I Told You So

Back in 2007, in the hey day of "The Counter Hour Movement" and other such collegic oddities, I wrote a blog entry titled “The Direction of a Certain Liberal Arts College,” or something like that. In it I said basically everything that a friend of mine said (although she said it with much more detail and passion than I). In this long lost entry, I made a prediction of sorts that went something like this: due to the current misguided and destructive administrative agenda foisted upon the college, within ten years Crichton College will be no more.

I made that prediction at the end of ’07. Crichton officially folded at the beginning of ’09. I suppose a little over a year is “within” ten years.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I seem to recall that Crichton didn’t have financial problems. Yes, we were a small college. Yes, we sometimes felt like we were running on a shoestring budget at times; but ultimately the college soldiered on with fresh tuition and interested donors. Why? My fervent claim is because we knew who we were and what we were about, and that identity gave us strength.

What exactly were we? Well, we were not an urban missions hub. We were not an open door, pandering, lackluster academic institution. We were not a ‘jonnie-come-lately” to bigger, badder Christian universities. We were not a collection of “recovering racists.” We were a Christian Liberal Arts college, dedicated to academic excellence and strong spiritual development. We were dedicated to the bizarre and absurd proposition that our students could change the world, not through racial reconciliation, not through education to all regardless of their academic credentials (e.g., can they even write?), not through urban development, not through “reaching upward,” but through critical thinking and spiritual growth. That, of course, is the hidden truth behind Crichton’s old motto (does anybody even remember it?): “Think Critically, Grow Spiritual, Change the World.”

This sense of academic excellence and strong spiritual development, this love of learning and love of God, was the sole tie that bound us together. We didn't need racial reconciliation awareness, we didn't need “red revolutions,” we didn't need open dialogue. All we needed was that beautiful scholasticism, the dance of faith and reason. We were united as thinkers and saints; we became divided as whites and blacks, “snobs” and “victims,” “Pharisees” and everyone else, and a house divided against itself never stands. Perhaps, just perhaps, if Crichon had not lost that initial vision and purpose, if it had not lost its mind, then perhaps the board of directors (when deciding the fate of Crichton's Liberal Arts program) would have found something worth saving. Apparently, they didn't, and that to our shame.

Farewell, dear Crichton. We knew thee well and loved thee more, though many loved you less.

Behold the Modern Man

Spoken by Malcolm Muggeridge from the book "Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith":

It has become abundantly clear in the second half of the twentieth century that Western Man has decided to abolish himself. Having wearied of the struggle to be himself, he has created his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, his own vulnerability out of his own strength; himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city tumbling down, and, in a process of auto-genocide, convincing himself that he is too numerous, and labouring accordingly with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer in order to be an easier prey for his enemies; until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.

Read it and Weep

All I can say is that it's about time someone said it.

Though I am a Conservative (more precisely, a Federalist Republican Conservative), I have avoided like the plague discussions about President Bush amongst my peers and even my friends precisely because nobody engages in a serious and honest discussion about him. Everyone either melts into a stinking pile of irrational and virile hatred, or they try and be both clever and popular by taking seemingly innocuous pot-shots at the man with either irrelevancies (like his supposed speech impediment) or media-perpetuated myths (like "cowboy diplomacy" or "spying on Americans"). Throughout the fashionable days of Bush-bashing, I found myself forced to sit back and keep my mouth shut.

However, now that Bush is on his way out, and everyone is going gaga over the newly Anointed One (I swear, the guy's more popular than Jesus right now), I will fling my cards on the table, if for no other reason than to hear myself state what I have believed for eight years:

I do not agree with everything that Bush did (illegal immigration policies, some expansion of government, and lack of communication with the American people to name a few), but I honestly believe that come some ten to twenty years down the road (maybe even sooner), we will look back on the Bush presidency and realize that it wasn't even 1/100th as bad as we were lead to believe. We will look back with shame at calling his presidency "the worst in American history," and will return that particular infamy back to where it belongs: with Jimmy Carter. We will look back with regret at how unfairly and cruelly we treated a man who protected this nation for eight years and struck fear into the hearts of our enemies. We will look back in anger at not only the deceptive media who lead us along in Bush-bashing like lambs to the slaughter, but also at ourselves for being so easily strung along. That is what I believe. The man was not perfect (who is?), but I vehemently deny that he was the devil incarnate, an idiot, or any of the other disgraceful epitaphs that have been shameful dumped upon him by an atrocious media, pinheaded west/east coast elites, and a foolish American public. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.