Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2013

Spring 2013

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INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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Your Future. Your Liberty.

Your ISI.

The Intercollegiate Review is the flagship publication of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

Since 1953, ISI has been teaching future leaders the principles that make America free and prosperous. ISI prepares students for a lifetime of leadership and provides the educational resources necessary to discover, embrace, and advance liberty.

Join the ISI community and learn more about the benefits of your complimentary student membership:

JOIN.ISI.ORG “ISI WAS HANDS DOWN THE MOST MEANINGFUL PART OF MY COLLEGE CAREER.” —SAMANTHA LEAHY, CLEMSON UNIVERSITY, CLASS OF 2012

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INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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CONTENTS 18 STUDENT VOICES

You Can Plant the Grass Roots Harvard undergrad Michael Cowett on making an impact beyond the campus

What You Can Learn from “Sex Week” at Yale Bijan Aboutorabi reports from the front lines of the campus culture wars

28 ARTS & MANNERS Tyranny on Screen

Five Satires Your Professors Won’t Assign You The Best Ideas You Can Read for Free

2 PUBLISHER’S NOTE

32 Urgent Memo from the Dean of Diversity

3 CAMPUS CHAOS The five dumbest courses

8 FEATURE

The “Truths” They Hold

20 OFFICE HOURS

Paul Kengor explains where progressives want to take the country

Princeton professor Robert P. George answers students’ questions

The Truths We Hold The IR editors explain America’s founding principles

22 FREEDOM HALL

16 NOTES FROM THE CONSERVATIVE UNDERGROUND

24 GOD ON THE QUAD

Resistance is not futile

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(Three hundred) words of wisdom

Longtime Georgetown professor James V. Schall, SJ, on using reason to keep your faith

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Publisher’s Note

A Clash of Worldviews

W

PU B LISH E R elcome to the new Intercollegiate Review, the magazine for students Christopher Long who want to think and live free.

E DITOR When was the last time you heard someone mention the word Jed Donahue ­liberty? You are much more likely to hear professors and fellow students talk SE N IOR E DITOR about progress, equality, fairness, justice, and diversity. So it is no surprise that John Zmirak when most people think about politics and political power, they imagine things MANAG I NG E DITOR they want the government to do for them or to others. This mind-set overlooks Anthony Sacramone what people ought to be free to do for themselves, without the government ASSOCIATE E DITOR involved. The quest for such freedom motivated America’s Founding Fathers to Christopher Fisher write a Constitution that limits the power of government and protects our GodART DI R ECTOR given—not government-given—right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Glenn Pierce Many professors today ignore or disparage the principles on which America DESIG N E R built its historic freedom and prosperity: individual liberty, limited government, Daniel Trost free enterprise, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and traditional values.

ADVE RTISI NG MANAG E M E NT The rights and freedoms that we often take for granted represent hard-won Publishing Management Associates Inc. victories in countless struggles. Many professors and students are eager to CONTR I B UTI NG E DITORS surrender those liberties, to trade their freedom for the perceived safety and Bijan Aboutorabi, Yale equality promised by wielding the state’s coercive power against individuals and Tony Alimi, Princeton communities.

Michael Cowett, Harvard We are faced with two competing worldviews, and we must choose how we Stephen Herreid, College of St. Mary ­Magdalen will live . . . and how our children will live after us. The Intercollegiate Review Kelsey Rupp, UNC at Chapel Hill seeks to defend the principles of freedom and confront the growing threats. At Adam Schwartzman, Dartmouth the heart of this issue you will find a pair of articles laying out these competing worldviews (see pages 8 and 9).

This magazine is an inteWE ARE FACED WITH TWO gral part of the Intercollegiate COMPETING WORLDVIEWS, AND WE MUST Studies Institute’s work to educate for liberty. For sixty years .

ISI has been inspiring students to discover, embrace, and advance the principles and virtues that make America free and prosperous. If your interest is piqued by the ideas in the Intercollegiate Review, you might enjoy ISI’s other educational programs. We offer scholarships, fellowships, and internships; the chance to network and build friendships with The I ntercollegiate R eview (ISSN #0020-5249) is like-minded students and professors; conferences on liberty and limited governpublished two times during the academic year by the Interment; the opportunity to form reading groups, run student publications, and collegiate Studies Institute, Inc., 3901 Centerville Road, Wilmington, DE 19807-1938. Intercollegiate Studies Instihost prominent speakers on your campus; and much more. tute, Inc. © 2013. All rights reserved.

All student members on the ISI mailing list receive I hope that you enjoy this issue, and that we hear from you. America is in need the I ntercollegiate R eview free of charge during the academic year. Nonmembers may subscribe to the magof a new generation of leaders who think and live free.

CHOOSE HOW WE WILL LIVE

Cheers,

Christopher Long President, ISI

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INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

azine at $15/two issues or $28/four issues. Please visit­ www.intercollegiatereview.com to subscribe or for ­further information. Direct all correspondence to the above address. Address changes may be sent to update@isi.org.

Direct advertising inquiries to Publishing Management Associates Inc., 129 Phelps Avenue, Suite 312, Rockford, IL 61108-2447, 815-398-8569, pma-inc.net.

Opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily represent the views of ISI or the editors. The responsibility for opinions and accuracy of facts in articles rests solely with the individual authors.

For more information on ISI, visit www.isi.org.

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It used to be—back in the days when female dorms were guarded as carefully as bank vaults and professors dressed like characters out of Mad Men or Harry Potter—that you had to learn a specific set of facts and ideas to graduate from college. Really, we aren’t kidding. In fact, there used to be mandatory courses with set reading lists that every BA student on campus took, like it or not. Undergraduates typically sat in these classes in freshman or sophomore year, in large lecture halls where full professors (not nervous grad students) taught “surveys” meant to bring people up to speed on subjects they might not have learned enough about in their (widely divergent) high schools.

It’s hard to imagine, but colleges used to insist that students master whole bodies of knowledge about subjects they might not even be interested in, using parts of their brains they hadn’t already developed, learning the basics of disciplines they might not ever use. The theory behind these old-fashioned “core curricula” was that every student ought to be literate concerning the basics of the culture he or she lived in—the books that formed its ideas, the ideas that formed its institutions, the institutions that intercollegiatereview.com

HAR VAR D U N IVE R S IT Y

The Literature & Arts B Requirement Instead of studying Renaissance art, students at Harvard can enroll in this class.

“Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee” Against the background of radical theories of racial formation and identity politics in America, this course will comparatively explore controversial images of African Americans and Italian Americans in selected films of two of the most important contemporary American filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. On their road to becoming i­conic figures in America’s contemporary cinematic and a­rtistic avant-garde, Scorsese and Lee radically transformed ­received or conventional perceptions of Italian Americans and African Americans in mainstream American film. In this course, we will explore both similar and contrastive styles and approaches by the two filmmakers.

STAN F O R D U N IVE R S IT Y

The Math Requirement More interested in football than science? At Stanford you can kill off the one math class required of nonscience majors this way.

“The Mathematics of Sports” The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the use of mathematics, statistics, and probability in the analysis of sports performance, sports records, and strategy. Topics include mathematical analysis of the physics of sports and the determinations of optimal strategies. Our objective is for students to use these tools over the duration of the course to develop new diagnostic statistics and strategies for sports.

INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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shaped its laws, and the laws that governed the country.

Every BA student, regardless of major, had to conquer these classes to graduate. So you had future ad execs in courses on the American Revolution, aspiring politicians reading Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton, psychology majors thumbing through the King James Bible. These were the kinds of classes Bluto and Flounder were cutting in the movie Animal House—and no wonder. New ideas only aggravate a hangover.

In the late 1960s, however, student radicals took over campuses across the country and tore down every “repressive” structure that stood in the way of their doing . . . pretty much whatever they wanted. Single-sex colleges and even dorms mostly disappeared; dress codes were stripped away; and core curriculum lists were largely put in the shredder. I­nstead, you could broaden your mind not by learning specific things about the civilization in which you lived but by dipping your toe into a wide array of classes, broken out into fuzzy “discipline clusters.” So instead of a class in U.S. history, you could study the history of the country your grandparents came from.

