Fundamentalism and education have always been at odds. Fundamentalism, by definition, takes one perspective and filters all other ideas through that single lens. The Nazis or the Taliban, the Khmer Rouge or the Christian Coalition, they take a single-minded narcissistic vision of the world and use it as a tool of domination to unite their followers in unthinking self-congratulation while projecting all their inner conflicts outward against straw-man enemies.
The real enemy of these cults is education. Education is considered an absolute good in most of the world, but not in fundamentalist states. You could not claim life in the Soviet Union was better and richer than that in other countries unless you either had no information about other countries, or only visited them with blinders and filters on your eyes and ears. Fundamentalists believe 'education' is the application of these filters and blinders.
Often the beginning of a true education is the uncomfortable disillusioning of infantile fantasies about the world and one's central position in it. Education broadens one's perspective to include other points of view even as it encourages one to question for oneself all received knowledge. This is unsettling to the individual, which is why colleges and universities are isolated from the world a little like a sanitorium.
It's one thing for an eighteen-year-old to think his father has his head up his ass about the way the world works, and quite another for his college professor to teach things that prove it. The normal response is to want to kill the messenger. This is frowned upon in academia and elsewhere, (except in the chambers of the Supreme Court where Clarence Thomas had a poster about striking a blow for freedom by bombing Yale- he said it was just a joke- ha, ha.)
A student with such a feeling has two choices: leave the college where he or she is trying to get a liberal education (yes, liberal - hence the term Liberal Arts degree), or learn to use the thinking tools of academia, tools that students will be unskilled at using at first while their professors will be experts, and so their professors' ideas will dominate the discourse well into graduate school. This is a proper running of the system.
Unfortunately for Fundamentalists, their sons and daughters quickly learn skills of logic in college that knock over the one-legged stool their faith perches on. The solution is to attack the institutions of higher learning and pass bills making it illegal to suggest a more stable stool might have two, three, even four legs. My office chair rolls on six casters. Very stable. I can roll in any direction I want. This is anathema to the Christian Coalition, so they are innoculating their young against college. Check out the logic-busting indoctination at probe.org where there is a Student Mind Games Conference. A recent attendee lauds the program because:
"I had no idea what to expect except from what Jerry Solomon had portrayed for the juniors and seniors at my high school. He acted as a professor from a large university who was adamant about his dislike for Christianity. The professor allowed no one to ask him questions because he was the one asking the questions. "
Mind games, indeed.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Religion on Campus
Saturday, April 02, 2005
High Noon at the UN Corral
"We like the idea that he'll represent U.S. interests to the U.N., rather than act as a U.N. spokesman to this country," said Howard Kaloogian, chairman of Move America Forward. "We like the idea that he'll speak truth to power."
The report on John Bolton's nomination presented the above conservative opinion quote in Thursday's LA Times article, "Democrats Set to Reject Pick for U.N." as a legitimate contrary position equal to the Democrats'. But it was a cynical, chauvinist statement to make, underserving of equal airing. Cynical because it co-opts the language of those truly oppressed. And chavinistic because it assumes that when an ambassador supports ideas of the UN, he or she is abdicating his responsibility to the US.
The Democratic objections pointed to facts in the public record as the grounds of their concerns. Move America Forward used innuendo to turn the argument from the nominee to the evils of both Bolton's detractors on the one hand to and the institution of the UN on the other. The pigs of Orwell's Animal Farm would be proud of this Squealer's success at teaching the sheep to chant "US good, UN baaaad."
We admire those who "speak truth to power" because they do in the face of 'power' coming back and destroying them for standing against the behemoth. Is he saying poor David United States is going to stand up to Goliath United Nations? Ridiculous. But what makes it even worse that such comments are reported in the paper without ridicule. The Fourth Estate should be more than a Xerox manchine.
"Speak truth to power" is the motto of the American Friends or Quakers who are, among other things, radically pacifist. Think Grace Kelly in "High Noon." Quakers have endured ridicule because they have opposed war under every circumstance, and would stand with the UN and its preference for negotiation rather than confrontation at every turn.
The neocon/Radical Right/Move America/Bolton folks must mean something very different when they say 'truth' and 'power' than what the dictionary says. If their specialized lingo were translated into common usage language where words are used to clarify rather than obfuscate meaning, Mr. Hooligan's (sic) message is that John Bolton is going to " speak Power to Truth" and speak with all our six-shooters blazing.
