Author Archives: Ron Lipsman

Thinking About the Unthinkable – Disunion

Then one must contemplate that perhaps Disunion is preferable to Civil War. An amicable divorce might be preferable to the inevitable civil strife. Is it feasible? Can American liberals and American conservatives imitate Czechs and Slovaks?

It is commonly accepted wisdom that the United States fought a Civil War to end slavery. While true, the need to remove that stain from the fabric of American society was not Lincoln’s primary motivation for prosecuting the war. It was instead his unshakable belief in the absolute necessity of preserving the Union, for by ‘giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free…We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.’ Lincoln surely believed that the dissolution of the Union would sentence the people of the United States, indeed most of humanity, to a future of poverty, enslavement and degradation.

There were several notable separatist efforts early in US history. But since the defeat of the Confederacy, no serious movement to sunder the Union has arisen. The country has been blessed with a century and a half of unity, prosperity and freedom – during which time it came to lead mankind toward those goals, by its example and by force of arms when freedom was threatened by tyrants and totalitarian regimes.

However, in that same period – especially in the latter two thirds of it – the US has undergone a fundamental transformation (if I might channel the phrase used by the latest engine of that change). Until roughly the dawn of the twentieth century, virtually all of the (free) American people were content that the principles upon which the nation was founded were sound, essential to the character of the society and worthy of continuation as the governing ideals of the country. But at that dawn, the nascent progressive movement began a century-long effort to radically alter the country’s political and cultural axioms.

The nature of the transformation has been described countless times by numerous authors. Suffice it to say that: the ultimate ideal of individual liberty has been superseded by the quest for equality and fairness; the reliance on free markets, democratic capitalism and entrepreneurial endeavors has been supplanted by an entitlement mentality and government control of business; American exceptionalism – the idea that the US has a special role to play in spreading the blessings of liberty around the world – has been jettisoned in favor of a multilateral approach to foreign affairs; and the notions of limited government, consent of the governed and constitutional federalism have given way to a mighty behemoth, i.e., the federal government, which dominates the lives of its citizens. This transformation, which took a century to bring about, was accomplished primarily via the progressive movement taking nearly complete control of the opinion-molding organs of American society: the media, universities, legal profession, libraries, seminaries, foundations, educational establishment, etc.

The miracle is that any resistance to the progressive putsch manages to survive. Truth be told, much of traditional America has been asleep at the switch for nearly a century. On the one hand, conservatives thought that perhaps some of the progressives’ explicitly stated objectives might conceivably smooth out a few of the rough edges that were natural consequences of America’s traditional rugged individualism – so conservatives acquiesced in their implementation. On the other hand, conservatives completely failed to appreciate how deeply and broadly the progressive initiatives were undermining traditional American mores, economics and politics. But there are signs that a substantial proportion of (what remains of) traditional America has finally awakened to the realities of the progressive onslaught. Moreover, that group of discontented conservatives is determined to stop the onslaught and restore the country that has been yanked away from them.

And so the nation finds itself sharply divided. With the advent of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid assault, the goals and methods of the progressive camp came into sharp focus. Many American conservatives are saying: no more compromise, no more blindness. It’s time to return America to its traditional moorings. But perhaps an equal number are satisfied with the progressive trajectory and have no desire to reverse course. Thus in the last few years, the nature of the sharp differences between the two sides has come into clear focus. As a consequence, the signs of disunity abound:

  • Washington is thoroughly dysfunctional as the two sides can find no common ground upon which to govern.
  • The current presidential campaign is marked by vitriol, hatred and a total lack of empathy as each side attributes lethal motivation to the other.
  • Thus our government – and thereby, our people – cannot come to grips with our problems – or even agree on what they are.
  • Supreme Court judgments are viewed as illegitimate.
  • There is a near universal dissatisfaction with standard politics, giving rise to non-standard movements, like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.
  • Each side blames the other for perceived signs of the decline of America.
  • The nation is on a crash course toward disaster as entitlements, the debt and deficits spiral out of control.
  • The culture is marked by moral squalor more than by wholesome morality.

What’s to be done? The current situation is unsustainable. One of two things must happen: Either one side or the other will win the argument – the losing side will accept defeat and agree to live peacefully in a nation governed according to the precepts of its rival. Or not! That is, the stalemate will persist, grow more intense and result in a calamity for the nation – the exact nature of which is almost impossible to predict.