Rather than reading plays by Shakespeare, you could study the poems of Bob Dylan. Were you at a faith-based college? Well, you could kill off that pesky “religious studies” requirement by studying a religion; pick one that you’re kind of curious about. And so on.

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YAL E U N I V E R S IT Y

The Humanities & Arts Requirement If the Federalist Papers aren’t your idea of a fabulous read, you can skip them (and every other document written by the American Founders) and check off your history box with this lecture course.

“U.S. Lesbian and Gay History” Introduction to the social, cultural, and political history of lesbians, gay men, and other socially constituted sexual minorities. Focus on understanding categories of sexuality in relation to shifting normative regimes, primarily in the twentieth century. The emergence of homosexuality and heterosexuality as categories of experience and identity; the changing relationship between homosexuality and transgenderism; the development of diverse lesbian and gay subcultures and their representation in popular culture; religion and sexual science; generational change and everyday life; AIDS; and gay, antigay, feminist, and queer movements.

TH E U N IVE RSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTI N

The Science Requirement At UT Austin, you need to take three science classes in the same discipline. That’s pretty demanding. Luckily, one of them can be this course, which at least will give you something cool to look up on YouTube.

“Animal Sexuality” Hormones are powerful molecules that not only help shape the development of the body and regulate physiological processes, but they also act on the brain to influence how individuals behave. Not only can hormones influence an individual’s behavior, but the behavioral experience of the individual can in turn affect hormone release. Although males and females produce the same hormones, they produce them in different amounts and patterns and it is important to be aware of how these different hormones may exert their anatomical or physiological effects. intercollegiatereview.com

The results of such changes are colleges like the one you’re probably paying $40–$50K per year to attend. History majors can graduate without knowing how or why the United States became independent. English majors can finish without reading a single line of Shakespeare. Political science students can go on to grad school having never read the U.S. Constitution. And students from different majors have very little overlapping knowledge in common, so when they argue over ideas, they’re pretty much speaking in different languages. But hey, at least you never had to read those old, hard books—which at first glance seem kind of boring.

We at IR decided to check up on how well the “distributional requirements” are working at five prominent colleges, looking to see how easily you could check off the boxes in five key disciplines. Keep in mind that we’re simply reprinting the actual course descriptions, word for word. We don’t need to make this stuff up.

COLLEG E OF TH E HOLY CROSS

The Religion Requirement If you’re enrolled at Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and you don’t feel like reading what some dead pope had to say about how you (who are alive!) should try to act, you can skip that and satisfy the college’s one-course theology mandate by pulling out your trowel and taking this class.

“Gardens and World Religions” A survey of the historical and cultural backgrounds of the ­major garden traditions of the world associated with religions. This course moves from considerations of human aesthetic and spiritual experience in the natural world to a survey of the major garden traditions associated with the western Mediterranean and Europe: in classical Greece and Rome, Christianity, and Islam. The course then moves to East Asia and classical traditions of China and Japan. Special focus will be given to elements of the campus Japanese Garden Initiative: teahouse gardens and monastic viewing gardens. Field trips to regional gardens will be made. For the final project, students design small virtual contemplative gardens for possible construction at specific campus sites.

Do you know of other examples of Campus ­Chaos? Let us know! Send us news about the latest outrages on your campus—courses, events, protests, or anything else—at ir@isi.org.

Or You Could Decide to Learn Something If you want a solid humanities education, you might choose instead to create your own core curriculum. We suggest you pick one course from your own school’s catalog in each of the following eight vital topics.

Knowing these core facts about our civilization and our country will give you a solid foundation for every other subject you will study. They will also make you seem like some kind of genius to your average fellow student, who’s probably pretty ignorant of such things. intercollegiatereview.com

1. Greek and Roman Literature in Translation 2. Ancient Philosophy 3. The Bible (Hebrew and/or New Testament) 4. Christian Thought before 1500 5. Early Modern Political Philosophy 6. Shakespeare 7. American History before 1865 8. Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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Learn with Friends

ISI student groups across the country are exploring great ideas, engaging in stimulating conversation, hosting exciting speakers on campus, running independent newspapers, and challenging the leftist orthodoxies at their schools.

You can join the fun. Start an ISI group at your college, or affiliate an existing one.

Your ISI group will receive many benefits, including: • Free ISI books and other publications • Grants to host speakers, debates, and conferences at your school • Support for your student-run publication • Advice on building a successful group and making a mark on

your campus • Special invitations to ISI conferences on liberty and limited government

“Find out if you have an ISI group on your campus— and if not, start one!”

—Maj-Britt Frenze, ISI student group leader, University of Virginia

For more information, or to start or affiliate an ISI group, go to www.isi.org or e-mail us at programs@isi.org

EMERGE

FROM THE CONSERVATIVE UNDERGROUND

The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore greets ISI student leaders

“This conference was the best experience of my life so far.”

— Alexander Falconer, ISI summer program participant, Regent University

ATTEND AN ISI SUMMER CONFERENCE Meet conservative leaders. Connect with like-minded students from around the country.

Learn the principles of liberty. Gain the skills that will set you apart in school and in life.

Arguing Conservatism: Rhetoric and Debate Symposium July 8–12, 2013 McConnell Center, University of Louisville Louisville, KY Takes conservatism to a new intellectual level: an intensive week of philosophical debate based on traditional debating societies such as the Oxford Union

American Freedom Institute

Leadership Retreat

July 22–27, 2013 Samford University Birmingham, AL

August 4–8, 2013 Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal Mecosta, MI

A weeklong introduction to limited government, free markets, individual liberty, the rule of law, and traditional values

Provides student leaders with an overview of intellectual conservatism and the practical skills necessary for expanding the conservative presence on campus

APPLY TODAY AT WWW.ISI.ORG

B Y PAUL KENGOR

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We must redistribute the wealth. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a fortunate few but should be equal and common—like a big pot of stew. It is the job of the federal government to dole out each citizen’s fair share of the wealth.

In the words of Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee: “That’s what governments do—is redistribute. The argument is not whether they should redistribute or not, the question is how much we should redistribute.” Unlike the radicals of the French and Russian revolutions, leftists in America have not tried to seize all the “means of production” at once by force. Instead, they aspire to share the fruits of production according to their notions of what is fair. The primary method for doing this in the United States has been the “progressive” income tax—whose rates get progressively higher as incomes go up. When this tax was first enacted by constitutional amendment in 1913, it taxed a tiny percentage of the income of the superrich. Within just thirty years, under FDR, the IRS claimed a full 94% of upper incomes. That proved such a disincentive to hard work that the rate fell to 70% under Lyndon Johnson, then 28% under Ronald Reagan, before rising to 39.6% under Bill Clinton. It was reduced to 35% under George W. Bush. But the Obama administration ratcheted it back up to 39.6%—in the name of “fairness.”

Too often, the media paint politics in America in terms insulting to our country. Elections are covered like sporting events or celebrity chef bake-offs. Campaigns are “contests” between career politicians over who gets to exercise power and reward his supporters; elections are “horse races” testing which tax bracket or ethnic group can raise the most super-PAC billions and bus the most folks to the polls; and debates are “slugfests” that pit the all-stars of the Blue team against the Red. In the late Roman Empire, people did really riot in support of different-colored teams of charioteers. But there is much more at stake in today’s America when conservatives clash with progressives. Will America turn back to its roots as a smallgovernment, decentralized Republic that embraces a strong work ethic? Will it rush ahead to imitate the bureaucratic, secular nanny states of western Europe? Can leaders with such 8

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B Y THE EDITORS

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The free market isn’t right because it works. It works because it’s right.

The free market succeeds because it reflects and respects our imperfect human nature. Other economic systems start out with false or utopian notions of how people might be trained to act—then harness the vast resources of modern states to train them. Such coercion swallows up liberty, violates human dignity, and fails every time.

