Attacking Education

Indiana’s terrible legislature is–as usual– considering several terrible bills. One of those is a thinly-veiled attack on Hoosier higher education.

Senate Bill 202 would establish government oversight of tenure and promotion for all faculty teaching at the state’s public universities. The bill would require those institutions to “deny, limit, or terminate continued employment to faculty if certain conditions related to free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity are not met.”

The author of S.B. 202 wasn’t taking any chances that a classroom discussion violating his quixotic definition of “intellectual diversity” might go unchallenged; SB 202 also establishes a reporting system encouraging students and employees to file complaints against any faculty member they feel is failing to meet the new pro-conservative conditions. It also adds two additional alumni representatives to university boards of trustees.

The Indianapolis Star has published an opinion piece that describes the bill and its likely effects: the departure of competent faculty and an enforced intellectual conformity, a la DeSantis’ Florida. The article reported on the real motives of the bill’s supporters and the political dishonesty involved.

The bill is similar to proposals advanced in other majority-Republican state legislatures — in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Texas — that seek to establish political oversight of tenure and promotion procedures, curriculum planning, and student services at public institutions of higher learning. Such initiatives are part of a concerted effort to curb the expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs that many colleges and universities across the country have adopted.

Sen. Spencer Deery, R-Lafayette, the bill’s author, has cited partial and unspecified polling data in a number of press reports that purport to show 46% of right-leaning students not feeling welcome to express their views on college campuses in Indiana. In fact, no such Gallup survey results exist.

The figure of 46% does, however, show up in a 2022 study conducted by political science professors at the University of North Carolina (and much cited by conservative advocacy groups) that seems to confirm Deery’s worries. But that study only surveyed students across eight institutions in the UNC system (and even there, with a sample size of 500 students, a mere 2.5% of the student population), not in Indiana.

Of course, as the author notes, even if a more rigorous survey produced the same results, S.B. 202 wouldn’t alleviate the problem. Instead, it would turn Indiana’s campuses into incubators of political correctness and intellectual conformity and would replace the scholarly and professional basis for employing faculty with political litmus tests.

The article ends with a pertinent question: why is a political party that holds a supermajority in the state legislature, the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, and 7 out of 9 seats so alarmed by the prospect of actual education on the state’s college campuses?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

All available polling and research confirms that the more educated voters are, the more likely they are to vote, and the more likely they are to vote Democratic.

Here in Red Indiana, any threat education poses to GOP dominance will be delayed, thanks to gerrymandering and the lack of a mechanism to overcome it (not to mention the ongoing “brain drain” that sends our brightest graduates to states more congenial to that pesky diversity and inclusion), but our legislative overlords are looking down the road. The rural districts that reliably send MAGA Republicans to the Statehouse are emptying out, and even in the hinterlands, some of Indiana’s small towns are showing signs of dreaded culture change–welcoming immigrants and other “diverse” town-folks.

Several political observers have noted that MAGA Republicans are prone to projection–that when they hurl an accusation at Democrats or “Never Trump” Republicans, they are usually accusing their targets of behavior of which they themselves are guilty. Senate Bill 202 is an effort to indoctrinate students attending the state’s institutions of higher education; anyone who has been paying attention is aware that Republicans have been insisting that teachers, librarians and professors are “indoctrinating” students by introducing them to subversive “liberal” ideas.

The problem is, indoctrination is the antithesis of genuine education.

Educated individuals can recognize complexity, live with ambiguity, and discuss, negotiate and compromise with people who disagree with them. Today’s MAGA voter rejects complexity, is terrified by ambiguity, doesn’t understand the concept of negotiation and refuses to compromise. To be a MAGA Republican means to believe in a black and white universe threatened by any rapprochement with fellow-citizens who differ.

Education and intellectual inquiry are the enemy. Hence S.B. 202.

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Defining Our Terms

A recent headline asked the wrong question. The TIMES headline read “America’s Becoming Less Religious. Is Politics to Blame?”

The correct question is: has politics become religion?

The article begins with statistics. It quotes results from Gallup, Pew, and PRRI, showing that the percentage of Americans who identify with any religion is in steady decline, “as are those who believe in God, the devil, Heaven, Hell, or angels; who say religion is a very important part of their life; maintain membership in a church or synagogue; or attend church regularly.”

The article proceeds to examine the possible causes of that decline.

Economic prosperity and functional governance (both wonderful things) can weaken our felt need for religious resources. For example, much of what religious institutions historically provided America’s citizens—education; counseling; support for the needy; marriage options; entertainment; and explanations for how the world works—are increasingly provided by the state and the market. Church participation has become more optional, just one more activity middle-class families do in the suburbs—or not.

