Higher Education and Rational Control

by Peter Augustine Lawler
Serenity now; or, getting over yourself

So I’ve found a few minutes this afternoon to work on the keynote talk I’m giving next Saturday at the conference of the professors who teach with core texts. Theirs is the only teaching method and delivery system I can believe in. Here is a very rough taste:

Higher education, Tocqueville says, is countercultural in a democracy because it’s basically aristocratic. That is, it privileges the truth about the human soul and the cosmos over the kind of utility that chains philosophy and science to economics, politics, and medicine. Higher education, from a democratic view, can be regarded as inconsiderate and sterile. Nothing ever gets done! The time for talk is over, and the time for action is now, say both the social-justice warriors and the disruptive innovators. 

As Neil deGrasse Tyson says, what time do we have for philosophy and theory when we have to be able to fend off the asteroids threatening to pulverize our planet? And then there’s the climate that’s always threatening to change enough to make human life or even human flourishing impossible to sustain on our planet.  

There’s no time to raise the merely theoretical question of the meaning of climate change. Or to wonder whether there’s a lot more than we often realize about our sometimes paranoid preoccupation with the extinction of life or of our species. And there’s our transhumanists who are spending so much time and treasure trying to deploy technology to fend off their own personal extinctions. One’s own biological death, they think, is no longer a reality that we accept in order to live well and be happy; death has become a problem to be solved. 

From the point of view of higher education, the dominant view of the great books across the ages is that philosophy is learning how to die, to get over obsessing about your personal significance. Being itself is not in our hands, and it’s the fate of persons to be extinguished, unless there’s a personal and loving God willing to save us. Some raging against the dying of the light is to be expected and can even be noble, as long as you don’t forget that the light is being extinguished, no matter what you may do.

But, the middle-class democrat responds, the resulting serenity now gets in the way of what we really can do to control our environment and make the lives of persons more secure. The dissident philosopher-novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the most courageous persons of the 20th century, says that what’s wrong with the Americans is their lack of a clear and calm attitude toward death. But maybe that’s what’s right with them: They’re all about being agents of change, about bringing the future under our rational control. 

But if the point of life is to extend one’s own being through rational control, then there’s very little place for real higher education. That might be the main reason that what remains of liberal education in our country is under siege.

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Donald Trump and the Unpanderables

by Peter Spiliakos
How Do You Pander to The Disengaged?

Response To...

Organizing the Atomized

Yoni Appelbaum writes that Trump voters are disproportionately less likely to be involved in religious or any other voluntary organizations.  Appelbaum thinks it will be tough for Trump to win with a core constituency that has so little experience of working within voluntary groups.  That might be true, but the nature or Trump’s support might also explain why so many conventional politicians overlooked the existence of such a large, disaffected constituency.

Appelbaum’s column is consistent with something I wrote a while back.  The reason business interests and (to a much lesser degree) religious conservatives have so much influence in Republican politics isn’t money.  How much did all of that donor money help Jeb Bush?

The business lobbies and religious conservatives have social capital, and social capital is about relationships.  Local chambers of commerce and church organizations can bring in politicians to discuss issues.  The politicians hear about the concerns of the business owners and church members. The politicians can adjust their political strategy accordingly.  The politicians also get some insight into the shared values and idioms of these groups.

People who are civically disengaged don’t hold business luncheons or church suppers.  The lack of formal organizations means it is tough for politicians to get a sense of what disengaged people think.  These disengaged voters are in the blind spot of the right’s politicians.  Ironically Trump, with his background in the entertainment mass media, had a better sense of what these voters were thinking that the politicians who have spent decades going all over the country talking to civic groups.

The most obvious case of this disconnect was Scott Walker.  Walker did fine when the priorities of right-populist wage-earners overlapped with those of his more affluent suburban base.  But Walker flopped when he ran for president and tried to make a play for Trump’s immigration restrictionist voters.  It wasn’t that Walker was too good to sell out to these voters.  He wanted to sell out.  He tried to sell out.  But like with Trump and pro-lifers, Walker didn’t know the idiom.

Reaching those civically disengaged voters is a problem without an obvious solution, but getting a better understanding of those voters should be a priority.  It calls for in-depth survey research and extensive small-group interviewing.  This could be done by either partisan organizations like the RNC or by ideological groups like the ones funded by the Koch brothers.  The more the merrier.

But instead of that, you have politicians and intellectuals hoping that they can use public relations razzle dazzle to win over this group.  That is the real hope of a Ryan Miracle at the Cleveland convention.  They hope that selling Ryan as exciting, unifying, and optimistic will get the disaffected to shrug and go along.  That is a bad bet. 

h/t Ramesh Ponnuru  

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Cruz in Control

by Peter Augustine Lawler

It is, once again, more likely than ever that Cruz will be the Republican nominee. There is little chance it will be Trump, and about no chance it will be anyone else.

