Professorial Liberalism vs. Granddad

My grandfathers both passed away many years ago. I miss them greatly. Grandpoppy Mounts held a double doctorate in both Theology and Psychology, in contrast to Granddad Gordon, who left school in the eighth grade in order to survive the great depression. Both served during WW2, and both became equally successful in their respective careers after the war. While neither became “rich” in the financial sense, both were, what I refer to as “wisdom-rich,” and they certainly achieved an admirable level of success during their lives.

I suppose I’m thinking with nostalgia today, because I just returned from something of a personal pilgrimage to Granddad Gordon’s old farm. Someone else owns the property now, but it was really something to walk the fields with my three children he never got to meet. Granddad Gordon was a quiet man, but when he did speak, I listened. (Admittedly, because if I didn’t listen, he’d use his leather razor strap on my rear end.)

Aren’t principles wonderful? Not the kind you learn from a supercilious professor who blathers to his students between adoring glances at his own reflection, but those small-town altruisms that you learned from your grandpa while chit-chatting your way across the pasture, as a kid. The term “progressive” would be fine if it strictly referred to the adventurous nature of technological discoveries, as they apply to the “tools and utilitarian” arena. But that’s not what “progressive” means. In political circles the term “progressive” means one believes that those things which are “tools and utilitarian” are inseparably connected to principles of morality and behavior, as well. This is the greatest lie of secular liberalism.

The political left in this country think they do, but regardless, principles DON’T suddenly “change” because someone invents a smaller, thinner phone, or GE develops a new microwave that can either cook a meal in less than three seconds or freeze your leftovers in five. I mean, we may someday actually figure out how to instantly “beam” ourselves (Star Trek style) to a colony on Mars, but it will still be stupid to “put all our eggs in one basket,” and the man who does will still end-up “so broke he can’t pay attention.” Someone may eventually invent (in contrast to what we have now) an ATTRACTIVE and COMFORTABLE “green” eco-car (that doesn’t even require a driver), but a man who doesn’t “know his place” will still get “beaten like a rented mule.”

Americans may continue to vote themselves grand gifts from the U.S. Treasury through the continued election of closet Marxists who saunter the electoral “catwalk” brandishing the designer clothing of the Democrat Party, but when the money-printing machine finally breaks-down, lazy men will still be “like a blister, because he doesn’t show up until all the work is done.”  Mayo may find the cure to cancer (I pray they do), but it will still be impolite to act pretentious in public, goading Grandpa to conclude, “Ah, he’s all hat and no cattle.”

In contrast to Grandpa’s simple wisdom, there remains an odd insecurity in academic circles. In order to sell one’s “legacy of quality education,” one must maintain the appearance of intellectual superiority to that offered by competing institutions. Sometimes it appears as if the professorate is compelled to frame issues in the most COMPLICATED ways possible, so that when he/she finally delivers the solution to the students, it’s presented in a way that maintains the mystique of brilliance and the cultured reputation of the establishment. Just watch and listen to the next “guest expert” from Renowned University as he explains the intricacies of the healthcare dilemma to his captive CNN audience. (Meanwhile, the cause of the healthcare problem, as well as the solution, are fairly easy to understand… I’ll write about that sometime.)

In contrast, Grandpa wasn’t in competition with other institutions, he wasn’t insecure, and he didn’t necessarily care whether or not anyone believed he was or wasn’t mentally superior. He just wanted us grandkids to learn the principles that wouldn’t change, even if we DID someday earn our PhD. Grandpas have skills! They often know how to take complex issues and make them simple enough for “youngens” to understand, without the conflicts of professorial vanity. You see, the key to understanding allegedly difficult national or even international problems is learning the skill to reduce them to the simplest possible terms.

For example, many people today claim that fighting against terrorism abroad is wrong, “because the application of justice against terrorists will only serve to increase terrorism around the world!” Why? “Because when you fight back against the unjust, the unjust get angrier, and therefore, become more unjust in greater numbers.” What’s the solution? “Open a dialogue with them,” they say. Yet the same people who make this claim surely wouldn’t argue that “allowing the police to fight crime in Sioux City, by arresting individual criminals is the wrong thing to do! Because, after all, if you arrest a criminal, it just makes all the other criminals angrier and causes an increase in crime city-wide!” It wasn’t too long ago that some Democrats criticized President Obama for allowing the military to shoot and kill the Somali pirates. Why? “Because,” they screeched, “this aggression will only bolster pirate recruitments!” What serendipity I experienced as the President’s own flawed argument was used against him, by his own team.

The just punishment of evil acts, whether they be in a dark Woodbury County alley, at sea, or in another tyrannical nation with the ability, desire, and intent to harm Americans, REDUCES said acts…it does NOT increase them. Why? Because the principle of justice doesn’t change, whether you’re dealing with one criminal or a whole international syndicate of them. It isn’t that either of my grandfathers would have been against opening a dialogue with criminals and terrorists, either, [I’m chuckling]. I know they both would have supported things like, “Stop or I’ll shoot!” as a perfectly good place to begin the dialogue. (How I miss them…how I wish more folks were like them.)

Here’s my point: reducing the complicated sounding ideas of “international justice” to one of simple justice, as it relates to our backyards, helps us better understand problems that aren’t necessarily as complicated as the media and politicians like to make them appear. Their arguments may well sound all “hoity toity,” but a principle doesn’t change, whether it’s applied in the woodshed or with a “water-board.” Most enjoyably, to a man such as I, remembering Granddad’s common sense makes it easier to expose the not-so-hot canards of “professorial liberalism.”

Many of our current problems in America are sourced in what is best described with the southern simplicity my grandpa might have used if he were still alive. You see, in past elections, Americans were talked into “sellin’ their mule so they could buy a plow,” and congress has become “a little too big for their britches.” But come the next election, they may finally understand that “a tree don’t ever get too big for a short dog to lift his leg up on!”