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Don’t Ask for a Refund: Not Even Attacked

Don’t Ask for a Refund: Not Even Attacked

Last updated on: March 27, 2017 at 7:55 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Don’t Ask for a Refund: Not Even Attacked 2017-03-27T07:55:44-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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During the horrible circus fire of 1944, when many children were burned alive, this happened:

Another officer had had a long day. He’d started before noon, doing traffic on Barbour for the big crowd coming in. Now he drew duty at the Brown School, becoming the officer in charge. Three adults approached him. “Where do we get our refunds for our circus tickets?” they asked. The man was so nonplused he didn’t even laugh at them. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know. We’re not taking care of that here.”

O’Nan, Stewart (2008-12-10). The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy (p. 175). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In the midst of an existential crisis, some people don’t get it. They think the problem is the money they have paid for the tickets. So it is with too many Christians when it comes to higher education. Their ideas are ignored, their principles mocked, but they are worried about Division 1 football or the bill.

Are you a traditional Christian?

You are not even wrong at most schools. Your ideas are not mentioned. If they are mentioned, they are not engaged, but mocked. There are noble exceptions at most places, but they are too often tokens or exceptional (Princeton University).

Whatever the merits of a free market, in many majors you would be more likely to meet a socialist than a free-marketeer. When someone does oppose big government, they have too few colleagues to engage in the kind of argument that leads to intellectual health. They must represent their people and ignore the fact that conservatism is so diverse that it would take scores of conservatives to represent the full spectrum of ideas.

Religious people might have their disagreements, but at most colleges and universities there are not enough theists to bother with those arguments. State schools might have a women’s studies program devoted to ideologies hostile to traditional Christianity, but it will not have a major (or a women’s program) in traditional views of the family.

This makes debates easy to win, since most academics have not faced existential disagreement since they went to college themselves. Sadly, there is not enough dissent to left-of-center opinion to generate much more than an argument between various degrees of leftism. Clinton represents the “right wing” option in many departments.

Red state legislatures are paying for their own destruction. Why does Texas have a public university system and a private college system much like you would find in New York or California? Why does South Carolina have an academic culture like Washington?

If you have a minority opinion on the left, the University will (generally) protect you and it will be easy to find professors and administrators who will take you seriously. If you have minority opinions on the right, finding role models will be much harder. Imagine being an open Marxist on social media. You will not face problems in getting university recognition, but if you are a traditional Christian, you would be wise to keep your views to yourself.

Protests of speakers at many colleges have gotten attention, but notice: these are speakers invited by student groups. Rare it is for there to be a faculty sponsor who will say more about that speaker than: “I am here to support his or her’s right to speech.”

Intellectual diversity exists, but only of a sort.

This is true, but this also is true: the American university and college system is wonderful. Good work is done. Research in areas like science solves many physical problems. Many schools contain conservative or traditional Christian faculty who provide an alternative. Our schools, colleges, and universities have great collections of art, books, and original documents. They are dedicated to research and this is also a good thing.

Traditional Christians should want a place at this table and not to destroy the table.

This is the hard part! Instead of using power, my idea is this: let’s solve problems that the modern college and university is not solving and so out flank them without destroying them. Many traditional Christians or conservatives will be called to work, quietly, inside the system, but I want to change everything by going around the problem.

What if we educated those nobody educates? Schools are not eager to educate in inner cities or in rural areas. The students in our neighborhood are as ignored by government schools as conservatives and Christians are. They are given schools that have no text books, bad teachers, and horrific curriculum. The education of the good students is sacrificed to the “right” of a thug to stay in school.

What if we served our way to a place at the table?

That is the way for Christians. The Saint Constantine strategy is to let the barbarians have Rome if we must, leaving some saints like Benedict behind to do what can be done. Instead, we will build a new and better city. We will save what can be saved and do what can be done.

This can be done, but only if traditional Christians realize they cannot just choose the “state” option anymore. Too many of us have confused the football team with the school. . . and so given up our children to Moloch.

We can do better, but we must do better without hate, despair, or violence. Let’s just win and not worry about the ticket price.

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