Trump didn’t do that badly in Wisconsin, and overall he’s fading only slightly. His campaign is in disarray and all that, but that only means he doesn’t have what it takes to expand beyond his hugely devoted base.

Cruz, however, seems to have consolidated the Rubio vote. And the biggest news from Wisconsin might be Kasich tanking.

Cruz is not quite nominated. He still has to not be swamped in New York and Pennsylvania and win rather decisively in California. Otherwise there will be “democratic legitimacy” issues. Note that he’s now the favorite in California, according to the 538 experts, and he will continue to extend his lead as Kasich fades away. Cruz also is now a pretty strong second in Pennsylvania, where Kasich is also losing support.

The “New York values” thing is haunting Cruz in New York, where he might finish third. It will be, I think, a respectable enough third.

Neither Cruz nor Trump will go to the convention with a majority of delegates, and Trump will almost surely have a plurality. But it is also true, as Nate Silver and others have noticed, that many more delegates will be for Cruz than are free to vote for him on the first ballot. Overall, the delegates will end up being much more pro-Cruz than either the voters or the establishment. An unexpectedly small number of the delegates will actually be whole-hog Trumpians. Cruz’s hard work in dominating delegate selection will pay off.  

So more experts today than before are agreeing with the obvious point that for Trump it’s first ballot or bust. And Wisconsin was his last chance at dodging the bust.

Damon Linker, meanwhile, is wrong to predict that the only alternative to Trump is chaos. It’s increasingly likely that the convention that chooses Cruz on the second ballot won’t be all that chaotic. Cruz will be in control. Every other candidate should have imitated Cruz on his ground game and mastery of details. In that sense, Cruz will be getting what he deserves.

I’m reporting this as a value-free social scientist. But people without values can still laugh at those Cruzophobes who still imagine the “never Trump” convention will nominate someone other than Cruz. I’m not laughing at Cruzophobia as such; I feel its pain, and I’ve signed up for therapy. 

On the Democratic side: Bernie keeps winning and with another impressive margin. It remains the case that he will be nominated if he wins in both New York and California. He won’t if he doesn’t.

 Hillary says no more being nice.  Bernie has to die, and the main weapon will be a huge number of very negative commercials. We’ll see if that approach will work better for her.

 

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Why Did Huma Slip?

by Carl Eric Scott

The recent Huma Abedin interview in People probably strikes many as a more or less forgettable red-meat story for conservatives. We already knew something was weird with this gal, although sure enough, it gets a little weirder yet:

Clinton’s longtime aide raves about the former secretary of state as she recounts their meeting: “You know these things that happen in your life that just stick? She walked by and she shook my hand and our eyes connected and I just remember having this moment where I thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ “

“And it just inspired me. You know, I still remember the look on her face. And it’s funny, and she would probably be so annoyed that I say this, but I remember thinking; ‘Oh my God, she’s so beautiful and she’s so little!’ “

So the usual outlets post it up, and we scroll down to the comments to peek at few of the ugly jokes about Hillary’s sex life. Yawn. Yuck. Time to move on to the next story.

But I’d advise you to look again, and to think. Huma’s statement to People is so daft in the way it draws attention and lends credibility to the rumors about her and Hillary being lovers that it seems at least as likely to be a statement made for inner-circle tactical reasons as one sincerely made in an unguarded moment.

If it is the former, that would be very disturbing, because it would mean that along with every other sign of the corruption permeating the House of Clinton, we’re seeing that in the midst of Hillary’s primary campaign, a top aide issues an implicit threat to reveal more of what she knows, or to tell more believable tales, unless she gets the attention, power, and promises she is after. And yes, her Muslim Brotherhood connections are very serious ones.  Even if we someday learn that Huma’s motivations to get into Clinton’s circle were fundamentally detached from any foreign and/or Islamist agenda, what I suspect this statement reveals about her relationship with Hillary is quite troubling.

Again, it could just be an unguarded moment in which a genuinely homosexual attraction to another of the same sex​, or, a merely marginally-erotic one, is revealed. And can’t a heterosexual woman observe that another woman she is close to is beautiful without suggesting that she harbors gay thoughts? Well yes, but speaking the way Huma did takes a certain obliviousness in our era.  Moreover, another of Huma’s statements in the interview, that “I think that if my boss quit tomorrow, she will go down as one of the greatest American women in the history of the world,” sounds air-head enough that it suggests that she is just the sort of unintelligent and unsophisticated type capable of making the “she’s so beautiful” statement with utter sincerity, and unaware of what will be read into it.  

And Abedin not only presents herself as being unsophisticated in her manner of speaking, but also in her approach to political life:

“I have a policy,” she added. “I never read anything about myself. I could count on one hand how many actual interviews I’ve done. I’ll never read them. I just don’t want to know. If it’s about me personally, I honestly just ignore it.”

