#325 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Thursday April 14)
Good morning,
It’s Thursday and time for a potpourri of responses:
JOE BIDEN ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO REMAIN REPUBLICANS?
Peter Bain comments on party loyalty: “Your friend’s statement about leaving the Republican Party struck a chord for me…
Millicent and I were on the Acela from NYC back to Baltimore in November 2019. The primaries were under way, with the customary Democratic free-for-all. Biden’s campaign was widely viewed as dead in the water, and the pundit class had written him off. We looked up from our seats and there he was, in our car, chatting away with folks. We watched as he engaged with just about everybody, but particularly the younger folks. Being me, I of course approached him to have a chat. I told him I appreciated his long career of public service, but that, as a lifelong Republican, I disagreed with a number of his policy positions. I went on to tell him, though, that I was struggling with my party and what I felt it had become and the even more concerning direction in which I saw it heading. I said this assuming that his response would be to describe the “big tent” of the Democratic Party and to encourage me to cross the aisle and join the Democrats.
However, without any hesitation, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “No, you need to stay in your party and fight for it! We need real debate, vibrant discussion of competing ideas and philosophies, for America to be what we are at our best. If you leave, all that remains are the extremists with whom real conversation isn’t possible…” My regard for him changed in that moment…
To this day, I remain in the Republican Party... I will work with my friends, with many of whom I now have fundamental disagreements and from some of whom I am sadly estranged, to bring back a coherent, policy-based constitutional philosophy to serve as the foundation of a party of principle, and not the cult of personality and culture war we currently face. I was deeply saddened to see the Republican Senators turn their backs and walk out on Justice Jackson’s confirmation vote yesterday. I was also proud of Mitt Romney, standing alone and applauding the all together fitting and proper elevation of this remarkable jurist, with some of whose rulings I am sure I will disagree, but whose jurisprudential thinking I will undoubtedly respect.
We are indeed living in history in the present. I pray we all do whatever we believe is our best to restore and fulfill our nation’s unique and critical role in human affairs.
BANNING BOOKS
There was no shortage of responses to my rant about the banning of books. Sue Meltzer notes that the same people trying to protect children by banning books seem uninterested in banning certain types of weapons.
And there are these words, uttered by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942: “Books cannot be killed by fire. People die but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever [nor can they] take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.”
FRATERNITIES, REDUX
In response to my questioning the continued rationale for “Greek life” on campus, a lot of folks commented on their positive experiences. Yet some of those same people noted that the culture has been declining for years, noting they don’t even recognize the current behaviors at their fraternity houses.
The best argument for fraternities is the community that they build. Joan Kessler suggests, however, that there are other avenues for college students to find and build community—through organizations like Hillel, the Newman Center and other faith-related organizations and through special interest organizations. It’s a difficult area in which to strike the right balance. If one limits housing options and the ability of students to built their own small communities, how does one deal with houses focused on foreign languages and cultures, or residences that create a more comfortable environment for minority students? The devil is in the details.
If this were a Middle School debate tournament, the resolution might be “fraternities in 2022 do more harm than good.” If it were, it’s hard to imagine that the proposition wouldn’t win most times.
Have a great day,
Glenn
From the archives: