Has there ever been a group of people bound by a political false narrative that have been consistently wrong over many years, and be able to survive as a politically significant entity? In retrospect there were observations to be made that could have been used to define the moral predicates that were behind the faux logic of many on the left even in the late 1960’s when I went to college. In my opinion this false narrative in our country all started in the late fifties and early sixties in education.
One glaring observation that I can make today, is that very few of my college professors—no matter their age, were married and had children. Like so many people that aspire to professional careers, families are an afterthought until over the years they become a never thought. In fact, even though we were a Lutheran University, very few went to church on Sunday, and my sophomore year the faculty council voted to do away with the once-a-week chapel requirement. Thank goodness because I was a year behind in my “chapel obligation” and I would have been required to go twice a week to make it up before graduation.
Most of the professors and instructors in the social sciences were not married, though a few certainly enjoyed dating several of their students—at the same time—both gal and guy professors. They often partied with their students. Many were deep into the drug culture and MJH was something more common than ETOH. They had time to march at Kent State, in Columbus, and in Washington DC. Many times, they skipped classes to march and had a TA stand in for them or cancel the class all together. The cause didn’t seem to matter—Viet Nam, Civil Rights in the South—of course there were no racists in Ohio! It was always to march against something—not for something.
The profile of the basic science and engineering professors was very different. For the most part they all wore a shirt and tie. Classes met every day and attendance was taken. They for the most part had 4-hour labs per week in addition to class. In short, they had no time to waste at a demonstration because their classwork took so much out of each week. They also for the most part professed a conservative and many a Christian ideology. I had a chemistry professor last week of the fall term use equations using entropy, enthalpy and heats of reaction, plus special relativity, to prove the first three Chapters of the Genesis story. I didn’t understand the math then and I have taken out my notes on several occasions over the past 50 years and I still don’t understand the math.
We had a Spanish professor Senior Juan Favale who was most interesting. He had married Fidel Castro’s sister. He was energetic, athletic, and a true intellectual. He was a devout Catholic and a devout American Patriot.
I paint this picture of my own educational journey because I truly believe that the example that most young people who go to college should follow is the example of their own parents. After 4 years of indoctrination the ideas, values and moral predicates of most Americans who have chosen to have children and raise and sacrifice for their families, seem to be subordinated to a faux nominalist-humanistic ethos of relativism. There has never been a society that could exist beyond two generations, unless the culture of that society embraced a moral philosophy grounded in the reality of one’s dependence on a higher power—let’s just call that power God, or Devine Providence or “Joe”. A moral code produced by a higher power would be unchanging and one that could lead a people into perpetuity. A moral code based on the whim of a person, or a human who thinks themselves to be a God, lasts as long as that person is still in power. Many times, in history that human “Godhead” leaves this earth without their own head.
“Whether we choose to be led by the Lord, Or lorded by the loudest tongue” RK
In the end the lesson I believe that is missing from higher education today, is the lesson of the value of work. Maybe if you have time in your schedule to demonstrate against Isreal, against the police, against our President, or against “white privilege”, there is not enough work to do in your studies.
In the words of Pope Leo XIII, “work should be oriented not to self-aggrandizement, or to the saturation of selfish desires, but rather it should be focused on the service to others and in obedience to God’s Commandments” which have always proven to be the moral standards and predicates to both spiritual and temporal joy. The hole in our hearts that we try to fill with other things cannot be filled with sex or drugs or money. What college professor would ever say such a thing? I know a lot of mothers and fathers who teach that to their children every day in word and example.
I see little happiness or joy on the political left today. Maybe they should fill their hearts with something else other than “things”.
