The Bowdoin Orient

Over my Spring Break as a Bowdoin tour guide learning the subtle art of marketing, I comfortably experienced Catholic Holy Week. I easily strolled down to St. John the Baptist, a charming parish with a distinctively French interior, for Palm Sunday. Its Easter Vigil service lasted over three hours, but I was well rewarded as I likely heard many of the same readings and hymns as my ancestors from France, Spain and Ireland. On Easter morning, I was invited to join a generous elderly couple for a feast of ham, sweet potatoes and green beans. As Holy Week came to a conclusion, however, I was reminded that the Christians of the Middle East do not have the luxury of commemorating biblical events in peace. They are indeed reliving the Gospels, sharing in the persecution, isolation and abuse endured by the man they proclaim as Messiah.

In mid-March, the State Department finally concluded, after a considerable and troubling delay pointed out by the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea, that the actions of ISIS constituted genocide against Yazidis (by far the region’s most vulnerable group), Christians and other religious minorities. No doubt countless Syrians of all creeds have suffered at the hands of the Islamic State, but it is indisputable that these minorities face more severe persecution, experience far less protection from competing international powers and risk not only continual losses of life but their very survival as intact communities. The final genocide designation against Christians was certainly due after continual reports of the destruction of ancient monasteries and churches, the kidnapping and murder of clergy, the placement of both Christian and Yazidi women into sex slavery and the wholesale destruction of Christian communities.

We would be mistaken if we assumed this persecution of Christian communities was limited only to the hands of the Islamic State. With honorable exceptions such as Jordan, sincere religious pluralism is becoming all too rare throughout the region. Pew Center surveys have found substantial majorities in countless Middle Eastern countries favoring the criminalization of apostasy (i.e. the free conversion of a person out of Islam into another faith). Over the past century, thanks to policies pursued from Ataturk to Erdogan, the once enormous Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul has dwindled to 2,000. The Arab Spring and subsequent rise of the Muslim Brotherhood was hardly good news for Egypt’s Coptic Christians. The United States’ Quixotic scheme and execution of “nation building” in Iraq unleashed sectarian conflict that has seen the flight or death of two-thirds of country’s Christian population since 2003.

The potential end of a vibrant Christian faith in the Middle East, where liturgies can still be heard in Aramaic and churches trace their origins to Saint Paul, is more than a humanitarian tragedy. It holds profound geopolitical implications. Notwithstanding the discrimination faced under second class citizenship, Middle Eastern Christians used the historic tolerance of the Islamic world to become a creative and prosperous minority. Historians like Bernard Lewis have long recognized the role of the region’s Christians as catalysts for liberalism, reform and economic development. Both the Spanish Inquisition and the post-1948 persecution of Jews by Arab Nationalist states are obvious examples of how a loss of cultural and religious pluralism undoubtedly holds back freedom and prosperity. Furthermore, the existence of strong, flourishing Christian minority is the best empirical reply to the “clash of civilizations” narrative peddled by both our own Islamophobes and the Islamic State, of a total, irreconcilable demarcation between the “Christian West” and “Muslim East.”

The pressing need to protect the Middle East’s Christians and religious minorities while also creating a semblance of regional order will be the next great challenges of American foreign policy. As President Obama made obvious in his recent interview with The Atlantic, even partial steps towards a potential resolution are unlikely to come from his administration, given his reflexive, nearly ideological dismissals of more interventionist American proposals in Syria as simply false hopes of a Washington “establishment” unable to share in his grand view of history. Still less can arise from our country’s growing flirtation with isolationism, in either the peacenik or Jacksonian nationalist varieties offered by Sanders and Trump. Nor can it come from Ted Cruz’s schemes of apocalyptic carpetbombing. The last hopes for Middle Eastern pluralism and stability may indeed lie with either John Kasich or, barring my own personal delusions with a rational look at presidential betting markets, Hillary Clinton. Let us hope they and their Secretaries of States do not react to the collapse of Syrian Christianity—and Syria or the very region itself—with crocodile tears.

At best, Ohio Governor John Kasich hovers around 10 percent in New Hampshire primary polls. His war chest pales in comparison to both establishment and insurgent candidates’ fundraising. At the recent CNBC debate, Donald Trump’s ever thoughtful insults shut Kasich down, saying he’s “on the end” of the stage because of his paltry national poll numbers. But could this folksy Midwestern governor be the GOP’s “last best hope” for reviving the optimism and governing competence of the party’s earlier age?  

