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Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 06:47:58 -0500
To: <lreeves &AElig hilltop.bradley.edu>, "Daniel Reeves" <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Cc: <improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu>, "Nicole Poellet" <poelnico &AElig umich.edu>,         "John J Kapusky" <jjk514 &AElig gmail.com>
From: "John Kapusky" <JKAPUSKY &AElig TWMI.RR.COM>
Subject: Re: article on red-blue alliance
Status: RO
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Sorry if you got this twice.  Email biff, due to expired address; sent
again.

Sincerely,

John J. Kapusky
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Kapusky" <jac1010 &AElig peoplepc.com>
To: <lreeves &AElig hilltop.bradley.edu>; "Daniel Reeves" <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Cc: <improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu>; "Nicole Poellet" <poelnico &AElig umich.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 10:46 PM
Subject: Re: article on red-blue alliance


> I too found the article refreshing.
>
> '... can we all just get along...'
>
> Sincerely,
>
> John J. Kapusky
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <lreeves &AElig hilltop.bradley.edu>
> To: "Daniel Reeves" <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
> Cc: <improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu>; "Nicole Poellet" <poelnico &AElig umich.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 11:18 AM
> Subject: Re: article on red-blue alliance
>
>
> > Wonderful.  Now that one I enjoyed reading.  Laurie
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
> > Date: Wednesday, December 1, 2004 8:08 pm
> > Subject: article on red-blue alliance
> >
> > > Cam writes,
> > >
> > > > My goal here is to urge everyone to create a better world by
> > > trying to
> > > > understand each other.  In this case, it means researching the other
> > > > side to the same extent we research our own vs. blindly pushing
> > > for the
> > > > extreme right or left, while in reality hoping to end up with a
> > > slightly> different definition of the middle.
> > >
> > > Here's an article in that spirit that I found interesting:
> > >
> > > http://www.techcentralstation.com/112904A.html
> > > [text of article follows]
> > >
> > > Faculty Clubs and Church Pews
> > > By William J. Stuntz
> > > Published           11/29/2004
> > >
> > > The past few months have seen a lot of talk about red and blue
> > > America,
> > > mostly by people on one side of the partisan divide who find the
> > > other
> > > side a mystery.
> > >
> > > It isn't a mystery to me, because I live on both sides. For the
> > > past
> > > twenty years, I've belonged to evangelical Protestant churches,
> > > the kind
> > > where George W. Bush rolled up huge majorities. And for the past
> > > eighteen
> > > years, I've worked in secular universities where one can hardly
> > > believe
> > > that Bush voters exist. Evangelical churches are red America at
> > > its
> > > reddest. And universities, especially the ones in New England
> > > (where I
> > > work now), are as blue as the bluest sky.
> > >
> > > Not surprisingly, each of these institutions is enemy territory to
> > > the
> > > other. But the enmity is needless. It may be a sign that I'm
> > > terminally
> > > weird, but I love them both, passionately. And I think that if my
> > > church
> > > friends and my university friends got to know each other, they'd
> > > find a
> > > lot to like and admire. More to the point, the representatives of
> > > each
> > > side would learn something important and useful from the other
> > > side. These
> > > institutions may be red and blue now. But their natural color is
> > > purple.
> > > You wouldn't know it from talking to the people who populate
> > > universities
> > > or fill church pews.
> > >
> > > A lot of my church friends think universities represent the forces
> > > of
> > > darkness.  Law schools -- my corner of the academic world -- are
> > > particularly suspect. A fellow singer in a church choir once asked
> > > me what
> > > I did for a living. When I told her, she said, "A Christian
> > > lawyer? Isn't
> > > that sort of like being a Christian prostitute? I mean, you can't
> > > really
> > > do that, right?" She wasn't kidding. And if I had said no, you
> > > don't
> > > understand; I'm a law professor, not a lawyer, I'm pretty sure
> > > that would
> > > not have helped matters. ("Oh, so you train people to be
> > > prostitutes?")