How might one side win? One can envision two scenarios – of totally different natures. First, the Left might triumph through demographics. The organs described earlier have been doing an effective job of brainwashing the body politic. That might continue and accelerate. Furthermore, the Left’s favorite constituents – e.g., women, minorities, immigrants and, alas, the poor are growing faster than those groups who gravitate to the Right. (It’s true that the Leftists are having fewer babies and killing more in utero than the Rightists are – but that effect is overshadowed by the rapid growth of the Leftist constituencies.) Thus the current 50-50 split in the nation might become 2-1, or even 3-1 for the Left, and the Right will be silenced.

How might the Right win? I can only envision one way. A very serious spiritual/moral/religious revival sweeps the country, blowing away the secular, dependency-driven milieu that nurtures Leftist ideology. It’s a big stretch to imagine, but not totally beyond the realm of possibility.

But maybe neither of these eventualities occurs. Then one must contemplate that perhaps Disunion is preferable to Civil War. It’s a horrible thought, terrifying to contemplate. But if the country remains roughly evenly divided between two fundamentally different and irreconcilable visions for its future, then it is hard to believe that the unity and cohesion, civil calm and common sense of purpose, and faith in a shared destiny that has characterized American society for so long will endure. An amicable divorce might be preferable to the inevitable civil strife. Is it feasible? Can American liberals and American conservatives imitate Czechs and Slovaks?

Probably not! The reasons are legion and could fill a book. They range from legal to geographical to financial to the allocation of resources. In short, no matter how desirable it might become, it is impossible to imagine a peaceful division of these United States according to the dual philosophies that divide its citizens.

So, either the Left wins; or the Right wins; or an endless, fraternal, yet internecine, struggle saps the vitality of the US and leaves it adrift, with diminished stature, unexceptional, no longer dynamic, prosperous, patriotic or free. Ronald Reagan said that: ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.’ God forbid that this is the generation whose advent Reagan feared.

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This article also appeared in The Intellectual Conserative at:

Why Isn’t Romney Slaughtering Obama?

By any objective standard, Barack Obama’s presidency must be judged a failure. It is undeniable that the hope for positive change that he inspired – however nebulous the meaning – has not been fulfilled. Obama promised the American people that he would deliver: (i) a more prosperous future, (ii) a more transparent government, (iii) a country that would be respected worldwide, (iv) a more equitable society and (v) a more united body politic. Not only has he failed to deliver on any of those five promises, but the case is easily made that he has moved the needle in the opposite direction in every one of those areas.

No rightist, and nary a centrist would disagree with the previous assessment. Even the leftists are unhappy with their savior. Numerous critical articles have appeared in leftist journals such as the New York Times and the Huffington Post – although, most of these chastise the President for not governing sufficiently far to the left. (A good example is an article by Jonathan Chait in the September 2, 2011 NYT entitled ‘What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama.’) Given the universally negative opinion of Obama’s achievements, why isn’t Romney clobbering him in the polls? One would expect that virtually any minimally respectable Republican candidate could cruise to victory in November.

Before providing the answer, here is a litany – arranged in parallel to the five points above – of Obama’s primary failures, which are not open to dispute:

(i)      Obama’s Keynesian economic policies have forestalled the robust economic recovery that normally follows a steep recession. Instead, his profligate tax, spend and borrow policies have led to massive deficits, crushing debt, bloated and inefficient government, sustained high unemployment, financial uncertainty and a diminished standard of living.

(ii)    Obama’s ‘Chicago-style’ of governing is characterized by the ramming through of major legislative measures (Obamacare and Dodd-Franks) without widespread citizen assent, a bigoted Justice Department, recess appointments when Congress is not in recess, executive orders that violate legislative intent and the bottling up of America’s energy resources under insurmountable red tape.

(iii)   Obama pursues a warped and cowardly foreign policy that subverts US allies (like Israel, Poland and England) while rewarding its enemies (too numerous to list). It encompasses a dangerous drawdown of the country’s military assets. The result has not been increased respect or affection for the US around the globe, but rather contempt and disregard. Why should any country respect the US when its president bows to dictators and denies that his country plays or has played an exceptional role in world history?

(iv)   Obama’s attempt to redistribute wealth has been partially ‘successful.’ His demonization of the wealthy and entrepreneurial has terrified business, restricted investment and stunted economic growth; but it has succeeded in increasing the number of Americans on food stamps.

