Blasphemy

Well, this is irritating:

[B]y highlighting the increased earnings of college graduates, the argument [that a state’s residents make more money when they are well educated] has made it easy for state lawmakers to conclude that individuals should pay for more of their education, said [Thomas W. Ross, president of the University of North Carolina system] and others, and to justify budget cuts in public higher education.[1]

Ouch. Double-ouch. And almost certainly right.

But as the article I draw that passage from almost acknowledges,[2] universities are only partly to blame. As a society, we place great faith in quantitative results, especially profit.[3] Such results offer an illusory but satisfying certainty.[4] This precedes but, I would suggest, is a necessary condition for neoliberalism, which reposes maximum faith in markets, increasingly even for non-economic concerns, indeed even for capitalist libertarianism, who adherents can sometimes be heard to label what they call a “free market” the highest form of democracy.

Here, traditionalist conservatives reach a conundrum they don’t quite acknowledge.[5] They generally ally themselves with capitalist libertarians in support of smaller government. But they also offer some severe critiques of industrial capitalism. Richard Weaver, for instance, dismisses “gain-getters” as though they were universally regarded as immoral (and maybe they were, then).[6] John Calhoun, generally remembered for his advocacy of slavery, wrote somewhat less famously and well ahead of Karl Marx:

After we are exhausted, the contest will be between the capitalists and the operatives; for into these classes it must, ultimately, divide society. The issue of the struggle here must be the same as it has been in Europe. Under the operation of the system, wages must sink more rapidly than the prices of the necessaries of life, till the portion of the products of their labor left them, will be barely sufficient to preserve existence. For the present, the pressure is on our section [the agricultural, slaveholding South].[7]

In an article notable for its extremely patriarchal view of women’s rights, Christopher Olaf Blum writes, “We sense that we are interchangeable, standardized, disposable parts within the modern economy and bureaucratic state—which is to say that we are not parts at all, but mere particles of sand in some great heap or pile.”[8]

But for all their blinkers on social inequality—indeed, they consider it essential to society and view ‘diversity’ in terms of a vertical hierarchy—traditionalist conservatives stand very nearly alone, of all the tendencies in our political discourse, in protesting the instrumentalization of humanity.[9] They also, one might note, tend to be somewhat more sympathetic to higher education than most other conservatives, albeit a higher education that privileges Western tradition, especially the ‘classics’ of the ancient Greeks. And they have gone from being one of the three major tendencies of conservatism that George Nash describes in The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945[10] to, I would say, being mostly eclipsed by the social conservatism they mostly agree with but which is largely evangelical Protestant rather than Catholic.[11] In a historically anti-intellectual United States of America, with the especially anti-intellectual authoritarian populism[12] on an upsurge and the mainstream left accepting neoliberalism as part of a bipartisan consensus at least since the fall of the Berlin Wall,[13] and more likely since Jimmy Carter’s presidency,[14] higher education in a non-instrumental sense has a very precious few allies. Higher education now reduces to job training, albeit for a better class of job.[15] And therefore it indeed comes to be seen a private gain rather than a public good.[16]

What this means should go without saying. But now it must be said: We increasingly deprive ourselves even of the capacity for self-criticism as Bernie Sanders, who says very little that would have been regarded as particularly controversial in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but is now considered too far to the left, gets less than a fair shake from the mainstream media in his presidential campaign and from the Democratic Party whose nomination he seeks.[17] Capitalism and social inequality are kept safely beyond serious challenge. Money becomes the exclusive measure of all value. This insanity—our insanity[18]—thus assumes the status of religion, even more and even more dangerous than any established religion, and to speak of sanity, as the liberal arts, the humanities, critical theory, and human science all do, becomes blasphemy to be excised from the range of acceptable political discourse.