Another factor is simply the inevitable consequence of living in an increasingly cosmopolitan, multiracial democracy where liberal values of tolerance are celebrated. Diverse neighborhoods, schools, and civic institutions force us to confront the reality that there are wonderful people out there who don’t share our religious beliefs. Our children will be friends with one another, maybe even spouses. Rising generations find the divisive dogma of many religious groups increasingly strange, if not offensive.

There is another explanation that the article explores: politics.

For the past few decades, sociologists and political scientists have demonstrated across multiple studies that as Christianity has become increasingly aligned with right-wing conservatism and the Republican Party, Americans who might have otherwise identified as Christians on surveys are now identifying as “nothing in particular” or “none.” The conclusion many seem to be drawing is “If this is what it means to be religious, count me out.”

We see quite a bit of that reaction on this site. And as the article notes, that reaction is mirrored by political conservatives, who have become increasingly likely to identify with religion because they see it identifying them as Trump supporters–actually (although the article doesn’t explicitly acknowledge it) as White Nationalists. White Americans identifying as “White Evangelical,” see the label itself as meaning “pro-Trump MAGA conservative.”

The article assumes that “This is another way that politics has driven secularization”– that the association between right-wing politics and religion driving young progressives away from religion is also secularizing religious folks. It compares the former phenomenon to the resurgence of Russian Orthodoxy in Putin’s Russia, where the number of Russians who identify with Russian Orthodoxy has grown, but the growth doesn’t reflect a rise in religious practices like church attendance and prayer. Instead, it reflects a rise in nationalistic fervor, ethnocentrism, and a fondness for the old Soviet Union and Stalin.

And that brings me back to my long-ago interpretation of Soviet Communism, which I saw not as an economic theory–at least, not primarily–but as a religion, a belief system.

The linked article is interesting, and as far as it goes, informative and factual. But it doesn’t grapple with what I see as the most important question, namely what is religion? I’d define it as a belief system based in faith rather than on demonstrable fact– a belief system that elevates certain values and behaviors on the basis of convictions that are simply not subject to empirical confirmation.

How is a belief that White Christians are superior beings entitled to pre-eminence in American life any less “religious” than a belief in the existence of heaven or hell?

You can undoubtedly come up with numerous examples of what we usually call “ideological” beliefs. What the studies cited in the linked article really demonstrate is that–at least in today’s contentious culture– “religion” and “ideology” have become virtually indistinguishable. And that’s a problem, because what we have come to call “culture war” is really a debate about whose belief system should be imposed on everyone else.

Political scientists tell us that laws are legitimate when they are agreed to by majorities of citizens holding very different world-views: for example, Americans of virtually all beliefs agree that murder, robbery and rape are wrong, and should be punished. (Although we still debate the definitions of even those terms.)

Americans aren’t really getting “less religious,” but they are admittedly getting less traditionally religious. Political ideologies have morphed into a different kind of religion. One is grounded in respect for pluralism and equal liberty of conscience. The other is intent upon protecting what they believe to be their god-given superior social status.

Compromise seems unlikely.

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Age And Skill

I am so sick of the focus on Joe Biden’s age. In the interests of transparency, I will admit to being two years older than the President. I do forget names and dates more frequently than I used to (although I never had much of a memory), but then, like Biden, I have a lot more material to remember and a lot more experience to draw on than younger folks do.

Some people are senile at 50. Some never are. My grandmother, who died just two months before her 100th birthday, was mentally coherent to the end. My husband is 91 and still sharp (so is Willy Nelson, who’s also 91 and still performing). Donald Trump, who is a mere four years younger than Biden, seems to have been born with dementia. (Trump has always been incoherent, so his followers evidently haven’t noticed the extent to which he is visibly continuing to decline.)

The people trying to defeat Biden by claiming he is age-impaired are people who have no persuasive argument with his performance and are desperate to find something–anything–they think will work. The Democrats who are publicly panicking over the issue–or worse, insisting he should allow someone else to run– are providing them aid and comfort. The truth is, Joe Biden has been a great President. (My middle son says Biden is the first person he’s voted for who has exceeded his expectations.)

I thought about the issue of performance when I viewed a powerful ad run by a candidate for U.S. Senate in North Dakota, of all places, sent to me by a (formerly Republican) friend who pointed out that the picture painted by this particular candidate is applicable everywhere, not just in the state of North Dakota. I am going to shorten this post in an effort to encourage you to click through and watch it, because it is a powerful indictment of the “wolves” who have hollowed out America’s middle class and who are attacking Biden because, under Trump, they will be able to continue preying on America.

