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Mike Pence Made a Girl Cry. . . at Hillsdale College
Vice President Mike Pence addressed the Class of 2018 at Hillsdale College’s 166th Commencement at the invitation of the class officers. And the valedictorian “literally” cried, she found it so upsetting. I’m not going to name her, because this post isn’t intended to embarrass or humiliate her. Rather, the point is that even exceptional institutions like Hillsdale College suffer the dis-integration that’s destroying our society.
How do I know about this? It was reported in the New York Times — speaking of dis-integration. I don’t know if it’s original to @drewinwisconsin, but he often repeats “You think you hate the news media. You don’t hate them enough.” That’s certainly the case with the New York Times and the article (behind the paywall) How a Conservative Christian College Got Mixed Up in the 2020 Election Plot: Hillsdale College has become quietly involved in many political fights — including Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat.
I only know about it because Mr. C and I had a row over it after he read the article and said he wished Hillsdale wouldn’t invite political figures to give their commencement addresses. He could read and share it because he has a subscription, Cod bless him.
Our argument went something like this:
Me: What if the political figure was Abraham Lincoln?
Him: What if it was Joe Biden?
Me: I’d skip my own graduation ceremony if Joe Biden gave the commencement address.
Him: It seems an unnecessary provocation to students and parents who disapprove. Bishop Barron gave a great commencement address at Hillsdale.
Me: I agree, but the worst I ever heard was Tim Allen — hardly a political figure. And Mike Pence seems a fairly benign personage, so it must have been his association with Donald Trump that set the girl off.
Fact check: True.
I just finished watching Pence’s speech — rather boilerplate stuff with a brief foray into the administration’s accomplishments and — heaven forfend! — greetings and congratulations from President Trump to the class and the use of the phrase “make America great.”
Watch for yourselves (Arnn’s defense of his institution and touching introduction starts about minute 25):
What do I mean by “dis-integration?” I’m borrowing from a podcast I listened to on Catholic Answers talking about Christian atheism. And this is the part of Pence’s speech I found unconvincing — that “faith is on the rise in America.” I disagree. There is likely still a significant number of Americans who practice a cultural Christianity, but I contend the lack of faith in a transcendent Being — especially One to whom we will be held to account — is on the rise. Virtual atheism wearing a Christian skin. The example given on the Catholic Answers podcast was the red state of Ohio voting for unrestricted abortion.
So “dis-integration” is the loss of societal and institutional integrity. We’re experiencing a breakdown of the integral whole. For heaven’s sake, we can’t even agree on what a woman is anymore!
This is what dis-integration looks like:
Yet even as she thrived academically, she found her values unmoored from the emergent brand of conservatism espoused by Arnn and his administration. In an interview, she recalled her graduation, in May 2018. She was the valedictorian. Pence delivered the commencement address, declaring that the Trump administration was “advancing the very principles that you learned here in the halls at Hillsdale.”
“I was sitting there in the audience in tears, in embarrassment and frustration,” [redacted] told me. “This is supposed to be the culmination of the education that I received, and instead the school is making a mockery of itself.” She added: “I was literally crying. I’m going to sound like a snowflake, I guess, but whatever. It was a travesty. Another student heard me crying and reached out to me afterward and said, ‘This isn’t the send-off we deserved.’”
You “deserved?” The Vice President of the United States — a man of integrity by most standards — spoke at your commencement and you “deserved” better? Maybe you should be grateful it wasn’t Tim Allen. Seriously.
And I would expect a Hillsdale graduate, if anyone, to “embrace the adventure” Jordan Peterson so often talks about and to take on “maximal responsibility.” Both ideas alluded to in President Arnn’s and Vice President Pence’s speeches. And what exactly are the values a Hillsdale valedictorian no longer shares with the “emergent brand of conservatism espoused by Arnn and his administration?” The article doesn’t say.
There’s more revealed by what goes unsaid in the article than the foreboding implications laid out to damage Hillsdale College and Larry Arnn (I believe it was the NYT that labeled Arnn “the most dangerous man in America” several years ago). For example, early in the article it says, “Arnn would counsel Pence, as the vice president faced mounting pressure to block certification of the vote in the House of Representatives.” Counsel him how? To block the certification? To certify? You have to read nearly to the end of the article to learn that Larry Arnn counseled “caution.” Well.
You think you hate the New York Times? You don’t hate it enough. The media and the education establishment (of which Hillsdale is NOT a part) are the greatest threats to America. Nothing is more destructive to the character and integrity of our people and, therefore, our nation.
Published in General
Bless her heart. The fragile little [redacted] should have been forced to read this once a week.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings – The Kipling Society
Pure hubris. Not everyone can withstand being valedictorian intact.
We live in a highly polarized nation. To repeat a comment I made on another thread: I recently read a Facebook comment from a former co-worker who mentioned that he knows several people who have canceled their New York Times subscriptions b/c it’s too pro-Trump. Yes, you read that right, and no, I don’t think he was kidding.
She was “literally crying”? Aww…. poor thing. I literally don’t care about her precious feelings, although I must admit that when I read the title of this post, I assumed that the girl was crying because Hillsdale had invited a massive cuck to speak at her commencement. Now, there’s something to cry about. At least Tim Allen was probably funny.
2018? Six years ago? Who gives a Flying Burrito Brothers album? It takes going back six years to dig this up?
Maybe she’s still crying about it.
That’s a lot of tears to shed over a total nothing.
She’s not equipped and ready for this world. That’s all.
