The Left at Christian Univs, part 3: Diversity

If you care to understand the development of diversity as an ideological, political enterprise in higher education, you need to read this book.

Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, by Peter W. Wood, was published in 2003, in the same time frame as the Supreme Court's ruling in Gratz v. Bollinger, preceding by just a bit the ruling that outlawed University of Michigan's undergraduate racial quotas for failing to meet the test of being "narrowly tailored."

It is essential reading for anyone, right or left, who wants to understand the development of the diversity initiatives that are so popular in colleges and universities, as well as certain non-profits, government agencies and even some businesses, especially large corporations. It is very scholarly, dense with references (they don't get in the way of the narrative, but they provide sources for further study, or confirmation for doubters), historically grounded, yet highly readable and accessible to general readers. The author is a professor of anthropology, and former Associate Provost of Boston University. He's seen academia from the classroom and the administration building.

Better reviews than I would be likely to write can be found here and here.

Why it matters

As I discussed in The Left at Christian Universities, part 2, a trend for Christian universities and colleges seems to be to move left by adopting essentially secular enterprises. Diversity, as understood for the last 30 years or so, is one of these, regardless of how we adorn it. In an upcoming post, I'll very briefly review some that history. However, for the full story, from 19th century antecedents to 1970s court cases to 1990s academic dogma, this book is a goldmine.

The Left at Christian Universities part 2

In The Left at Christian Universities part 1, I briefly introduced the observation that many Christian colleges and Universities seem to be moving gradually left. This seems especially true of those that:

1) experienced recent, fairly rapid growth
2) are trying to move up in rankings/ratings, such as in the US NEWS and WORLD REPORT
3) changed from a college to a university in the last 25 years or so (often a sign of the outworking of growth and ambition to be well-thought-of, and the reflection of that in marketing initiatives).

I suppose the first question is:

Why does it matter?

It matters because of what we've learned about the typical developmental trajectory of church-related colleges over the last 100-150 years.

Simply, colleges founded by churches rarely (if ever) become secular by moving to the right. (Perhaps you know of one that I don't. If so, do you know of two? Three? There are a lot of examples the other way.) These institutions become secular by moving to the left (the Christian left) and then it seems to take a generation or so to gradually shed the Christian identity in all but name. One may conjecture about the reasons for this, and about just how the mechanisms work.

It seems critical that we examine the historical sources of the ideas that are represented in and by the Christian left and right. If an idea or perspective can be shown on historical grounds to have arisen from sources which are anti-Christian (something more than merely non-Christian), we are correct to look with great suspicion on its current manifestations, regardless of how much God-talk we surround it with. For example, rules of logic developed from the writings of Greek philosophers are merely non-Christian, not anti-Christian. On the other hand, we should be deeply suspicious of a teaching about the value of human persons that flows in a logical way from the assumption that we are mere meat machines, an anti-Christian perspective that cannot possible lead to sound moral judgments.

This is not a violation of the “all truth is God’s truth” principle. We are not talking about denying the validity of science, or the rules of logic, or the fundamental principles of economics (if we can agree on what they are), i.e., theologically neutral propositions flowing from “the general revelation”. We are talking about the danger in trying to harmonize the perspectives of people who were specifically anti-Christian with Biblical teaching; drawing their viewpoints, flowing from anti-Christian stands, into the church’s teaching, perhaps because these viewpoints sound caring, or objectively rational, or appeal to us emotionally in some way; and then wrapping the entire affair in judiciously selected Bible verses so we can assure ourselves of our continued piety, while experience a chilly frisson of self-congratulation at our open-mindedness.

How concerned should a Christian be when he finds himself agreeing on policy matters and social issues with well-known atheists? The answer, of course, is it depends. It depends on whether or not the particular matter of agreement flows from a commonly held perspective or understanding that is itself more or less theologically neutral. On the other hand, it should evoke great concern when a specific anti-Christian perspective, flowing in a consistent way from an anti-Christian worldview, becomes something we adopt as our own, having decorated it with hermeneutic distortion of Biblical texts.

