Zinn 1, Daniels 0

Yesterday, university  campuses around the state held Howard Zinn “Read Ins”  at which numerous faculty–including yours truly– participated. The events were prompted by then-Governor Daniels’ efforts to banish Zinn’s work from Indiana classrooms.

As I said yesterday, Daniels wanted to use the power of state government to protect unsuspecting students from “wrong” ideas—defined as ideas with which he disagreed. There is no principle more basic to both the academy and the American constitutional system than the one that forbids him from doing so.

The Founders did not minimize the danger of bad ideas; they believed, however, that empowering government to suppress “dangerous” or “offensive” ideas would be far more dangerous than the free expression of those ideas—that once we hand over to the state the authority to decide which ideas have value, no ideas are safe.

In these United States, We the People get to decide for ourselves what books we read, what websites we visit, what videos we watch, what ideas we entertain, free of government interference. Your mother can censor you, and in certain situations your employer can censor you–but your Mayor or Governor or President cannot.

Furthermore, free intellectual inquiry is an absolutely essential ingredient of a genuine education. Education requires the freedom to examine any and all ideas, to determine which are good and which not so good. It also requires that we protect scholars who come to unpopular conclusions or hold unpopular views.

Some citizens will make poor choices of reading materials or ideologies. Some Professors will embrace perspectives that disturb or offend students and Governors. Just as putting up with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their clones is the price liberals pay for free speech, putting up with Howard Zinn–or with Robert Reich, or with me—is the price conservatives pay for their own freedom.

The search for truth requires that we examine contending ideas. That is not the same thing as requiring some sort of artificial “balance” that ignores scholarly integrity in order to teach discredited positions like creationism rather than science, or holocaust denial rather than accurate history.  As a statement from the AAU put it some years back,

Self-appointed political critics of the academy have presented equal representation for conservative and progressive points of views as the key to quality. But the college classroom is not a talk show.  Rather, it is a dedicated context in which students and teachers seriously engage difficult and contested questions with the goal of reaching beyond differing viewpoints to a critical evaluation of the relative claims of different positions. Central to the educational aims and spirit of academic freedom, diversity of perspectives is a means to an end in higher education, not an end in itself.

Howard Zinn was a reputable, albeit controversial, historian. Much of what he wrote was a valuable corrective to the histories of his era; some was oversimplified or otherwise problematic. But opinions about the value of his–or any–books are beside the point.  The question is “who decides what books are used in the classroom,” and the answer is not ”the governor”.

The real irony of these sorts of efforts at censorship is that they almost always backfire by shining a brighter light on the object of the censorship. I wonder how many of the people attending the IUPUI read-in and the others around the state had ever heard of Howard Zinn prior to Daniels’ ill-advised effort to suppress his work.

Funny how often it works that way.

One of my sons was a student at the University of Cincinnati when the local prosecutor tried to close down an “obscene” exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. Students and residents who ordinarily wouldn’t have gone across the street to attend an art exhibit couldn’t wait to see this one. The line stretched for blocks.

This happens so often, censorship has become a marketing tool. According to film histories I’ve read, at times when movie attendance has been dwindling, filmmakers have responded by producing more explicit films in hopes that the howls from the “usual sources” would increase attendance.

You’d think the busybodies would learn: If there’s material you don’t want people to see or hear or read, your best bet is just to ignore it. As Governor Daniels demonstrated, however, the moral scolds and PC enforcers have trouble learning that lesson.

Howard Zinn says “thanks, Mitch.”

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Logical Consequences

For the past quarter-century, Americans have been bashing government–not just this or that administration or political party or elected official, but the enterprise of governing.

Want a laugh? Say “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” Want to indulge a conspiracy theory? The government’s giving the Alamo to the UN! Obama plans to impose Sharia law!..  Got a grudge against your state lawmakers? Push for your area’s counties to secede. Hate the feds? Put on a tricorn hat, misspell a placard and hold a rally.

The problem is, there are consequences to this constant and indiscriminate hostility to government authority, and those consequences aren’t pretty.

Example: Yesterday, to its credit and my surprise, The Indianapolis Star ran two actual news stories: one about legislative conflicts of interest and corrupt behavior, and another about inadequate regulation of child care providers.  Stories about the inept rollout of the Affordable Care Act, and other tales of poor management, are everywhere.

Guess what? When we devalue government, we shouldn’t be surprised when government isn’t done very well. When we spend our time and energy arguing whether major elements of government infrastructure should even exist, we don’t have much time or energy left over to insure that all parts of government are operating properly–that public servants are competently performing those tasks that most reasonable people believe government should do.

I will be the first to acknowledge that we have public officials who deserve our scorn, policies that are–at best–counterproductive and need to be changed, and antiquated or corrupted structures that need to be revisited. The difference is, those are criticisms of how well our government is doing–not attacks on the legitimacy of government itself.

Are some regulations unnecessary? Undoubtedly. But supervising people who care for defenseless infants and children certainly seems an appropriate function of government. Most Americans would also agree that we need laws sanctioning officials who abuse their positions for personal gain.

Americans’ attitudes toward government are a lot like their attitudes toward Congress: we famously despise Congress, but approve of our own Representative. We hate government, but not the programs that benefit us, or veterans, or grandma.