WC, sometimes I think that the dis-integration is already done despite some lingering chunks of the American Way. I also sometimes think that even worse is that there is currently something else entirely that’s integrating, an unstable facsimile that will spread itself until we’re all incorporated or extinct.
So Hillsdale is great and we need it, but the bigger problem is grade school and high scool. The kids are being ruined k-12, and they don’t even have God as a life raft.
Think historical Dark Ages.
I don’t wish to emphasize the particular girl’s irrational response, though. I have had a student at Hillsdale College and Mr. C and I are members of the President’s Club (we send $$ to help pay for other students (reasonable) tuition). Our very personal experience with Hillsdale can be summed up in one word — love. Love of their students (you’ll get the sense of it if you watch the first half of the video) and love of truth, beauty, and goodness. Not to mention love of country.
How does any student who applied to and attended such a place — most of them are homeschooled and Christian — and who learn their history and philosophy from beloved professors and develop the skill of critical thinking — end up with such hatred for DJT that the very presence of his rather milquetoast proxy (I’m not particularly a fan) can ruin her special day celebrating the very real accomplishment of graduating from Hillsdale?
The article’s author says he interviewed “nearly two dozen” students of such outlook. How do Christians, particularly, end up with such a hateful attitude toward an admittedly flawed man who managed to do some very good things for the country? President Trump is the unforgiven and the unforgivable. There’s something anti-Christian about that.
The temptation of getting one’s name in the New York Times at such a young age must also be very great. . .
I blame the media, social and otherwise. Media ginned up this hysteria about the man and may very well get him killed. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow not only won’t play President Trump’s Iowa victory speech (because she doesn’t “knowingly air untruths” — LOL! Stop, it hurts!), she even hesitates to say his name, as if he’s the American Lord Voldemort.
Our nation is in deep, deep trouble. I know I’m not saying anything anyone here doesn’t already know, but there is no outcome to this year’s election that won’t tear us apart. Gird your loins.
Yes, Hillsdale is trying to address that, too, with their Barney Charter Initiative opening classical charters in every state.
In the meantime, though, I grow tired of the complaints about the public schools (and Catholic schools aren’t much better) when people who share my values are still sending their kids there. These schools are in the business of lefty indoctrination and of stealing your kids’ innocence! If I had school-aged children or grandchildren, there is no sacrifice I wouldn’t make to homeschool them. What’s happening to our kids is just evil.
Certainly not anything worth crying over, but I would prefer that a politician giving a commencement address not use it as an opportunity to brag about himself and his administration.
A conspiracy theory could explain it.
That way of thinking is why we are where we are.
I have an exact opposites sentiment to that for an Administration trying to do the right thing for Americans.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of the speech. But, I repeat — Trump (and his proxy) are less the problem than the (over)reaction to him. I would think anyone schooled at Hillsdale would have enough strength of character to withstand even a so-so speech by Mike Pence without breaking down in anguish. Apparently I would be wrong.
The bigger issue is Hillsdale graduates who find Hillsdale’s “emergent brand of conservatism” a mockery and a travesty. How so? Where is the departure in values from when the student applied to an as-advertised conservative, Christian, liberal arts college and now?
If it’s simply Donald Trump’s presidency, that is a horribly shallow, irrational response.
Not even.
When our kids were growing up, my pastor believed that it was better to keep kids in schools and be a witness to the community. He has since come around to encouraging home schooling, if possible.
Edit: We homeschooled our kids.
Consider the possibility that the NYT writer is simply lying. Reporters lie all the time, especially when it comes to sources on background. There have been numerous instances of reporters making up sources. This article has a nice review of prior incidents:
https://thefederalist.com/2018/04/23/boston-globes-news-fabrication-scandal-nothing-new-journalism/
Of course, the granddaddy of fabrication scandals is Pulitzer-Prize-winning Walter Duranty, who denied the Holodomor and acquiesced with Stalin’s lies. “All the news that’s fit to print.” Of course, nobody’s heard of Gareth Jones.
As Michael Malice likes to say, however much you hate journos, it isn’t enough.
Oh, yes. At best he was misrepresenting by omission. This is SOP for the media. Together with the education establishment I hold them in contempt for the corruption and dis-integration of our society.
And it’s possible the valedictorian student was a plant.
It might not be hatred. I notice a lot of youngish people are shocked and disturbed generally by polarization and not-niceness. I’d imagine that if someone were relatively sheltered, Donald Trump’s rise and how it made most go bananas would’ve been a big surprise. Conversations I’ve had with a few Hillsdale alum friends and a lecturer at their grad school give me the impression that many of the students there don’t see an off ramp to a brighter future.
Dr Sheldon Cooper had it figured out.
This country will only be fixed one person at a time. People exactly like those who attend Hillsdale, who embrace the adventure of life by taking on maximal responsibility (Jordan B. Peterson) — getting married, having children, raising them right, becoming upstanding members of the community, by taking care of others through acts of self-sacrifice. . .
But, if these graduates don’t have the emotional self-discipline and self-control to not fall for the hysteria surrounding President Trump and the accusation that all of America’s evils can be attributed to white Christians (see MSNBC), there isn’t an off ramp to a brighter future. That much is true.
Imagine what would happen if Notre Dame invited Hillsdale’s President to speak at commencement.
“Is this video a parody? Did EJ produce it? I haven’t read through the comments.I get more than a whiff of EJ becoming what he hates.”
C’mon. Don’t be shy.
Wrong thread.