-paying one, at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia. Why does she want to move? "I had no idea how hard it would be to live in a place where people still want to fly the Confederate flag at the state capitol," she said. Allow me to translate: "I can't stand living among racist hicks and rubes." Did that matter to my department? Naw. Yours truly brought it up during the hiring meeting, and called it what it was, bigotry. Didn't matter.
Academics, as a group, are a pampered lot, and, like other pampered people, they don't appreciate how lucky they are. They also tend to be cliquish; Lewis wasn't far off the mark in That Hideous Strength. I wouldn't presume to predict the political opinions of the construction worker up the street from me (who actually knows how to do things, like put a second story on his house, which he did). It would be a shot in the dark. But it is not a shot in the dark to predict the political opinions of the typical academic, especially in the social sciences and the humanities. Gee, why is that? Academics that I've known think they have the answer. They are just SMARTER than the construction worker.
So I think I know the species well. I belong to it, after all. I know our failings, as a group. We decry what OTHER people do to the poor, but we will happily fight for raises beyond the rate of inflation, and lower course loads, so that we can pursue our all-important "research." Whenever we can, we farm out the teaching of composition and other remedial courses to adjuncts and special lecturers -- all while knowing full well that the special lecturers will be working at an hourly rate below that of the chefs at McDonald's. And don't get me started on secularist prejudice.
Typical: a few weeks ago I reviewed a course proposal for 20th century imperialism. The course would be taught by a leftist historian and a communist political scientist who loathes theology, and doesn't have much use for American Catholic students, either. All right, I'm looking over the syllabus. Now, which empire in the twentieth century was most ruthlessly efficient, and brought misery to the greatest number of subject nations? Only one guess allowed. And, which empire in the twentieth century somehow does not make it to the syllabus? One guess.
Typical: We were interviewing candidates for a job in African American literature. The candidate gave a presentation on the Black Panthers' use of humor. I'd just read David Horowitz's Radical Son, wherein Huey Newton and the Panthers play a large part, so I was especially interested. She gave as an example their cry, "Off the pigs!" -- meaning, "Kill the cops!" You're not finding that particularly humorous? Maybe you have a father or a brother or an uncle who's a cop? My department found it humorous. We laughed out loud. We were quite charmed by the candidate. We voted for her, almost unanimously. Well, the president wasn't going for that. There were other troubles in the resume. So some of the members of my department called for the three oldest men among us, the so-called "founders," to appeal directly to the president. They declined that honor.
Typical: My department again is interviewing a candidate, this time for a job in creative writing. She already has a job, quite a well-paying one, at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia. Why does she want to move? "I had no idea how hard it would be to live in a place where people still want to fly the Confederate flag at the state capitol," she said. Allow me to translate: "I can't stand living among racist hicks and rubes." Did that matter to my department? Naw. Yours truly brought it up during the hiring meeting, and called it what it was, bigotry. Didn't matter.
Academics, as a group, are a pampered lot, and, like other pampered people, they don't appreciate how lucky they are. They also tend to be cliquish; Lewis wasn't far off the mark in That Hideous Strength. I wouldn't presume to predict the political opinions of the construction worker up the street from me (who actually knows how to do things, like put a second story on his house, which he did). It would be a shot in the dark. But it is not a shot in the dark to predict the political opinions of the typical academic, especially in the social sciences and the humanities. Gee, why is that? Academics that I've known think they have the answer. They are just SMARTER than the construction worker.
6.10.2011 | 6:51pm
Lewis says:
I’ve been part of the tribe nearly as long as you have, and what you describe fits only some of the campuses I’ve worked on. Campuses that have leaders, both administrators and what your department calls founders, who are comfortable and broadminded, don’t have the problems you describe. Campuses on which people are playing power games have lots of problems.
I taught at a small conservative-leaning Catholic college, and we got along just fine. There was alarm from one quarter when a liberal dean was hired, and there was alarm from another when the new president got all excited by Ex Corde, but the spirit of the place was such that no one said or did anything foolish. We fundamentally respected each other.
I was one of the campus “radicals,” you should know. I insisted on including in my Western Civ course a Latino text that my colleagues believed “really” belonged in World Civ. I thought it more important for students, especially our Latino students, to understand that their forbears were included in and part of Western Civ.
On the other hand, I was also the guy who argued that we needed Mass to be said at more of our campus events and that pushed our most conservative theologian to take a sabbatical even though he insisted that he didn’t believe that in theology it was possible to do “original research.” I just thought he had served faithfully enough that he deserved a break. He did, and he took it, though he continued to suspect my motives.
I teach now at one of those liberal institutions that is packed full of “tenured radicals.” We have take-back-the-night marches, and condoms and gays are everywhere. Women and people of color are found at every level of the administration and sometimes dominate the upper levels. But because the leaders are easy in their skins, there’s very few of the bruised egos I see on other campuses. There are strong conservative and libertarian groups. Crosses regularly appear in campus pro-life demonstrations. Two of the last three hires in my department were libertarians, whose views are rejected by most of the department but not reviled. They were unanimous hires.
There are faculty who wish our campus were more radical or more conservative, but most of us are happy to have so many smart and generous colleagues. Which is not to say that we don’t marginalize people. The professor who liked to mock gay students was finally pushed off campus. Many liberal students liked him because they liked hearing strong, contrarian opinions, and this was why he lasted as long as he did, but when he started calling out students by name, his friends helped him understand that he had crossed the line and it was time for him to go. I’m sure his account of the campus differs from mine.
