What the American university once was

While I’ve never been fond of the Columbia University campus, where I started my undergraduate studies once upon a time but didn’t remain, there are some fine buildings there. Today, walking around the campus on a beautiful October day, I came upon Earl Hall, near Broadway and 118th Street. (Here is an inadequate photograph.) Struck by the perfect composition of the building, I stopped to gaze at it, then saw an inscription over the front entrance that I had never noticed before. I walked closer to read it:

Erected for the students
That religion and learning
May go hand in hand and
Character grow with knowledge.

Learning and religion. Knowledge and character. Reason and revelation. Athens and Jerusalem. Today, of course, Columbia is as secularized, soulless, left-wing, diverse, post-modern, anti-American, anti-Western, and politically correct as any university in the U.S. But to see that magnificent statement engraved on that beautiful building, which was erected 106 years ago, was to be reminded of what American education, and Western culture itself, used to be about … and perhaps can be again.

* * *

When writing this entry, I couldn’t remember the exact words of the inscription, so I googled it, and found it provided by, of all people, Glenn Beck, who visited the Columbia campus last spring with his college-bound daughter. He also noticed the uplifting sayings and memorials that dot the campus, such as the names of the ancient Greek authors and the American Founders on Butler Library, and offers some acerbic reflections on the difference between the ideals embedded in the university’s buildings and what the university stands for today.

- end of initial entry -

A. Zarkov writes:

Reading your link to Glenn Beck I came across this:

“You know what I didn’t find? A single founding father. You know what I didn’t find? The Federalist Papers. I didn’t find anything—I found Malcolm X. I didn’t find anything from our founding, nothing. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that odd? No, no.”

Beck reminded me of my daughter’s high school—an expensive, highly selective college preparatory school in Northern California. She told me they spent much more time studying Malcolm X, an illiterate, a thief, and a drug dealer, than George Washington. From time to time I think about this to remind myself how much our educational system has degenerated. No wonder America is getting ready to elect an anti-American radical as president.

As an aside, my daughter was accepted to Columbia and other Ivy League schools. She choose not to go there, and I’m glad, but also a little sad, because I would have liked to have her live for a time in the place where I was born and raised.

Irv P. writes:

… reminded of what American education, and Western culture itself, used to be about … AND PERHAPS CAN BE AGAIN

Lawrence, I think you are a great guy and a great intellect, but wake up! There is no “perhaps.” What we idealize is gone forever. The genie can’t go back into the bottle. Forces have been at work since before WW II, that have been eroding our culture bit by bit. Since the 1950s, huge chunks of the edifice have been carved out. This is “progress” and it’s on the march. No turning back. Too late. We are an extremist minority, a very small minority. All of our major social institutions have conspired wittingly or unwittingly to make it thus. We’re fringe. No one sees that engraving and no one cares. (except the fringe).

There is a guy running for president who despises our culture, even in its present diluted form, and a person of your stature is riding the fence. You look into the future and see a great movement to turn things around if the public is faced with an Obama reality. That’s a real pipe dream! Where does this vision come from? Maybe it’s from the less than one percent that Tancredo was able to garner in a primary (caucus) held in fly over country. That’s not due to Tancredo. That’s due to who we are as a country. That wasn’t N.Y. or California. That was Middle America. You think people are going to put themselves out to oppose Obama? It’s almost laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

The other guy and his running mate LOVE America. Case closed! Why can’t we vociferously oppose those things we disagree with McCain about? Answer … we can!

You want a chance at keeping your hope alive. That’s about the only chance you’ll get. Obama is the final nail in the coffin! Just the fact that he wasn’t eliminated the moment Wright came to the fore, is proof that the hammer is already banging.

LA replies:

When I said that Western culture can perhaps be that again, I am expressing my hope and faith that the West can be restored. I’m not saying that the clock can be turned back. I’m not saying that traditionalists have some realistic chance in the near future to defeat liberalism and take over America. I am saying that as far as I’m concerned, what created the West was true, is still true, is still alive, and can be restored, though in what form we cannot know.

Nor am I suggesting that my “glass half full” Obama presidency scenario means the restoration of a non-liberal America. Of course not. My “utopia” in this case is not a restored America; it’s an America in which there is a conservatism that sees the prevailing liberalism as the enemy and is, finally, fighting against it.

Irv P. replies:

Thank you for a very clear answer. I’ll go to the front lines with you anytime anywhere!

Jack S. writes:

I am a Columbia alumnus too. Those buildings were built in 1899. America today would be unrecognizable to Americans of that era. Columbia was once a great University just as America was once a great country.

October 28

A. Zarkov writes:

Irv P. writes “The genie can’t go back into the bottle. Forces have been at work since before WW II, that have been eroding our culture bit by bit.” I agree that we cannot turn back the clock and make America exactly what it was 60 years ago, but we can correct the excesses of the counter-culture movement. However that will require the emergence and survival of the right leader, and this leader won’t come from the now moribund Republican party. The Republicans had the power to fight the left, but they threw it away for thirty pieces of silver. They needed to have attacked them at their three citadels of strength: academia, media, and law. Instead they ignored the opportunity and concentrated on making money for their cronies. Tom Tancredo was an exception, but he couldn’t muster the courage or the strength to fight. He should have spoken up forcibly during the debates, but for some reason he couldn’t. He needed a “go for broke” strategy—risky, but the only hope he had of making an impact. After he dropped out the entire immigration issue disappeared. I watched Obama start to crack when Bill O’Reilly brought up immigration as an explanation for stalled growth of personal income growth in the US. Then inexplicably O’Reilly dropped the issue. This is why Obama wins; his opposition does not understand his weak points and is unwilling or unable to exploit them. Here’s a guy with a glass jaw and no one will punch. Amazing.

I don’t think the situation is nearly as dire as Irv P. suggests. The public will react favorably to the right leader. Right now they’re demoralized and the left is ascendant, but nothing lasts forever.

LA replies:

I also was disappointed by Tancredo’s candidacy, in particular the way he focused on illegal immigration and barely discussed the immigration issue as a totality. What a waste. This was his one time to be running as a presidential candidate. This was his main opportunity to impress on the country his understanding of what has gone wrong with America and how we need to change. Tancredo is in key respects a traditionalist, not just a conservative, that is, he sees America and the West as concrete cultural entities, not just ideas. This makes him extremely rare, virtually unique, among mainstream U.S. politicians. Yet he limited himself to the no-brainer (though of course extremely urgent and vital) issue of illegal immigration. Some of his traditionalist vision was conveyed, but not enough.

Brandon F. writes:

Of course Irv is right about the state of decay our civilization is in. There is no repairing it.

Irv is wrong, at least from a traditionalist perspective, about McPalin loving America. Sure they love America but in the twisted, convoluted, liberalized way Bush loves America. A place where anyone in the world is free to settle with no respect to law. A place that has no qualms about sending troops wherever it wishes to spread its particular form of decadence. A place where the ultimate is to live a lifestyle of luxury and self pleasure.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2008 08:41 PM | Send