The free market is the only efficient, honest system by which billions of people can cooperate in meeting human needs. A price is a message from consumers to producers about how badly they want a product; supply and demand function to organize useful work without the need for economic dictators. Every time the government steps in to interfere with people freely negotiating prices, it mixes the signals and encourages bad investments. Most economic crises, including the Great Depression, have been caused or protracted by bureaucratic meddling.

fundamentally contradictory worldviews cooperate in governing a huge and diverse country— or will one set of values simply have to dwindle and disappear? Finally, how can you find your own place on the Left–Right spectrum?

In this feature, we examine the deeper issues that divide Right from Left, the tectonic plates whose movement and clashes can determine the fate of our nation. Take a look at the eight sets of contrasting principles laid out here and see which ones you agree with—then learn more about each of them in the helpful books we recommend. You’ll come out of this political science mini-course a much more informed observer of how (and why) your country is governed the way it is.

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THE “TRUTHS” THEY HOLD

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We need a managerial class to govern the economy and solve our day-to-day problems. Individuals, families, and civil society are incapable of fairly and wisely directing resources and affairs; they need guidance from central planners and experts.

A century ago, federal government spending consumed 3% of the national wealth; today it consumes 25%. This massive shift didn’t occur by happenstance. Our vast managerial class is the fruit of a hundred-year crusade waged by idealistic liberals. In the late nineteenth century, a scholar named Woodrow Wilson called for a new “science of administration,” one that empowered bureaucratic experts to make the “right” reforms based on “modern ideas and conditions.” Wilson was elected president in 1912 and began making this “science of administration” a reality. Like Wilson, progressives today believe that government bureaucrats are best qualified to make countless decisions affecting Americans’ day-to-day lives.

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The economy cannot prosper or function stably without regular interventions by the federal government. It requires regular “stimulus” to avoid severe downturns and even a repeat of the Great Depression.

The Keynesian theory that has dominated liberal thinking since FDR states that the cause of recessions and depressions is not bad investments but lack of demand—people don’t want enough things and aren’t borrowing enough money to go out and buy them. Instead of leaving people alone to save their wealth or wisely invest it, Keynesians print more money and pump it into the economy so Americans can spend their way into prosperity— thus “creating jobs.” President Obama said back in 2009: “It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs.”

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The most critical areas of life are precisely where we most need government help—for instance, in guaranteeing health care.

Progressives have been trying to implement “universal health care” since 1912; those very words appeared in that year’s Progressive Party platform. Under President Obama, they seem to have finally pulled it off.

Obamacare subjects one-sixth of the U.S. economy to ever-expanding federal regulation, which will likely lead to a single-payer, government-monopoly health system such as exists throughout most of Europe. Attempting to undo this massive program will be like trying to unscramble eggs. Unfortunately, health care is only one example of the paternalism that drives progressives.

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Defending the Free Market:

Basic Economics:

The Moral Case for a Free Economy

by Robert Sirico (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2012)

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A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 2010)

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THE TRUTHS WE HOLD

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The rule of law should protect the individual from illegitimate force.

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Small, stable government and a free economy allow talented people to rise and new ideas to emerge.

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Limited government is the only system worthy of human beings.

The best protection any of us can have is a stable rule of law that enforces legal contracts, sets fair guidelines for adjudicating disputes, gives everyone equal access to the courts, punishes fraud, and makes people pay what they owe. That’s very different from having an activist government that constantly meddles in the efforts of free men and women to profit from their own hard work and talent. Such efforts are the engines of prosperity and invention. Because it allows for progress, the market also produces inequality—in any contest, some people outcompete others.

Human beings were created free, and they do their best work when they’re looking out for themselves and their families. In a limited, constitutional government, people are free to speak, associate, pray, preach, work, invest, and do every other human thing. Following their consciences, they can pursue happiness in this life and the next. Too few societies in history have respected people enough to grant them the freedom they deserve. Instead, most states have aggrandized power—in pursuit of the rulers’ self-interest and ideologies. The Anglo-American tradition of liberty, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence, is one long rejection of such paternalism.

People love power and hate to let it go. One lesson of history is that the wealthy and articulate typically learn how to “work the system.” They use government to stifle competition, impose their values, and enshrine themselves as oligarchies. With a small government, new ideas and new people always have a chance to break through and rise; big government tries to freeze things in place to secure power for the few, in both business and politics.

No government can impose a virtuous society from the top down. Instead, healthy culture grows organically from free, nongovernmental institutions such as charities, churches, private schools, clubs, and volunteer groups.

This “civil society” (Tocqueville) is what creates social order. Bureaucratic, expansionist government by its nature seeks to weaken, restrict, and replace such institutions with centrally managed agencies of the state.

Liberals’ paternalistic approach—favoring policies that turn citizens into lifelong spoiled teenagers or timid subjects of a domineering state—does not comport with the Western, Judeo-Christian vision of man: a fallen creature, prone to selfishness, but who can learn to treat his neighbor justly with the help of God and a vibrant community. The Constitution made faith free of federal constraints largely because most of the Founders recognized that religion, in shaping virtuous citizens, was the greatest support of a free system of government.

Only when we discipline ourselves can we safely live in liberty.

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It Didn’t Have to Be This Way:

The American Cause

Why Boom and Bust Is ­Unnecessary—and How the Austrian School of Economics Breaks the Cycle

by Russell Kirk (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2002)

by Harry C. Veryser (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2012)

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THE “TRUTHS” THEY HOLD

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The government should rectify perceived injustices in public and private life, and ensure an ever-expanding list of “rights”—which are discovered and promoted by enlightened, progressive thinkers and then enacted into law.

The list of basic rights claimed by adults and urged by governing progressives keeps getting longer. Now it appears to include the right to “free” contraceptives. Private institutions that violate these rights ought to be punished and, if need be, shut down. The Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a mandate that even Catholic institutions must pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs or face enormous fines that could bankrupt them.

This federal fiat is a stark sign of things to come. It reflects the progressive view that the government can and should target any corner of civil society that resists the expansion of “rights” until the opponent cooperates or dissolves. Never mind that these newly minted “rights” often conflict with liberties enshrined in the Constitution, such as the right to the free exercise of religion.

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Society’s most important moral arbiter is the government. Other institutions, such as the family, can be redefined or reinvented by government, as progressive opinion dictates.

An assertion of raw state power lies behind the liberal drive for same-sex “marriage.” Just twenty years ago, the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which merely reflected the definition of marriage prevailing in Western culture for at least three thousand years: one man and one woman, ordered toward the potential procreation and rearing of children. Now activists have largely dismantled that definition and are using the government to impose a radical new meaning of marriage as the temporary sexual partnership of two individual adults—full stop. In Britain, there is already talk among government ministers of forcing churches to perform same-sex marriages or face “discrimination” lawsuits.

The Founders recognized general (and unchanging) moral precepts—“the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” as the Declaration of Independence puts it. But progressivism insists that government be the moral arbiter, with decisions made on the basis of the “modern ideas and conditions” of which Woodrow Wilson wrote.

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The Moral Foundations of Civil Society

The Quest for Community

by Wilhelm Roepke (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishing, 1995)

by Robert Nisbet (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2010)

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THE TRUTHS WE HOLD

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As government grows more powerful, it sucks up all the air and stifles other institutions, destroying civil society.

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The golden mean between anarchy and tyranny is ordered liberty, which we nourish by freely working for our communities.

The best thing the federal government can do most of the time is to get out of the way. Its real job is to protect us from one another by defending the rights to life, liberty, and property. Beyond that, the state is meant to do only the things that can’t be done effectively or fairly by individuals—like guarding the borders, enforcing laws, and keeping people from dumping waste in other people’s wells. Everything else is done more efficiently and effectively by private initiative, community organizations, and local government.

In socialist countries (like most of Europe), there are very few private charities, almost no religious or independent schools, and few incentives for helping one’s neighbor. Too much of the wealth is taken from people in t­ axes, and the responsibility for almost every activity is shunted onto the government. That stifles diversity of thought, helps dominant elites impose their values on dissenters, and turns free citizens into clients of the state. It’s interesting that the demographic group that gives the most to private charity in America is conservative churchgoers, while secular liberals give the least. Instead they vote to raise taxes—on themselves and on everyone else.

