In his recent column (“Everyone values education. Except, increasingly, Republicans,” Aug. 22), columnist Leonard Pitts makes the case that because Republicans have a negative view of colleges and universities, we don’t think higher education is a “good thing." No, as the study he cites clearly states, we don’t see the progressive indoctrination at almost all four-year universities as a good thing.
We want our children to be exposed to different points of view and be encouraged to have rigorous debates which seek the truth, not safe spaces from challenging ideas, an intolerance of reasoned disagreements and an insistence of all students adopting PC values from pronouns to pro-choice.
A 2016 study found that liberal professors outnumbered their conservative counterparts by a stunning 12:1 margin. In history departments, the margin is 33:1. This is a marked shift over the past 50 years when liberal history professors once “only” outnumbered conservatives by a 3:1 margin in 1968 and by a 9:1 margin as recently as 2004. Worse yet, this alarming bias is matched by the lack of diversity of what these professors teach, tolerate and reward in the classroom. Progressives are all about diversity unless it is of ideas they abhor.
Another reason our base has contempt for these elite institutions and those who cheer for them is because they have contempt for them. Mr. Pitts comments that people who don’t have college degrees are a threat to “America’s ability to effectively govern itself and meet its challenges.” Given the skewed view of history and values taught on campuses today, I agree with our base that the only hope for maintaining the values that made our country great is for those who have not be brainwashed to get more involved in the process. I am with Bill Buckley on this one when he said “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty.”
Seventy-four percent of Americans over the age of 25 don’t have a four-year college degree. In most cases, they don’t want or need one to pursue their career and their dreams. And those dreams are as important to them and our country as any. And that path is one that is important for the economy of our country and is reflected in the marketplace. The average annual salary of a plumber in New York City is $65,000 and a coal miner in Pennsylvania makes $62,000. Not bad considering the average attorney in Baltimore makes $73,000, who may have earned a law degree but at the cost of nearly $200,000 in student debt and interest that will take decades to pay off.
The contempt of progressives isn’t limited to these undereducated deplorables, but also to the work they do and the schools that teach them their trade. For a generation, progressives have been savagely attacking private trade schools attempting to destroy them and shift the resources to the progressive academy. The latest progressive idea is to have working men and women who don’t go to college pay for the kids at MIT and Yale. Our base has always known what they really mean by redistributing wealth.
Republicans aren’t hostile to knowledge, we are hostile to elites who want to bully us into thinking that the left has the key to it and everyone else’s point of view is not only wrong, but hateful, bigoted and impermissible. If you are so certain of your rightness, why not entertain the debate? Why be offended by the ignorance of the right? Why not engage in the kind act of honestly and sincerely listening, discussing and seeking understanding of all points of view?
If that was what was happening on colleges and universities then we could all agree that higher education is a good thing for our country.
Rick Santorum
The writer, a Republican, is a former senator and presidential candidate from Pennsylvania.
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