> > > You hear the same kinds of comments running in the other
> > > direction. Some
> > > years ago a faculty colleague and I were talking about religion
> > > and
> > > politics, and this colleague said "You know, I think you're the
> > > first
> > > Christian I've ever met who isn't stupid." My professor friend
> > > wasn't
> > > kidding either. I've had other conversations like these -- albeit
> > > usually
> > > a little more tactful -- on both sides, a dozen times over the
> > > years.
> > > Maybe two dozen. People in each of these two worlds find the other
> > > frightening, and appalling.
> > >
> > > All of us are appalling, I suppose, but these reactions are mostly
> > > due to
> > > ignorance. Most of my Christian friends have no clue what goes on
> > > in
> > > faculty clubs. And my colleagues in faculty offices cannot imagine
> > > what
> > > happens in those evangelical churches on Sunday morning.
> > >
> > > In both cases, the truth is surprisingly attractive. And
> > > surprisingly
> > > similar: Churches and universities are the two twenty-first
> > > century
> > > American enterprises that care most about ideas, about language,
> > > and about
> > > understanding the world we live in, with all its beauty and
> > > ugliness.
> > > Nearly all older universities were founded as schools of theology:
> > > a
> > > telling fact. Another one is this: A large part of what goes on in
> > > those
> > > church buildings that dot the countryside is education -- people
> > > reading
> > > hard texts, and trying to sort out what they mean.
> > >
> > > Another similarity is less obvious but no less important. Ours is
> > > an
> > > individualist culture; people rarely put their community's welfare
> > > ahead
> > > of their own. It isn't so rare in churches and universities.
> > > Churches are
> > > mostly run by volunteer labor (not to mention volunteered money):
> > > those
> > > who tend nurseries and teach Sunday School classes get nothing but
> > > a pat
> > > on the back for their labor. Not unlike the professors who staff
> > > important
> > > faculty committees. An economist friend once told me that
> > > economics
> > > departments are ungovernable, because economists understand the
> > > reward
> > > structure that drives universities: professors who do thankless
> > > institutional tasks competently must do more such tasks. Yet the
> > > trains
> > > run more or less on time -- maybe historians are running the
> > > economics
> > > departments -- because enough faculty attach enough importance to
> > > the
> > > welfare of their colleagues and students. Selfishness and
> > > exploitation are
> > > of course common too, in universities and churches as everywhere
> > > else. But
> > > one sees a good deal of day-to-day altruism, which is not common
> > > everywhere else.
> > >
> > > And each side of this divide has something to teach the other.
> > > Evangelicals would benefit greatly from the love of argument that
> > > pervades
> > > universities. The "scandal of the evangelical mind" -- the title
> > > of a
> > > wonderful book by evangelical author and professor Mark Noll -- 
> > > isn't that
> > > evangelicals aren't smart or don't love ideas. They are, and they
> > > do. No,
> > > the real scandal is the lack of tough, hard questioning to test
> > > those
> > > ideas. Christians believe in a God-Man who called himself (among
> > > other
> > > things) "the Truth." Truth-seeking, testing beliefs with tough-
> > > minded
> > > questions and arguments, is a deeply Christian enterprise.
> > > Evangelical
> > > churches should be swimming in it. Too few are.
> > >
> > > For their part, universities would be better, richer places if
> > > they had an
> > > infusion of the humility that one finds in those churches. Too
> > > often, the
> > > world of top universities is defined by its arrogance: the style
> > > of
> > > argument is more "it's plainly true that" than "I wonder whether."
> > > We like
> > > to test our ideas, but once they've passed the relevant academic
> > > hurdles
> > > (the bar is lower than we like to think), we talk and act as
> > > though those
> > > ideas are not just right but obviously right -- only a fool or a
> > > bigot
> > > could think otherwise.
> > >
> > > The atmosphere I've found in the churches to which my family and I
> > > have
> > > belonged is very different. Evangelicals like "testimonies"; it's
> > > common
> > > for talks to Christian groups to begin with a little
> > > autobiography, as the
> > > speaker describes the path he has traveled on his road to faith.
> > > Somewhere
> > > in the course of that testimony, the speaker always talks about
> > > what a
> > > mess he is: how many things he has gotten wrong, why the people
> > > sitting in
> > > the chairs should really be teaching him, not the other way
> > > around. This
> > > isn't a pose; the evangelicals I know really do believe that they -
> > > - we
> > > (I'm in this camp too) -- are half-blind fools, stumbling our way
> > > toward
> > > truth, regularly falling off the right path and, by God's grace,
> > > picking
> > > ourselves up and trying to get back on. But while humility is more
> > > a
> > > virtue than a tactic, it turns out to be a pretty good tactic.