The Christian left seems more likely to ally itself with initiatives and perspectives whose origin is outside the church. These include abortion “rights” (flowing from Margaret Sanger’s eugenics views, among other places), certain views of science’s role in life and faith (especially sympathy with the neo-Darwinian synthesis), diversity, multiculturalism, sympathy with socialistic approaches to social problems, anti-military perspectives (natural for Christians from the Anabaptist tradition, but not so much for others), modern environmentalism as a near religion in its own right, suspicion of the profit motive, class warfare, preoccupation with “social justice” (not the simple Biblical concern for the local poor), “borderless nations”, disdain for the USA (expressing itself in inappropriate moral equivalence arguments relating the USA, and sometimes our allies, to other nations), encouragement for gay marriage (more than civil unions with associated “couple” oriented privileges, which seems acceptable to many on the right), etc. The list could be longer, but the flavor is here.

This is not to say that all of the Christian left agrees with all of these things. And it seems possible for perhaps one of these perspectives to find root in an otherwise Christian right perspective, though it is uncommon. However, where half or more of these perspectives are present in an institution or person, it seems reasonable to affirm identification with the Christian left.

With one exception, what all of these have in common is their origins not merely in non-Christian thought, but frequently in explicitly anti-Christian thought. The exception is the specifically pacifistic Anabaptist tradition, which can encourage a thorough-going withdrawal from all civil participation that has any aspect of violence implied in its function, though this is not always completely practiced by current descendants of the Anabaptist tradition. A simple test for the “theological authenticity” of a pacifist is how willing they are for the political state to tax and redistribute to cure social problems. The threatened violence behind the power to tax is anathema to many true Anabaptists, but not to many members of the Christian left, whose concern is not primarily refraining from doing evil with violence, but with effecting specific “cures” for society’s ills, which they are only too happy to do with taxes paid by other people.

The trajectory

Christian institutions of higher education have a way of starting as small bible colleges that will fail in a decade or two if they don’t mind their onions and focus on their main mission. Then they get a little bigger, and start trying to do other things… which is fine, as long as they keep their eye on the ball. But at some point, they find that they really want to be thought well of in the eyes of the world (the marketing/message/branding thing… must get that USNEWS and World Report rating) and begin trying to arrange adequate resources and public image such that even if they failed to carry out their primary mission for 20-30 years (or CHANGED the mission, gradually and subtly), they’d still survive, and maybe even thrive. Here is how you know you’re there: when the university creates a separate PROGRAM dedicated to carrying out its current understanding of the original mission, and then advertises that it’s doing this. (Imagine Ford engaging in an advertising program to tell the world that it was now trying to make good cars....) On the surface, this looks good… but it’s in fact an acknowledgment of serious “mission creep”… and unfortunately, the fix, mandated to create objectively observable and measurable results (of something that was never meant to be so measured... "Exactly how attractive is the curve on that fender?"), is often just another kind of “mission creep”.

Upcoming posts

I’ll try to pursue each of the “Christian left” perspectives above, and review the historical roots of each. Keep in mind that I’m not an historian, I’m just a musician who reads a lot. I've been in Christian academia for a long time, and have had the privilege of talking, in depth, with fine educators of both the Christian left and Christian right perspective, though of course I identify more with the latter. I expect the theologians, philosophers, biologists, physicists, historians and social scientists to point out all the ways I've misused their disciplines. So be it. Some of them are "hoist on their own petard", in that they have talked about interdisciplinary, integrative work so much that I have taken them seriously and am trying to do it.

The principles I’ll try to follow are simple. I’ll trace the antecedents of particular ideas that I have identified as being distinctively part of the Christian left. I'll be trying to make the case that most of them are secular, that is, flowing not out of the gradual development of the historical Christian traditions, but rather appearing discontinuously from secular, frequently explicitly anti-Christian sources.