Once the state, through high taxes, has annexed half or more of a country’s wealth—and hemmed in the rest with regulations—many people can’t afford to start a business, pay private school tuition, buy what they want, build a house, or otherwise shape their own lives. Instead they must petition the government for their needs.

Private organizations are starved of funds, micromanaged by the government, or suppressed.

No man is an island. We are social beings by nature, and when economic, social, or political forces tear up the organic bonds of community, we each become a naked individual shivering before the power of the state. To avoid that, we must support civil society, behave responsibly, care for our neighbors, and defend nongovernmental institutions—especially faith-based groups—from interference.

The American tradition is not every man for himself but everyone first for his family, then for his neighborhood, then for his city, and county, and state, and finally for the country as a whole. Society is built as a pyramid of loyalty that begins with the nuclear family. When foundations are destroyed, people in need have nowhere to look but to government—which becomes an ever more coercive and intrusive pseudo-community.

Every community sets certain standards that limit the exercise of our rights. Sometimes these restrictions go too far, but they are part of every society in recorded history. We accept certain limits because we know that disordered liberty today leads to chaos tomorrow and tyranny the day after. Rights come with responsibilities, and reckless uses of freedom tear down the institutions (such as the family) that can push back against the state.

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We Still Hold These Truths: ­

Vital Remnants:

Rediscovering Our ­Principles, Reclaiming Our ­Future

by Matthew Spalding (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2010)

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America’s Founding and the Western Tradition edited by Gary L. Gregg II (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1999)

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THE “TRUTHS” THEY HOLD

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Americans should not be bound to their country’s repressive past and unjust institutions but should look forward and in every generation reinvent what it means to be an American.

For conservatives, the Judeo-Christian tradition is right about what mankind is, and the American Founders were right about how we should govern ourselves. Progressives are not so sure. They look to the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that prevailed in the past and judge them by twenty-first-century standards. So they learn to look at our forefathers not with an appropriate reverence and respect but often with a moralizing condescension.

They see (and teach) the past not as a wellspring of wisdom about unchanging human nature but as a chronicle of injustices and the struggle to overcome them—a struggle that will never end. As Woodrow Wilson once announced: “The modern idea is to leave the past and to press onward to something new.”

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The courts, especially the Supreme Court, are the voices of the “living Constitution,” and it is their job to expand our rights to suit contemporary opinion, whatever the dead letters of the Constitution’s text might actually say.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973) famously manufactured a right to abortion on demand in America, ultimately through all nine months of pregnancy. That “right” had to be read into the Constitution at the expense of sections guaranteeing a right to life, such as the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life.” To the contrary, abortion was conjured out of the “right to privacy,” a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution. This is only the most famous example of progressives’ employing the courts to impose legislation they could not otherwise pass. Many more are sure to come—such is the process of progressivism. It quite literally does not know where to stop.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College. His books include The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, the Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

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Ideas Have Consequences

The War for Righteousness:

by Richard M. Weaver (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948)

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Progressive C ­ hristianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic N ­ ation

by Richard M. Gamble (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003)

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THE TRUTHS WE HOLD

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A democracy needs citizens who know their rights and duties, their history and institutions. Knowledge of the past is a safeguard against destructive innovations.

8

The American Constitution embodies transcendent truths learned over thousands of years of tradition and experience, binding us together as Americans.

We aren’t serfs in Tsarist Russia. We are free citizens, and it’s part of our heritage to govern our own communities. Our ancestors fought for that right, and we honor them by preserving it through civic involvement, informed voting, and activism. Such work is possible only if we know what they did and why. But too few Americans know about their country’s past or its principles. In extensive, statistically valid studies, ISI has discovered an appalling civic illiteracy among Americans. While the general population scores very low on basic questions of American history and government, elected officials score even worse. Students at elite U.S. colleges learn very little about our country—then go on to form its governing class.

Although the Constitution had certain historical blind spots that eventually required amendments, it has proved the single most durable, stable guardian of freedom of any governing document on earth. It is based on timeless principles of justice and unchanging truths about human nature. It preserves a balance between liberty and equality, the will of the many and the claims of the few. It sometimes frustrates us, because it is doing its job; it also frustrates people who want to take away our rights. Those rights don’t change, and having a stable document whose very structure safeguards them is our best protection against the abuse of government power. And if the twentieth century teaches us anything, it’s that government power was made to be abused.

LEARN MORE:

LEARN MORE:

Family and Civilization

Living Constitution, Dying Faith:

by Carle C. Zimmerman (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008)

Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence

By Bradley C. S. Watson (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009)

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INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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Challenging politically hostile or apathetic college students isn’t easy. But it’s important, and it can be done. Across the country, students are banding together to publish alternative papers, sponsor contrarian speakers, conduct debates, get people reading conservative classics, and otherwise shake up the stale orthodoxies that muffle campus debate.

Here are just a few reports from the field. These ISI student groups show that resistance isn’t futile.

FIGHTING LEFTIST ORTHODOXY

UPSTART Yale’s Federalist Party

Y

Carolina Review

T

he University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a hotbed of experimental leftism in an otherwise fairly conservative state. But the Carolina Review is pushing back.

In 2011 the Carolina Review—a member of ISI’s Collegiate Network of independent student publications— called attention to the university’s attempt to fire one of UNC’s few conservative professors. The paper’s reporting brought so much public pressure to bear that the professor kept his job.

The Carolina Review also exposed the efforts of Campus Y—part of the school’s official Division of Student Affairs—to lobby against a state constitutional amendment defending traditional marriage. Campus Y was improperly using the department’s Facebook account and UNC’s official

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website, as well as producing pamphlets at school expense.

Carolina Review editors have stood up to university officials too.

When the Review investigated UNC’s finances, UNC’s general counsel spent six months stonewalling on a records request for one department’s budget— which the school was legally obliged to turn over. Finally, Carolina Review coeditor Anthony Dent published an op-ed in the local Raleigh News & Observer exposing the school’s obstructionism. The story prompted a state senator to revive a bill to strengthen the state’s freedom-of-information law.

If it passes, the UNC system—and the state government as a whole—will be more accountable to taxpayers.

ale’s reputation for liberalism is well earned. But a conservative subculture is thriving there, thanks in part to the Federalist Party of Yale. This ISIaffiliated club gathers students every week for Oxford-style debates that challenge the best and brightest to hone their thinking. The Federalists have debated such political topics as “Resolved: Cut the Safety Net” and philosophical themes like “Resolved: Natural Rights Are a Social Construct.” Federalist Party chairman Alexander Isper, who ­attended ISI’s Leadership Retreat in Mecosta, Michigan, has also brought stellar guest speakers to campus, including Cambridge historian Bella D’Abrera and ISI author James Kalb.

The Federalist Party has achieved a lot since its founding in 2010. In the fall of 2012, a member of the party was elected president of the Yale Political Union, one of the country’s oldest and most influential college political clubs. intercollegiatereview.com

CITIZEN LEADERS The University of Virginia’s Burke Society

PHOENIX RISING IN INDIANA The Wabash Conservative Union

A

t Wabash College, one of the few remaining all-male campuses in the country, the ISI-sponsored Wabash Conservative Union brings together a diverse group of students to discuss ideas and events. The group also hosts speakers such as Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, who discussed science and liberal education in October 2012. And its alternative student paper, The Phoenix—another member of ISI’s Collegiate Network— has become a powerful voice at Wabash through its incisive editorials and analyses of campus controversies.

In September several members of the Conservative Union represented Wabash at the annual Front Porch Republic conference in Holland, Michigan, sponsored by ISI. These intrepid road warriors were excited to spend a long weekend learning political philosophy from some of America’s top scholars. The car was a bit heavier on the way back, since each student took home a pile of ISI books to read and share with friends.

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amed for Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, the University of Virginia’s Burke Society is dedicated to learning about the Right’s intellectual heritage and the foundations of ordered liberty. From its humble origins as a collection of five friends meeting and discussing topics of interest, this student group has grown into an influential presence at UVa—one that successfully fought for a much-needed university course on modern conservative thought.