Joe Biden has done more than any President since FDR to combat the wolves and shore up the middle class, to grow America “from the middle out,” as he likes to say. If the linked video speaks to you, you are a Biden voter! (If, on the other hand, you are throwing your lot in with the wolves, you are clearly a MAGA person…)

Let me be clear (as if I haven’t been!). Given the choice Americans will in all probability face at the ballot box, I will vote for Joe Biden. I would vote for him even if he was in a coma. The only genuine issue with his age isn’t senility–he is clearly in possession of his faculties, and his superior performance as President has been enhanced by the depth of his knowledge and experience and the connections he’s developed over the years that have allowed him to surround himself with highly competent people.  The only downside of his age is an actuarially increased possibility of death sometime during the next four years– and a Kamala Harris Presidency would still be infinitely preferable to the disaster–for America, for democracy, for world peace–that Trump represents.

Watch the video.

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Evidently, The GOP War On Cities Isn’t Limited To Indiana

When the Indiana legislature is in session, residents of urban areas don’t feel safe–and there is ample reason for our angst, as this blog has repeatedly documented.  A sad side effect is currently playing out in the Indianapolis City County Council, where the Democratic majority is trying to quiet one Counselor’s expressions of anger over the arrogance of a legislator who says he knows best what sort of transit city folks are entitled to. The Democratic caucus is evidently worried that open resistance will make the legislature even harder to deal with.

The bottom line, of course, is that Hoosiers–both city dwellers and rural folks–are absolutely helpless to influence our legislative overlords. Thanks to extreme gerrymandering, legislators in Indiana choose their voters, not the other way around, and Indiana lacks the ability to mount referenda or initiatives. We are truly subjects, not citizens.

There’s no mystery about why.

Our Red state legislature makes war on the cities that provide virtually all of the tax dollars they spend–the cities that are demonstrably the economic engine of the state–because cities are where Democrats live and vote.

It turns out that Indiana is not the only retrograde Red state engaging in these tactics. According to a recent article in The American Prospect, Republican-led states have now taken to blocking liberal cities from even thinking about legislating on behalf of their residents.

There’s nothing historically novel about America’s politics dividing along urban vs. rural or cosmopolitan vs. parochial lines. One has to go back a full century, however, to find a time when the nation’s political fault lines ran so clearly along the city/country divide as they do today.

“Those people” tend to live in cities, and they tend to vote Democratic.

 In the 1920s, cities were too Catholic and Jewish and freethinking for the countryside’s Protestant traditionalists, and new urban-based media (radio, movies) brought the taint of the new to rural communities whose susceptible young people were lighting out for the cities. Today, culture wars and economic conflicts also play out largely along urban/rural lines. Of the top 35 cities in America by population, only four have Republican mayors, and one of those, Eric Johnson of Dallas, Texas, was elected as a Democrat and switched parties in 2023.

State level lawmakers may not be the brainiest of people, but a number of them have figured out that–as the saying goes–there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Since Republican legislatures and governors can’t stop city residents from electing Democrats, however, they’ve devised a whopper of a Plan B: negating majority rule in those areas by denying those cities the right to enact any laws or promote any policies that run counter to the preferences of the governor and the legislature.

The article lists a number of examples. North Carolina’s legislature nullified a Charlotte ordinance protecting LGBTQ rights. When the city of Birmingham passed a municipal minimum-wage statute, the Republican state legislature outlawed municipal minimum-wage laws.

More recently, majority-Black and majority-Democratic Jackson, Mississippi, has had a crime problem, so the Republican Mississippi state legislature responded by enacting a law that stripped criminal trials from the jurisdiction of Jackson courts and established a new group of courts, with judges to be appointed by the state’s Republican chief justice. When Democratic Nashville established a civilian review board for its police, the Republican legislature and governor passed a law that banned civilian review boards. The underlying racism in such preemptions is never very far from the surface. The Republican neo-Dixiecrats who dominate Southern legislatures can no longer keep Blacks from voting, but they’ve found a way to keep Blacks, in the cities where they constitute clear majorities, from governing.

And of course, there’s always Texas.

In the past, the state had enacted laws to stop municipalities from creating local ordinances that protect tenants facing eviction and to stop cities and counties from regulating fracking within their boundaries. Last summer, however, the Texas legislature passed and Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law HB 2127, which its sponsors gloatingly called the “Death Star” bill for local governments. The law prohibits municipalities from enacting local ordinances that go beyond any state laws that deal with agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, natural resources, occupations, and property.

The sweeping law negated local statutes like those that Dallas and Austin had enacted to require employers to give water breaks to construction workers in torrid summers. It further forbade cities from enacting any such ordinances that climate change or conscience might require. It’s so broad that it’s not clear just what kind and how many local laws and regulations it would negate.

Knowing that Indiana isn’t alone really doesn’t give me any comfort.

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Please Share Widely

In November, Hoosiers will vote to fill an open seat for U.S. Senate. Despite primary challenges, the choice will almost certainly be between Marc Carmichael and Jim Banks.

