God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' by William F. Buckley Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Excellent book.
I couldn't help but keep thinking of that saying, "Unless man learns his history, he is doomed to repeat it." History is full of "mistakes" that have caused, hopefully, mankind to learn it's lessons. However, it seems that there are plenty of lessons mankind has NOT learned, and today we are seeing the repeat of some of them.
This book clearly lays out a lot of history - both where socialism/communism/tyranny lie as well as capitalism, and compares the two without using those words. It gives a clear, full and unbiased history of mankind, his governance, and especially how slowly the ideas and principles of communism take over a nation - through its university professors and students. It describes the logic that universities are there, not to indoctrinate the student, but to offer him all points of view, with the idea that over time, the truth will rise to the top and make it self known.
However, the truth, he also argues, does not survive on its own - because man is always at liberty to eschew truth, to turn a blind eye if you will. Therefore, truth does not always "rise to the top" and does not always prove itself loudly. So what are we to do? Do we have a responsibility to teach these young student truth? Do we have the responsibility of acknowledging then truth IS "arrived at", to then say, basically, "we don't need to keep looking for truth, we have found it."
There are a lot of nuances that go in to the logic of it all, the morality of it, the "science" of it, and the duty of all involved - student, professor, parent, boards, presidents, etc.
Fascinating book that lays it all out.
The author was once a socialist/democrat/liberal and since turned conservative - because of the logic of it all. I tend to agree with the author. Yet I also appreciate his wisdom in that he challenged me to be fair with my own self and acknowledge that the answers aren't as simple as I'd like them to be. There is give-and-take when it comes to Universities. True, they are to not tell the students what to think but how to think. True, also, though, that these same universities have turned into exactly that: Telling student WHAT to think, and very little of HOW to think. That's not good.
Read the book. It'll give you something to think about. And hopefully at the end, we can all agree with the author: there are some absolute truths we must always hold to, and that matter. The rest, we can continue to explore and search for other truths. Some are absolute. Some are not. But it is our duty and privilege to learn and grow while in this world, and to help others do the same.
I recommend this book - and in no small part due to the fact that it teaches the reader the history of what has happened, how it turned out, why it's good or not good, and what to avoid in the future. If everyone read and truly understood this book, they would fight more today to change things and make them better. They'd understand and recognize how it is that we're going off the rails, and they'd understand the actual danger of it.
Learn your history - read this book. And then learn how to defend out nation and our freedoms before it's too late. If we do not understand the enemy, we cannot fight him, and he'll win over us. We are truly fighting an enemy today. We must take the time to understand him and know him. so we can fight back.
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