I’ve taught at other schools that sound more like yours, places where people don’t trust their colleagues or their administrations. Usually, there’s a clique of angry people somewhere in the faculty, department, or administration that have decided to draw a line and to fight the good fight either against the racist phallogocentric patriarchy or against the school of resentment. These culture warriors share similar tactics, goals, and mindsets. They think that winning this hiring decision or that curriculum decision is one step in bringing the world into order. Usually, they’re gratified in finding culture warriors of the other stripe who will indulge in the same game. It’s all pretty disheartening, but it’s not too much different from the scorched earth tactics found in the gossip mills in other workplaces. There’s more jargon and more earnest rhetoric, though as for that, you find a lot of the same high-flown, deeply serious rhetoric being used in church committees.
Your story about the imperialism course doesn’t alarm me. I don’t buy the argument that the US is a worse empire than the Soviet Union was, and so I get tired of the kind of liberal or Marxist who is always railing against the US. On the other hand, I think it is important to understand that the US is an empire, a fact that conservatives today are loath to articulate although they were once not so shy about admitting it.
I have friends who are cops, so I don’t find such jokes funny, but I’m also not sure I get the joke. Did you leave out some part? On the other hand, I worked at a school that trained a lot of cops, and I was not impressed by some of the attitudes I saw from some going into the field. I’m also sympathetic to the experiences many minorities have had with the police. My experience of being able to trust the police and turn toward them for help is simply not shared by other Americans.
I’m with your candidate who doesn’t want to live under the stars and bars. I wasn’t there for the interview, but it’s not necessarily bigotry to see racism in a flag whose purpose is in being flown is the rejection of civil rights for black Americans. I’m a proud Southerner, and I even own my great-grandfather’s Confederate uniform, but my parents taught what to take pride in and what not to.
I agree that most academics are pampered, but I don’t find them any more cliquish than any other group. Many in my family did not finish high school, and when I go home, I hang out with friends who remain country. Each clique has its predictable political and social opinions and its own different sense of entitlement.
Most of the academics I call friends don’t think they are “smarter” than your construction worker. They think they’re more knowledgeable about history, societies, and media manipulation. They also know that they could very well be wrong. It takes only a little historical reading to discover how wrong the smart guys were at any particular time. I get annoyed by those people, well read in history or not, who think they actually know the answers to political questions.
I taught at a small conservative-leaning Catholic college, and we got along just fine. There was alarm from one quarter when a liberal dean was hired, and there was alarm from another when the new president got all excited by Ex Corde, but the spirit of the place was such that no one said or did anything foolish. We fundamentally respected each other.
I was one of the campus “radicals,” you should know. I insisted on including in my Western Civ course a Latino text that my colleagues believed “really” belonged in World Civ. I thought it more important for students, especially our Latino students, to understand that their forbears were included in and part of Western Civ.
On the other hand, I was also the guy who argued that we needed Mass to be said at more of our campus events and that pushed our most conservative theologian to take a sabbatical even though he insisted that he didn’t believe that in theology it was possible to do “original research.” I just thought he had served faithfully enough that he deserved a break. He did, and he took it, though he continued to suspect my motives.
I teach now at one of those liberal institutions that is packed full of “tenured radicals.” We have take-back-the-night marches, and condoms and gays are everywhere. Women and people of color are found at every level of the administration and sometimes dominate the upper levels. But because the leaders are easy in their skins, there’s very few of the bruised egos I see on other campuses. There are strong conservative and libertarian groups. Crosses regularly appear in campus pro-life demonstrations. Two of the last three hires in my department were libertarians, whose views are rejected by most of the department but not reviled. They were unanimous hires.
There are faculty who wish our campus were more radical or more conservative, but most of us are happy to have so many smart and generous colleagues. Which is not to say that we don’t marginalize people. The professor who liked to mock gay students was finally pushed off campus. Many liberal students liked him because they liked hearing strong, contrarian opinions, and this was why he lasted as long as he did, but when he started calling out students by name, his friends helped him understand that he had crossed the line and it was time for him to go. I’m sure his account of the campus differs from mine.
I’ve taught at other schools that sound more like yours, places where people don’t trust their colleagues or their administrations. Usually, there’s a clique of angry people somewhere in the faculty, department, or administration that have decided to draw a line and to fight the good fight either against the racist phallogocentric patriarchy or against the school of resentment. These culture warriors share similar tactics, goals, and mindsets. They think that winning this hiring decision or that curriculum decision is one step in bringing the world into order. Usually, they’re gratified in finding culture warriors of the other stripe who will indulge in the same game. It’s all pretty disheartening, but it’s not too much different from the scorched earth tactics found in the gossip mills in other workplaces. There’s more jargon and more earnest rhetoric, though as for that, you find a lot of the same high-flown, deeply serious rhetoric being used in church committees.
Your story about the imperialism course doesn’t alarm me. I don’t buy the argument that the US is a worse empire than the Soviet Union was, and so I get tired of the kind of liberal or Marxist who is always railing against the US. On the other hand, I think it is important to understand that the US is an empire, a fact that conservatives today are loath to articulate although they were once not so shy about admitting it.
I have friends who are cops, so I don’t find such jokes funny, but I’m also not sure I get the joke. Did you leave out some part? On the other hand, I worked at a school that trained a lot of cops, and I was not impressed by some of the attitudes I saw from some going into the field. I’m also sympathetic to the experiences many minorities have had with the police. My experience of being able to trust the police and turn toward them for help is simply not shared by other Americans.
I’m with your candidate who doesn’t want to live under the stars and bars. I wasn’t there for the interview, but it’s not necessarily bigotry to see racism in a flag whose purpose is in being flown is the rejection of civil rights for black Americans. I’m a proud Southerner, and I even own my great-grandfather’s Confederate uniform, but my parents taught what to take pride in and what not to.
