Ignorance and violence come from both sides of the political divide
Dr. Richard Taylor and I agree on the importance of overcoming ignorance with education. Like many of my academic colleagues, however, Dr. Taylor seems to notice ignorance and violence only when it comes from the political right. Certainly all his examples are drawn from that side of the spectrum. He thus perpetuates the facile Manichean division of American politics into enlightened, progressives and benighted, ill-educated Trump voters. President Biden fell into the same trap in his inaugural address, characterizing “the forces that divides us” as a constant struggle between “the American ideal” and “racism, nativism, fear, and demonization,” calling the American people “to defend the truth and defeat the lies.” In fact, there are plenty of false or ill-founded claims coming from the political left, many of them pushed by people with degrees from elite universities: That the Arctic ice shield would vanish by 2014, that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, that the aim of the American Revolution was to protect the institution of slavery, that identifying China as the source of Covid-19 is “racist.”
Acquiring a good education, as Dr. Taylor says, is the best means of preparing yourself for sorting through the conflicting claims and getting as close as mere human beings can to knowing the truth. I would add that students should learn to become comfortable with the notion of controversial truths. In fact, most of what is worth learning is more or less open to debate. This does not mean there is no truth, only that it is usually very hard to establish. In fact, even in science there is very little that is “settled,” the conflicting claims of health officials on the effectiveness of wearing masks being one small example of the problem. A good college course on the history of science would show how Copernicus and Galileo upended the settled science of geocentric astronomy, and how Einstein upended the settled understanding of space, of time, and of the nature of light. Questioning the settled assumptions of a science is often the very basis for scientific progress.
Reading the Declaration of Independence is an excellent idea. It often surprises people to learn that, in his original draft, Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves and later admitted his own racial prejudices, had included a vehement denunciation of the king of England for introducing the “execrable commerce” of the African slave trade into North America. The king, he said, was engaged in a “cruel war against human nature itself and its most sacred rights of life and liberty,” capturing people who “never offended him” and leading them into slavery. The passage was removed from the final document by other representatives of the Second Continental Congress —one of many compromises made between American abolitionists and slave-holders right up until the Civil War. Placed in the context of the deleted passage, the most famous assertion in the document, namely, that “all men are created equal” with “unalienable rights” to life and liberty, appears to be, in part, a deliberate attack on the institution of slavery. Nothing in our history is simple.
If there is one piece of advice I could give to students entering college, it is to come not with a pocket full of truths you hope to share with the world, but with questions, real questions. You may be concerned about the changing climate. What are the different factors affecting the climate? How does the current warming differ from the numerous previous periods of warming and cooling in earth’s vast history?
If you go to college with questions, instead of settled answers, your investment of time and money will be rewarded. And after you graduate, keep asking them. This will keep you humble and open-minded, instead of arrogant and dismissive of other points of view, which may also make you more likely to succeed in helping our boisterous, divided nation.
Tucker Landy is a retired liberal studies professor from Kentucky State University.