Between breaths talking about the evils of higher education yesterday (where faithful boys and girls go to be indoctrinated into atheism, don'tchaknow?), Santorum also unleashed this little bombshell idea.
"Just like we have certifying organizations that accredit a college, we'll have certifying organizations that will accredit conservative professors. If you are to be eligible for federal funds, you'll have to provide an equal number of conservative professors as liberal professors."
How many ways is this insane? Let me tick off a few.
1. Conservatives, and the GOP, have fought tooth and nail against the (non-existent) proposal to restore the "fairness doctrine" to TV and radio. Yet here's Rick, suggesting a "fairness doctrine" for higher education.
2. How does one become a certified "conservative"? What constitutes a "conservative" vs. a "liberal"? Do they have to be theists, or Christians, or the Right Kind of Christian (and do we really want to impose a religious test on professors)? What about a libertarian who believes in legalizing pot but is opposed to abortion? What about someone who is pro-free trade but opposes the War on Terror? Is supporting gay marriage a conservative value (Dick Cheney) or a liberal one (Barack Obama)? How can you possibly boil down the multiple axes of political, social, religious, philosophical, economic thought in the world into a binary classification like this?
What is the Conservative Creed to which certified conservatives will be required to attest and adhere?
(Of course, people do all the time, self included, in discussing the "Left" vs the "Right" … but that's rhetorical, and usually sloppy. We're talking here about something that has to be codified enough to meet federal grant and student loan requirements.)
4. How long before some conservatives think that the conservatives receiving certification are, in fact, too liberal, and the standards need to be further tightened up? "Jones? Well, she's good on the Laffer Curve, and she recognizes the existential threat that Islam represents to the Christian West, but I also heard she's on the Pill. Besides, should we really be encouraging a woman to be out in the workplace?"
5. And, along the same lines, what happens as "conservative" evolves over the years? It's frequently commented that there are GOP icons of the past 50 years (Reagan included) who couldn't get nominated today because of their "liberal" ideas. Does "conservative" certification require annual renewal?
6. Does this mean that we will have "certified liberals" as well, and that they'll have guaranteed spots at Liberty U. and George Mason and Oral Roberts?
7. How insane is it that Santorum is actually recommending that people should get jobs based on their political beliefs?
Santorum seems to think that the only way to protect conservative ideals (by which he means his own) is by forcing the world to treat them equally, by ensuring some "equal number" of slots for it, some sort of "Political Affirmative Action." The "Free Market" of ideas is apparently not enough here. He assumes his own ideas are the True, Righteous, Correct ones, and so it's perfectly acceptable to impose them on educational institutions (one wonders about when other institutions would follow).
Say what you will as to whether the majority of academia is hostile toward "conservatives" (provide strict definitions, please), that's a social phenomenon — which, when talking about ideological discussions is the only possible way of dealing with the matter.
(Which is why, btw, this is fundamentally different from racial or gender affirmative action — both of them a conservative bete noir. It's also different from protecting against religious discrimination, if only because you can at least put labels on people's religion and measure hiring / firing / promotion rates.)
I do believe in a robust and diverse intellectual community in academia. I think that's an ideal easier said that done. And I certainly don't think the solution is through federally-blessed certification boards to determine ideological purity. #ddtb
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Daily Kos: Santorum Calls for Conservative Education Commissars
I'm sure you've already seen the Rick Santorum clip where he says that contraception is "not OK" and expounds various other medieval ideas about sex.
Here's what probably you don't know: That's not ….
WOW. Kudos for you for even dignifying his idea with an analysis, which I'm not sure Santorum is even worthy of. Well, I retract that actually. His ideas are worthy of picking apart, because he is STILL IN THE FRICKIN RACE!! How is this man a viable candidate to be the next President of the U.S.?? I think there's a reason that people tend to grow more cynical as they age, and that reason is embodied nicely by this kook Santorum. Geez. Sometimes I wish I didn't know the things these idiots say.