I agree that most academics are pampered, but I don’t find them any more cliquish than any other group. Many in my family did not finish high school, and when I go home, I hang out with friends who remain country. Each clique has its predictable political and social opinions and its own different sense of entitlement.
Most of the academics I call friends don’t think they are “smarter” than your construction worker. They think they’re more knowledgeable about history, societies, and media manipulation. They also know that they could very well be wrong. It takes only a little historical reading to discover how wrong the smart guys were at any particular time. I get annoyed by those people, well read in history or not, who think they actually know the answers to political questions.
6.11.2011 | 12:19am
Tony Esolen says:
Lewis,
Many thanks for that long and sincere response. I shouldn't complain too much about my school; it is a fantastic place to teach, and I have many colleagues whom I call close friends. But my college is also not like other places, either; we are still a Catholic school.
And yet ... it is certainly true that it's a lot harder to predict the politics of my friend up the street than it is to predict the politics of the professor down the hall. Hadley Arkes visited our campus a few years ago and told us that he was the only professor at Amherst who was pro-life. The only one, in a faculty of 150. Let's suppose he's right (he's been there a long time, and should know). Now, given that about half the people in the US are pro-life, what are the odds that in 150 people chosen at random, no more than one of them would be pro-life? Those odds would be 151 divided by 2 raised to the 150th power. That denominator would be greater than 10 raised to the 45th power; 1 with 45 zeroes after it. A mere billion is only 1 with 9 zeroes after it ... Someone here can tell me whether 10 to the 45th power is, say, greater than the number of particles in our galaxy (I know that 150! is greater than the number of particles in the universe).
Well then, why should that be? There's something not right about that. If it were anything else -- say, if there were only one woman on the faculty, in this time when almost half of the PhD applicants are women, we would say, "This smells bad here!" But we don't. Why not?
You know what group of people is flagrantly underrepresented among the faculties at places like Amherst? Or Brown? I'm thinking of schools near me. Evangelical Christians. When was the last time you heard an academic saying, "We don't have enough evangelical Christians on this campus!" I've heard it exactly once, from a conservative Catholic trying to make a point.
Typical: I'm in a faculty seminar, a kind of boondoggle -- eight professors from various disciplines, talking for a semester about a single topic. Ours was freedom (my presentation was on Paradise Lost). We got round to discussing the question of homosexual pseudogamy. Well, that did it -- my friend, a theologian, never got to present her texts from Herbert McCabe, because she was supposed to defend the Church's teaching all by herself (I was sick that day). When another friend of mine, a liberal convert to Catholicism, said that it would be a good thing if we let the people decide this question democratically, the response was, "But how can we do that? The people always vote regressively!"
I don't agree with you about the Stars and Bars. I too have lived in the south, for nine years. I'd guess that more people than not did not want to defend slavery, but also did not want the interpretation of their entire history foisted upon them by folks up north. In any case, I found the comment extremely rude and ill-bred. Recall exactly what she said: she didn't like living around the KIND OF PEOPLE who wanted to fly that flag. I'll bet she didn't try hard enough to get to know them. We're not talking about a clique here, but about South Carolinians pretty generally.
I also don't agree with you about the course on imperialism. Suppose you are teaching a course on English Drama of the Renaissance. Don't you think you ought to spare a week or two for Shakespeare? Or you are teaching a course in French history. Don't you think you should mention Napoleon? I should add that it wasn't only the USSR that was missing from the syllabus; so was Red China. But Rwanda was there ...
If academics as a group were actually broadly educated -- if they enjoyed the liberal arts education you seem to have enjoyed -- I'd let them think they knew more about history, societies, and media manipulation than my neighbor up the street. I'm not as sanguine as you are. I have students -- plenty of them -- who are more broadly educated as undergraduates than many of my colleagues in the social sciences are. What things are like in the natural sciences, I have to learn from my friends who teach in them -- who don't paint a pretty picture either.
Many thanks for that long and sincere response. I shouldn't complain too much about my school; it is a fantastic place to teach, and I have many colleagues whom I call close friends. But my college is also not like other places, either; we are still a Catholic school.
And yet ... it is certainly true that it's a lot harder to predict the politics of my friend up the street than it is to predict the politics of the professor down the hall. Hadley Arkes visited our campus a few years ago and told us that he was the only professor at Amherst who was pro-life. The only one, in a faculty of 150. Let's suppose he's right (he's been there a long time, and should know). Now, given that about half the people in the US are pro-life, what are the odds that in 150 people chosen at random, no more than one of them would be pro-life? Those odds would be 151 divided by 2 raised to the 150th power. That denominator would be greater than 10 raised to the 45th power; 1 with 45 zeroes after it. A mere billion is only 1 with 9 zeroes after it ... Someone here can tell me whether 10 to the 45th power is, say, greater than the number of particles in our galaxy (I know that 150! is greater than the number of particles in the universe).
Well then, why should that be? There's something not right about that. If it were anything else -- say, if there were only one woman on the faculty, in this time when almost half of the PhD applicants are women, we would say, "This smells bad here!" But we don't. Why not?
You know what group of people is flagrantly underrepresented among the faculties at places like Amherst? Or Brown? I'm thinking of schools near me. Evangelical Christians. When was the last time you heard an academic saying, "We don't have enough evangelical Christians on this campus!" I've heard it exactly once, from a conservative Catholic trying to make a point.