(v)    Perhaps his greatest failure is his inability or unwillingness to function as the post-partisan, post-racial unifier that he promised to be. The country took justifiable pride in electing a black president, viewing his election as an atonement for the racial injustices in its past. Rather than embracing the role, Obama has squandered the opportunity by pitting rich against poor, business against consumers, citizens against illegal immigrants, religious against secular, and even whites against minorities on occasion. His disgusting campaign against Romney-Ryan is more indicative of a gangland thug than an inspirational national leader.

The harsh assessment above is certainly shared by a great many Americans. Why, then, is Mitt Romney not running away with the election? The answer can be provided in a rather broad stroke, which is sharpened by two very specific components of that stroke. First, Obama is, unfortunately, deeply representative of the political/cultural trajectory of the country over the last hundred years. The century-long onslaught by progressives on American society has been recounted by numerous authors. In a nutshell, progressives believe that the founding principles of the United States – as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – were wrong and that America could be converted, according to them, into a more just, humane, equitable and fairer society if it adjusted its principles to more closely match those of John Dewey, Herbert Croly, Woodrow Wilson and even Karl Marx. Over the course of a hundred years, the people of the United States – either consciously or subconsciously – have come to accept to a shocking degree the legitimacy of that view.

Well, Obama is the fulfillment of that vision. Romney, and especially Ryan represent a return to the ideals of the Founders. In fact, given the apparent success of the progressive revolution, it is perhaps remarkable that Romney is even competitive with Obama. The fact that he is competitive illustrates that the progressive victory is not yet complete. Actually, only 20% of the country openly professes allegiance to the progressive program. The remaining 80% are split roughly evenly between those who would prefer to cling to the Founders’ ideals and those who are either apathetic or confused. Unfortunately, the latter group tends to overwhelmingly support the leftist cause. This is so because of two special features of today’s progressive milieu that have rendered the flaming incompetent Obama as at least an even bet to retain his crown. They are Media bias and Public School brainwashing.

It is well-known that virtually all of the opinion-molding organs of American society are firmly in the hands of the leftists. These include: the media, public schools, academia, legal profession, foundations, seminaries, libraries and, sadly, many major corporations. Therefore, unless an individual is an exceptionally original thinker or is exposed to a countervailing inoculation (e.g., by reading the Wall Street Journal or The Washington Times, watching Fox News, subscribing to the Heritage Foundation or attending Hillsdale or Grove City College), his mindset is inevitably shaped to be part of the liberal consensus. And the two venues that are most influential in this regard are the media and the government-controlled public schools. If these two components were magically removed from the progressive control board, then what remains – if it even could survive without these fundamental components – would likely not be enough to control the national conversation as it currently does. But today – and for the last 30-50 years – the children of America are subject to a relentless barrage of left-wing propaganda that is strongly reinforced by what their parents see and read on TV, in the movies and in the newspaper.

The pernicious efforts of the mainstream media and the education establishment have rendered at least a quarter of the population into mindless robots who serve the progressive cause. Nothing is going on in their heads. Therefore, the robots will favor Obama – despite his manifest failures and despite the fact that their support runs counter to their own self interest. Added to the 20% hardcore liberal population, one obtains Obama’s 45% approval rating.
Thus the election is neck and neck. But here’s a thought. Maybe it’s not. All the polls seem stuck on a roughly 45-45 split. That leaves 10% undecided. Now, historically, undecideds break nearly unanimously against the incumbent. Hopefully, Obama’s vile campaign against Romney will ensure that the historical precedent is maintained. Thus, it really is 55-45 for Romney, which would match the 10 point spread between Reagan and Carter in 1980. So maybe a slaughter is in the offing after all. One can only hope.
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This article also appeared in The Intellectual Conseervative at:

Liberal Train Wreck Begets Conservative Passion – Or Does It?

It’s summer reading season. Bookstore shelves and electronic book catalogs are full of samples lamenting the sorry state of affairs in the age of Obama. Four that I have read are: The Tyranny of Clichés by Jonah Goldberg, The Road to Freedom by Arthur Brooks, No, They Can’t by John Stossel and    The Amateur by Edward Klein. For those who, like the writer, rue the day that the American electorate took leave of its senses and installed into the Oval Office the least qualified, most inexperienced and furthest left candidate in the history of the nation, these books are preaching to the converted. One hopes that at least some of those who perpetrated the dastardly electoral deed are drinking from the ‘I told you so’ wisdom in those pages.

