Universities are the Enemy (J.D. Vance)

WHY IS COLLEGE EDUCATED J D VANCE AGAINST UNIVERSITIES? I'll tell you why.

If you have listened to J.D. Vance, then you are aware the Yale Law School graduate has used sharp criticism of elite higher education to help establish his MAGA bona fides and build a national brand. The author of the best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016, Vance has written and talked about how education is key to opportunity and how higher education helped to lift him out of poverty. Vance, a former Marine, graduated from Ohio State University and Yale University School of Law. But, when it comes to others, university professors are “the enemy,” and he proposed legislation to restrict the consideration of race in admissions decisions. He does not believe YOU need higher education. NO LIFT FOR YOU.

he is not alone. The Right, or Republicans have a long history of disparaging higher education even though many of them holding offices are highly educated. During Vance's 2022 Senate campaign, his first run for office, Vance changed his tune on higher education, saying that universities are dedicated to “deceit and lies, not to the truth.” Why did he go to a university for so MANY years if he only learned lies? Maybe his HIGHER education has made him the ONE to tell you not to BE or BECOME educated. Even though he IS educated, this educational downfall, pitfall has not prevented him from becoming a Republican vice president nominee in 2024. 

I first wrote this post after listening to AFR (American Family Radio), where I heard for the hundredth time a standard Christian view which irritates me to no end. The statement: COLLEGE BRAINWASHES OUR KIDS.

In 2022, the reason this statement came up was due to a poll that was taken showing that people with college education tend to view President Obama more favorably and people with a high school or lower education tended to not favor President Obama. The radio hosts stated this was not because those with a higher education were smarter than the other group, but that they had gone to college (any and all colleges) where the professors have secular/liberal beliefs. These professors then in turn have 4-6 years to indoctrinate the kids to think liberally like them. In essence, most people with higher education are brainwashed by secular society. I FOUND THIS CHAIN OF THOUGHT TO BE RIDICULOUS AND INANE. If I am not mistaken, most parents have 18 years to rear their child before they send them off to begin their life. How can 18 years of CONSERVATIVE guidance be tossed to the wind so easily? How does a child, who clearly understands their family's values decide to throw them all away because a stranger has presented opposing (according to Christians) mores and concepts? A large number of Christians have been told over and over that colleges are liberal, and their teachings were in-line with 'woke' doctrine. Send off your child to become a doctor, lawyer, pharmacist, or engineer, and the university's MAIN focus is to indoctrinate your child with 'liberal' ideals. And fearful CHRISTIANS believe it. Even if they have been to college themselves and were not indoctrinated. The Right have become the anti-education at any level party, as evidenced by Florida's Governor, Ron DeSantis, who put restriction on history being taught in schools which opened the door for new Florida standards teaching students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills, approved by the State Board of Education in July 2023. WHAT KIND OF EDUCATION DO REPUBLICANS PREFER? 

Must ALL universities be done away with because Republicans are fearful of the education their soon to be adult children may have an opportunity to learn? And really, are Christian parents actually suggesting that their kids are susceptible to every new person they encounter? If their children are so easily swayed, then why do they let them go to universities or out into the world at all? They may be persuaded to do or be anything. It is almost as if Christian parents believe Christian children have a brain of mush and whatever they come into contact with they will believe it without questioning it or thinking about whether it is true or not. CAN CONSERVATIVE CHILDREN THINK FOR THEMSELVES OR NOT? CAN THEY CHOOSE RIGHT FROM WRONG WITHOUT PARENTS LIMITING THEM? It seems by the complaining that colleges brainwash Christian children, they can't think for themselves. OR CAN THEY????

STORY TIME. My oldest daughter who is 26 and a professional has met and made friends with dozens of people of different ethnicities. One of her male friends, who declares he is a Christian, came to her one day and said: "Yesterday when we were in a group, I was going to make a remark about _________ (who was of Hindu descent), but I realized if I said something racist about her it would have more than likely offended you or at least made you think I would talk about you in the same way; so I did not say it" With that he walked away. 