Typical: I'm in a faculty seminar, a kind of boondoggle -- eight professors from various disciplines, talking for a semester about a single topic. Ours was freedom (my presentation was on Paradise Lost). We got round to discussing the question of homosexual pseudogamy. Well, that did it -- my friend, a theologian, never got to present her texts from Herbert McCabe, because she was supposed to defend the Church's teaching all by herself (I was sick that day). When another friend of mine, a liberal convert to Catholicism, said that it would be a good thing if we let the people decide this question democratically, the response was, "But how can we do that? The people always vote regressively!"
I don't agree with you about the Stars and Bars. I too have lived in the south, for nine years. I'd guess that more people than not did not want to defend slavery, but also did not want the interpretation of their entire history foisted upon them by folks up north. In any case, I found the comment extremely rude and ill-bred. Recall exactly what she said: she didn't like living around the KIND OF PEOPLE who wanted to fly that flag. I'll bet she didn't try hard enough to get to know them. We're not talking about a clique here, but about South Carolinians pretty generally.
I also don't agree with you about the course on imperialism. Suppose you are teaching a course on English Drama of the Renaissance. Don't you think you ought to spare a week or two for Shakespeare? Or you are teaching a course in French history. Don't you think you should mention Napoleon? I should add that it wasn't only the USSR that was missing from the syllabus; so was Red China. But Rwanda was there ...
If academics as a group were actually broadly educated -- if they enjoyed the liberal arts education you seem to have enjoyed -- I'd let them think they knew more about history, societies, and media manipulation than my neighbor up the street. I'm not as sanguine as you are. I have students -- plenty of them -- who are more broadly educated as undergraduates than many of my colleagues in the social sciences are. What things are like in the natural sciences, I have to learn from my friends who teach in them -- who don't paint a pretty picture either.
6.11.2011 | 10:27pm
Lewis says:
You’re welcome. I hope it wasn’t too long because this one is even worse.
When you say things like “we are still a Catholic school,” it makes me think that that sense of embattlement is part of the problem. My Catholic school was comfortable with its Catholic identity. It wasn’t “still” Catholic. It was just Catholic. Many if not most of the teachers were or were former religious, and the lay teachers were either Catholic or sympathetic, non-hostile, to Catholicism. We were too poor to attract professors who wanted to fight the culture war against religion through the college, though, as I said, there were some conservatives led by a new president who wanted to fight a culture war. The good sense of the place and its history, however, prevailed over that attempt.
I’m still skeptical of your ability to predict the politics of your neighbors, either down the street or down the hall. The loudest, most opinionated voices usually dominate the conversation and lots of people give the impression of assent when their views differ a little or a lot. Also political conversations typically are framed in extreme terms rather than subtle ones. Finally, faculty conversations, like conversations in many workplaces, always are overshadowed by the possibility of repercussions.
So is there really only one professor who is pro-life at Amherst? Is he counting people like me who are not chasing the dream of making abortion illegal again but who think the best way of being pro-life is to give people, especially women, better sex ed and greater access to contraception while requiring stricter laws on clinics? Most conversations don’t get into those kinds of weeds, so I’m not sure your friend has an accurate measure of the range of opinions.
I think you’re right that we need to see a greater push for more kinds of diversity. Too many faculties see evangelicals as already triumphant in the culture when they aren’t. But that’s one of the odd things about the US. Everybody feels like his worldview is under attack and marginalized. Of course, unless your sole identity is as consumer, it probably is.
The response in your faculty seminar that the people always vote regressively doesn’t strike me as completely off the wall. Progress in black civil rights was made judicially. Legislatures routinely sided with the majority, so did the courts for most of our history. So it’s not outrageous to think that change for gay civil rights will be most successfully pursued through the courts. I don’t happen to share that position. In fact, I think it’s quite clear that gays will gain rights through legislatures as women and men without property did. The politicization of the courts by both left and right strikes me as very dangerous for our democracy.
By the way, I hope you found a better term than “pseudogamy” or at least qualified the term in some way. Terms like that create a hostile environment, just as terms like “homophobia” do. It sounds like your school probably comes off as hostile to the beliefs of some of your faculty.
The stars and bars aren’t about the interpretation of history. It’s about resistance. The flag didn’t reappear until the civil rights movement. Since then it’s been about the resistance to the civil rights movement. “Sweet Home Alabama” was an anthem that I knew all the words to for a reason. It’s about race, not slavery, and it’s about desegregation. Like most in my generation, I went to Catholic school only when the city desegregated.
Like your colleague, I’m happy not to live around that “kind of people” anymore. They’re still my friends and family. I go home a lot, and we talk about a lot of things, including politics and religion. Their talk isn’t any more sophisticated than that of my academic friends when they go off on American imperialism, though their grasp of history and of some facts is weaker. I’m not sure I would have sought out the friendship of some of my friends and family had I not had these deep ties to them. But that’s one of the functions of family and old friends—to keep us humble!
Because I grew up in the South, I can hear someone defend the stars and bars and know when they’re promoting regional pride, when they’re being politically fiesty, and when they’re being racist. But I don’t expect an outsider to be able to hear the difference.
But you’re also right that your colleague was being rude. She had no idea whether someone in the room was a Southerner. My accent is so soft that folks are often surprised—and too late for them—to learn my background. Kind of like learning that I’m a Christian. Favorite question: “So do you go to church often?” The answer, “every week,” takes people aback.
As for the course on imperialism, I don’t think your analogies work. Courses often have a topical focus that excludes other inquiries. I’ve seen Renaissance courses titled “exclusive of Shakespeare,” and a history of twentieth-century France may or may not spend much time on Napoleon. The American empire preceded the Soviet Union, though not the Russian. Red China is interesting. It has not been territorially expansive the way the Soviet Union was, but it’s recent approach of securing markets through supporting distasteful regimes shares a lot with the American approach. Self-critique is crucial to a democracy, especially when the prosperity of that democracy relies on the impoverishment of others.
