Hillsdale
Hillsdale College is a private, liberal arts school. There are 3204 students; set on 400 rural acres in Southern Michigan just north of the Indiana border. “Free Baptists” founded the school 178 years ago and Hillsdale still considers itself a Christian college. Its modern claim to fame is as the leading independent college “free” from federal and even state regulation. Students at Hillsdale cannot get federal or state financial aid. Instead, Hillsdale matches what they would get from private funds. This allows Hillsdale to avoid complying with any Federal and State regulations regarding education, including Title IX protections. In 1984 they pledged to follow their own non-discrimination policy. But “…with the help of God, resist, by all legal means, any encroachments on its independence” (Hillsdale Website).
Instead Hillsdale increased their endowment by establishing the Center for Constructive Alternatives, a national center for conservative thought. Since then, Hillsdale, along with other privately financed academic institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, make up the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement. They also have strong Cross Country teams, competing in GMAC conference and NCAA Division II.
I originally knew about Hillsdale as a coach. Cross country successes put them on the list of small colleges my good runners might be interested in. Like Cedarville near Dayton and Malone in Canton, a runner looking at Hillsdale had to consider more than academics and athletics. They had to decide whether they were willing to accept the strict religious and behavior codes that those institutions demanded. A runner had to not only be “good enough” for their team, they had to “fit in” on their campus. None of my kids went to Hillsdale.
1619 Project
I didn’t end up on the political end of Hillsdale until the New York Times published The 1619 Project (NYT). That massive study looked at American History from a very different “lens”; the impact of enslavement on the economic, cultural and moral development of the United States. “1619” made important points that “regular” American History, particularly the history taught in public schools, ignored. As a teacher who learned “our” history in the 1960’s and 70’s, “1619” opened a whole different perspective.
Many Americans were challenged by “1619”. They discovered that the “story” they knew so well wasn’t real, and their entire framework of history was changed. Many reacted with anger and denial to “1619”, and looked to “defeat” the idea. Hillsdale College was a big part of the “1776 Project”, a counter to “1619”. It defended the traditional, 1950’s version of the American story. As an educator, I wanted to know what both sides were saying. So I signed up to get “1776”. That put me on the Hillsdale list, and I’ve been there ever since.
Postulates and Theorems
The College publishes a newsletter called “Imprimus”, an up to date primer for the conservative movement. Last week I read an article about “The Twitter Files” and the “existential threat” the US government now poses to American democracy itself. Without going to “into the weeds” about the Twitter Files themselves, the article outlines a set of assumptions that conservative academia has about our recent history. And it is those assumptions that make it extraordinarily difficult for us to communicate across our ideologic boundaries.
When I was a sophomore in High School, I took geometry. I was never a “math kid”, and worse, I was uninspired by our geometry teacher. In spite of that, I did learn about postulates and theorems. Postulates were “givens” that required no proof. They were simply accepted as fact. Theorems, on the other hand, needed proof. The best parts of geometry was watching the teacher lick chalk from his fingers, and getting out of the class at the end of the year. But the concept of postulates and theorems stuck.
Reading “The Twitter Files” I realized how different the postulates were between conservative academia and my own sources. Which leads me to the following discovery.
Liberal and Conservative cannot communicate with each other, because we fail to share a common set of postulates to base discussions. If we don’t agree on fundamental facts, postulates, how could we possibly solve greater problems, theorems.
The Laptop and Russia
So what postulates did I glean from “The Twitter Files”?
The Hunter Biden laptop absolutely revealed a direct financial connection between Hunter’s corrupt actions and Joe Biden. The Biden laptop information is “postulate”, fact without question, regardless of the “chain of custody” issues, or the lack of President Biden’s replies
The FBI used undue influence to keep the laptop story from “breaking” on social media, particularly Twitter (now X). The FBI was working on the “postulate” that Russia exercised a massive mis-information campaign during the 2016, impacting the results. The author of the article rejects that premise completely, minimizing the impact of the Internet Research Service efforts, and claims instead that the FBI was working to elect liberals – because (postulate) that’s what the FBI (and other government agencies) do, even during the Trump Administration and under Republican leadership.
Russian involvement in the 2016 election was a “hoax”, as was “the official Covid narrative”.
Insurrection and the Deep State
Donald Trump did nothing to incite an Insurrection (and, in fact, the Insurrection itself was just a protest, like Black Lives Matter marches of the summer before). “…That same day (January 6, 2021), key Twitter staffers correctly determined that Trump’s tweets did not constitute incitement of violence or violate any other Twitter policies.” Therefore Twitter had no “right” to ban Trump, and only did so under pressure from the above mentioned government agencies.
“Twitter was taking marching orders from a deep state security apparatus that was created to fight terrorists, not to censor or manipulate public discourse.” In fact, “The FBI in particular has directly meddled in the last two presidential elections to a degree that should call into question its continued existence.”
“…The administrative state has metastasized into a destructive deep state that threatens to bring about the collapse of America’s constitutional system within our lifetimes.” Once you accept this as a postulate, then any actions the FBI, Homeland Security, or other agencies take to protect voting or social media from manipulation is, in fact, attempting to collapse the Constitutional system.
Squares and Parallelograms
How can we possibly get back to the “old days”, when conservatives and liberals could discuss across their ideologies and reach compromise? If we don’t even share the same history (1619 versus 1776, Russia involvement in 2016) or view of the role of government (continued existence of the FBI), or believe in the dangers of un-regulated social media; then where is the point of mutual agreement?
If we can’t even agree that a square has four equal sides, where do we even begin to talk?