All four books are severely critical of Barack Obama and the ultra-liberal philosophy that motivates his thoughts and actions. Four years ago, when he ran on a nebulous ‘hope and change’ platform, shielded by an adoring media, and unburdened by any meaningful record that could conclusively tag him for the ultra-leftist that he is, it was easy for the electorate to ignore the few – but, in retrospect, completely clear – signs of his statist political persuasion. That is no longer the case. Three and a half years of damning evidence cannot be ignored. Although he obfuscates regularly, anyone with half a brain recognizes Obama’s:

  • solution to every national problem involves expanded government, less individual freedom and an imaginary, egalitarian nirvana;
  • preference for collectivist, Euro-style socialism over bedrock American founding principles;
  • un-American, class-conscious demonization of entrepreneurial success accompanied by redistribution of wealth and the promotion of an entitlement mentality;
  • Keynesian economics, despite the fact that everywhere it has been tried, it has failed – every time.
  • shameful castigation of America as the cause of certain of the planet’s geopolitical and environmental ills; non recognition of the salutary role that America played in the defeat of totalitarianism; failure to acknowledge anything special about America’s role in world history; and his purposeful diminution of America’s capability to influence world events;
  • lack of respect for forces and institutions that are responsible for America’s astounding success in the last quarter millennium – e.g., Christianity, entrepreneurial businessmen, military preparedness, rule of law, civil society, traditional family values, the Constitution and Western Civilization. Instead he wishes to replace them with: a powerful central government, secular humanism, crony capitalism, multiculturalism, globalism and environmentalism.

Indictments such as the above are rife in the pages of the four cited books. Here are a few examples:

Klein: [Describing Obama’s assessment early in his presidency of what he expected to achieve] It was, by any measure, a breathtaking display of narcissistic grandiosity from a man whose entire political curriculum vitae consisted of seven undistinguished years in the Illinois Senate, two mostly absent years in the United States Senate, and five months and ten days in the White House. Unintentionally, Obama revealed the characteristics that made him totally unsuited for the presidency and that would doom him to failure: his extreme haughtiness and excessive pride; his ideological bent as a far-left corporatist; and his astounding amateurism.

Goldberg: [Commenting on social justice, another term for the far-left statism/collectivism/corporatism practiced by our benighted president] Meanwhile, what does social justice bring with it? On virtually every front where social justice claims the high ground, it does so by appealing to the authority of a mirage and grounding its arguments in nothing firmer than an ill-defined sentiment. Intellectually, it has no more weight than a gesture, no more substance than a wish. Yet those who fight for it do not care; indeed, they like it that way, because it prepares the battlefield for them. They promise to deliver a better world, but haven’t the foggiest idea how to provide it. The Romans knew how to build roads and toilets; all the centurions of social justice know how to provide is someone else’s money. It’s imperialism fueled by guilt and sustained by smugness. But it is successful. These centurions and citizens of social justice run our schools, our charities, our newspapers, and, if they have their way, our world.

Stossel: It is unfortunate that the United States, a nation founded on more libertarian principles than most other countries, now seems incapable of admitting that government has gotten too big. One ‘problem’ is that we’ve had things so good for so long that most of us simply don’t believe, in our guts, that government control can strangle the golden goose…I can go to a foreign country, stick a piece of plastic in the wall, and cash will come out. I can give that same piece of plastic to a stranger who doesn’t even speak my language – and he’ll rent me a car for a week. When I get home, Visa or MasterCard will send me the accounting – correct to the penny. That’s capitalism! I just take it for granted. Government, by contrast, can’t even count votes accurately.

Brooks: Politicians who pretend that we do not have to choose between these two ideas of America are mistaken or less than honest. They want us to think that statism and free enterprise are ultimately compatible; that bureaucracy is not antagonistic to self-government; that we can remain exceptional when our system is indistinguishable from collectivist systems around the world. But this is deceit. Not choosing is effectively just the choice for big government. Unless we actively choose free enterprise and make the tough choices to limit the government, we will slip down the road toward European-style social democracy. We know this to be true because it has been happening for nearly a century. To be honest, big government is an easier choice than free enterprise. In the short run, it allows us to avoid sacrifice. Politicians who ask for sacrifice face a tough battle with voters, so they tend not to. But this laziness – on our part and on the part of the governing class – endangers all of us in the long run. It will mean the end of our Founders’ vision for our country. It will end any hope of limited government. And it will saddle our children and grandchildren with crushing debt.