I’ll have to ask a different of questions to the social scientists I know. I haven’t noticed them being less broadly educated than my humanities students, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Distribution requirements in most universities have been a joke for decades. Compare the undergraduates who are not your students but are majors in sociology to your social scientist colleagues, and I’ll bet you won’t notice much difference!
But back to the point, the sociologist believes that his greater knowledge of social organization makes him a better judge of politics than the man down the street. He might be wrong, but he’s no farther off the mark than the construction worker who thinks his job experience gives him greater insight into economic policy. There’s plenty of pretension to go around.
When you say things like “we are still a Catholic school,” it makes me think that that sense of embattlement is part of the problem. My Catholic school was comfortable with its Catholic identity. It wasn’t “still” Catholic. It was just Catholic. Many if not most of the teachers were or were former religious, and the lay teachers were either Catholic or sympathetic, non-hostile, to Catholicism. We were too poor to attract professors who wanted to fight the culture war against religion through the college, though, as I said, there were some conservatives led by a new president who wanted to fight a culture war. The good sense of the place and its history, however, prevailed over that attempt.
I’m still skeptical of your ability to predict the politics of your neighbors, either down the street or down the hall. The loudest, most opinionated voices usually dominate the conversation and lots of people give the impression of assent when their views differ a little or a lot. Also political conversations typically are framed in extreme terms rather than subtle ones. Finally, faculty conversations, like conversations in many workplaces, always are overshadowed by the possibility of repercussions.
So is there really only one professor who is pro-life at Amherst? Is he counting people like me who are not chasing the dream of making abortion illegal again but who think the best way of being pro-life is to give people, especially women, better sex ed and greater access to contraception while requiring stricter laws on clinics? Most conversations don’t get into those kinds of weeds, so I’m not sure your friend has an accurate measure of the range of opinions.
I think you’re right that we need to see a greater push for more kinds of diversity. Too many faculties see evangelicals as already triumphant in the culture when they aren’t. But that’s one of the odd things about the US. Everybody feels like his worldview is under attack and marginalized. Of course, unless your sole identity is as consumer, it probably is.
The response in your faculty seminar that the people always vote regressively doesn’t strike me as completely off the wall. Progress in black civil rights was made judicially. Legislatures routinely sided with the majority, so did the courts for most of our history. So it’s not outrageous to think that change for gay civil rights will be most successfully pursued through the courts. I don’t happen to share that position. In fact, I think it’s quite clear that gays will gain rights through legislatures as women and men without property did. The politicization of the courts by both left and right strikes me as very dangerous for our democracy.
By the way, I hope you found a better term than “pseudogamy” or at least qualified the term in some way. Terms like that create a hostile environment, just as terms like “homophobia” do. It sounds like your school probably comes off as hostile to the beliefs of some of your faculty.
The stars and bars aren’t about the interpretation of history. It’s about resistance. The flag didn’t reappear until the civil rights movement. Since then it’s been about the resistance to the civil rights movement. “Sweet Home Alabama” was an anthem that I knew all the words to for a reason. It’s about race, not slavery, and it’s about desegregation. Like most in my generation, I went to Catholic school only when the city desegregated.
Like your colleague, I’m happy not to live around that “kind of people” anymore. They’re still my friends and family. I go home a lot, and we talk about a lot of things, including politics and religion. Their talk isn’t any more sophisticated than that of my academic friends when they go off on American imperialism, though their grasp of history and of some facts is weaker. I’m not sure I would have sought out the friendship of some of my friends and family had I not had these deep ties to them. But that’s one of the functions of family and old friends—to keep us humble!
Because I grew up in the South, I can hear someone defend the stars and bars and know when they’re promoting regional pride, when they’re being politically fiesty, and when they’re being racist. But I don’t expect an outsider to be able to hear the difference.
But you’re also right that your colleague was being rude. She had no idea whether someone in the room was a Southerner. My accent is so soft that folks are often surprised—and too late for them—to learn my background. Kind of like learning that I’m a Christian. Favorite question: “So do you go to church often?” The answer, “every week,” takes people aback.
As for the course on imperialism, I don’t think your analogies work. Courses often have a topical focus that excludes other inquiries. I’ve seen Renaissance courses titled “exclusive of Shakespeare,” and a history of twentieth-century France may or may not spend much time on Napoleon. The American empire preceded the Soviet Union, though not the Russian. Red China is interesting. It has not been territorially expansive the way the Soviet Union was, but it’s recent approach of securing markets through supporting distasteful regimes shares a lot with the American approach. Self-critique is crucial to a democracy, especially when the prosperity of that democracy relies on the impoverishment of others.
I’ll have to ask a different of questions to the social scientists I know. I haven’t noticed them being less broadly educated than my humanities students, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Distribution requirements in most universities have been a joke for decades. Compare the undergraduates who are not your students but are majors in sociology to your social scientist colleagues, and I’ll bet you won’t notice much difference!
But back to the point, the sociologist believes that his greater knowledge of social organization makes him a better judge of politics than the man down the street. He might be wrong, but he’s no farther off the mark than the construction worker who thinks his job experience gives him greater insight into economic policy. There’s plenty of pretension to go around.
6.12.2011 | 12:38am
Tony Esolen says:
Hello Lewis,
Well, there are a lot of things to sort out, there.