I’ll discuss the Biblical references that are made by the Christian left to support these perspectives, but I will do so in the context of the Bible overall, what is known historically about the context of the times (and sometimes what is different about the times in which we live), the teachings/behavior of the early church fathers, and the continuing tradition.

I’m not sure how long this will take.... I’ve done a lot of the reading I need to do, but there is, of course, no end to it. So hang with me as we go. Suggest a book if you wish.

The first one will be on the topic of diversity and multi-culturalism. Look for it soon, I hope.

History has still not ended

There's a lot of discussion here and there and other places about the future of the Republican party, and "conservatism" (not the same thing, of course). Some speak of the millennials as less interested in political parties, less ideological, etc. We hear that Reagan conservatism isn't going to sell anymore, and that it isn't just a matter of not having a great communicator anymore, but rather that the public just doesn't see things like it did.

Almost universally, the analysis seems to involve the assumption of stability in events, in anticipation of only small changes from current circumstances, and it assumes the ability of politicians and the media to manage message to the general public. This gives extraordinary power to the message deliverers, of course, and the better message deliverers are expected to win most of the time. In sum, this approach assumes that politics is about politicians.

But it isn't, in the end. It's about events, most of which are beyond the immediate control of any given crop of politicians.

People's memories are short. "We will never forget" has morphed into "maybe we weren't in so much danger after all". A decade ago, the left blocked drilling in Anwar and other places, because the oil wouldn't come on line for a decade, and, "It won't help us right now." But the decade has passed, and I just filled my tank with regular gas at $4.35 per gallon, self-serve. If they'd drilled then it would have helped now. Most people don't know that the two hottest years in the last century are 1934 and 1998 (1934 was the hottest, with a cooling period in between, and no one can claim the 1930s warming was due to CO2 emissions), and most people don't know that we appear not to be warming up since 1998, but cooling, if anything.

But there are likely to be developments that totally change the dynamic of things, and to quote our second president, "Facts are stubborn things."

When there is a major attack on US soil (inevitable, according to many serious observers), or possibly even on one of our allies, peoples' attention will be re-focused. If there is any obvious link between the left's less forceful approach to terrorists and their enablers (likely), there will be a re-energized right. Let's be clear: if Islamicist extremists do the deed, and if the left has curtailed programs that might have detected or stopped the attack, or removed pressure that would have diverted the attackers' attentions, or (shudder) if there is a nuclear attack carried out by anyone who got the materials to do it from an Islamic nation, the blowback will be enormous, and a very large price will be paid by the party that is identified in the public mind as having been asleep at the switch. Fool me once....

Does anyone think that Congress will be able to resist public demand for drilling when gasoline is $6.00 per gallon? If so, how about $8.00? $10.00? At some point, the dynamic changes. Sure, the left will try to pin the blame on the evil oil companies, and that miserable resource hog, the American driver. And that works for awhile, when people aren't paying that much attention. But at some point, instead of just wondering why prices are so high in a vague sort of way, people are going to DEMAND to know. There will be debate, and the old answers will be trotted out, but inevitably someone is going to get peoples' attention with the simple idea that as demand goes up and supply doesn't, the prices will rise. Few people want to drive less.

So, I think drilling is going to happen. It's just a matter of time, and public desperation. And the party that had a history of blocking it, and fights it to the end, is going to suffer, for awhile.

By the end of an Obama administration (two terms to 2016!), if we have not had a year hotter than 1998, it will be impossible to claim global warming is even real (with a straight face, anyway), let alone caused anthropogenically. (The activists have begun to suspect this... that's why they've changed the scare-phrase to "climate change", which works no matter what happens, since the climate always changes.) If the left has forced a very costly scheme to control carbon emissions in the meantime, and the economy has suffered because of it, gas prices are higher, etc., then the campaign slogan for the conservative candidate in 2016 could be, "WHAT global warming?"