Much as we may not want to admit it, we live in a complex modern world where there are   tasks that only government can effectively perform–from FAA supervision of air travel, to FDA oversight of food and drug safety, to regulations preventing banks from ripping off unwary customers…..on and on. When the agencies charged with these tasks fail to do their jobs properly, real people get hurt–planes crash, people get sick and die, and–as we’ve seen– economies fall into recession or worse.

We need to stop bashing government’s legitimacy, and instead turn our attention to how government is doing its job. We need to put down the ax and pick up the scalpel–to stop characterizing government as some sort of enemy,  and begin focusing on making it better.

When we insist that “public service” is an oxymoron, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get decent public service.

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Trying to Understand

In a recent post, I noted that Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner–the well known polling and survey research outfit–has issued a report titled “Inside the GOP,” detailing conclusions from a variety of focus groups conducted with the Tea Party, Evangelical and Moderate factions of today’s Republican Party.

Some of those conclusions simply confirm the hunches of political nerds like me, who obsessively follow politics and government. For example, the report notes that “the base thinks they are losing politically and losing control of the country–and their starting reaction is ‘worried’ ‘discouraged’ ‘scared’ and ‘concerned’ about the direction of the country and their powerlessness to change course.”

We sort of figured that.

Despite the disproportionate media attention generated by the Tea Party faction, Evangelicals continue to make up the largest bloc in the GOP base, and they focus far more on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion than either of the other factions. Evangelicals characterize the President as a socialist, as ‘worst President in history’ and as ‘anti-American.’ These accusations are echoed by the Tea Party faction. (For those of us who do not fall into these categories, these extravagant and overwrought accusations have a “never-neverland” quality to them–they make you want to scream things like “Do you even know what a socialist is?” and “Where were you when George W. Bush was President?)

The research paints a picture of dispirited moderates who wonder where their party went; however, it also notes that moderates are a rapidly diminishing presence in the party. They are “very conscious of being illegitimate within their own party.”

The report also acknowledges the Elephant in the Room (no pun intended).

The GOP base is “very conscious of being white in a country with growing minorities.” As they see it, “Their party is losing to a Democratic Party of big government whose goal is to expand programs that mainly benefit minorities.” As the report delicately notes, “Race remains very much alive in the politics of the Republican Party.”

There is a good deal more, and the entire report is worth reading. For those of us who wonder why the GOP has expended so much energy and vitriol trying to prevent working-class Americans from accessing basic healthcare, the answer is that  they are panicked by their conviction that “Obamacare” is the “end game”– a program which will cement voter loyalties to the Democrats.

The next explosive–and divisive– issue, according to the report, will be climate change. “Climate skeptics are a majority in the conservative factions.”

All in all, the report paints a picture of a party that has been captured by what used to be considered the fringe–or, more accurately, the fringes. And while those fringes overlap somewhat, there are major differences that do not bode well for what used to be a Grand Old Party.

I’ve been predicting a schism for nearly twenty years, so obviously I’m not a reliable soothsayer….but the divisions–both within the party and from the American mainstream–are getting pretty deep.

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In Which I AGREE with a Tea Partier

Maybe we really are in the “End Times.” I entirely agree with what a Tea Party Senator has just said.

Utah Senator Mike Lee was arm-in-arm with crazy Ted Cruz during the recent shenanigans that shut down the government. But in the wake of that fiasco, he has made a speech that at the very least shows a self-awareness we are not accustomed to seeing from Tea Party folks, and in places sounds positively progressive!

“Especially in the wake of recent controversies, many conservatives are more frustrated with the establishment than ever before,” Lee said. “And we have every reason to be. But however justified, frustration is not a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative.”

Instead of “outrage, resentment, and intolerance,” the party should project a message—and more than a message, a principle—of “optimism,” he said.

“American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and above all hope,” Lee said. “It is also about inclusion. Successful political movements are about identifying converts, not heretics.”

 But the paragraph that most struck me was one in which Lee actually seems to occupy reality, and to see what most Tea Party folks resolutely refuse to acknowledge:

“This opportunity crisis,” he continued, “presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where families just can’t seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly profit at everyone else’s expense. The Republican Party should tackle these three crises head on.”

Actually, I’d settle for a GOP that wasn’t insistent on making them worse.

That said, if this speech actually represents Mike Lee’s current perspective, it is immensely welcome–if considerably overdue. Maybe we could get him to talk to several members of Indiana’s Congressional delegation.

I’m especially looking at you, Todd Rokita and  Marlin Stutzman.

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Sums It Up

One of my “virtual” friends recently posted the following to Facebook. It made me think–and it also made me sad.

I like universal health care not just for its moral reasons but because it encourages job mobility, entrepreneurship, takes the burden off our manufacturing industries, and leads to cheaper health care costs. I like to spend money on public education because it makes our workers competitive in the international market. I want cap and trade because reliable and knowledgeable humans who are super-awesome at economics tell me that the long-term costs of inevitable climate shift will be worse than doing nothing. I want solar power and other green alternatives in order to ease climate change and to make us energy independent so people in countries half a world away with thousand-year-old grudges will stop yanking us around. I favor separation of church and state because, like Thomas Jefferson, I don’t want people of faith to have other faiths shoved on them by the power of the government.

In other words, as “Lefty” as all of that makes me today, I’m pretty much a 1972 Republican.

How did we get to the point where these sensible positions made him–and so many others– unwelcome in the GOP?

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