I use the term "pseudogamy" because I think it aptly describes the phenomenon. It's mimic-marriage. A man can't marry a man, because the two of them together cannot perform the marital act. It requires a man and a woman to do that. Sure, there may be medical problems that prevent the marital act from being effectual, but that doesn't change the type of act that it is. All forms of sodomy mimic the marital act, no matter the sex of the people performing them.
I guess I would not call you pro-life, either. If you said to me, "I don't believe in the slaughter of Jews, personally, but I'm trying to do all I can to make sure that Germans and Jews don't come into conflict with one another," I'd say that your position was not coherent. You have already given away the pearl of price, the human life. Someone who says that the deliberate taking of innocent human life can be justified has already said, in effect, "Human life is not holy." It has already been subjected to the utilitarian calculus. If you then say to me, "You should oppose all forms of war," I'll reply that if war involves the direct and deliberate taking of innocent life, I will; I'll call you on it. I'll become a practical pacifist, rather than give up my affirmation of the holiness of human life.
Contraceptives have not lowered the number of unwanted pregnancies; you should know that. Sure, if the same number of people post-pill were hopping into bed unmarried as pre-pill, then the number of unwanted pregnancies would have dropped. But these are human beings we're talking about here, not mathematical counters. The whole sexual culture changed, with the pill. It's the destruction of the family, the coarsening of mass entertainment, and the cynicism with which men and women regard one another -- not to mention a sea of blood -- that persuaded me, after my own wandering into a far country, that every single thing the Church has said about human sexuality was right. The Church was right, and I was wrong; Scripture was right, and I was wrong; the natural law was right, and I was wrong.
Back to academics -- a thought experiment. Suppose, in an interview for a job in the English department at Brown, or Boston College, or Oberlin, a candidate were to say, "No, I don't teach Queer Theory. I believe that homosexual acts are objectively disordered, and that in fact the whole sexual revolution has been a disaster." What are the chances that that person will be hired? Zero.
One more jab -- I do hope you'll take these in the spirit of a good wrestle. "Take Back the Night" and free condoms are exactly what I meant, when I said, "Leave it to academics to preen themselves for taking a moral position which costs them absolutely nothing." You want to take back the night, students? How about taking back your pants? How about taking back your sobriety and your chastity? You want safe streets at night. Fine, so do I. Who's responsible for the mess they've become? Aren't you in part responsible? You preach a sexual free-for-all, hedonism only curbed by self-interest, a kind of selfishness squared; you pour battery acid into the river upstream, and then you complain that the drinking water doesn't taste good. You want safe streets? I do too, and I know that I won't get them unless we get intact families again, mother and father and kids, and unless we start to remember the decencies that made women act like ladies and men act like gentlemen. And the pack of rubbers? Who on earth could ever suppose that the mysteries of human longing could be solved by a pack of rubbers?
More academics: that course on imperialism was supposed to be the capping fourth semester of a course in Western Civilization. It's unconscionable that the two most malignant empires should be missing from the syllabus. They are missing because one of the professors actually favors those empires, and doesn't want to have to run them down. As for my colleagues in the social sciences, they don't get the liberal arts education we try to give to all of our students at Providence College. Naw ... they've just spent the 21 years I've been here trying to eliminate or decimate that program. They see no use in reading Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Dostoyevsky, Plato, Aristotle ... They see no use in it, because they haven't done it. We've asked.
I'll be away from the Internet for most of the coming week ...
My construction worker neighbor has several advantages missing to the sociologist. He's either made a payroll, or been close to someone who makes the payroll. He knows the difference between good work and shoddy work. He knows what kinds of people make for good workers and rotten workers. He probably has a fair idea of the margin that his boss's business works under. He also has a fair idea of how many government palms need to be greased all the time just to get a project going. I imagine he's seen quite a lot that would surprise the sociologist. And he's done a lot, too. My father-in-law's neighbor works like a Trojan, time and a half and double time, at one of the most dangerous jobs in the country: bridge maintenance and painting. I'm talking about the GW Bridge, the Verrazano Bridge, things like that. It is brutal work. He makes great money, and he is worth every bit of it. Try to tell him, "Hey, you're not hiring enough women for your crew." He'd salt your ears.
John Ratzenberger gave the commencement address at our school this year (his daughter was a graduating senior). It was terrific. He talked about what it felt like to hold a 4 by 8 slab of plywood while you were standing on the skeleton of a four story building -- how you had to angle it into the wind so that it wouldn't become a kite with you on it. Now I know, from doing some construction work indoors, what it's like to hold one of those things out away from your body, but I'll be damned if I know what it's like to hold it against the wind, while I'm trying to keep my balance forty feet in the air. If a few more sociologists had some experiences like that, I might have more respect for them.
Well, there are a lot of things to sort out, there.
I use the term "pseudogamy" because I think it aptly describes the phenomenon. It's mimic-marriage. A man can't marry a man, because the two of them together cannot perform the marital act. It requires a man and a woman to do that. Sure, there may be medical problems that prevent the marital act from being effectual, but that doesn't change the type of act that it is. All forms of sodomy mimic the marital act, no matter the sex of the people performing them.
I guess I would not call you pro-life, either. If you said to me, "I don't believe in the slaughter of Jews, personally, but I'm trying to do all I can to make sure that Germans and Jews don't come into conflict with one another," I'd say that your position was not coherent. You have already given away the pearl of price, the human life. Someone who says that the deliberate taking of innocent human life can be justified has already said, in effect, "Human life is not holy." It has already been subjected to the utilitarian calculus. If you then say to me, "You should oppose all forms of war," I'll reply that if war involves the direct and deliberate taking of innocent life, I will; I'll call you on it. I'll become a practical pacifist, rather than give up my affirmation of the holiness of human life.