Well, that strikes the reader as understandable, given the Hillary’s lesbian lover! speculations that grew up around her early on. Don’t we all detest what we see in the comments on any story about Huma? Who could blame her for not wanting to read those? 

But wait a sec . . . this is coming from a woman who is said to be “one of the key glues that holds Clintonworld together”? Who married, and stayed married to, Anthony Weiner? Who used her connection with Clinton to pressure Democratic donors to back his shameless and ill-fated mayoral run, and who, if one friend of hers is to be believed, at the same time covered over what she knew about his continued sexual disorders?

She never reads anything about herself?

Hmm . . .

Keep reading this post . . .

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Paul Ryan for President?

by Peter Spiliakos
A Cure That Is Actually The Disease

It is not quite impossible that we might get a GOP presidential nominee that was not among the presidential candidates.  You could end up with a situation that the loyalist Cruz, Trump, Kasich, and Rubio delegates end up hating each other so much that nobody can get 1237 delegates.  It isn’t the most likely scenario, but it is possible.  Even in that case, Paul Ryan would be a terrible choice and the idea that he would be a good compromise (or any kind of compromise) is indicative of the arrogance and insularity that got the GOP leadership into this mess.

Ryan is an open supporter of the comprehensive immigration bill that would have provided upfront legalization and doubled future immigration flows.  If anything unites Cruz and Trump supporters, it is this Washington/Chamber of Commerce approach to immigration policy.

Ryan is also a supporter of tax reform that would , if you read between the lines of public his comments, cut the tax liabilities of high-earners.  He is also a supporter of cuts to the old-age entitlement programs (as am I.)  One can hardly imagine a combination of policies better designed to alienate Trump supporters than amnesty, tax cuts for the rich, Social Security and Medicare reductions, and doubling immigration.     

Ryan wouldn’t be a terrible candidate because he didn’t run, or because he is a Washington insider.  He would be a terrible candidate because he is a conviction politician whose convictions (on some major issues) have been rejected by the vast majority of his party’s presidential primary voters.

The Ryan fantasy is only one symptom of a resilient disease.  Ryan’s backers have not reckoned with the reality of public opinion within their party.  They honestly think that they can win everything at the convention after having lost everything at the ballot box.  They are as delusional as any Trump proposal.

The Republican Party (and more importantly the center-right political coalition) is badly divided.  Any healing will involve a message that speaks to the populist conservatives who support Ted Cruz, the working-class moderates who support Donald Trump and general election swing-voters too.  The Ryan fantasists think that all it takes is a pretty face and speaking the proper incantations to get dissenting voters to forget their own interests and priorities. It was that fantasy that gave us the RNC “autopsy” that said the GOP agenda was just fine except for comprehensive immigration reform. 

Paul Ryan is a good man with some good ideas, but he can’t be the solution to the GOP’s dilemma because his blindness (a blindness that is common among GOP elites) is the cause of the GOP’s dilemma.   

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Slowly, Professor

by Carl Eric Scott

I agree with this, uh, too much for my own good.

In their new book, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy …Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber apply the principles of the “slow” movement to academia. Proudly proclaiming themselves “slow professors,” the authors offer insights on how to manage teaching, research and collegiality in an era when more professors feel “beleaguered, managed, frantic, stressed and demoralized” as they juggle the increasingly complex expectations of students, the administration, colleagues – and themselves. “Distractedness and fragmentation characterize contemporary academic life,” they write.

I’m such a slow professor I can’t get in the door!  A perpetually visiting or adjunct-ing gypsy scholar.  Still, they’re right, right?  I recommend reading their piece with Papa Haydn in the background.  Or, sure, in the foreground.  

One of the more important things for a professor to do these days is to go outside and be seen reading. Office hours out on the quad, or around it peripatetic style. Especially this month, when a lot of students get a case of spring fever disastrously intersecting with their already being behind.  Set for them the example that the pleasures of the outdoor air can be combined with some of the tasks they have–and indeed, that for the most serious of their tasks, the slow reading of a great book, the doing of it outdoors might actually help.   

When it’s too cold this should be done in the most soulfully-quiet yet still-visible place in the library.  We gotta encourage those librarians–let them see that their place still rightfully belongs to the book, not to the screen.  Another good practice is walking around the school’s track with a Loeb in hand, preferably while the football team is practicing and the coaches are screamin’ their heads off.  Sure, you’ll probably get 50% less reading done, but you’ll burn some calories and maybe put the idea into some puzzled student’s brain that college has something to do with thinking.  Walk all over the place like this.  And if you fall into a hole in the ground like Thales did, that is what health insurance is for, and it’ll give your students a funny story to share.

