Tag: protests

Healing Divisions By Being Real Christians

In the midst of protests and chants of black lives matter, what can I say that has any significance at all? After all, I’m a white guy (actually, kind of light beige) who grew up in a small town in northern Indiana that had no racial diversity. The closest we came to it was the Amish farming community east of town. Their lifestyle was different but they were of the same Germanic background as many of us town-dwellers. But when… Read more »

Liberty or License?

Some people are beginning to grumble about the stay-at-home orders during this COVID-19 era. Protests are beginning to pop up in various state capitals. The concern, they say, is that their liberty is being trampled by authoritarian government. At this juncture, it might be beneficial to define terms. Noah Webster, America’s first lexicographer, offered in his 1828 dictionary a key distinction between the words “liberty” and “license.” He divided liberty into various types, one of which was “civil liberty,” the… Read more »

Columbus, Racism, & Protests

Wealthy football players claim America is oppressive. Their protest over the national anthem goes viral. The nation gets thrown into turmoil. Columbus Day arrives. We have our annual Columbus-was-a-genocidal-maniac theme trumpeted from the mouths of those who, like the football players, believe America is the bastion of systemic racism. As a historian, I know that our history includes some terrible things. Yet we need some sense of comparative analysis, not emotional outbursts, to deal with what has happened. We also… Read more »

Awash in Foolishness

My response to the whole NFL national anthem controversy is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I have a visceral reaction: who are these spoiled brats making more money in one year than either I or anyone reading this blog will make in a lifetime? What do they really have to protest? What’s “wrong” with the words of this anthem? I’m an American historian who deeply appreciates the Founding of this nation—its Biblical framework of thinking and its overall goals…. Read more »

Higher Education’s Sad Spectacle

I’ve been following events on our nation’s campuses where higher learning is supposed to take place. From one perspective, one could say the faculty and students have performed a great service for making the nation laugh again, what with their “safe spaces” and tears over the last election. However, my desire for higher learning to be appreciated makes the spectacle more a reason for sadness than laughter. Denying conservative speakers the right to be heard is a type of fascism,… Read more »

What Academic Freedom?

Radicalism on university campuses has changed somewhat since the 1960s. Back then, the radicals were fighting against what they perceived were conservative administrations and professors, and their protests often turned violent. What they didn’t really understand is that most of those administrations and faculty members weren’t philosophical conservatives at all. Liberalism was dominant in the academic realm. It’s just that liberals at that time still professed a belief in honest debate over ideas. Today, it’s those who were protesting in… Read more »

Campus Insane Asylums

On the higher education front, welcome back to the 1960s. Well, sort of. Yes, the latest round of protests from people with great experience in the world (aged 18-22) isn’t quite what it once was. Not that I cared for the 1960s protests, you understand. I was in college at the time myself. But this new protest movement from those who think they know everything is even more self-centered than the previous one. It’s all aided and abetted by those… Read more »