Contraceptives have not lowered the number of unwanted pregnancies; you should know that. Sure, if the same number of people post-pill were hopping into bed unmarried as pre-pill, then the number of unwanted pregnancies would have dropped. But these are human beings we're talking about here, not mathematical counters. The whole sexual culture changed, with the pill. It's the destruction of the family, the coarsening of mass entertainment, and the cynicism with which men and women regard one another -- not to mention a sea of blood -- that persuaded me, after my own wandering into a far country, that every single thing the Church has said about human sexuality was right. The Church was right, and I was wrong; Scripture was right, and I was wrong; the natural law was right, and I was wrong.
Back to academics -- a thought experiment. Suppose, in an interview for a job in the English department at Brown, or Boston College, or Oberlin, a candidate were to say, "No, I don't teach Queer Theory. I believe that homosexual acts are objectively disordered, and that in fact the whole sexual revolution has been a disaster." What are the chances that that person will be hired? Zero.
One more jab -- I do hope you'll take these in the spirit of a good wrestle. "Take Back the Night" and free condoms are exactly what I meant, when I said, "Leave it to academics to preen themselves for taking a moral position which costs them absolutely nothing." You want to take back the night, students? How about taking back your pants? How about taking back your sobriety and your chastity? You want safe streets at night. Fine, so do I. Who's responsible for the mess they've become? Aren't you in part responsible? You preach a sexual free-for-all, hedonism only curbed by self-interest, a kind of selfishness squared; you pour battery acid into the river upstream, and then you complain that the drinking water doesn't taste good. You want safe streets? I do too, and I know that I won't get them unless we get intact families again, mother and father and kids, and unless we start to remember the decencies that made women act like ladies and men act like gentlemen. And the pack of rubbers? Who on earth could ever suppose that the mysteries of human longing could be solved by a pack of rubbers?
More academics: that course on imperialism was supposed to be the capping fourth semester of a course in Western Civilization. It's unconscionable that the two most malignant empires should be missing from the syllabus. They are missing because one of the professors actually favors those empires, and doesn't want to have to run them down. As for my colleagues in the social sciences, they don't get the liberal arts education we try to give to all of our students at Providence College. Naw ... they've just spent the 21 years I've been here trying to eliminate or decimate that program. They see no use in reading Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Dostoyevsky, Plato, Aristotle ... They see no use in it, because they haven't done it. We've asked.
I'll be away from the Internet for most of the coming week ...
My construction worker neighbor has several advantages missing to the sociologist. He's either made a payroll, or been close to someone who makes the payroll. He knows the difference between good work and shoddy work. He knows what kinds of people make for good workers and rotten workers. He probably has a fair idea of the margin that his boss's business works under. He also has a fair idea of how many government palms need to be greased all the time just to get a project going. I imagine he's seen quite a lot that would surprise the sociologist. And he's done a lot, too. My father-in-law's neighbor works like a Trojan, time and a half and double time, at one of the most dangerous jobs in the country: bridge maintenance and painting. I'm talking about the GW Bridge, the Verrazano Bridge, things like that. It is brutal work. He makes great money, and he is worth every bit of it. Try to tell him, "Hey, you're not hiring enough women for your crew." He'd salt your ears.
John Ratzenberger gave the commencement address at our school this year (his daughter was a graduating senior). It was terrific. He talked about what it felt like to hold a 4 by 8 slab of plywood while you were standing on the skeleton of a four story building -- how you had to angle it into the wind so that it wouldn't become a kite with you on it. Now I know, from doing some construction work indoors, what it's like to hold one of those things out away from your body, but I'll be damned if I know what it's like to hold it against the wind, while I'm trying to keep my balance forty feet in the air. If a few more sociologists had some experiences like that, I might have more respect for them.
6.12.2011 | 8:58am
Lewis says:
I understand why you use the term “pseudogamy,” but I’ve been suggesting all along that your campus seems to be suffering from the domination of culture warriors of one kind or another, and I’ve been explaining that the two campuses I’ve worked at that have had healthy cultures (one conservative and one liberal) were able to do so because they had leadership that was interested in teaching and intellectual inquiry, not victory in the culture wars. If you participate in a seminar using words like “pseudogamy” without qualification or explanation, then you are making the campus climate worse. You are making gay activists and those sympathetic to gay issues feel marginalized and endangered. They in turn will leave, subvert their classes, or try to organize and take over the department, etc. I’ve taught at colleges like that, and I watched the culture warriors feed off each other. I just wanted to teach and get intellectual stimulation from people with a range of ideas. So I’m happy to teach now at a university that has strong Marxists, strong libertarians, strong conservatives, Orthodox Jews and Catholics, and we all just teach and have lively debates. No one is trying to win a war on campus, though many are trying to win a war in the broader culture.
I didn’t think you’d consider me pro-life either, but let’s go back to the context. Your friend says he’s the only pro-life professor at Amherst, and you say he wouldn’t count me as one either. Does that change if I say I support the ban on partial birth abortion, that I like sonogram and parental consent laws? How much of the extreme pro-life agenda do I have to accept before I get my pro-life pin? My support for all these things has already lost me my pro-choice pin. But then I’m in that big lump of Americans who reject the extreme positions of both camps.
I’ll have to ask my friend at Brown about your hypothetical candidate. I can tell you that I’d look at him a little more closely before I hired him. I have colleagues who think the way he does, but they are collegial with the lesbians and gays down the hall. Neither group feels like they’re being shunted aside. I’m looking for faculty who can work with each other.