  1. [1]Eric Kelderman, “The Challenge of Restoring the ‘Public’ to ‘Public Higher Education,’” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 11, 2015, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Challenge-of-Restoring-the/234578
  2. [2]Eric Kelderman, “The Challenge of Restoring the ‘Public’ to ‘Public Higher Education,’” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 11, 2015, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Challenge-of-Restoring-the/234578
  3. [3]Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, John Wilkinson, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1964); Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993).
  4. [4]Bruce Mazlish, The Uncertain Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2007).
  5. [5]George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 30th anniversary ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).
  6. [6]Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of our Time (Louisiana State University, 1964; Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995).
  7. [7]John C. Calhoun, quoted in Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2001), p. 171.
  8. [8]Christopher Olaf Blum, “On Being Conservative: Lessons from Louis de Bonald,” Intercollegiate Review 41, no. 1 (2006): 26.
  9. [9]Christopher Olaf Blum, “On Being Conservative: Lessons from Louis de Bonald,” Intercollegiate Review 41, no. 1 (2006): 23-30; Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2001); Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of our Time (Louisiana State University, 1964; Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995).
  10. [10]George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 30th anniversary ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).
  11. [11]George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 30th anniversary ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).
  12. [12]Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? (New York: Henry Holt, 2005).
  13. [13]Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Free Market Did Not Bring Down the Berlin Wall,” Foreign Policy, November 7, 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/07/berlin_wall_fall_25_anniversary_reagan_bush_germany_merkel_cold_war_free_market_capitalism
  14. [14]Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
  15. [15]Scott Carlson, “A Symposium Cautions Against Conflating Education With Job Training,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 18, 2015, http://chronicle.com/article/A-Symposium-Cautions-Against/233209/; Michael W. Clune, “Degrees of Ignorance,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 6, 2015, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Gutting-of-Gen-Ed/234453; Terry Eagleton, “The Slow Death of the University,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 6, 2015, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Slow-Death-of-the/228991/; Colleen Flaherty, “Making the Case for Liberal Arts,” Inside Higher Ed, June 19, 2013, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/06/19/new-academy-arts-and-sciences-report-stresses-importance-humanities-and-social; Scott Jaschik, “Obama becomes latest politician to criticize a liberal arts discipline,” Inside Higher Ed, January 31, 2014, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/31/obama-becomes-latest-politician-criticize-liberal-arts-discipline; Paul Jay, “How Not to Defend the Liberal Arts,” Inside Higher Ed, October 27, 2014, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/10/27/essay-state-liberal-arts; Mark Keierleber, “Obama Ramps Up Federal Focus on Job Training,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 31, 2014, http://chronicle.com/article/Obama-Ramps-Up-Federal-Focus/144357/; Tom Kludt, “Marco Rubio Thinks It’s ‘Pathetic’ That Obama Apologized To Art History Majors,” Talking Points Memo, February 19, 2014, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-rubio-art-history-majors-apology-pathetic; Valerie Strauss, “Jeb Bush has a liberal arts degree. It didn’t stop him from belittling liberal arts majors,” Washington Post, October 28, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/10/28/jeb-bush-has-a-liberal-arts-degree-it-didnt-stop-him-from-belittling-liberal-arts-majors/; Beckie Supiano, “No Laughing Matter: President’s Quip About Art History Pricks Some Ears,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 31, 2014, http://chronicle.com/article/No-Laughing-Matter-/144327/
  16. [16]Eric Kelderman, “The Challenge of Restoring the ‘Public’ to ‘Public Higher Education,’” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 11, 2015, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Challenge-of-Restoring-the/234578
  17. [17]Jonathan Easley, “Sanders rips Trump, but Dems say problems run deeper,” Hill, December 14, 2015, http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/263190-sanders-rips-trump-but-dems-say-problems-run-deeper; Patrick Healy, “Bernie Sanders, Confronting Concerns, Makes Case for Electability,” New York Times, November 19, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/19/bernie-sanders-defends-democratic-socialism-calling-it-route-to-economic-fairness/; Ezra Klein, “Bernie Sanders’s biggest problem, in one sentence,” Vox, August 13, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9145091/bernie-sanders-problem; Gary Legum, “Bernie Sanders is in big trouble: You don’t have to be a neoliberal shill to see the cold, hard facts,” Salon, October 28, 2015, http://www.salon.com/2015/10/28/bernie_sanders_is_in_big_trouble_you_dont_have_to_be_a_neoliberal_shill_to_see_the_cold_hard_facts/; Mike Lillis, “Democrats: Sanders unelectable,” Hill, September 19, 2015, http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/254280-democrats-sanders-is-unelectable; Lauren McCauley, “Viewers Tune Out, Voters Lose Out as Democratic National Committee Buries Second Debate,” Truthdig, November 16, 2015, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/viewers_tune_out_voters_lose_out_as_dnc_buries_democratic_debate_20151116
  18. [18]Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1956; repr., Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2010).

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