The Peril of Disregarding the Past - Liberalism and Conservatism

“And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” Deut. 6:6-7

In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks told a story that perfectly captured the divide between what I call “traditional conservatism” and liberalism - “liberalism,” which historically is a good term, but has been perverted.

He quoted a report by a Harvard faculty committee, which read,
The aim of a liberal education...is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar...and to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves...”

The report helps us understand why higher education has been corrupted, and why we are producing a generation of barbarians.

The language Brooks quotes goes far beyond teaching critical thinking or even encouraging students to, as the old bumper sticker used to say, “question authority.”

As Brooks rightly argues, the report describes “an entire way of living.” In this way of living, “individuals should...be skeptical of preexisting arrangements...break free from the way they were raised...[and] discover their own values.”

This disregard for the past seems even natural in our day because, as Brooks notes, our cultural norms exalt the individual over the institution - so much so that appeals to things such as institutional memory are regarded as primitive.

Thus, we are increasingly unable to understand ideas such as those expressed by former Chicago Cub, Ryne Sandberg, at his induction into Baseball’s Hall of Fame. He spoke of the respect due the game, his teammates, opponents, and, most of all, those who had played the game before him.

If this brings to mind the biblical phrase “the great cloud of witnesses,” it should. What Brooks wrote about institutions is in accord with Christian ideas about the role and importance of tradition.

Continued Tomorrow...