I suppose I could compose an SLO (“Student Learning Outcome”) that would cover all of that, but doing so would keep me from good reading, good conversation, and all the other good things about academic life that Berg and Seeger remind us to fight for.  There’s a time for rapid-fire talk and hyper-connected multi-tasking, but it sure shouldn’t characterize most of the time of those charged with cultivating the life of the mind.

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Trump’s Nomination Is Getting Even Less Likely

by Peter Augustine Lawler

It’s getting easier for me to say that Trump won’t be nominated. And harder not to say I told you so.

For one thing, Trump’s been goofier than ever. But that’s not the main piece of data to consider today. As Nate Silver points out, those who bet on elections have reduced Trump’s chances, but still peg him the favorite. They also think that it’s now likely going to be a contested convention. The bettors are contradicting themselves. There’s no way Trump can win after the first ballot. Lots of the delegates pledged to him now will bolt once unbound.

So Nate says that, for Trump, it’s first ballot or bust. That means bust. And almost surely Cruz, who is outwitting Trump and everyone else on the delegate-selection front. Cruz has an at least 75 percent chance of being nominated.

Our friend Henry Olsen’s scheme of a Cruz–Kasich cartel carving out spheres of influence was cited favorably by the New York Times. Both the New York Times and Henry, of course, hope for a convention that won’t nominate what the newspaper calls a ”dangerously ignorant” or  “dangerously reactionary” nominee.

Cruz and Kasich shouldn’t waste much time or treasure attacking each other, though. Each candidate should present himself as a safe and self-controlled alternative to Trump. Let them learn from the ridiculous war between Bush and Rubio that killed them both.

I just explained why that a ”never Trump” alliance isn’t necessary to keep Trump from being nominated. Cruz is certainly more aware of that than ever. I will add, as I have before, that “never Trump” is not a candidate, and the alliance would sap some energy out of the campaigns of both Cruz and Kasich. It’s also sort of undemocratic.

 Let voters everywhere have the maximum conceivable choice, which isn’t, after all, exactly huge.

Let Cruz be Cruz, and Kasich be Kasich.  Each guy makes a good case for himself. Let me remind you that the case for Kasich is that studies show he’s the one most likely to actually win in November. The case for Cruz as the one and only real conservative is the one that will almost surely prevail at the convention, largely because he will have so many loud and proud delegates and a surprising number of closeted ones. 

Finally, for our Democratic friends or for those who place down bets, Sanders still has a maybe 15 percent of being nominated. Ignore the delegate count. Bernie’s in if he wins in New York and California. Unlikely? Sure. Possible?  He’s only down 12 percent and surging in the latest New York study.

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Americanism on Screen

by Carl Eric Scott
Martha Bayles on America's Cultural Diplomacy

I missed Martha Bayles’s essay “How the World Perceives the New American Dream” when it first came out last fall.  It is a useful sketch of the main themes discussed and researched in her 2014 book Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad.  

Having just written an essay reflecting on classic Hollywood’s self-assigned mission in the 1935-ish to 1963-ish window to try serve American cultural health, and by extension, to give the world that was consuming its films a positive and less-sensationalistic sense of what our culture was about, the tid-bit I find most interesting is the Bollywood-not-Hollywood attitude of Nigerians towards today’s films:  

This summer I was in Nigeria, meeting with Hausa-speaking journalists, when over lunch the subject of movies came up. One young man, recently returned from covering the ravages of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the country’s northeast, said that he and his wife disliked Hollywood movies because they were “too immoral.” Most Nigerians, Christians as well as Muslims, prefer Bollywood films, he told me, because they are about topics tradition-minded people can relate to, such as generational conflict over arranged marriage.

Yes, it does us little good, whether we want to fight against the current global trend of Democracy in Retreat, or whether we want to more seriously try to fight the spreading attraction of Islamist politics, when our current television and film producers are turning out the ultra-cynical, the porny, and as Bayles most astutely notices in her must-read analyses of the astounding popularity of Friends and Sex in the City abroad, the obsessed-with-extended-adolescence.  The perceptions of what democratic culture finally amounts to conveyed by these shows, and similar media products, aide the efforts of those who preach Islamism, the anti-democratic “China-model” for development, etc.  

I provide more extended reflections on Bayles’s book in my epic essay “Globally-Conscious Americanism that Ain’t Globalist.”  That essay is your Ellisonian, Tocquevillian, McWilliams-ian, Manentian, and Jeff Sessions-praising antidote to the dumb slogans/proposals in favor of “globalist education,” on one hand, while keeping you from the temptation to run to Trumpian inward-Americanism on the other.  

To make up another label on the spot, I suppose you could say Bayles and I are for rooted interculturalism, and that part of that means there’s no getting around all Americans’ civic and cultural responsibility for what Americanism comes to mean, not just for ourselves, but for the world.  

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