Humanities in Crisis

About a week ago, Martin Cothran  linked to this article by David Brooks on the subject of why the liberal arts are such a joke in education.  Brooks writes “the humanities are not only being bulldozed by an unforgiving job market. They are committing suicide because many humanists have lost faith in their own enterprise.” What is the reason for this? According to Brooks “Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in this uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender. Liberal arts professors grew more moralistic when talking about politics but more tentative about private morality because they didn't want to offend anybody.”

I had the opportunity to see this first hand in my time at A&M, especially in my class on Literary Theory. Truth, in the class, was debunked and talked about as an unreal or irrelevant thing, and the focus was on how writers were influenced and how their works could be twisted to mean anything we wanted, thus proving an author had no control over his work. This was the subject of an essay I wrote for the class which I may post here at some point in the near future. Several people at The Imaginative Conservative have written replies to Brooks article which are very interesting, especially that of Louis A. Markos where he brings in a very enlightening quote from C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.

However, while everyone points at the problem quite clearly, I think that most of them are missing the root of the problem. As Charles Clough says often, it all comes back to origins.

If evolution is true, if humans evolved from monkeys, then the humanities are a complete waste of time.

If mankind is evolving through history, which is the primary point of today’s scientism and atheistic revolution in the meaning of morality, then what Aristotle said thousands of years ago is monumentally irrelevant. What is driving much of the debate around abortions, gay marriage, euthanasia, social security, gun control, political philosophy, is the belief that mankind is advancing along a rising slope that begins with slime, rises through apes, rises through us today and beyond.

The problem with the humanities is that they deal with people, events, and philosophies all resting on that line between us and the apes, not between us and what we must become. They are, in effect, below us.

The humanities only make sense if we are created by a rational God who has revealed himself and his truth to mankind through the ages. Only if mankind is created in the image of God do the ancient philosophers have anything meaningful to offer besides a look at un-evolved man which should be taken quickly and mockingly.

Don't Stop, Don't Drop.

A friend of a friend of mine recently published this article on her blog, looking back at her experiences running cross country. There are a couple of things that jumped out at me in reading this especially in the context of me training my replacement for next year and the passing on of the Guidon which will take place this weekend. There is an exclusiveness that is a healthy part of an organization's structure and promotes higher performance, and that exclusiveness and performance must be matched with humility and a servant's heart.
For those of you who are not in the Corps, the Guidon is the unit flag which represents the standards, the history, and the goals of the unit, not unlike the Eagle of the Roman Legions. The guidon bearer is chosen each year in a process know as Guidon Candidacy, a two-three week period in which freshmen carry mock guidons during increased physical training and take part in a variety of leadership development and stress evaluation exercises. When I was a fish, the most daunting part of Guidon training was the high port runs, in which we carried our flags over our heads for 2-4 mile runs. As we fell out for our first high port run, the current Guidon bearer formed us up and said "I have one piece of advice for you when it comes to high porting, don't stop, and don't drop."
That piece of advice has gotten me a long way over the last few years. Don't stop trying, working, or giving and don't drop your standards, your morals, or yourself.
In the article, the author talks about the atmosphere that her cross country coach created, in part by talking about what made them different from the rest of the school. We do this a lot in the Corps, and it is apart of creating excellence in whatever organization we are apart of. This exclusiveness, this concept of us being separate and somehow better than them fosters a healthy pride in the organization and a drive to live up to the high standards that form our identity as separate from theirs. In the Corps, one of the forms this takes is attendance at Silver Taps and Echo Taps, where we remember and pay homage to the memory of Aggies and Cadets who have passed away. We pride ourselves on attending these events in mass because these ceremonies separate us from those who are not Aggies, those who are not Cadets.
This all by itself creates merely pride and snobbery. But there is a difference between the pride of a Marine and the pride of, say, a career politician. The second believe he has risen above the rest, is wiser and better than everyone else and is thus entitled to whatever its politicians are entitled to. The first, in contrast, knows that he has been trained beyond what most others have, knows that he is stronger and tougher than most others, but he knows also that that all the training and preparation has taken place so that he can serve others.
The author of the article talks a lot about helping others and focusing on what we can do for them. My junior year in the Corps one of my jobs was to conduct physical training tests for several units. The final event of the test was a mile and half timed run. At nearly every single test, the leaders of the outfit would come sailing in well under the time limit, wait for a few seconds to catch their breath, turn around and run back onto the track, reappearing a few minutes later running in with the slower fish who struggled to meet the time limit. They did not stand at the finish line beating their chests or bragging about their speed, they quietly used their gifts to motivate and encourage others.