With support from ISI, the Burke Society hosts a number of influential speakers, including Jonah Goldberg of National Review and Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War against Boys. The society’s more than thirty student members, led by ISI Honors Fellow Roraig Finney, also meet regularly for book discussions, presentations, and debates. Throughout the fall semester, members debated various currents within the conservative movement— libertarian, religious, neoconservative, etc. The in-depth discussions produced a deeper understanding of principles and a renewed sense of citizenship—precisely what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he founded the University of Virginia.

THE ART OF ASSOCIATION Patrick Henry College’s Alexis de Tocqueville Society

A

t Patrick Henry College, a small Christian college in Virginia, the Alexis de Tocqueville Society helps undergraduates investigate what it means to be a conservative in a postmodern age.

With the assistance of faculty adviser Dr. Mark Mitchell, ISI Books author and founding editor of the online journal Front Porch Republic, the Tocqueville Society brings in many outside speakers, such as historian Wilfred McClay, Notre Dame professor of architecture Philip Bess, Hillsdale College historian Richard Gamble, Pepperdine University historian Ted McAllister, and freed Sudanese slave Francis Bok, who drew a packed house for his report on the persistence of slavery around the world today. The true highlight for the Tocqueville Society comes after the guest lectures, when the visiting speakers host special seminars just for society members.

Because of its members’ serious interest in ideas, the Tocqueville Society has produced a number of ISI Honors Fellows over the years. Honors Fellows, chosen from a highly selective national competition, are treated to a yearlong program that kicks off in the summer with a weeklong intellectual retreat.

Tocqueville Society members are also recruiting their fellow students to participate in ISI regional conferences— where they can meet and make connections with leaders in a wide array of disciplines and professions.

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STUDENT VOICES

YOU CAN PLANT THE GRASS ROOTS What I’ve Gained from Working in Local Politics By Michael Cowett

C

onservative activists like me face many challenges, from staunchly liberal environs to the demands of schoolwork and jobs. But if you can keep the balance (and your grades up), a­ ctivism provides many rewards—a deeper sense of citizenship, meaningful connections, and invaluable experience.

I have long cared about politics. But studying at Harvard with professors such as Harvey Mansfield has rooted my sentiments in the tradition of conservative thought. Edmund Burke was right to prefer gradual change restrained by tradition to radical ­innovation. Friedrich Hayek correctly observed that free people are best served by free markets. And America’s

leadership, though imperfect, offers the best hope of peace and prosperity.

My convictions on these issues have only deepened as I have learned.

Although I’m from Ohio, in the fall of 2009 I registered in M ­ assachusetts to vote for Senator Ted ­Kennedy’s ­replacement. Scott Brown’s s­ urprise win inspired me to join the ­Cambridge Republican City Committee in 2010. Since then I’ve volunteered for local, regional, and statewide campaigns, and interned for a state legislator. In March 2012 I was elected to the Massachusetts Republican State Committee, where I help to develop new candidates for o ­ ffice.

Most of the other active campus conservatives I know have little interest in local politics. But especially for students, local or state-level politics offers you a better chance to make a difference. Big, national campaigns

usually demand significant weekly time commitments. In local races, candidates are glad to take whatever time you’re able to give, and most of their headquarters are closer by.

Staying local means you might work on more, and more exciting, projects: when I was on Beacon Hill, I helped my boss write a bill. The small size of these offices and campaigns also means that you’ll get to spend more time around your candidate, from whom you can learn an amazing amount.

Sure, it can be challenging to juggle schoolwork, volunteering, and your social life. (It’s a good thing that most campaigns take Friday and Saturday nights off!) When it comes to class work, I force myself to make a weekly “to do” list and check off every box before I turn my attention to politics.

Even if you attend college in a very liberal region (as I do), conservative activism is still a viable option. There are far fewer college conservatives than liberals, which means that fewer potential interns are competing with you for slots with state legislators and local officials. Conservative groups in these regions also tend to be less organized, so enthusiastic young college students are always in high demand.

To maximize your impact, make an effort to learn about the results of the past election or two and the most pressing local issues. Attend some events and soak up as much as you can from those who are already active.

Despite the occasional frustrations, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my two and a half years working in local and state politics. It’s a great break from hitting the books, and I’ve met some amazing, hardworking, principled people. Why not call up a local campaign, or your local party committee or conservative group, and ask what you can do to help? I’m confident you’ll find it as manageable—and rewarding—as I have.

Michael Cowett, a senior at Harvard, is an IR contributing editor and editor emeritus of the Harvard Salient.

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STUDENT VOICES WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM

“SEX WEEK” AT YALE

By Bijan Aboutorabi

F

or those of us on the Yale University campus, hardly a semester goes by without some tragicomic reminder of the dysfunctions and paradoxes of sexually liberated college life. The class of 2012’s senior video—played the day before commencement, in the presence of parents, grandparents, and siblings—depicted a threesome taking place in the library’s stacks. Each year’s incoming freshmen, meanwhile, are duly taught the requisite “safety” and “consent” protocols along with the dozens of campus sites where they can pick up free prophylactics. (Students are admonished to “wear your rubbers” by weirdly cheerful posters of dairy cows in pink rain boots.) Thus the cult of sex bookends the undergraduate experience, a fitting frame to a fouryear romp through the sexual playground of the modern university.

Predictably, youthful licentiousness has a dark side. In October 2010 frat pledges marched past freshman dorms shouting chants that openly glorified rape and graphically joked about necrophilia. But nothing so trivial as that could shake Yale’s complacency about its sexual scene. The same month, the student dean’s pre-Halloween e-mail was a paean to “glorious consensual sex,” teaching students that the hookup culture would enrich their lives, provided only that the right verbal signs were given.

Only when nineteen THE DEAN’S students submitted a formal complaint to the Department of Education, alleging that Yale had violated Title IX by systematically sweeping sexual assault reports under the rug, did the administration tweak its official sexual policy of laissezfaire—by slightly rearranging a few bureaucracies and reaffirming the glory of consent as the sole criterion for sex.

Yale’s cult of hedonism reaches its apogee in a carnival called Sex Week, held the week preceding Valentine’s Day every two years. Sex Week’s official mission statement is to foster “engaging and meaningful discussions about sexuality, intimacy, and relationships.”

The reality is much starker: a studentorganized deluge of events starring pornographers, sex toy vendors, polyamory activists, and everything else imaginable. An event emblematic of Sex Week 2012 was “Fornication 101,”

E-MAIL WAS A PAEAN TO

we try to present a vision of sexuality that takes love and intimacy, not the individual search for pleasure, as the starting point. To self-indulgence and puerile titillation we oppose the virtues of integrity, responsibility, and respect for the dignity of the human person.

Our first campaign, a petition calling for an end to Sex Week, won more than two hundred student and faculty signatures as well as letters of support from appalled parents. Yet the university administration was too timid to cancel Sex Week—despite the recommendation of Yale’s own ad hoc committee on sexual climate. So during Sex Week 2012, we hosted True Love Week, with speakers such as author Anthony Esolen and sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox and topics ranging from the true nature of love to the social importance of a strong marriage culture.

Of course, Yale is just one battleground in the sexual culture wars simmering on the nation’s campuses.

Other groups fighting the good fight include Princeton’s Anscombe Society and Harvard’s True Love Revolution.

Students interested in provoking dialogue should get in touch with the Love and Fidelity Network (loveandfidelity. org), which offers campus groups invaluable support.

Standing against the reigning culture may not be easy, but it is essential if students are to have an alternative to the hegemony of the hookup.

“GLORIOUS CONSENSUAL SEX.”

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a “course” that promised “to introduce students to carnal knowledge.” Now that is an Ivy League education.

In 2011 I was among the group of students that founded Undergraduates for a Better Yale College to openly challenge the prevailing libertine culture. In our events and activities,

Bijan Aboutorabi, a senior at Yale, is an IR contributing editor and the former chairman of Yale’s Conservative Party.

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OFFICE HOURS

Princeton professor

Robert P. George

takes students’ questions Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, is one of America’s most prominent public intellectuals. He has been hailed by everyone from Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan (who praises “his sheer brilliance, the analytic power of his arguments, the range of his knowledge”) to talk show host Glenn Beck (who calls him “one of the biggest brains in America”).

