This is your far-flung correspondent Ed Palm here again reflecting on our current condition in these Disunited States.
Liberty University revisited: This fundamentalist Christian university — founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer Towns — celebrated its 50th anniversary last week with a university-wide convocation attended by students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Co-founder Towns was one of the guest speakers. He noted the school’s remarkable progress over the past 50 years and went on to point to the signal accomplishments of two of the school’s alumni as evidence of its success — “a Miss America winner and the Christian songwriter and singer Mark Lowry.”
While I’m out of sympathy with Liberty’s insistence on accepting the Bible as literally true and authoritative in spiritual and temporal matters, I have to believe that hundreds of its graduates have gone on to make more significant contributions to our society than to win beauty contests or to achieve fame in the niche Christian music industry.
I am especially bothered by the implicit endorsement of the sexist Miss America Pageant. The great majority of Americans have lost interest in it — and for good reason. Calling it a “scholarship competition” and eliminating the swimsuit parade doesn’t change the fact that it essentially objectifies women. But, then again, the Bible, in its Old and New Testaments, reflects the values and mores of a patriarchal society in which women are subordinate and even subservient to men. Given that Liberty expects its students to revere and not question scripture, I have to wonder if women there are indoctrinated to believe that men are superior to them. If not, how they do get around the biblical model of the male-female relationship?
I suspect they do it through condescension — just as the Catholic Church of my day did. They patronized women by reminding them that theirs was the special privilege of bringing new life into the world. The irony is that one of the best ways to keep women down is to put them up on a pedestal, implying that any role but wife and mother is beneath them. The subtext, of course, is that Jesus and his disciples were men, so don’t even think about becoming priests — who are addressed as “father.”
If you think all this has nothing to do with you nearly 3,000 miles away, consider that Liberty has an on-campus enrollment of some 15,000 students drawn from all across the country. It is now boasting of a record online enrollment of over 114,000 students. As Kevin Roose, author of the 2009 Liberty exposé “The Unlikely Disciple,” reminds his readers, “These people vote.”
An alternative line from Milton’s “Paradise Lost” comes to mind: “Awake, arise, or be forever fallen” into the theocratic realm of Christian nationalism. Count me among those who believe we need to rebuild our Constitutional wall between church and state. I further believe that calling America a “Christian nation” is exclusionary and disrespectful to those of other faiths as well as to secular humanists like me.
Free community colleges? In general, I support Biden’s human infrastructure package, but as a former Olympic College dean, I do have to quibble over making community colleges free. It’s human nature that what we get for free we don’t value. Community colleges in most states, Washington included, saw their state support cut during the 2007-08 economic recession. Community colleges, moreover, have always been hard-pressed to be all things to all people. They are likely to find themselves wasting time and money with halfhearted students who really have no academic or career objective in mind. I think the California Reagan compromise was good — $50 a semester. These days it could be $100 or $150 — or whatever charge would be enough to discourage those who just have nothing better to do.
Biden’s infrastructure plan: Community colleges aside, I for one am not worried about the cost of Biden’s New Deal. I view the money spent as an investment that will pay dividends in America’s future. I do have reservations about some of it. But I believe that we owe it to our elderly and our disabled to ensure they are well cared for, and I especially support universal free preschool. As I have written in the past, I see that as akin to the G.I. Bill. Much of the money spent in launching preschool children on their way to productive middle-class lives will eventually come back to the government through their income taxes.
And as I learned by teaching for eight years in West Virginia’s insular culture, young people have to be able to envision a better future to achieve it. Free preschool is likely to help our most disadvantaged children see that there is a world outside of the cycle of poverty and welfare dependency.
We were spending an average of $300 million a day on Afghanistan ($2 trillion over 20 years). Now that we are out of there, why not put that money to better use by improving our physical and human infrastructure?
A modest proposal: I would like to propose a mood music number — some Muzak — to be played incessantly in both chamber of Congress: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by the Rolling Stones. The line I would have the Democratic Progressive Caucus and the Republican Freedom Caucus pay special attention is the refrain: “But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find you get what you need.”
We have legislators on both sides acting like spoiled kids threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don’t get everything they want. Enough already! For what it’s worth, my advice to Congress would be to compromise and get what you can for now. Legislating is not a zero-sum game. Every gain for one political party is not necessarily a loss for the other. In the words of the Canadian comedian Red Green, “We’re all in this together.”
An afterthought: Active-duty servicemen and women are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activity while in uniform. While watching the news coverage of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, I was appalled to see a woman soldier in her dress uniform there on the scene. As an individual — off duty and out of uniform — she would have been free to attend a political rally. But she was not free to use her uniform as a megaphone amplifying her support of Trump — especially of his stolen-election lie. Shame on her!
Contact Ed Palm at majorpalm@gmail.com.
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