That is why we must push ourselves, why we must work to develop ourselves and those around us, so that we may give back to others.
"Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working withhis hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." Ephesians 4:28



Note: After my sophomore year, highporting was banned in the Corps and cadets are no longer allowed to conduct highport runs.

Do. Your. Job.

As my time in the Corps of Cadets is coming to an end, I have had the opportunity to look back at some of the lessons I have learned over the last four years. I've learned a lot about leadership and followership, mostly by making mistakes. The biggest lesson I've learned is as difficult to execute as it is simple to understand.

Do your job.

It seems simple, but I and others have wasted vast amounts of time and energy doing anything but. In the Corps, as in just about any organization, there is always something going wrong, something to worry, argue, complain, or debate about. There are always people who could be doing their job better, and there are always things that need to be done better. On the other side, there are always personal goals that we all have, either to do community service, grow in our relationship with God, or develop friendships with those around us. The problem that arises is when we neglect to fulfill our responsibilities and chase instead after other things, whether relationships or personal pleasures.

Too often we worry about the people who are not taking care of their responsibilities, and spend valuable time and energy complaining or gossiping about people who are not doing their job, time and energy that could be better spent completing our assigned tasks and leading those around us. Very often, if you perform your job well, you can cover for the mistakes or failures of others and you can set a good example for your subordinates and peers, which will in turn elevate their performance. People who do their job well consistently for long periods of time can build amazing amounts of influence and credibility. It does not happen overnight, but if day in and day out you show up and give 100% of your effort to do your job and then to help others, you will be able to have a positive impact beyond what you imagine.

I've often heard my dad talk about those Christians who are "so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good", and in the Corps I've seen people like this a lot. The Christians who had the most impact for Christ were not the ones who went to all the bible studies, were at church every Sunday  or made every christian retreat, but the ones who did their jobs well. I don't mean to belittle these things, they are very healthy and important for good christian growth. However, I have seen time and again young Christians come back from a bible study or retreat all excited and trying to minister to their roommate or buddies, only to get the cold shoulder. They wonder why their buddies don't respond more positively, and the answer is that while they were off 'getting into the word' and 'fellow-shipping with their brothers and sisters in Christ' their buddies were cleaning up the mess they left behind, scrambling to rewrite the training schedule that was left unfinished or unapproved, or giving the briefing that the christian skipped out on. Bible studies are important, no less than Church, retreats, mission trips, and all the rest, but if we are going to be good witness for Christ, we have to begin by taking care of our responsibilities to others.

It is easy at the end of the day to look at what you did and give yourself a pat on the back for being better than everyone else. You worked hard and they didn't. But remember a few things.
First, everyone has their own struggles and hardships. When you are picking up slack for someone else, remember that people have been picking up your slack since before you were born. Even aside from what our parents do for us, everyone has bad days, problems, and weaknesses. While today you are covering for someone else, someday you will need someone to cover for you.
Second, its not about you. At the end of the day what matters is if freshmen learned the drill movements, if the shipment got out the door, if the reports got filed, if the job got done. When we learn to be humble and handle our own load, we might have the opportunity to help someone else and achieve things bigger than ourselves.

Why We Need Health Care (Part II)

In the last post I attempted to define at a very fundamental level why liberals believe that the wealthy are to blame for the plight of poor people in America. I realize now that I made a basic mistake and did not define the terms I was using. When I speak of poor, I mean people who have difficulty paying for or maintaining many of the luxuries that are common place in America and when I speak of the wealthy, I mean those who make or have accumulated more than the average American family.