Klein: Obama’s supporters claim that he has been falsely charged with being a leftwing ideologue. But based on my reporting, I concluded that Obama is actually in revolt against the values of the society he was elected to lead. Which is why he has refused to embrace American exceptionalism – the idea that Americans are a special people with a special destiny – and why he has railed at the capitalist system, demonized the wealthy, and embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Despite the similarities, there are some significant differences among the four books. Brooks’ and Goldberg’s works are quite scholarly in nature. Brooks’ main emphasis is on what he sees as the moral case for free market capitalism as the best economic structure for the United States. He explains why, to his thinking, this choice not only maximizes the chances of the most people prospering, but in terms of right and wrong, good and evil, it is the proper choice over collectivism. Goldberg’s book is built around various sayings, slogans and ‘truisms’ that we have come to accept as legitimate or even factual; but which in fact merely represent liberal dogma that upon close examination is exposed as wrong, immoral, incoherent and often utterly vapid.

Goldberg writes with great wit, Brooks with great clarity. The other two books, while well-written, are less serious – more aimed at being a best seller than having a profound impact on the country’s great philosophical debate. Stossel’s reads like the script of one of his TV programs. And Klein has the breathless, gotcha, yet undocumented flavor of an exposé – which is exactly what it purports to be.

But there is a missing ingredient in all four – a sense of extreme urgency, unchecked passion or great fervor. If these authors – like so many of the other Obama-bashers – are correct, America is in mortal danger and if we don’t reverse course quickly, we are headed for disaster. If that is the case, where is their call to the barricades?

To be fair, some of this summer’s reading material exhibits that passion. Three that come to mind are: Ameritopia by Mark Levin, Still the Best Hope by Dennis Prager and America-Lite by David Gelertner. I have dwelt on the first two here and here, and I hope to address Gelertner on another occasion. Let me just say here that the following malady is aloft in the land. Tremendous numbers of people – mostly, but not exclusively, on the right – believe that the country is at – and conceivably past – the tipping point. The century-long progressive remake of American society has proceeded so successfully that there is little, if any, time left in which to change course. Moreover, it would take drastic, likely revolutionary action to accomplish this. But the trumpet has not sounded. Few authors are channeling Tom Paine: ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ Why is that?

Conservative critics often say that the US looks increasingly like France or the Netherlands, or Greece or Spain: once glorious nations that are mired hopelessly in statism, secularism, socialism and stagnation. In fact, I think that the country whose trajectory we most clearly mirror is our progenitor – Great Britain. England was the most powerful nation on Earth for three centuries. When the progressive virus was born (in the late 1800s), it took hold in England as well as in the US. Both countries elected multiple progressive heads of state in the early twentieth century (David Lloyd George and Ramsay MacDonald in England, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow and Wilson in the US). But while America has resisted the virus to some extent (Coolidge, Reagan), England succumbed. Churchill provided the last few moments of glory, but the English people showed their true feelings in the election of 1945. By the time Thatcher arrived, it was already game over. There was no longer any will to resist. Alas, the lack of a clear clarion call in the US to combat the alien, progressive disease might signal that we too no longer have the ability to resist.

The US today bears great resemblance to England just after World War II. As I have written elsewhere, the Suez affair of 1956 marked, with unmistakable clarity, England’s permanently diminished status. What particular event shall herald the final closing down of the American experiment? The fact that even the most severe critics of the progressive project cannot summon the will to call for the revolutionary steps required to restore America is likely a harbinger of our British-like fate. But to avoid closing on such a deeply pessimistic note, let’s acknowledge that England had no analog of the Tea Party. Its emergence is a hopeful sign that perhaps the ardor that is missing in the four references will yet be marshaled to save the republic.
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This article also appeared in The Land of the Free at:

Faculty Tenure: Crucial or a Vestige?

The granting of tenure to professorial faculty at the nation’s universities is a long and venerable tradition. A professor with tenure has a life-time appointment that can only be revoked if the recipient commits some egregious transgression, which is usually summarized by such formal labels as moral turpitude, gross negligence or dereliction of duty. In effect, the only tenured professors who get the sack are those who have robbed a bank, raped a co-ed or pistol-whipped a colleague. The only exception to these draconian circumstances is when a university program or degree, which encompasses the professor’s academic discipline, is discontinued. But even then, the university usually finds an alternative academic home in which the professor can carry on his duties, his life-time appointment undisturbed. In short, with extraordinarily rare exception, a tenure appointment is indeed a life-time position.