None of this will stop Obama from getting elected this year, unless the terrorists are stupid enough to mount an attack on US soil before the election, or gas goes up to $6.00 per gallon immediately. I expect neither to happen immediately.

Unfortunately, I expect both during Obama's presidency, though this is one time I'd love to be wrong.

The only (very cold) comfort will be that the winds of politics will probably change direction again... for awhile, at least. It will be too late to immediately undo Obama's disastrous effect on the courts, the economy, and our national security... but it may bring an opportunity to staunch the bleeding, at least. Until, of course, the stupid Republicans who come to power in the reaction get complacent, fat and greedy, like the last crop that just lost Congress in 2006.

Pray for McCain to win, but the nation will weather an Obama administration, painfully.

The Left at Christian Universities part 1

I will be starting a series of posts on "the left" at Christian universities. It is widely assumed, I think, that most Christian universities are made up of faculty with a right-leaning tilt. While that's certainly true for some, it is not nearly true for all, and the trend-line is definitely leftward.

There are several dynamics at work in this. Over the next few weeks, I'll try to unpack my ideas about this, based on many years in the Christian academy, and some research I've been doing into trends at various institutions.

I promise, there will be something to offend nearly everyone.

For now, I will say that two clear signs of the leftward move are the creation of administrative posts to promote "diversity", and a more-or-less uncritical acceptance of the standard environmentalist narrative, particularly anthropogenic global warming.

But we'll talk.

Left to Right: the American way

Conversion from life in the real world of the CEO of Whole Foods Market: "Excerpt Of The Day: Business Is Not A Zero-Sum Game"

'At the time I started my business, the Left had taught me that business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation of consumers, workers, society, and the environment. I believed that 'profit' was a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole. However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong.

The most important thing I learned about business in my first year was that business wasn't based on exploitation or coercion at all. Instead I realized that business is based on voluntary cooperation. No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the market place; employees have competitive alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliers — they all need to cooperate to create value for their customers. If they do, then any realized profit can be divided amongst the creators of the value through competitive market dynamics.

In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win, win game — and I really like that. However, I discovered despite my idealism that our customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines, and taxes.

Were we profitable? Not at first. Safer Way managed to lose half of its capital in the first year — $23,000. Despite the loss, we were still accused of exploiting our customers with high prices and our employees with low wages. The investors weren't making a profit and we had no money to donate. Plus, with our losses, we paid no taxes. I had somehow joined the 'dark side' — I was now one of the bad guys. According to the perspective of the Left, I had become a greedy and selfish businessman. At this point, I rationally chose to abandon the leftist philosophy of my youth, because it no longer adequately explained how the world really worked.' -- John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market"

Reuters roots for Islamic militia in Somalia?

Experts say US funding Somali warlords - Yahoo! News: "(Reuters) - The United States has been funneling more than $100,000 a month to warlords battling Islamist militia in Somalia, according to a Somalia expert who has conferred with the groups in the country."

Reuters' leftist slip is showing, as usual. The USA is funding "warlords", but the Islamists are "militia"... how noble of them!

Reuters names only one source, John Prendergast, a Senior Adviser at the (non-profit) "International Crisis Group." Prendergast worked in the White House and the State Department in the Clinton administration from 1996-2001, a bit of information Reuters omits, but which bears on the objectivity of Prendergast as the only named source. All the other sources are "anonymous".

Reuters seems to think it's bad for the US to fund anti-Islamist groups in Somalia, and implies the UN is investigating US provision of arms to Somalia "warlords". Outside of the hilarity of the UN investigating anything at all, the obvious point is simple.

Shouldn't the US do what it can to prevent an Islamist takeover of Somalia, with all the potential for Taliban-style rule that would be a certainty?

