Pure Common Sense

For those who don’t know David Horowitz is, he is a political activist and the founder of Students for Academic Freedom. I read his interview in Newsmax this month and it really got me thinking. Horowitz has voiced concern in the past over how atheists now control theology departments at colleges across the country and devout Christians are having their voices suppressed. Although Horowitz is himself an agnostic, he is pleased with the increasing numbers of evangelical Christians in undergraduate universities, as he supports any form of religious commitment among students in an increasingly secular atmosphere. Like me, Horowitz believes that the college is a marketplace of ideas and that only works is nothing is censored. The ideas can clash with each other in open competition and we just have to let it work, as it is with the free market in economics.

Perhaps it has come time for Christian students at American universities to form an alliance with other students who feel they are having their rights violated to create a greater coalition. This would be in the make of the Leave Us Alone coalition, which is championed by Grover Norquist in his new book. Such a coalition might even rival the power of the New Left in the 1960s and get American academic thought back on the right track. It is much easier to be devoutly religious on college campuses than it has been in the past and now there must be contribution to the campus atmosphere in general.

There was much more balanced presence on college campuses in the 1950s and past decades than there is today. With the birth of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a radical upsurge in violence and intimidation which made the administration become radically leftist. There is no intellectual superiority of left-wing academics because they did not attain their ruling regime in a fair-and-balanced manner. They came to power through intimidation and armed revolution. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, among other events, it is becoming clear that a lot of their ideas just ain’t so. It is time to return to the free market of ideas and abandon the secular socialist empire of ideas. Horowitz even points out that the secular left has its own religion now. He says that it “is a secular religion, promising a kingdom of heaven on earth – a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, inequality, war, etc. delivered by political operatives.” He contends that there are “tens of thousands of these secular missionaries” preaching their radical gospel on campuses.

Horowitz has done valuable work promoting the spirit of the first amendment of our constitution on the college campus and I hope that there is more progress on that front in the future. But I would like to see more academic freedom prior to college. I think that in high schools and middle schools there should be more first amendment rights. Nothing should be censored in those arenas unless there is a clear distraction to the learning process and it is administered in a balanced manner. I would also like to see room be made for nondenominational prayer among teachers and students. The ACLU and loose constructionist judges have been an obstacle on that front. It is time for a change.