Why would a university agree to make an appointment that so severely restricts its ability to terminate an underperforming, even incompetent employee? The answer goes back to the dawn of the modern university. The role of the faculty, as originally conceived, and as interpreted still to this day, was to discover truth, wisdom and beauty in the subjects that command human interest (e.g., math and science, engineering, medicine, law, humanities, the arts, economics, politics, agriculture, and so on) and to transmit their findings to students and to the society at large. To do so, faculty need to be free to pursue controversial theories, novel ideas and unexplored terrain. Their discoveries may prove discomforting to those who sponsor, donate to or otherwise manage the university, and who therefore – to silence the faculty member – might be in a position to fire, or to influence those who could fire the faculty member. In order to guarantee the faculty member’s academic freedom to pursue knowledge down whatever path it leads him, the system of granting tenure was instituted. The only comparable situation is with federal judgeships as conceived of in the US Constitution.

Well, the reasoning is sound. And it is certainly the case that scores of advances in the subjects listed earlier have been pioneered by faculty research at American universities. So what’s the problem? Why is the tenure system under attack? Here are some reasons:

  • Until roughly 50 years ago, tenure was granted to only a tiny fraction of the population representing the intellectual elite, many of whom did use their unique academic freedom to bring forth sparkling new ideas and inventions. Today there are literally hundreds of thousands of tenured faculty in the United States. Clearly, the ranks of tenured faculty contain far more than just the absolute intellectual cream of American society. Moreover, while many professors (perhaps most) do fine work, the vast majority are not engaged in research that could expose them to the whims of someone who might fire them without cause. The academic freedom that is provided by the cloak of tenure has been granted to far more individuals than the small number who might really need it.
  • Not surprisingly, in a program of this magnitude, there are bound to be abusers. Those of us who spend our lives in academia are sadly all too familiar with colleagues who use tenure as a shield to protect themselves from the consequences of shoddy research, an inadequate amount of research, poor teaching, irresponsible administrative habits, questionable personal behavior and an overall job performance that is the antithesis of what the public would consider elite – and therefore worthy of a life-time appointment.
  • Tenure has served as a poor role model. Tenure-like systems now extend (beyond federal judgeships and academic professorial faculty) – both formally and informally – to public school teachers, many government workers, certain unionized positions and even to corners of the corporate world. Ultimately, there is no good rationale for any of that. But as long as the academic tenure model can be held up as a salutary structure, it serves as an example to be copied.
  • Tenure contributes to the ossification of academia. The number of sexagenarian, septuagenarian and even octogenarian faculty on American campuses is startling. These are not the groups on campus from which innovation originates.
  • Perhaps counter intuitively, tenure reinforces groupthink on campus. The overwhelming dominance of a leftist worldview among campus faculty is well-known, amply discussed by many (e.g., in The Coming Decline of the Academic Left) and no longer in dispute. Well, once the universal mindset is established, the presence of deeply entrenched forces effectively prevents any serious challenge to the dominant mindset. Moreover, those just starting in the system and hoping for tenure themselves have little motivation to rock the boat by challenging prevailing “wisdom.”
  • The dynamic nature of American business includes the freedom to fail. The number of successful businesses built on the wreckage of previous, failed endeavors is astounding. Tenured professors have no freedom to fail. Thus the corresponding motivation to succeed that accompanies creative destruction in business is totally absent in academia. It’s hard to learn from your mistakes if no one ever acknowledges that you have made any.

These are serious criticisms, which call for responses. How might the academic world respond? There are three possible courses of action. First, one could argue that, for all its flaws, tenure protects academic freedom and the latter is so important that it is worth the cost of the ill effects just described. The opposite response would be that the costs are so outrageous that the practice must be halted – tenure should be abolished. Perhaps there is a reasonable course of action in between these extremes. I’ll probably get crucified for suggesting such a course, but the luxury of retirement does afford a certain degree of literary freedom – so consider the following.

There already is a probationary period for faculty who aspire to a tenured position – it’s called an assistant professorship. Generally, it lasts 5-6 years. But many institutions treat it as a pledge period and grant admission to tenured status perfunctorily. Even those institutions that examine an assistant professor’s tenure credentials carefully are wont to “graduate” many who, while they will prove to be solid teachers and researchers, will also work at a level that hardly requires academic freedom. Here’s an alternative:

  • Only those assistant professors who demonstrate extraordinary levels of scholarship, creativity, imagination and leadership would be granted tenure – say 15-20% of the candidate pool.
  • In order to facilitate such a critical decision, the length of the probationary period would be extended to 8-10 years.
  • The best of the rest would be offered renewable, long-term contracts, say 5-10 years.
  • The next coterie would be offered short-term contracts, say 2-4 years.
  • And finally, those who don’t pass muster would be let go.
  • Contracts may or may not be renewed, but if the latter, a long grace period would be standard.
  • Those granted tenure would be called Professor; those offered contracts, Associate Professor.