Professor George recently took questions from ISI students about undergraduate education, the conservative movement, his new book, and much more.

What advantage does a liberal arts education offer over preprofessional programs?

— Adam Schwartzman, Dartmouth

Robert P. George: True

liberal arts learning is soul enriching. It broadens and deepens us as free and

rational beings—beings who are not determined by external or internal forces beyond our control, but who believe and act for reasons. At its best, this broadening and deepening helps us meet the basic spiritual and moral challenge facing every human being— making reason the master

20 INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

of passion or desire. Thus liberal arts learning offers the promise of liberation from the most abject form of slavery: slavery to self.

Many conservatives are comparing the current climate of the marriage debate to the climate of the abortion debate ten years before Roe v. Wade. What

do you see as the future of the marriage debate? Do you think gay marriage will be legalized nationally?

— Kelsey Rupp, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill RPG: What individuals

and societies do or will do is not inevitable. Huge consequences can flow from the choices and intercollegiatereview.com

Contemporary left liberals are moralists—moralists on a mission.

They are so certain that they understand moral truths correctly that they are willing to impose them on society. actions of a small number of people. What will happen to the institution of marriage is up to us.

And yes, you are right to draw the comparison with the abortion debate in the late 1960s and (especially) the 1970s. Acceptance of abortion was, its advocates insisted, inevitable. The pro-life cause, they said, was doomed. But forty years later, abortion has not been accepted. A majority of Americans are pro-life, and today’s young people are more pro-life than their parents’ generation was.

What would you say to students of a conservative mind-set who are wary of speaking up against an opposing campus culture?

—Tony Alimi, Princeton

RPG: Standing up to

campus conformism isn’t easy—at least at the beginning. You worry about damaging your reputation, inviting a bad grade, even losing friends.

You will find, however, that standing up for your principles elicits the respect of people whose respect is worth having, even if they do not share your convictions. That is why I urge students who dissent from campus dogmas to be intercollegiatereview.com

bold. That does not mean to be reckless. What’s the difference? It is reckless to speak out when one doesn’t know what one is talking about; it is bold to defend unpopular truths by understanding the evidence and mastering the arguments on the competing sides of the debate.

What is the conservative movement most in need of? How can young conservatives best prepare themselves to be of use?

—Bijan Aboutorabi, Yale

RPG: The conservative

movement needs what every social-reform movement needs: dedicated, well-informed, intellectually sophisticated, bold young activists. We’ve got lots of them at Princeton. I know that there are many at Yale. Another thing we need more of is supportive faculty members. Conservative students and student groups at colleges and universities that have a critical mass of such faculty members really flourish.

What do you see as the political future of social conservatism, particularly with respect to the age disparities in approval of

conservatives who cling to orthodoxies?

— Lillian Civantos, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

homosexuality and samesex marriage?

—Michael Cowett, Harvard

RPG: Young men and

women today were formed in a culture in which it is difficult not to absorb the premises of sexual revolutionary ideology.

Even conservative young people often don’t realize that they are uncritically buying into premises about human nature and the human good that have no more right to the status of orthodoxies than does belief in the virtues of central economic planning.

This is an enormous achievement by the Left, and an enormous failure of the modern conservative movement—and of religious institutions of nearly every tradition. The situation can be reversed only by exposing the errors of me-generation liberalism and defending a superior set of ideas about sexuality and marriage. The question is, will there be people of courage who will stand up, speak out, and fight?

Your new book, Conscience and Its Enemies, challenges the “dogmas of liberalism.”

Don’t liberals like to say that reason and science are on their side, while it is

RPG: Contemporary left liberals are moralists— moralists on a mission.

They are so certain that they understand moral truths correctly that they are willing to impose them on society. What are some of those “truths”? The absolute right to abortion.

The right to conduct one’s sexual life however one pleases, so long as one refrains from obtaining sex by coercion or deception.

The conviction that “marriage” is the union of two people (or more) without regard to gender.

The idea that anyone who disagrees with them is a “bigot.” And on and on.

As for liberal claims that science is “on their side,” the aim of Conscience and Its Enemies is to show why that can only be regarded as laughable.

“This country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.” —New York Times Magazine

Robert P. George

CONSCIENCE

AND ITS ENEMIES confronting the dogmas of our age

This interview has been edited and condensed. To read the whole discussion with Professor George, go to intercollegiatereview.com.

INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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FREEDOM HALL Want to understand the principles of liberty?

Politicians and TV talking heads, always reacting to the controversy of the moment, don’t offer much insight. To really understand the sources of—and threats to—our political, economic, and religious liberty, we need to consult “the best which has been thought and said in the world.”

Here are the words of three of liberty’s greatest advocates.

W H AT WA S W R O N G W I T H T H E RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT?

T

he age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded. . . . All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.

All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ­ratifies, as necessary to cover the ­defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be ­exploded as a r­ idiculous, a­ bsurd, ­and antiquated fashion.

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest ­order. . . . The murder of a king, or a queen,

or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way, gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy . . . laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of ­every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons; so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. . . . There ought to be a system of manners in every nation, which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) 22 INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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W H AT M O T I VAT E S SOCIALISTS?

H

ow did politicians ever come to believe this weird idea that the law could be made to produce what it does not contain—the wealth, science, and religion that, in a positive sense, constitute prosperity? Is it due to the influence of our modern writers on public affairs?

Present-day writers—especially those of the socialist school of thought . . . begin by supposing that people have within themselves no means of discernment; no motivation to ­action. The writers assume that people are inert matter, passive particles, motionless atoms, at best a kind of vegetation indifferent to its own manner of existence. They assume that people are susceptible to being shaped—by the will and hand of another person—into an infinite variety of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and perfected. Moreover, not one of these writers on governmental affairs hesitates to imagine that he himself—under the title of organizer, discoverer, legislator, or founder—is this will and hand, this universal motivating force, this creative power whose sublime mission is to mold these scattered materials—persons—into a society. . . .

They assume that if the legislators left persons free to follow their own inclinations, they would arrive at atheism instead of religion, ignorance instead of knowledge, poverty instead of production and exchange.

According to these writers, it is indeed fortunate that Heaven has bestowed upon certain men—governors and legislators—the exact opposite inclinations, not only for their own sake but also for the sake of the rest of the world! While mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators aspire for enlightenment; while mankind is drawn toward vice, the legislators are attracted toward virtue. Since they have decided that this is the true state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to substitute their own inclinations for those of the human race.

—Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850) intercollegiatereview.com

WHERE DID AMERICANS GET THEIR LIBERTIES?

O

ne characteristic of the American Bill of Rights is important . . . namely, the differences that separate it from the Declaration of the Rights of Man in the France of [1789]. In considerable part the latter was a parchment-child of the Enlightenment, a top-of-the-brain concoction of a set of men who did not understand that a political community, like man himself, has roots in history and in nature. They believed that a state could be simply a work of art, a sort of absolute beginning, an artifact of which abstract human reason could be the sole artisan. Moreover, their exaggerated individualism had shut them off from a view of the organic nature of the human community; their social atomism would permit no institutions or associations between the individual and the state.

In contrast, the men who framed the American Bill of Rights understood history and tradition, and they understood nature in the light of both. They too were individualists, but not to the point of ignoring the social nature of man.

They did their thinking within the tradition of freedom that was their heritage from England. Its roots were not in the top of anyone’s brain but in history. Importantly, its roots were in the medieval notion of the homo liber et legalis, the man whose freedom rests on law, whose law was the ageold custom in which the nature of man expressed itself, and whose lawful freedoms were possessed in association with his fellows. The rights for which the colonists contended against the English Crown were basically the rights of Englishmen. And these were substantially the rights written into the Bill of Rights. . . .

The Bill of Rights was an effective instrument for the delimitation of government authority and social power, not because it was written on paper in 1789 or 1791, but because the rights it proclaims had already been engraved by history on the conscience of a people.

— John Courtney Murray, SJ, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (1960) INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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GOD ON THE QUAD

READING, WRITING, PRAYER, FASTING

By James V. Schall, SJ

E

ven students in religious-founded institutions can lose their faith. Others find God at Ohio State University. Some students mold themselves to the prevailing campus ideology, while others go through unchanged. One thing seems true. If we acquire a BA or a doctorate in physics or history but have a fourth-grade intellectual grasp of faith, we run into trouble. On that account, we have mostly to pursue the ultimate questions through our own efforts.

originates in a disordered life. So how we live, especially in college, is not a merely “academic” question.

A university curriculum can either reinforce or correct the erroneous choices we make. We can find, in academia, endless reasons to live a disordered life. We look for excuses to live as we want. We seldom hear the case for virtue. If we hear of virtue, it is usually derided.

Argument does not make us virtuous.

As Aristotle observes: “If arguments were sufficient by themselves to make The crucial question according to principles and send us in search of people good, the rewards they would Aristotle is not what we think but means to very bad ends. How so? command would justifiably have been how we live: “Virtue preserves the If we live a disordered life in any of many and large.” He continues: “The origin, while vice corrupts it; and in the moral areas, be it thievery, lying, aim of studies about action is surely not action the end we act for is the origin, laziness, excessive drink, or illicit to study and know about each thing as the assumptions (hypotheses) are sex, this choice will direct all of our but rather to act on our knowledge. the origins in mathematics. Reason further actions to make them seem Hence knowing about virtue is not does not teach the origins either “reasonable” (see J. Budziszewski’s enough, but we must also try to possess in mathematics or in actions; with On the Meaning of Sex). We want to and exercise virtue.” We like to sit and actions it is virtue, either natural achieve what we choose. We use our talk about what is right or wrong. We or habituated, that teaches correct intellect not to critique our choice argue endlessly. Usually, talk is an belief about the origins [i.e., first but to achieve it, however it is related excuse for not actually becoming what principles].” we should be.

WE CAN FIND ENDLESS REASONS TO If we are virtuous, Aristotle Aristotle tells us that we thinks, we will recognize the use a myriad of excuses and . WE reasonings to avoid doing what truth when it finally confronts LIVE A us. If not, we will not be able to SELDOM HEAR THE CASE FOR VIRTUE. we ought: “Arguments seem spot it though it’s right in front to have enough influence to of us. to our highest end. Our habits, good stimulate and encourage the civilized Reason does not “teach” first or bad, will protect the end we have ones among the young people, and principles. It teaches us the means chosen. To justify how we live, we perhaps to make virtue take possession that lead to ends. First principles will develop theories that justify our of a well-born character that truly loves determine how we choose to live and choices. what is fine; but they seem unable to how we understand happiness. The stimulate towards being fine and good.” first precept of action is the famous disordered life does not first Why not? “It is impossible, or not “Do good; avoid evil.” Aristotle tells arise from error of intellect. easy, to alter by argument what has us that vice will corrupt our first Rather, error of intellect long been absorbed by habit.”

DISORDERED LIFE

A

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Photo: Michael Fernandes

We go to college also for a job or a profession. Jobs and professions are good things. We need to work. It is a noble thing to make or sell or assist others through our skills. However, we need more than skills. In The Intellectual Life, A. G. Sertillanges tells us to organize our lives so that we keep some regular time to think, to contemplate, to pursue the things that are.

Something “liberal” should color our education, something that frees us from the absorption found in most lives and occupations. A “liberal” education “frees” us first from ourselves, giving us the “leisure” (in the true sense of the word) to look at the things that are.

Ultimately, this freedom to reason is what sets man apart from other finite beings. We are the “rational” animals.

We do not cause ourselves to be what we are. Our task is to become what intercollegiatereview.com

we are. We are the only beings whose perfection lies in our own hands. “Nor will greatness, or abundance, exempt [a man] from . . . this desire” to know, as Samuel Johnson wrote: “Since, if he is born to think, he cannot restrain himself from a thousand enquiries and speculations, which he must pursue by his own reason, and which the splendor of his condition can only infer; for those who are most exalted above dependence or control are yet condemned to pay a large tribute of their time to custom, ceremony, and popularity, that, according to the Greek proverb, no man in the house is more a slave than the master.”

Aristotle said much the same thing.

We do not have to be “master of the land and sea” to be happy. The politician is busy. He is taken up with troubles all about him. He has no time to pursue the pleasures of intellect. He is often tempted by the less-noble pleasures.

The purpose of a “liberal” education, especially for those with a religious background, is to know what is beyond politics and economics, beyond the cares of daily life. The student today will largely have to educate himself in the highest things.

He will do this by reading and conversing, even by prayer and fasting.

The college student needs the virtue that enables him to see the origins, the first principles. These will be invisible to the person who cultivates evil habits—since his mind will busy itself, even exhaust itself, trying to rationalize the person’s bad decisions.

He won’t even have the energy to try to search for truth.

James V. Schall, SJ, taught for decades at Georgetown University before retiring in 2012. He is author of more than a dozen books, ranging from The Classical Moment to Praise of “Sons of Bitches.”

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AN EDUCATION IN ONE SITTING W

hat do you really need to learn in college? And what aren’t your professors teaching you?

“These slim volumes come close to constituting mini–great books in themselves.”

Find the answers in ISI’s acclaimed Student Guides. These pocket-sized guides put knowledge right

—Wall Street Journal

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A Student’s Guide to RELIGIOUS STUDIES

A Student’s Guide to LIBERAL LEARNING

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A Student’s Guide to LITERATURE

A Student’s Guide to THE STUDY OF LAW

A Student’s Guide to MUSIC HISTORY

A Student’s Guide to U.S. HISTORY

George W. Carey

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INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

27

Tyranny

ARTS & MANNERS

on Screen

By Anthony Sacramone

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus

Utopians may be loosely defined as those who have lost touch with reality and so build castles in the air—and, however inadvertently, hell on earth.

The Utopian mind eschews traditional notions of individual rights, the intractability of human nature, and the balance of power, in pursuit of a perfectly crafted Stability. The counterpoint to Utopia is the “dystopia,” the society that has fallen into near chaos due to war, overpopulation, or plague. A state of siege exists between the governing powers and the populace. There is no disguising the ugliness, the oppression, the restraints even on marital love and, of course, reproduction.

Free thought is in chains.

Cinema has been in love with dystopian story lines since its earliest days: for example, Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis, released in 1927.

A sensational cinematic achievement, Metropolis has influenced many of the films on the following short list of cautionary tales that still have much to say to contemporary audiences.

BRAZIL [1985]

A

controversial, bizarre, and eye-popping dictatorship of the inefficient, where the masses are mollified by consumer kitsch and obsessed with plastic surgery.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a daydreaming bureaucrat who, when not fashioning himself a dragon slayer with wings, is trying to exonerate

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INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

an innocent man who was executed because a fly literally got into government paperwork.

Among the many obstacles facing the would-be hero is the fact that he is hopelessly in love with a woman (Kim Greist) who may or may not be part of a terrorist resistance group. Can Robert De Niro and his bag of tricks save poor Sam? Is there a way out of this place? Directed by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame.

total Party control cannot even be conceptualized. Winston (John Hurt) works for the Ministry of Truth and spends his day lying about the past. It is during Hate Week that Winston falls in love with Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), who yearns for a future free of Big Brother. Caught in the middle of an assignation, Winston and Julia are taken into police custody.

Brought to Room 101, Winston is confronted by O’Brien (Richard Burton), who proceeds to redirect his love away from Julia and toward Big Brother, by way of a personalized form of torture. The quintessential depiction of “a boot smashing a human face forever,” 1984 remains the gold standard of dystopian storytelling for its gruesome depiction of statism run mad.

1984 [1984]

B

ased on the classic novel

by George Orwell, the film captures the monochromes and world-dreariness of Oceania, a totalitarian realm superintended

by Big Brother. It is here that Newspeak eviscerates vocabularies so that ideas subversive of

FAHRENHEIT 451

[1966]

G

uy Montag (Oskar Werner) is a fireman whose job is not to put out fires but to light them— in order to burn up books. In this imagined future, books are seen as an ever-present menace, ­capable of putting socially disruptive ideas into the heads of a pop­ intercollegiatereview.com

ARTS & MANNERS ulace dulled by drugs and endless TV. But Montag grows ­curious about the objects of his fires, ­especially after meeting Clarisse (Julie Christie), a free thinker who quickly becomes an object of his desire. The fireman soon starts reading, and his colleagues come for him. Will he relent, or take his stand with a growing community of “living books”? Based on the classic novel by science fiction legend Ray Bradbury.