> > > Ideas and
> > > arguments go down a lot easier when accompanied by the admission
> > > that the
> > > speaker might, after all, be wrong.
> > >
> > > That gets to an aspect of evangelical culture that the mainstream
> > > press
> > > has never understood: the combination of strong faith commitments
> > > with
> > > uncertainty, the awareness that I don't know everything, that I
> > > have a lot
> > > more to learn than to teach. Belief that a good God has a plan
> > > does not
> > > imply knowledge of the plan's details. Judging from the lives and
> > > conversations of my Christian friends, faith in that God does not
> > > tend to
> > > produce a belief in one's infallibility. More the opposite:
> > > Christians
> > > believe we see "through a glass, darkly" when we see at all -- and
> > > that
> > > we're constantly tempted to imagine ourselves as better and
> > > smarter than
> > > we really are. If that sensibility were a little more common in
> > > universities, faculty meetings would be a lot more pleasant. And
> > > it should
> > > be more common: Academics know better than anyone just how vast is
> > > the
> > > pool of human knowledge, and how little of it any of us can grasp.
> > > Talking
> > > humbly should be second nature.
> > >
> > > There is even a measure of political common ground. True,
> > > university
> > > faculties are heavily Democratic, and evangelical churches are
> > > thick with
> > > Republicans. But that red-blue polarization is mostly a
> > > consequence of
> > > which issues are on the table -- and which ones aren't. Change the
> > > issue
> > > menu, and those electoral maps may look very different. Imagine a
> > > presidential campaign in which the two candidates seriously
> > > debated how a
> > > loving society should treat its poorest members. Helping the poor
> > > is
> > > supposed to be the left's central commitment, going back to the
> > > days of
> > > FDR and the New Deal. In practice, the commitment has all but
> > > disappeared
> > > from national politics. Judging by the speeches of liberal
> > > Democratic
> > > politicians, what poor people need most is free abortions. Anti-
> > > poverty
> > > programs tend to help middle-class government employees; the poor
> > > end up
> > > with a few scraps from the table. Teachers' unions have a
> > > stranglehold on
> > > failed urban school systems, even though fixing those schools
> > > would be the
> > > best anti-poverty program imaginable.
> > >
> > > I don't think my liberal Democratic professor friends like this
> > > state of
> > > affairs. And -- here's a news flash -- neither do most
> > > evangelicals, who
> > > regard helping the poor as both a passion and a spiritual
> > > obligation, not
> > > just a political preference. (This may be even more true of
> > > theologically
> > > conservative Catholics.) These men and women vote Republican not
> > > because
> > > they like the party's policy toward poverty -- cut taxes and hope
> > > for the
> > > best -- but because poverty isn't on the table anymore. In
> > > evangelical
> > > churches, elections are mostly about abortion. Neither party seems
> > > much
> > > concerned with giving a hand to those who most need it.
> > >
> > > That could change. I can't prove it, but I think there is a large,
> > > latent
> > > pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first
> > > politician to tap into it. (Barack Obama, are you listening?) If
> > > liberal
> > > Democratic academics believe the things they say they believe -- 
> > > and I
> > > think they do -- there is an alliance here just waiting to happen.
> > >
> > > Humility, love of serious ideas, commitment to helping the poor -- 
> > > these
> > > are things my faculty friends and my church friends ought to be
> > > able to
> > > get together on. If they ever do, look out: American politics, and
> > > maybe
> > > American life, will be turned upside down. And all those
> > > politicians who
> > > can only speak in one color will be out of a job.
> > >
> > > I can hardly wait.
> > >
> > > William J. Stuntz is a Professor at Harvard Law School.
> > >
> > >
> > > -- 
> > > http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  google://"Daniel Reeves"
> > >
> > > Q. How do you tell an extrovert computer scientist?
> > > A. When they talk to you they look at your shoes rather than their
> > > own.
> > >
> > >
> >