Economics, academics & liberty

(Denver Post, Mar. 1) One thing will get Colorado out of this recession, and it’s not big government. It is the human spirit. All economic growth is the improvement of material resources by creativity and work. Silicon, ignored for eons as beach sand, became microchips humming with intelligence. Petroleum was worthless tar seeps before men made it black gold. Our state was labeled “the Great American Desert” on early maps. People transformed it into the place of opportunity and productivity we now enjoy. Wealth multiplies when men and women combine the intellectual capital for producing goods and services with the moral capital for honest dealing and deferred gratification. Americans have always known this. “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged,” says the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Constitution hadn’t been written, and we had barely crossed the Appalachians. But the founders put first things first.

Even today, sophisticated and stimulus-dependent as the nation has become, we sense that the truth from Washington’s time is still true: Moral and intellectual capital will make or break the American dream. Hence our endless arguments about education.

From preschool to grad school, Coloradans can’t get enough of the classroom – and can’t agree on what it’s for. That’s a good thing on both counts. The push to improve ourselves, improve everyone and leave no one behind, is laudable. The contention over education’s meaning expresses liberty in all its messy glory.

So it’s okay that the University of Denver will host a debate on Monday between Prof. Alan Gilbert and state Sen. Shawn Mitchell on trying former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as a war criminal. And that CU-Boulder on Thursday will allow back on campus the disgraced plagiarist Ward Churchill and the unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

I abhor the anti-American falsehoods that will echo at both forums. But this petty childishness is a small price for free speech and unfettered dissent. It was even a “good” if distasteful thing when a Metro State professor could smear Sarah Palin, or when a terror apologist could address the 9/11 commemoration at Colorado College.

Such unruly eruptions in the thought-life of a free society are tolerable on one condition – competitiveness in the education marketplace. As long as students have alternatives, outrageous utterances by academic malcontents hurt no one. In fair combat amongst the campuses, Jefferson’s assurance was right: lies won’t stand.

This is where it gets dicey for Coloradans. In March 2004, concerns over professorial mistreatment of conservative and religious students yielded written assurances to legislators by the presidents of CU, CSU, UNC, and Metro for better protection of academic freedom. But little has changed.

Fortunately, competition in higher ed isn’t limited to the old-line public and private colleges. Other choices include for-profit upstarts like Colorado Tech or the University of Phoenix, as well as faith-based options like Regis and Colorado Christian University. Both of the latter uphold a 1787 understanding of education’s moral and religious benefits.

CCU, where I now work, is proudly counter-cultural. One of its objectives, in addition to academic excellence, is “to impact our culture in support of traditional family values, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, biblical view of human nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, original intent of the Constitution, and Western civilization.” Heretical, perhaps, but healthy.

CCU President Bill Armstrong, a former US senator, instead of railing at the Boulder leftists, politely counters by bringing to his Lakewood campus such eminent conservative speakers as Michael Novak on democratic capitalism and Thomas Krannawitter on America’s greatness. Take that, Bill Ayers.

All hail the open mind and the unregulated marketplace of ideas. A rebounding economy is sure to follow.

Paranoid liberals at Metro State

Tonight on Backbone Radio, campus editor Sean Doherty related the hilarious, but also deeply paranoid, fears of a Metro State staffer who voiced the following chain of spontaneous word associations in regard to a then-proposed (and since launched) campus newspaper called The Constitutional Reporter. "Constitutional... Klan... Republican... hateful... illegal... Nazi... swastika"

Yes, those are direct quotes. This really happened. Doherty's full notes of the phone conversations are given below.

STATEMENT BY SEAN DOHERTY Senior Political Science Major Metropolitan State College of Denver

Here are the minutes from my phone conversation with a representative of Metro State's administration.

Setting: I had previously asked for permission to put my paper on campus. They agreed. When I asked for written permission, the "gatekeeper" said he would get the permission slip to the right people and contact me. So, on the morning of 2/4/09 at 10:23am, I got the following call (I wrote down the following notes immediately after the conversation)

The gentleman on the phone had spoken with the appropriate people in admin who had him tell me the following:

"This is not a reflection on you as an individual but..." (an important distinction. What he is saying is that they don't know who I am but what concerns them is what they do know: the title of my newspaper: The Constitutional Reporter. They have no knowledge of anything except for the title of the paper)

He then goes on to say that the title Constitutional is concerning since the word is sometimes associated with radicals. He goes into rambling mode and lists a few other concerns such as "how do we know you're not part of the Klan?" He asked specifically if this was a Republican newspaper.

I responded that it was nonpartisan.

He then said that they don't want anything that could be considered hateful or illegal on the campus.

Then, he tried to justify their refusal to sign with this number: "we are for freedom of speech, freedom of speech..." and he explained that they understood this was a state institution and state property but that they wanted to "see an outline of the paper, you know, a business plan, to know what its about because they have to be careful before they give approval for something to be placed on campus.

I objected and said they did not need and could not request a business plan- I'm not even associated with the school other than being a student!

He said that was right but they would still need an outline of some sort.

I knew he wasn't the guy responsible for these concerns; he was just speaking for some administrators behind closed doors. I asked if I could meet with these people and address their concerns specifically so they may see that I am a good guy and certainly not a radical Klan member!

He said that they're busy folks (to which I responded that I am too) and he said they're always in meetings. So I asked him, "what about today at 3:30pm? Are they busy today at that time?" He could not give me an answer one way or the other and brushed off the question. He just told me to bring in an outline and we'd go from there. According to him, if I brought in an outline, then he could schedule a meeting with the administrators who could meet me and sign off giving our paper documented approval.

A day later 2/5/09 and around 11:30am, we have another phone conversation:

He reaffirmed that they were concerned and instead of just a Klan reference, he used the whole term in question: Ku Klux Klan. In addition, he added a new one to the list of concerns: that they did not want a Nazi paper on campus. "they did not want to pick up our paper and see a swastika on the cover."

I questioned him about what could be radical about the term Constitutional. To his credit, he said that the Constitutional Convention and other key events and figures in history were not radical (although, technically, in a way they were radical for that time) but he did not state any specific concerns or examples for what could be radical about the word Constitutional in a modern day context.

I asked him to submit his request to me in writing before I submit any outline in writing to them. I said something to the effect of "if the admin sees fit to request a written outline from me, I want a written outline of what their concerns are"

Nothing. He just told me to do an outline. I then said, basically, "well what if I did a news story about this? Would you want to put it in writing so nothing is mis-quoted?" He answered, "Absolutely not."

www.theconstitutionalreporter.com

To contact Sean Doherty 303.263.2281 kairoshappens@gmail.com