GATTACA [1997]

T DARK CITY [1998]

J

ohn Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub one evening to find the corpse of a woman ritually murdered, as well as a cop (William Hurt) on his tail for several more murders he cannot remember committing.

He soon comes to the realization that he’s been living a lie, under an identity imposed on him by the Strangers, a group of otherworldly beings responsible for the Dark City—a construct that undergoes regular reassembly. Murdoch refuses to embrace the false reality and, determined to find his real home, literally punches a hole in the world. Where will the “truth” ultimately lead him? Is the lie the only reality there is? A neo-noir thriller with monumental set design, Dark City would pave the way for another alternate-reality classic: The Matrix. intercollegiatereview.com

his smart and timely look at a genetically driven future pits the freedom of parents against the state’s desire to produce only genetically “gifted” babies.

Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) was conceived naturally and so is susceptible to a variety of ailments that make him an inferior genetic specimen, thus chaining him to a menial desk job. Only when he exchanges identities with a genetically engineered “valid” does he have any hope of realizing his dream of space travel. But can he still beat the genetic screening tests—and win the heart of Irene Cassini (Uma Thurman), who thinks herself unworthy of his supposed genetic superiority?

Gattaca is worth repeated viewings as contemporary debates about genetic testing and determinism ­continue.

THE TRIAL [1962]

I

magine a world in which you are accused of a crime that is never given a name. To whom can you turn for help? Orson Welles’s brilliant adaptation of Franz Kafka’s 1914 novel was a peek into the totalitarian future that

awaited large swathes of Europe. Yet Welles reimagines it as a kind of black comedy, even altering the ending, from the personal to the apocalyptic.

Josef K. (Anthony Perkins), a bank functionary, is visited one day by two men who arrest him for a nameless crime.

Thus begins one man’s labyrinthine journey to nowhere.

Neither his lawyer (played

by Welles himself) nor his family can come to his aid.

The Trial melds Welles’s unique camera virtuosity with Kafka’s cosmically grim vision of one man’s inner struggle to make sense of the absurd.

SOYLENT GREEN

[1973]

I

t is 2022 and the world’s population is bursting at the seams. Natural resources are depleted or polluted, and desperate populations are forcefed a green wafer called “Soylent Green,” supposedly a nutritious plankton culled from the oceans.

But when Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) investigates the murder of an executive of Soylent Corporation, the manufacturer of Soylent Green, he unravels a conspiracy and learns a secret so horrifying that it drives his good friend Sol (Edward G. Robinson) to a state-sponsored suicide. Will Thorn have time to reveal the truth to the masses before he gets swallowed up by the “machine”?

INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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ARTS & MANNERS as civilization shatters into tiny, sharp-edged pieces. Ex-priests turned sex therapists experiment on human souls, while gun-toting fundamentalists shoot it out with black separatist guerrillas in the bayous—and Tom More tries to heal the breach in man’s psyche by tinkering with his brain. This raucous, bawdy, hilarious novel (published in 1971) proved eerily prophetic of the present.

5 Satires

Your Professors Won’t Assign You

By John Zmirak

One of the most potent ways a teacher can influence his students is by the books he decides to assign—and those he doesn’t. Here are five literary classics you’ve probably heard of but haven’t been told to read by your teachers. There’s a good reason for that: each is a stinging satire of contemporary society that skewers liberal pieties (among other things).

LOVE IN THE RUINS

BRAVE NEW WORLD

by Aldous Huxley

I

n the 1930s (when most people still associated birth control with prostitutes), Huxley foresaw what would happen when modern technology merged with utilitarianism, consumerism, and social engineering: a society that has given up on virtue, culture, and love. Organized on moment-to-moment hedonism, the “brave new world” is designed to minimize sadness, pain, and boredom at any cost. Art, literature, and politics are replaced by utterly mindless entertainment. Instead of the movies, people go to the “feelies,” and sex means less than a handshake. Into this world of in vitro fertilization and “orgyporgies,” hero John the Savage stumbles like a prophet from the wilderness—carrying his battered copy of Shakespeare and all the forgotten values of the West.

THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS

by Walker Percy

by Jean Raspail

T

T

his comic novel by the awardwinning Louisiana writer depicts “bad Catholic” psychiatrist and philanderer Dr. Tom More trying to save his neck and his soul

30 INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

his French novel from 1973 predicted how socialist politics and self-hating liberalism would hollow out the soul of Western man and make him unwilling to

defend his values, his institutions, and even his countries. Using the metaphor of a massive influx of angry, anti-Western immigrants headed for Europe, the author diagnoses the flabby masochism of our post-Christian society— and suggests what will muscle in and take its place.

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

by John Kennedy Toole

A

t the same time screamingly funny and terribly sad, this novel tells the tale of a modern Don Quixote, the obese and unemployable Ignatius J. Reilly, who yearns for the glories of the Middle Ages—and who wreaks havoc all around him in the effort to restore them. Set in the New Orleans of the early 1960s, this episodic story is a rollicking good read, and a warning against the wrong kind of conservatism: one steeped in nostalgia and resentment.

THE WANTING SEED

by Anthony Burgess

B

y the author of A Clockwork Orange, this novel depicts a future where panic about overpopulation has made childbearing almost criminal, and the micromanagerial socialist government favors homosexuals and eunuchs. This grand satire shows how frustrated nature takes her revenge, in the form of resurgent, violent, religious rebellions that bring their own set of terrors. The book shows the historic seesaw between optimistic, clueless progressivism and the starkly realist reactions that build on the ruins of failed Utopia. intercollegiatereview.com

ARTS & MANNERS THE ACTON INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION AND LIBERTY

Ideas

The Best You Can Read for

Free

By John Zmirak

There is plenty of fluff and chatter online. But in between the kitten videos and breathless analyses of minor political blips, some of the best writing being done today appears in digital form. Here are just a few places where you can feed your mind and keep up with the latest debates among serious thinkers.

ARTS & LETTERS DAILY

T

his is the “arts” page of the elite Chronicle of Higher Education.

It scans the Web for the most incisive reviews of contemporary culture and scholarship on every topic—from ancient art to postmodern politics. Instead of jargon-ridden research papers, it features clearly written, engaging articles from dozens of magazines all across the political map.

Beware—you might make it your homepage. www.aldaily.com

E

ver feel like there’s a nagging tension between economics and altruism? Between freedom and faith? The scholars at the Acton Institute document how economic, civic, and religious freedom work together to build a thriving, prosperous society that cares for its most vulnerable members. www.acton.org

THE IMAGINATIVE CONSERVATIVE

T

his site features the writing of some of the best professors and essayists in America, reflecting on the deeper issues that underlie social and political trends. Learn about the moral foundations of the market economy, the religious message of the Constitution, the tensions between libertarians and traditionalists—in fully developed essays that you might be tempted to download, print, and read instead of your textbooks. www.imaginativeconservative.org

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REAL CLEAR RELIGION

Y

ou might call this God’s Drudge Report. Each day it features dozens of well-chosen headlines from the bubbling profusion of sites that report on religion—from controversies relating to church and state and battles over textbooks and curricula to persecution around the world, bioethics, and social issues. Nonsectarian but on the side of the angels, this site will keep you up to date on the “ultimate things” in America. www.realclearreligion.org

BIG HOLLYWOOD

T

his spin-off of the brash Breitbart.com uses its network of Los Angeles–based reporters to view popular culture from a conservative perspective. It showcases the political viewpoints of prominent media figures and scopes out which actors, directors, writers, and entertainers espouse traditional views that leave them out of place in Hollywood. www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood

INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

31

URGENT MEMO

from the Dean of Diversity

32 INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW · Spring 2013

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