Santorum on college

Funny how Dick Santorum calls Obama a snob for wanting everyone to go to college, where they'll be indoctrinated by liberal professors.

I agree that not everyone should go to college. There are reports of a struggle to fill mid-skill jobs even with our high unemployment. There is demand for machinists and nurses, who can get work with less than a bachelor's degree, but not so much for folks with a bachelor's in comparative literature, art history, or psychology. On the other hand, there there are traditional college paths that still lead to a career. But there is still a dead zone of undergraduate education that leads to jobs that don't require a degree or serve no measurable purpose but admission into graduate school.

And yes, college professors are almost always very liberal. But fear of liberal indoctrination is a sad reason to avoid college if college is otherwise an key part of your path forward. If this fear is real for someone, my suggestion would be to choose a very large school where the chance of ideological diversity is high. In that atmosphere, a student can be enlightened by exposure to many worldviews without being suffocated by any single one.

Hitchens on Jefferson

I don't know why Christopher Hitchens wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America). Hitchens is a piercing, irreverent thinker, and the book is a rather short and conventional chronicle of the founder.

The book is well written; I've come to appreciate Hitchens' skilled prose. And in its survey of Jefferson's life, it thoughtfully addresses those things I'd expect to be most relevant to Hitchens: Jefferson's role in putting revolutionary ideas into action and his dismissal of religion. But wouldn't it have been more worthwhile to expand those sections and eliminate the remaining chronology that has surely been covered many times over?

I happen to still be interested in Jefferson and might read on. Jefferson is a very powerful figure, especially for a Unitarian Universalist of sorts like myself. He wrote the "Jefferson Bible" by removing mystical references from the Gospels to reveal what he considered the unadulterated moral teachings of Jesus. It pleases me greatly that Jefferson is considered the "author of America" when religious folks assert that America's founding was unquestioningly Christian.

Unitarian Universalists consider Jefferson a Unitarian of sorts. They note his deism and continue to circulate the Jefferson Bible. And they certainly respect his guiding role in codifying our civil and religious liberties. But it recently became too much for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations to continue to have their Southeast District named after a slave owner. (Now it is simply the Southeast District.) UUists are good enough not to see Jefferson purely in black and white, and their interest in him remains. But through careful deliberation and a vote, they determined that even though Jefferson had taken some steps to fight the institution of slavery, even going as far as proposing abolition in a draft of the Declaration of Independence, had remained an owner of human beings and there had to be some punishment for that.



Jefferson also founded and designed what is now the original core of the University of Virginia. His ideal of orienting higher education around a familial relationship between student and teacher is one we can revisit as the quickly rising cost of college leads to inevitable crisis and reform. Students and parents will increasingly be asking themselves what makes college worthwhile. It is my hope that colleges respond by competing to craft clearly worthwhile programs. Jefferson's Academical Village will be an honorable source of inspiration.

Bachmann versus Stern

Howard Stern criticized Michele Bachmann's position on gays, and Bachmann replied that Stern is a corrupter of our youth.


Howard Stern is brilliantly funny and terribly offensive. He spawned dozens of much less talented "shock jocks" around the country who haphazardly apply what they think is his formula for success: simply be outrageous. But that's not enough. Stern is brilliant and original and surrounds himself with other brilliant and original people. He's outrageously honest about himself and expects the same of others. There is no better interviewer than Howard Stern because he cuts straight to what people want to know.

There's a major misconception about Howard Stern. People think that because his humor is lewd and irreverent, he is therefore an immoral and indecent person. There's an illogical leap there. Stern is an entertainer who brings joy to his listeners' lives. And he just happens to be morally driven. At a time when leaders are still kicking gays for political gain--or worse, because their value system calls them to do so--Stern has been a solid supporter of equal rights.

I think Howard Stern is morally superior to Michele Bachmann. While she kicks a minority, he speaks up for them.