A successful implementation of this plan would address all the elements of the critique above. The plan could be further improved with two more wrinkles: (i) allow for the extraordinary possibility that an associate professor up for contract renewal would have elevated the quality of his work to such an extent that tenure is now an appropriate consideration; and (ii) institute 10-year reviews of professors, with the possibility of “demotion” to associate professor. Of course (ii) would make the term “tenure” problematic and for that reason I am of mixed mind on (ii).

American universities stand on a precipice. The problems are manifold:

  • The cost of the product they dispense to students is astronomical.
  • Too much of what is called higher education is more accurately described as indoctrination. (See ibid again.)
  • Because of bloated administrative staffs, university budgets are absurdly inflated. The traditional three sources of revenue – state appropriations, federal grants and student tuition/fees – are tapped out.
  • Students are drowning in debt.
  • The value of what students (and their parents) obtain in return for their expenditures and debt is debatable.
  • Too much of the education is provided by adjunct faculty.
  • Universities lag behind K-12 institutions and the private sector in the deployment of technology.
  • Universities are often slow to innovate, and are being challenged by for-profit institutions.
Addressing the tenure issue will not solve all of these problems. But if universities can muster the courage to address the tenure issue in a meaningful way, then perhaps they won’t find some of the other problems to be so intractable.
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An abridged version of this article appeared in Minding the Campus under the title, How to Save Tenure–Cut it Way Back. See:
The article in the form it appears here also appeared in The Intellectual Comservative at:

Does John Roberts’ Capitulation Spell Doom for the US?

Anyone who engages in a competitive sport has experienced the moment when, even though the outcome of the match or game is theoretically still in doubt, the participants know absolutely who shall prevail. To look in your opponent’s eye and to see that he believes he cannot win brings an exhilarating satisfaction. By the same token, to see in your opponent’s visage the certainty that he will triumph is deflating beyond measure. Perhaps the most famous incident of such a moment in sport occurred in 1964 when, at the end of the sixth round, Sonny Liston peered across the ring at Cassius Clay and knew that his goose was cooked; so he dreamt up a phantom shoulder injury and conceded defeat.

Something similar often happens in the lifetime of a nation or a regime. The nation, or its present government, might appear to be sailing along smoothly, even successfully. But anyone paying attention realizes – generally because of one or more signature events that have happened recently, and because of the peoples’ and the government’s reaction to said events – that the regime (or nation) will not survive. The exact nature of the death scene might not be apparent, nor its timing; but its inevitability is assured and even those who recognize its imminence are powerless to prevent it.

A classic example is the Suez crisis of 1956, following which it was absolutely obvious that Great Britain’s three and a half century role as one of the paramount powers on the globe had come to an end. The nation did not disappear, but England had sunk to the level of a second rate power whose influence in the world was a mere shadow of its former scope. The monarchy continued, the Commonwealth limped along, England retained its permanent seat on the Security Council; but the entire world recognized that Britannia no longer ruled the waves, nor would it ever again.

At the opposite end of England’s reign one finds a moment when its predecessor surrendered the throne – i.e., the defeat of the Spanish Armada by Queen Elizabeth I’s forces in 1588, which marked the end of Spain’s century-long stretch as the world’s pre-eminent power. The Spanish ‘Empire’ lasted until the Treaties of Utrecht in 1713, or perhaps until Napoleon beat them up badly in the early 1800s, or maybe even until the US provided the final coup de grâce 90 years later. But three hundred years before San Juan Hill, Spain’s status as the major world power came to an end, and all knew it.

On the other hand, sometimes when the epiphanous moment occurs, it is not acknowledged, or if it is, its consequences are denied – making for an even more calamitous collapse in the long run. Two examples of the former are Nazi Germany immediately after the assault on Stalingrad stalled and Imperial Japan after the battle of Midway. Regarding the former, certainly many on Hitler’s staff – especially after America entered the fray – foresaw that the tide of the war would change. Some might have favored seeking a negotiated settlement with the Allied powers. But Hitler was blind to the tea leaves, and his was the only opinion that mattered. Had he entered negotiations for an armistice at that point, he might have salvaged some sort of regime – and millions of lives would have been spared. But he failed to recognize the inevitable.

