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The Germans have a delicious word to describe a world
gone mad. It’s “die Weltvernichtungsidee,” they say, and so account for the
fact that we are negating the world, turning it topsy-turvy, filling it with
contradictions, and remolding it on the basis of fantasy as opposed to reason
and reality. How else are we to reconcile President Bush’s recent
oleaginous lectures about freedom and democracy to Russia’s Vladimir Putin
with the bizarre actions of a North Carolina Baptist preacher? He threatened
to toss out of his congregation all who voted for John Kerry and refused to
repent of that sin-laden deed. (He has since resigned over the controversy). Or what is the democratic rationale behind Sen. George
Allen urging the graduates of Regent University to “lead the world by
expanding freedom” while the university’s founder, Pat Robertson, is telling
George Stephanopoulos that liberal judges represent a more serious threat to
this country than Nazi Germany, the Civil War, al Qaeda and “a few bearded
terrorists who fly into buildings”? What kind of freedom and democracy are we presented with
in Alabama, where state legislators now want to ban from public school
libraries and classrooms all works by or about homosexuals? How free are we
when state governments can forbid access to the works of Tennessee Williams,
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust,
E.M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, Plato, Aristotle and the philosophy of
Socrates? The fact is that, for all of Bush’s blather about
freedom and democracy, the very soul of those two words is under attack in
this country as it never has been before. Education and our universities’ unwavering dedication to
academic freedom are manifestly under
the gun. As a result of the petulant persistence of right-wing
culture engines, bills are now before a dozen state legislatures and the
House of Representatives to allow government insinuation and intrusion into
college classrooms. Alleging that university classrooms are dominated by
liberal professors, neoconservatives, led by ideologues such as David
Horowitz, have developed what is paradoxically called “An Academic Bill of
Rights.” Under one bill proposed to the California legislature,
professors are warned against taking unfair advantage of their positions of
power by indoctrinating students with “the teacher’s own opinions.” To
obviate such activities, state apparatchiks with little or no educational
background would monitor the texts, assignments and syllabuses of professors.
In other words, we have shuffled back to 1984 and the freedom and democracy
of George Orwell. Another bill, introduced in the Florida legislature,
would allow students to sue professors with whom they disagree over the
theory of evolution. Nor has Virginia been immune from attacks against its
academic practices. David Limbaugh, the culture-conscience twin of Horowitz,
has taken out after the University of Virginia for devoting a whole course to
Marxism. William & Mary’s philosophy department offers a similar course,
and we must assume it would effuse the same malodorous vapors as the course
at UVA. But it is undoubtedly the brouhaha over evolution vs.
creationism or intelligent design that has festered and fostered the attack
from the right on college classrooms. Though the Virginia Standards of Learning clearly state
that evolution and earth science will
be taught in public school biology classes, there are rumblings of discontent
in some William & Mary biology classes about the teaching of evolution. Biology professor George Gilchrist has been through the
evolution wars and has written extensively on the subject. It is his firm
belief that he is obligated to teach science, and it is this that he
impresses on his students. While they may believe what they like, in his
classes they will learn and be tested on evolution. For him, evolution is to
intelligent design as astronomy is to astrology. As he is careful to explain, the argument that theory is
not fact is preposterous, in that theory is about as good as it gets in real
science. Having been subjected to some 40,000 tests by leading biologists,
the theory of evolution is now a solid fixture in the biological canon.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for either creationism or intelligent
design. Myth is rarely susceptible to scientific proof. As for the charge that the majority of William &
Mary professors have liberal leanings, I suspect that it is true. That they
wear their liberalism on their sleeves and force their political opinions on
students is pure hokum. Students see through this kind of bunk and have ample
opportunity to register their complaints on class evaluation forms or to
department chairs. In addition, professors are evaluated on a regular basis.
Their grades, student evaluations, syllabuses, texts and research projects
are scrutinized as never before by both their peers at the college and by
external committees. As a result, you might think that professor Gilchrist
and his colleagues are safe from governmental interference and thought police
of whatever ilk. But you may be wrong. Given the anti-intellectual, troglodytic bent of no few
members of the Virginia legislature,
what’s happening in Florida, California and elsewhere might soon find itself
on the legislative agenda in Richmond. The negation of the world of reason and reality
continues apace. No better indication of its prosperity is there than recent
remarks made by hatchet man Tom DeLay to a National Day of Prayer meeting:
“All heroism, all virtue, all true progress is ultimately the product of
humility.” Case closed. |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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