The Left and the Right

Here are some quotes from the online presence of the Communist Party and the NAZI Party in the USA:

Communist Party USA Online -: "A Call to Action: Defend Democracy, Change Congress in the 2006 Elections!
by CPUSA National Committee, 03/10/2006 15:11
The Bush-Cheney Administration has plunged our nation into the worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War. The abuses of power they have committed are legion: an illegal pre-emptive war, lying to Congress and the people, warrant-less spying, mass incarceration of innocent people here and around the world, torture, corrupt no-bid contracts with crony corporations like Halliburton, criminal negligence in abandoning the victims of Hurricane Katrina..."

The American Nazi Party: "The year is 2025, White people HAVE become a MINORITY in America. On our streets hang Aryan men who refused to accept the 'New Way,' or perhaps they just looked too White. Perhaps they never thought MUD RULE would really come.
White girls who refuse the advances of Negroids, are publicly gang-raped so as to serve as examples to other shuddering Aryan females. Children are now taken from their houses, by force, to be brought up in a 'Multi-Cultural' home of Negroids, Arabs, Muslims and Gooks, all in the name of 'brotherhood and love'...

And yet, some fight back! Alone or in small cells, Aryans...men and boys...but most of all women who stand the most to lose, since the decline of real men among the White Folk, strike back...at night and with any weapon near at hand."

Aryan Attack (a publication of the National Socialist Movement, a NAZI organization):
"A nation’s economy dramatically influences the daily lives of all of its citizens. Today we suffer under a greed based Jewish economy. From the Jew Alan Greenspan, who heads the nation’s financial decision making body, the Federal Reserve, to the average sheeple who’ve bought into the Jew lie of Wall Street swindler and Jew Ivan Boesky that “greed is healthy,” altruism and the good of the whole is a dead thought. What’s important in today’s society is greed and its accompanying individualism. “It’s all about me” is the prevailing attitude.

In sharp contrast to this self-centered destructive worldview is National Socialism. National Socialism offers the only long term workable economic system. And it’s proven. When the world was suffering through a terrible economic depression, National Socialist Germany was not! What made the Nazi economy work, while the Jew based economies of the rest of the world failed?"

It's pretty common to talk about the Democratic Party in the USA as "the left" and the Republican Party as "the right".

From where I sit, it looks like the Democratic Party is attuned to the very, very far left, the Republican Party sits in the center, and their is no mainstream party on the "right" at all.

Click the links above. Read the sites. Notice how much Democratic rhetoric closely follows the Communist Party, and how distinct Republican rhetoric is from the NAZI Party.

Draw your own conclusions...

The Bear Dances and Sings

CNN and FOX are covering the election in Iraq.

I can only stand in awe of the courage of these determined voters. Their sheer guts and commitment to show up at all should be a lesson to nay-sayers everywhere about what people in this part of the world really want. How many voters would show up in, say, Chicago, in a similar situation? I don't know... but these Iraqi voters deserve our very highest respect.

CNN's current online headline is "Iraqis vote amid scattered attacks". Roughly half the TV coverage from CNN seems to be about the attacks today, but a solid half is about the vote itself.

FOX's headline is "Iraq's Historic Vote Begins". The first paragragh tells of attacks, but also provides context: lots of voters, and many foiled attacks, as well as some successful ones. FOX's TV coverage is stressing the protection provided by Iraqi forces, police and military, directly around the polling places. FOX has shown many entire families, from elderly to young children (presumably not voting yet...), walking together to polling places... in some cases carrying Iraqi flags, showing thumbs up to the camera, etc.

Both cable networks have provided reasonable coverage on how many Iraqi women are voting, although it seems to have been inadvertent in one CNN report, where the reporter could not be heard over all the women talking in the polling place.

ABCNEWS is carrying a story stressing the attacks, predicting lack of Sunni turnout, stressing how bad the result of a low Sunni turnout will be, etc. Big shock. Little mention of who is providing the election security... mostly Iraqis around the polling places. All attacks listed in GREAT detail.

Another ABC article, IRAQI HISTORY MAY COLOR VIEWS OF ELECTION tries to downplay the importance of a successful election. I consider this to be evidence that the election must be going well in the eyes of the editors.