By Matt May on 12.20.06 @ 12:08AM
What happens when the disingenuous arguments so popular in academia are parroted by the clergy?
What happens when the disingenuous arguments so popular in
academia are parroted by the clergy? The results are on display in
the campaign to dissuade Southern Methodist University from
becoming the home of the future George W. Bush Presidential
Library. A recent commentary by Rev. William K. McElvaney and Dr. Susanne
Johnson, posted on United Methodist Nexus, shows the library's
critics have little respect for objectivity, and even less for true
academic freedom.
The authors write that "SMU's best interests are served when
leadership proceeds without assuming that the reasons for seeking
the library at SMU are self-evident." Yet when listing their
objections to the university playing host to this particular
presidential library, they lazily repeat the litany of anti-Bush
canards that so many misguided leftists take as self-evident:
defending our nation against the terror masters is "illegal," the
battle in Iraq based on "false premises," the Bush administration
operates in "secrecy" (and, therefore, the library probably would
as well), the president is building a legacy of "environmental
predation" and exploiting "gay rights," and, the inevitable cherry
on top, "the most critical erosion of habeas corpus in
memory."
When McElvaney and Johnson argue that students and faculty at
SMU should be a part of an ethical discussion of the proposed
library site, they want these tired talking points to guide the
conversation. Yet no objective analysis of this or any other
administration would proceed under such narrow terms. These
so-called ethical concerns are really just shoddy cover for a
blatant attempt by the writers to deny their own university and
community an academic resource based solely on their distaste for
one man. If this were not the case, the many accomplishments of the
Bush administration would have been listed along with McElvaney and
Johnson's simplistic conclusions -- but they were not.
One does not need a wall full of advanced degrees to play the
game these writers are playing. According to their line of
thinking, the University of Texas should have questioned whether it
wanted to house the library of Lyndon Johnson, a vote-stealing,
war-mad egomaniac; the people of Atlanta should have had a
referendum on hosting the Carter Center, which honors the legacy of
an anti-Israel ideologue who never met a murdering tyrant he did
not love; the fathers of Little Rock should have rejected the
Clinton library because it is not wise to promote a perjurer who
disgraced the office of the presidency nearly every day;
Springfield's presidential library committee should have wrung its
hands because Abraham Lincoln jailed an anti-Union member of
Congress and hundreds of critical newspaper editors during
wartime.
It would be interesting to find out what sort of an
administration McElvaney and Johnson think should house its library
on the campus of SMU -- perhaps none, given the school's
denominational affiliation. Leaving that aside, no administration
in American history, including that of George Washington, is
without its problems, misjudgments, and failures. Yet the study of
history is perhaps the noblest academic pursuit. A presidential
library is a place of historical inquiry of the highest magnitude
and a feather in any university's cap.
No doubt, the Bush library will promote the president's ouster
of a terrorist-harboring dictator who murdered his own at a rate
comparable to Stalin and Hitler, and the courage of the Iraqi
people who literally walked in the face of death to exercise the
simple act of voting in a free election. It will surely promote the
liberation of Afghanistan from religious zealots who shut up and
shut out women, and whose ideas on dealing with homosexuals began
and ended with death by stoning. The library, in short, will
promote this administration's response to the most threatening
menace of this century. But a true academic study of the Bush
administration will, as it must, examine its missteps, its errors,
and its failings. No serious presidential library does
otherwise.
Because a president fails, stumbles, and acts in ways in which
some think is entirely wrong, does this mean that that his
administration is unworthy of study? Does it mean that agents of a
university should actively work to deny a place of study to their
own students? Surely the writers are aware that historians -- such
as Robert Caro, to name just one -- practically live at
presidential libraries when conducting research that often yields
less than flattering portraits of the president in question. Would
those now objecting to the library's presence at SMU be not proud
of an academic or trade publication that was highly critical of
George W. Bush's terms in office based on extensive research
conducted there?
By objecting to their university housing an edifice within which
biographers and historians will toil for decades to come because of
churlish prejudice, the critics are repudiating the very precepts
of open inquiry and academic integrity they purport to hold dear.
If they truly cared about such concepts, they would welcome the
Bush library as a place to study the presidency of a criminally
negligent clown, not squelch the pursuit of historical study at its
highest levels. One would think Bush-hating academics would greet
the construction of his library as an opportunity to educate future
presidents against bungling so badly. But one would be wrong. To
the potential detriment of Southern Methodist University, the
library's opponents are not engaged in the pursuit of knowledge but
rather a dubious personal quest that may end up an academic
windfall for some other school in Texas.
topics:
Trade, Environment, Iraq, Israel, Oil
