… Waiting my turn in the barbershop I thumbed through the magazines until I got stopped short by Guns and Ammo. There I came across a full-page ad headed “Defending Liberty since 1844.” The NRA? Nope - Hillsdale College, in Hillsdale Michigan.
Why, I wondered, would a college pay for a full-page ad in a gun magazine? Does it help attract students? Donors? Or is this evangelical college using the word to fire a shot across the bow of the competition. the Fallwells’ Liberty University in Virginia?
Maybe all of the above plus a grander strategy, as is now becoming evident in Florida Michelle Goldberg points out in “DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College,“ Hillsdale is being held up as a model for restructuring liberal-leaning New College into a genuinely conservative institution. That part of the Hillsdale story can be found here.
But what about the word “liberty” itself? In these contexts it sounds as if it is being exploited by being made into a slogan for one political position, rather than recognized as a goal all Americans value, not least when we argue how best to attain it.
OK, philologists: Is it not our job to help reclaim such words, or at least to blow the whistle when they are abducted – in this case at gun point.
Why, I wondered, would a college pay for a full-page ad in a gun magazine? Does it help attract students? Donors? Or is this evangelical college using the word to fire a shot across the bow of the competition. the Fallwells’ Liberty University in Virginia?
Maybe all of the above plus a grander strategy, as is now becoming evident in Florida Michelle Goldberg points out in “DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College,“ Hillsdale is being held up as a model for restructuring liberal-leaning New College into a genuinely conservative institution. That part of the Hillsdale story can be found here.
But what about the word “liberty” itself? In these contexts it sounds as if it is being exploited by being made into a slogan for one political position, rather than recognized as a goal all Americans value, not least when we argue how best to attain it.
OK, philologists: Is it not our job to help reclaim such words, or at least to blow the whistle when they are abducted – in this case at gun point.