My daughter said something interesting. Her friend came from a rather elitist background. A family of well-educated parents, grandparents and siblings. He went to the private academies and private colleges. His fishbowl was made up of like people. It was while pursuing his career goals he had been exposed to other ethnicities on a consistent basis and thus befriending my daughter. This is the profound revelation my daughter came away with: as you branch out into life around people unlike you, you find that they are just like you and once you make friends with one person that is different than yourself, it begins to change your actions which in turn influences how you treat all people-across the board- that are different from yourself. Your fishbowl gradually turns into a pond, lake, and finally an ocean.So, maybe when Christian parents control the environment in which their kids are reared, limiting exposures to the bare minimum for recognition's sake; they are presenting the ONLY thing the child can believe or adhere to. Once the Christian or Republican child has freedom of choice and exposure, then they recognize what they were once told was not acceptable, has more commonality than they were led to believe. People did not attack, kill, maim, or hate them (remember most Christians say they are persecuted in the world and when this does not actually happen the child may start to believe their parents were not being completely truthful with them which causes bitterness on the kids' part). 

Is The Republican, Christian, Conservative effort to LIMIT education an effort to not embrace those as they see and speak of as OTHER which usually are people of color? Is J.D.Vances' stance against universities and higher education just a PUSH to ensure a possibility of returning to an America of the past which he and MAGA believe was GREAT? Is the only way to maintain conservative beliefs is to erase any offering of something different? Are parents wanting FORCED Christianity, Nationalism, and Conservatism? YOU BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR.

A person's religion has to be their own. I cannot make or insist that my children be a Christian. They can go through the motions to satisfy me, but what good does that do me. It may make me look or feel better, look better to my friends and the church but it has not accomplished anything for God. I never cracked the whip on my kids when it came to religion. I told them about God, talked about Christianity daily; but I always let them know they had free will to choose to be a Christian or not and the consequences of both. We discussed the biblical and secular Creation debate and that they were the one to decide which one they believed. I did not create an alternate reality for them because I wanted them to always be prepared and able to live in the world, like all of us have to do eventually. I raised my kids with the full knowledge that God created them to have free will. As long as they were alive, they could choose evil or good and that their life choices were between them and God. I could not be the overseer or salvation of their souls. 

College is not for brainwashing. There is no torture room where they are stripping your child of all they once knew replacing it with Satan's message. If it were so, no one would send their kids to college. STOP BLAMING COLLEGE if your children stop believing the boogie man stories once they find there is no boogie man. Higher education doesn't remove the fear, it is actually SEEING there are not monsters like mommy and daddy said. At least, not like they had them believe. 

Face the real issue. It is the only way to continue a political party not offering a VISION for ALL the citizens of the country. Nothing more. Nothing less. A political party which insists on IGNORANCE or lack of education to flourish. A party making knowledge and understanding a TERRIBLE thing. You cannot own or control an EDUCATED person. It would be fine if Republicans didn't want their children educated, but it's EVERYONE'S child they want to be ignorant.

You have always heard you cannot change people; only the way you react to them. Women have been forever warned don't get married and think you can change him. Change doesn't come easy as evidenced by the turmoil our country is going through. People change because they want to change. 

It is like people believing the only way we could ever have a black president is because we are living in the end times or because he is the antichrist, or at least his hand maiden. This was said over and over during Obama's presidency. Those who want to believe such nonsense, believe it. Those who do not believe it has to be the end of the world for a black president to be elected don't. I have heard the one about college (indoctrination) and the president (not American) enough to be brainwashed, but I am not. Brainwashing is not as easy as Republicans would have you believe. But their repetitive insistence that universities are the enemy, has brainwashed the Right and Christians. Repetition is a brainwashing technique no matter how absurd. 

This is the end of my rant. I know rants usually tick someone off in one way or another. But I wrote these things because I was ticked off. Misery loves company. In the end if you believe colleges are brainwashing Christian children then prepare them for it. Tell them to research what they are told or learn only accepting facts. But it's not about FACTS, is it? Don't send them out to be sheep for the wolves. Talk with them about this concern. Talk to them about the entire college experience before they go and while they are in college. Believe it or not, there is more than you who can teach your child something for their betterment. P.S. I have been to college and never stopped believing in God and the Creation account in Genesis in the Christian Bible or any other part of the Bible. Science is not an enemy of Christianity, nor Philosophy. Not being grounded in God with a personal relationship with Him is the enemy. Political agendas cloaked in Christianity is the enemy. Not seeing other Americans as equals is the enemy.