I thought a comparison of their positions would be useful–and for rational voters, motivating. (Marc’s website has background on these issues.)

Abortion: Marc wants to codify Roe v. Wade.

Banks has an A+ rating from Pro-Life America, and a 100% lifetime rating from the National Right to Life Committee. His voting record on abortion/reproductive health can be accessed here.

Gun Violence: Marc wants to reduce America’s gun violence by passing a ban on military-style assault weapons and he supports a national Red Flag law.

Banks opposes both. He supports concealed carry and has voted against background checks for private sales. His voting record on gun issues can be accessed here.

Environment: Marc recognizes the threat posed by climate change and will work to safeguard the environment for our children and grandchildren.

Banks calls climate change a “liberal hoax,” and the Biden Administration’s environmental efforts “a war on energy.” The League of Conservation Voters gives him a 1% lifetime rating. His votes on the environment can be accessed here. 

White Christian Nationalism/Racism. Marc condemns bigotries of all kinds, and emphasizes the importance of fighting racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and bigotries of all kinds.

Banks created the “anti-Woke” caucus in the House of Representatives and has introduced legislation to outlaw any remaining affirmative action in college admissions. He has been dubbed “Focus on the Family’s Man in Washington.” He opposes all DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs.

LGBTQ+ issues. Marc has called for an end to the demonizing of trans children and supports the civil liberties of LGBTQ+ Americans.

Banks has been vocal in his opposition to gay rights generally, and to trans children especially. In addition to his “Anti-Woke Caucus,” he has supported efforts to ban trans people from the military, prevent trans women from participating in women’s sports, and prevent medical personnel from treating children for gender dysphoria. He recently sponsored a bill that would prevent agencies placing children in foster homes from taking measures to see that gay and trans children would not be placed with foster parents who have religious objections to homosexuality, saying that refusal to place those children in such homes was discrimination against religion.

Public Education/Teachers and Librarians. Marc opposes the recent efforts to censor books and intimidate schoolteachers and librarians. He is particularly concerned about Rightwing efforts to dictate to schools and colleges what they can and cannot teach.

Banks has attacked both public and private schools; he vowed to investigate the National Association of Independent Schools, focusing on the group’s role in political advocacy and its tax-exempt status. He has threatened to “expose” what he calls widespread political indoctrination in the public schools, and claims that lawmakers have a “moral duty” to investigate the use of academic accreditation associations as “political tools by leftist ideologues.” When he was in the Indiana legislature, he voted to allow instruction in creationism and supported educational vouchers that sent tax dollars to private, overwhelmingly religious schools.

Wages and Collective Bargaining. Marc supports a living wage and the right of workers to bargain for it. He believes that the recent signs of union resurgence are good news, and he joins with the 67% of Americans who—according to Gallup–support organized labor in the US.

Banks gets a zero rating from the AFL-CIO. When he served in the Indiana legislature, he supported “Right to work” legislation (dubbed by labor as “Right to work for less.”) On vote after vote in Congress, he has voted against labor; a list of those votes can be seen here. 

Healthcare. Marc supports Medicare for All, which would save an enormous amount of money (an estimated $600 billion per year, not including savings on prescription drugs) while providing everyone in America with access to high-quality health care coverage.

Banks voted against the most recent expansion of Medicaid and supports legislation that would ban vaccine mandates. He has voted to repeal the ACA, and against legislation that would prevent insurers from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions.  A review of all of his healthcare votes is here.

Immigration. Marc supports critically needed reform of America’s immigration laws, to allow us to address the chaos at the border, and he supports a path to citizenship for DACA children and other undocumented persons who meet certain requirements.

Banks supports finishing Trump’s wall on the southern border, eliminating federal funding for sanctuary cities, and the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.” He opposes any legislation granting amnesty for any undocumented persons (presumably including children currently protected by DACA) and opposes any expansion of guest-worker programs.

Other: Marc wants to ensure a fair, impartial and ethical judiciary; Banks enthusiastically supported the rushed confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and other deviations from longstanding norms.

Marc supports reforming the tax code to ensure that the rich pay their fair share, while Banks opposes any increase to the tax rate on profits earned from the sale of stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Marc also supports reclassification of marijuana to Schedule 3, and further research on its effects. Banks has voted repeatedly against efforts to fund research into the effects of marijuana. Banks’ votes on issues related to pot are here.

In November, Hoosiers will choose between a reasonable, thoughtful person who actually understands government, and an extreme MAGA culture warrior who will be generously funded by the usual suspects.

We have eight months to inform voters of the implications of that choice.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. The only valentine I want is the widest possible sharing of this information with Hoosier voters.

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