In this post I will look at why liberals look to the government as the solution of the problem. We identified their assumption that the reason for an excess of wealth in one area is a lack of it in another. They believe that there is a finite amount of wealth, which means those who have more than average have stolen it from those who have less.

Having determined that there is theft going on, (from one income bracket to another) the liberal then looks to see who or what has the power to remedy the situation. The most obvious candidate is government, it has the power to compel people to do its bidding, and the wealthy will not surrender the amount of income required of him willingly.

 Thus, the liberal sees government as the best force with the right to equalize the wealth of a nation, because the nation is not capable of doing it itself. When big business steals from the poor or otherwise takes advantage of them, the poor have no one to turn to except government. Thus the government become the ultimate charity, collecting from the wealthy to care for the poor. The collections take the form of taxes, and the government uses those taxes to pay for doctors, food stamps, medication, etc. In this way, the wealthy CEO of Walmart pays a portion of his earnings back into the system, allowing it to be used to help and provide for people in the lower income brackets he makes his money off of.

This is why people like Marx or Hitler look to some form of populist government and force to achieve what they see as social justice. Because people with wealth have been shaped by the capitalistic culture that surrounds them, they are motivated by greed and self interest and thus are more concerned about themselves than the community and must be forced to share and take care of the community.

Government becomes the ultimate parent, making sure the children share and get along while also providing just what every child needs.

Why We Need Health Care (Part I)

In the hopes of contributing something to the debate over the direction our country should take in regards to Health Care and welfare programs in general I will be taking a few posts to attempt to discuss the assumptions and reasoning that underlie the belief in welfare in general. 
We begin with a basic problem, there is a vast disparity in wealth among Americans. While some have golden toilets, others have difficulty paying for their plumbing from month to month. While some charter private jets to fly from city to city, others cannot afford a car to drive to work. A portion of our society cannot afford the basics of life in modern America. This raises two questions.

1. Why are people deprived or lacking in basic necessities and comforts?
2. How do we go about fixing the problem.

The first question is perhaps most important but is often overlooked so we can talk about fixing the problem. Before we can determine a solution to the problem we first need to identify the cause. This points us toward one of the bottom level beliefs of liberalism that is so fundamental that it is rarely brought to the surface.

Man is basically good and is shaped by his environment. Thus when educated he can be enlightened and improved, but if left in poverty or surrounded by corruption then he will be almost unable to avoid damaging influence they will exert. 

Thus, an individual in poverty must be rescued from that state. He is nearly  powerless to remove himself from his environment because the environment itself is what shapes and motivates him. Thus, his existence in poverty cannot be his own fault. 

If it is not his own fault, then we must look around for what is creating the environment that is keeping people in poverty. The liberal usually falls back on the great socialist thinkers, the foremost of whom was Karl Marx,   and identifies Capitalism as the culprit. Capitalism is, fundamentally built on gaining wealth for oneself. The vast amounts of money that corporations and companies make must come from somewhere, and often that money comes from the private sector. For  example, take Wal-Mart. The company has built itself around selling base level goods at base level prices, and the majority of their income comes from low income people (like me!) who are unable or unwilling to pay more at other stores. Thus, when Walmart makes a billion dollars, that is a billion dollars that came from lower income families who cannot pay for medical or dental bills, for a car, or for insurance. And, to make it worse, when the CEO receives a 100,000 dollar bonus, that is a hundred thousand dollars in his bank account that came from people who make less than that in four years.

Thus, the culprit seems obvious, there is a lack of money in one area (the low income bracket), an abundance of wealth in another area (the CEO's bank account) and a clear path as to how the money got from one place to the other. The CEO is caught red handed.

Now that we know who caused the problem, we'll look at how to fix it next. 

Health Care

I've been talking to a lot of people about the Supreme Court's Health Care ruling and thinking carefully in an effort to keep my foot out of my mouth in this post. There are a couple of things that I think might help people in thinking about this issue that have flown under the radar.