I don’t know whether your jab about take back the night was supposed to hit me. I take a similar line toward these phenomena. I never wandered into the far country you describe. I’ve always been one of those good Catholic boys, but I don’t preach that line. I just let my view appear in the stories I tell about the pleasures of dating only three women. One of the close student friends I’ve made was the leader of the feminist group that organized these events. We’ve had some great conversations about what she was actually trying to achieve.
By the way, you’re throwing a lot at the feet of that little pill. It’s possible that a few more factors might have been at work!
Well, that makes more sense. How would a unit on Red China fit into a Western Civ class? You can’t get much more Eastern Civ than China. And Russia has always sat uncomfortably inside and outside Western Civ. Now, would you argue that the Soviet experiment showed Russia’s commitment to Western Civ or to its abiding Orientalism? As the cap to a four-semester course on Western Civ, it makes great sense to finish all this praise of the West with some skepticism. You might even pair it with a Reno-like questioning of whether the liberal state is eating away its own foundations. If most of your professors are cheerleaders for the West, I think it gives your sequence more intellectual vitality to bring in a true believer of a different kind. Diversity is a good thing.
It definitely sounds like your social scientists need an education. Make them co-leaders in the seminars so that they have to read what they should have read and fallen in love with years ago!
Here’s a story you’ll like. A Hispanic friend from grad school was assigned a great books course. He told me afterward that he was all prepared for depictions of great racism, but they weren’t there. He concluded that they actually were great books after all, books for everyone, not just Rudyard Kipling. I smiled.
You seem to really love men who work with their hands. That’s great. I’ve got a friend who used his experience gutting deer in delivering his child, but I still wouldn’t call him an expert in health care. Nor would I claim that experts in health care are oracles. Your neighbor might have more experience with payroll, but he might still vote for someone who expanded Medicare, voted for tax cuts during two wars, etc. I don’t think virtue or wisdom lies in one class more than another. The cult of the worker is just as bad as the cult of the expert. Sometimes experts make the right guess, sometimes they don’t. The same is true of the worker. Both manage to remember only the times they guessed right.
I didn’t think you’d consider me pro-life either, but let’s go back to the context. Your friend says he’s the only pro-life professor at Amherst, and you say he wouldn’t count me as one either. Does that change if I say I support the ban on partial birth abortion, that I like sonogram and parental consent laws? How much of the extreme pro-life agenda do I have to accept before I get my pro-life pin? My support for all these things has already lost me my pro-choice pin. But then I’m in that big lump of Americans who reject the extreme positions of both camps.
I’ll have to ask my friend at Brown about your hypothetical candidate. I can tell you that I’d look at him a little more closely before I hired him. I have colleagues who think the way he does, but they are collegial with the lesbians and gays down the hall. Neither group feels like they’re being shunted aside. I’m looking for faculty who can work with each other.
I don’t know whether your jab about take back the night was supposed to hit me. I take a similar line toward these phenomena. I never wandered into the far country you describe. I’ve always been one of those good Catholic boys, but I don’t preach that line. I just let my view appear in the stories I tell about the pleasures of dating only three women. One of the close student friends I’ve made was the leader of the feminist group that organized these events. We’ve had some great conversations about what she was actually trying to achieve.
By the way, you’re throwing a lot at the feet of that little pill. It’s possible that a few more factors might have been at work!
Well, that makes more sense. How would a unit on Red China fit into a Western Civ class? You can’t get much more Eastern Civ than China. And Russia has always sat uncomfortably inside and outside Western Civ. Now, would you argue that the Soviet experiment showed Russia’s commitment to Western Civ or to its abiding Orientalism? As the cap to a four-semester course on Western Civ, it makes great sense to finish all this praise of the West with some skepticism. You might even pair it with a Reno-like questioning of whether the liberal state is eating away its own foundations. If most of your professors are cheerleaders for the West, I think it gives your sequence more intellectual vitality to bring in a true believer of a different kind. Diversity is a good thing.
It definitely sounds like your social scientists need an education. Make them co-leaders in the seminars so that they have to read what they should have read and fallen in love with years ago!
Here’s a story you’ll like. A Hispanic friend from grad school was assigned a great books course. He told me afterward that he was all prepared for depictions of great racism, but they weren’t there. He concluded that they actually were great books after all, books for everyone, not just Rudyard Kipling. I smiled.
You seem to really love men who work with their hands. That’s great. I’ve got a friend who used his experience gutting deer in delivering his child, but I still wouldn’t call him an expert in health care. Nor would I claim that experts in health care are oracles. Your neighbor might have more experience with payroll, but he might still vote for someone who expanded Medicare, voted for tax cuts during two wars, etc. I don’t think virtue or wisdom lies in one class more than another. The cult of the worker is just as bad as the cult of the expert. Sometimes experts make the right guess, sometimes they don’t. The same is true of the worker. Both manage to remember only the times they guessed right.
7.6.2011 | 1:35pm
Deena Decor says:
I use the term "pseudogamy" because I think it aptly describes the phenomenon. It's mimic-marriage. A man can't marry a man, because the two of them together cannot perform the marital act. It requires a man and a woman to do that. Sure, there may be medical problems that prevent the marital act from being effectual, but that doesn't change the type of act that it is. All forms of sodomy mimic the marital act, no matter the sex of the people performing them. Wow...good points. The moral obtuseness of some of our Catholic elites is shocking. But isn't the very idea of a communist regime allowing labor unions ridiculous to begin with? How can a society that doesn't allow rights like voting and free speech somehow allow collective bargaining? And let's not forget the conservatives that think China is our pal because free market reforms have put them on the path to western material prosperity. The strength of the west are the morals and wisdom that have been handed down to us. Not our wealth.