Kasich’s opening is now clear and immediate. Jeb! promises that he “can fix it” (Washington? His campaign strategy? “Low-energy” personality?), but it’s certain that other establishment candidates now have a chance. Kasich’s congressional and executive experience far outweighs Rubio. He is less polarizing and obnoxious than Christie. And he simply has much more to be proud of. Thanks to budgetary and economic turnarounds, Kasich holds a 62% approval rating in Ohio, the pivotal battleground state. In his re-election, he won 86 out of 88 counties, and 26% of the African-American vote.

In an angry, bitter age of “Trumpism”, Kasich’s stump speeches are a breath of fresh air. His reflections on a blue-collar upbringing in the Pittsburgh area reveal a man who takes virtues of faith, humility, and community seriously. He speaks with nostalgia about his congressional experience in the 1980’s and 1990’s, when both parties knew about collaboration and compromise. Kasich hardly rants about Benghazi, sanctuary cities, or other red meat for the base. His stump speeches sound like sermons, exhorting both the GOP and American civic life to recover compassion, optimism, and empathy. 

Cynics might dismiss this as window dressing for a same-old, reactionary agenda. But Kasich is showing otherwise in Ohio. He expanded the Earned-Income Tax Credit for working families and increased public education spending. Prison reform, stronger mental health services, and better drug treatment and prevention programs have also been priorities of his administration. In a politically courageous act, Kasich accepted federal funding for the expansion of Medicaid in Ohio as part of Obamacare, a decision that provoked the wrath of party purists in Ohio and nationwide. This decision may never escape him. During a heated exchange at a Koch Brothers donor conference, Kasich invoked the biblical Last Judgement to defend his decision.

But Kasich is no Rockefeller Republican, or even Jon Huntsman, either. He is a social conservative, though without the bombastic, polarizing style of Cruz, Huckabee, et al. As governor, he clashed with public-sector unions on pensions and dramatically increased the number of charter schools. He is a military hawk calling for a major naval build-up. Kasich does not need to prove his conservative bona fides.

 Plenty of work lies ahead for Kasich to hold a fighting chance. For one, he will need to improve his debating skills; on stage, he really sounds like a flustered, impatient guy from Pittsburgh who waited in line too long for Pirates baseball tickets. The positive media coverage Kasich receives is a double-edged sword, winning both attention and potential infamy as the moderate, reasonable bien-pensant of the hated “mainstream media”. Kasich deserve credit for directly criticizing Carson and Trump, but he will need to choose battles cautiously. But it’s not necessarily true that the GOP is just too extreme for Kasich to win. Instead, commentator Henry Olsen point outs that the Republicans’ underestimated “somewhat conservative” and “moderate” primary vote blocs are large and formidable, particularly in delegate-rich blue states, and the right campaign strategy could reach those two groups, propelling to Kasich to victory, or, more modestly, a Vice Presidential spot under Rubio.

A Kasich victory or impressive showing would point to a deeper intellectual renaissance taking place in the Republican Party beyond the spotlights of the latest antics of Cruz, Trump, and company. Since 2012, a group of thoughtful “Reform Conservatives” like Yuval Levin, Ross Douthat, and Reinhan Salam have been thinking and writing deeply about declining social mobility, poverty, and income inequality. Their policies recognize that a comprehensive economic agenda cannot just repeat supply-side economic orthodoxies, and they are quietly impacting the policy thinking of Paul Ryan, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio, among others. To the disappointment of progressives, the goal is not to implement a Great Society 2.0 or to make the country into a Scandinavian social democracy. But it may show, in spite of Paul Krugman’s pompous statements, that the “party of stupid” has plenty of solid policy ideas up its sleeves worthy of debate and consideration.

One hopes for a conservatism that acknowledges, rather than denies, the concerns of millennials, the increasing diversity of a changing nation, or the economic anxieties of middle and low-income Americans. One must not put final “trust in earthly princes”; it will be activists, voters, and thinkers, not politicians, who construct this movement. Nevertheless, Kasich, more than any other candidate, embodies this promise and can take the mantle of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan into a new century. Perhaps it will be this son of a Western Pennsylvanian mailman who can restore the old and all too often forgotten promise of the party of Lincoln, to “to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life”.