1. Whoever has the gold, makes the rules. We laugh about it, but it is true, the people who pay for something decide how to handle it, and since FDR's New Deal we have relied more and more on the government to take care of our social issues. When the government is responsible for all those things and we demand that the government pay for our education, our doctors, our medicine, and our house, and sometimes our food, then we should not be surprised when they tell us that we have to buy health insurance. I don't think they should make us buy health insurance, but I also don't think the government should pay for everything else either.
2. The Supreme Court is not meant to bite the bullet and clean up the mess that our representatives make. We can rail on Chief Justice Roberts all we want but it was the representatives we elected who did not stop the Health Care bill, and that is what we pay them to do. The Supreme Court is already a highly politicized institution, anyone who watched the confirmation hearings for Justices Roberts, Alito, or Kagan remember how nasty they were. A lot of that was based around their opinions on Roe v. Wade, which supercharged the court and has become a litmus test for appointments on both sides. Also, it might help to remember the court packing plan of FDR. The Supreme Court blocked much of what FDR proposed, and in response,  the president planned to rearrange much of the Judicial branch to remove the opposition to his proposals and announced it to the nation in one of his fireside chats. This was avoided when several Justices retired or switched positions on the Supreme Court and thus made it unnecessary, but the threat was very real, and it is possible that Chief Justice Roberts was afraid of beginning a war with the executive or legislative branches that could severely hurt the Court and the nation. 
3. If you don't like what congress is doing, then do your job. It is our duty as citizens to make informed decisions on election day. Election day is coming up, get informed. its that simple. 

The main point I'm trying to make here is that what happens in the hallowed halls of our government is a direct reflection of the society that puts people there. There will always be people willing to tell us what to do if we let them, and if we demand that they be our parents, they will eventually treat us like children. Personal responsibility, diligence, and loyalty to those around us will go a lot farther toward fixing our country than voting for libertarian candidates. A representative democracy places most of the power with the people on the assumption that they will hold onto it and use it responsibly, and as long as the people do then the system works less poorly than any other. Once the people give up responsibility, the government has to exercise it for them, and we start on the long road to oligarchy or anarchy.
A friend of mine, William Schwennson wrote an excellent article on the recent EU summit and the Supreme Court ruling. He has read the 193 page Supreme Court opinion and has some good insights into what it means. You can find it here.
On a final note, please keep the family of Lt. Col. Roy Lin Tisdale in your prayers. He left a wife and several children including a young son. However bad things seem to be going for us, it helps to remember "At least we aren't being shot at".
Semper Fi.

Learning

I was looking through some of my posts below, and besides the long period of time that has passed since I wrote anything, I noticed something else. I focused a lot on politics, some of which was important, some of which wasn't. Some of what I wrote I still agree with, some of it I wish I could erase, such as the Perry article.
When I went into my freshman year of College, I thought a lot of things that appear silly now. I have learned a lot from the last few years, and one of them is that the government will not fix our problems. It matters very little whether Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, or President Obama is in the White House, and it matters less who controls congress. What matters is us.
For those of us who are Christians, we are called to live out the commands of Christ, to let his light shine through us. We will produce far deeper and more lasting good on this world if we simply shine the light of God onto the people around us. If we consistently love one another as Christ loved us we will have an impact that the social conservatives have only imagined.
Look at a few of the big social issues the Church is concerned with: abortion, marriage, and welfare. If every christian young man lived responsibly, kept his word, honored the women around him as Paul commanded, and was generous to help the people he knew, those three issues would shrink overnight. The Church needs to clean its own house before it can send people out to clean up the culture.
I am far from perfect, as my buddies in the Corps can tell you, and I have failed many times to uphold the commands of Christ in everyday life. When we are faced with failure in our immediate lives, it is easier to blame the fall of society on Congress or on the courts, as I well know. As Christ said, we must remove the log from our own eye before we can remove the spec from our brother's.