Regarding Japan, in spite of having all the tactical advantages, the Japanese Navy was defeated at Midway, a mere six months after Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto – who is reputed to have seen the future accurately even as he planned the attack on Pearl Harbor – was in a distinct minority. Overall, Imperial Japanese militants failed to recognize that their war effort was doomed.

Two examples of the latter – i.e., where recognition occurs, but is ignored – are Lee after Gettysburg and Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both saw the handwriting on the wall — one of them literally. But Lee was unable or unwilling to try to convince his superiors to sue for peace. And although Gorbachev clearly saw that he was playing a losing hand, he fooled himself about the coming total collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unlike the German military staff or Yamamoto, neither of whom was in a position to change the history that they saw unfolding, both Lee and Gorbachev might have been in such a position.

A common thread in virtually all these scenarios is the presence of war. Indeed, the decisive moment in the death of a nation or a regime is often marked by a military event. But not always. The Brits were actually victorious in the brief 1956 Suez skirmish – admittedly against a vastly inferior foe. It was in the aftermath, in which Eisenhower unceremoniously and unconditionally ordered the English to withdraw, that it became clear that Great Britain – despite its former military élan – was now a zephyr compared to the US and no longer controlled its own fate.

Here are three more such existential moments that did not involve war at the defining instant:

  • When de Klerk freed Nelson Mandela, it was completely clear that the days of the apartheid regime in South Africa were numbered.
  • A hundred years ago, Argentina was poised to rival the US as an emerging entrepreneurial society. But then they fell off the track by experimenting with collectivist policies. The US left them in the dust. Then when they elected Juan Peron, the Argentineans sealed their fate as a statist and corrupt society.
  • It is hard to pinpoint a single event in the last 70 years that heralded the fall of Europe. But after 40 years of self-flagellation for the horrors that they inflicted upon themselves in two world wars, at some point in the last 30 years it became clear that Europe had totally lost faith in its culture, its heritage and its religion. (After all, another word for Europe for centuries was ‘Christendom.’) As the institutionalization of the European Union progressed, it became evident that the Europeans were basically committing political and cultural suicide.

Has the US just witnessed a defining moment? Does the betrayal of the conservative cause by Chief Justice John Roberts – a distinctly non-military event – qualify as such a moment for the US? Certainly some of the conservative pundits think so. And yet the right wing ether is full of hopeful articles about the ‘clever, ulterior’ motives of the Chief Justice and how in the end his ruling will redound to the advantage of the conservative cause. But anyone with his head screwed on straight recognizes that Roberts was intimidated by Obama and the mainstream media, and that he represents yet another in a long line of supposedly conservative Supreme Court justices who have defected to the liberal enemy. Moreover, this monumental surrender is indicative of a loss of faith – both by the people and by so-called conservative leaders – in the nation’s ability to reverse a century long slide into Euro-socialism.

Have we indeed passed the tipping point? It is not unreasonable to survey the wreckage inflicted on the nation since Reagan by progressives (Clinton, Obama) and faux conservatives (both Bushes), and thereby conclude that the Constitutional Republic known as America is doomed, and perhaps has already expired. Our economy is at best in a state of permanent semi-stagnation; our military capabilities are in sharp decline; the progressives control virtually all of the opinion-molding organs of society, which they use to brainwash the people; the federal debt is a major calamity that will wreak havoc very soon; our culture is saturated with pornography, drugs and violence, multiculturalism and secularism; we sit on the world’s greatest energy resources and we refuse to tap it; the federal behemoth consumes a fatal proportion of our GDP and regulates the minutiae of our lives; and worst of all, more than half the population is either oblivious to or favors these developments as evidenced by the, at least, 50-50 chance that it will compound the astounding error of 2008 and re-elect the only anti-American president in the nation’s 236-year history.

One could, on the other hand, claim that the preceding argument is excessively pessimistic. After all, our nation has experienced times of greater stress and weakness than the present: the Civil War, the Depression, the 60s and 70s when society seemed to be unraveling before our eyes. Moreover, as a stock broker said to me in 2010: ‘The market factored in Social Security; the market factored in Medicare; the market will factor in Obamacare.’ And perhaps he is right as clearly the market’s reaction to Roberts’ treachery has been mainly a yawn.

But perhaps the market’s yawn is not one of a large, successful and complex society simply digesting an alien body; but rather that of an organism meekly accepting the inevitability of its transformation under the influence of that foreign body.

I was extremely depressed by Roberts’ betrayal. But I tend to be a ‘glass is half empty’ kind of guy. For once, I am hoping that the glass is still half full.
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