In early 2015, Governor Scott Walker’s administration aimed for a dramatic shift in the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement. Gone was flowery talk about “public service” and “the search of truth”; such goals must bow to the imperative to meet “the state’s workforce needs”. Students of ancient Greek philosophy and their apparently hopeless job prospects have been a punchline in Senator Marco Rubio’s stump speeches, Such attitudes show a disregard for the conservative imperative to pass on a cultural inheritance. But they also speak to a larger shift, the rise of a technocratic and utilitarian approach to education that alarms conservative, Marxist, and liberal writers alike.

Liberal arts education is frequently defended by appealing to its contribution to critical thinking, social progress, and the common good. These are undoubtedly valid ends. However, set by themselves, we risk losing confidence in the oldest aim of the liberal arts education: to cultivate personal character through an engagement with the Great Books, through the “the best of what has been said and thought” in the words of Matthew Arnold. This is hardly a pinning of nostalgia. Numerous American colleges still have core Great Books seminars asking students to take great literature and philosophy seriously. It’d be hard to count as backward institutions like the UChicago or Columbia, 

Admittedly, a 21st Century Great Books program will look different from an Oxford or Cambridge curriculum in the 1800’s. It will be concise in a time when more students major in the physical and social sciences or want to enjoy a range of electives. Calls for greater diversity of voices should not be dismissed as political correctness. It would be inconceivable for a study of the human condition to not include Eastern or Islamic philosophical traditions. No curriculum today would be complete without drawing from voices like Wright, Márquez, Morrison, or O’Connor.

There must be a balance between necessary adjustment and preservation, however. Certain Western writings, such as Plato, Kant, or Marx in philosophy or ancient Greek dramas and prose, the Hebrew Bible, or Shakespeare in literature, dramatically shaped the entire history of ideas and the nature of our own culture, in both its virtues and weaknesses. To keep alive these texts in core seminars is not “Eurocentric” but an act of humility.

A Great Books program today need not be a systematic reading list universal for everyone on campus. Rather each professor would choose certain works for seminars clustered around Great Questions. What is the good life and ideal community? What do we mean by social justice and freedom? How does one understand both religious and secular views of the world? How do we make sense of and live through evil and suffering? These are the questions a liberal arts education needs to take seriously. 

This proposal might come across as too “ivory tower”. Should we not direct more core requirements into learning as much as we can about pressing political and social problems? Does all this talk about Great Books and Great Questions come from an extinct time when privileged colleges lay far too isolated and aloof from the world’s crises? Perhaps - but Tolstoy grasped a profound truth when he wrote that “everybody thinks about changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself.” Individual transformation of leaders precedes their contribution to lasting social change.

Just look at history. Movements like American abolitionism and the Civil Rights Movement brought lasting change because their members immersed themselves in older, deep wells of moral thought and right living. Conversely, those who lacked any appreciation for the past or concern for the interior life often saw their idealism descend into destructive ideologies. The French guillotine and the Russian gulag need only remind one of this final point.

A great error is to assume that such literary or philosophical texts would impose a particular ideology upon students. Irving Howe points out in a fabulous New Republic essay why a course on social thought including Nietzsche, Plato, Machiavelli, Jefferson, or Dewey would be a source of “a variety of opinions, often clashing with one another, sometimes elusive and surprisingly, always richly complex. These are some of the thinkers with whom to begin, if only later to deviate from.” The goal is not treat past authors as infallible oracles but to wrestle with important ideas.

It is critical for more colleges to restore towering past works of world literature and philosophy into an essential, if inevitably more limited, part of today’s curriculums. Those works save us from the “tyranny of the present”, assuming that the end of history directs to those who think and act like ourselves. They show how our assumptions about liberty, justice, or human nature are not obvious but lie atop a rich, contentious history. Their wisdom can teach us how to order our emotions and values as we enter a “real world” of tragedy and moral complexity. A few might count this position as reactionary. I’ll end with Roger Scruton’s words: “We have inherited collectively good things that we must strive to keep.”

With the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI the new papal conclave has already become a media circus, the center of speculation, “expert analysis,” and even the predictions of gambling houses worldwide. For Catholics, it is a time of deep uncertainty and excitement. The same questions will inevitably arise at both Sunday family dinners and the quiet circles of the Vatican. Should the church look for a pope from Africa or Latin America, who can speak to the growing number of faithful there and address their concerns over poverty and global inequality? Or must the church seek a leader from Europe or the United States, who can spearhead the “New Evangelization” to revive Catholicism in increasingly secular countries? Does the church need a strong, firm papacy or one that respects more the collegial leadership of bishops and the laity? Do we need a pope who is equal parts administrator, intellectual heavyweight or charismatic pastor? Is it possible to have all three?