It was obvious as soon as the debate began which candidates believed themselves to be the frontrunners. Former Congressman John Hostettler and former Senator Dan Coats within minutes began to bicker and tear each other down. Coats was the biggest target of the night. A recent bank lobbyist and Virginia resident, Coats returned to Indiana late in the race only after polls showed Evan Bayh to be vulnerable. His candidacy was encouraged and greeted enthusiastically by the Washington Republican establishment, but skeptically and even bitterly by the grassroots Republicans in Indiana who had been campaigning against Bayh for a year. Indianapolis Tea Party organizer Richard Beheny set the tone for the event when he used his opening statement to welcome Senator Coats back to Indiana. Others more subtlety jabbed Coats and his record, but the one person Coats singled out aggressively was Hostettler. The two clearly don’t like each other, or at the very least see each other as the largest obstacle to the nomination .

Coats was facing a hostile crowd, but by the end of the debate he had won their respect if not their votes. He was very polished, very knowledgable, and very enthusiastic. That’s not to say he wasn’t without significant missteps. In response to a question about term limits, he bizarrely declared that his dedication to term limits led him to drop out of the race against Evan Bayh in 1998—which begs the question of why he is running now. Surprisingly, none of the other candidates called him out specifically on this claim, and the one attack made on subject was directed at all three of the political office holders on the stage and devolved into a squabble between Hostettler and Richmond financial advisor Don Bates, Jr. (discussed below).

Bates and Behney have the least political experience of the group (that is to say, none), and both wear it as a badge of honor. When asked what distinguished him from the other candidates, Behney declared that the other men wanted to hold office. “I don’t want to be Senator,” he said. “I’m just ticked off.” His lack of political experience, however, may lead to a lack of political knowledge. He lacked specifics and gave a lot of vague answers that he would know to avoid if he learned anything from Sarah Palin’s mistakes. What federal departments would he cut? “How about all of them,” he answered. What entitlements would he cut? “All of them,” he answered.

Specifics were not a problem for John Hostettler. The man is a walking Constitutional database. He managed to answer nearly every question by putting it into the context of some specific section and article of the Constitution. He was also the most aggressive of all the candidates, which sometimes gave him the appearance of having a mean streak. After Don Bates, Jr. accused him of breaking his “Contract of America” pledge for term limits, Hostettler pointed out that the pledge merely bound signatories to allow a vote on the floor of the House, not to actually support the implementation of term limits. This is why some of the candidates “can’t be trusted,” Hostettler said, adding that the reality was different than what Bates “thought he read.” It was a direct attack on Bates’s trustworthiness and a subtle attack on his intelligence. It provoked groans from the audience. Hostettler would probably have been better off with a gentler rebuttal, especially since his explanation embodied the sort of nuanced, legalistic, misleading reasoning that people tend to hate about Washington.

Being shot down by Hostettler, and delivering a whiny, “I’m really disappointed” response, were probably low points in the debate for Bates, who otherwise preformed quite well. Bates played the part of the much-needed peacemaker. After nearly every spat between candidates, he would take a step back and remind everyone that in the end, we’ll all need to support the Republican nominee. He also nearly always answered questions with specificity, and didn’t attempt to dodge them. “I’m not going to wax eloquent,” he said at one point after all of his colleagues gave vague and noncommittal answers to who should be the next president of the United States (Bates unabashedly supports Mike Pence). It played well with the audience, and he was interrupted quite a few times with applause—even though they were told to refrain from clapping. For someone with virtually no name recognition in the northern part of the state, his connection with the audience was impressive.

Victory in the debate, however, belonged to citizen legislator and family farmer Marlin Stutzman. In the interest of full disclosure, I voted for Stutzman in the straw poll afterwards, and I have for some time intended to vote for him in the May primary (and hopefully in November as well). I have a sneaking suspicion that the Tea Party leadership that hosted the debate supported him as well—Stutzman got the center podium, surrounded by Behney and Hostettler, with Bates and Coats relegated to the fringes. Part of Stutzman’s State Senate district runs through Kosciusko County, and this was clearly his territory.

But attempting to step aside from those biases, Stutzman still has clear strengths that would lead me to declare him the victor. His time as a farmer gives him a great connection with his Hoosier constituency, and he was able to masterfully weave his experience on the farm into his arguments about budgetary and tax issues. He was the happy warrior of the group—conservative, but not angry about it. He stayed on message, and wasn’t drawn into any particularly nasty squabbles—though the ever aggressive Hostettler did target his tax record in the State Senate. Stutzman delivered an adequate rebuttal, and the issue was left there. He also got the biggest applause line of the debate when he delivered a call for Washington to behave more like Indiana government—where there are citizen legislators who have to return home and “live under the laws” they enact.

These are exciting times to be a political junkie in Indiana. It’s a great time to be a conservative in Indiana. This is going to be a vigorous Senate primary and a vigorous general election campaign. Regardless of the outcome, I look forward to the fight.

Update via the South Bend Tribune:

Straw Poll Results

Marlin Stutzman 80
Richard Behney 76
Don Bates, Jr. 47
John Hostettler 18
Dan Coats 16

Related posts:

1. Evan Bayh’s Senate Opponents to Visit Wabash
2. Evan Bayh and the Media Narrative
3. Notes on Indiana Literature

Dr. Folsom is a professor of history at Hillsdale College in south-central Michigan.  He received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University, received his master’s degree from the University of Nebraska, and earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pittsburgh. He has written several books in addition to New Deal or Raw Deal?, including Entrepreneurs vs. the State, The Myth of the Robber Barons, and Empire Builders: How Michigan Entrepreneurs Helped Make America Great.

See the rest of the lecture on our YouTube channel.
And check out pictures from the event on our Facebook page.

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1. Contrary to What You Might Have Heard: Burton Folsom, FDR, and the New Deal
2. Dr. Tom Palmer on Realizing Freedom
3. Lecture by Dr. Douglas Farrow on Defining Marriage a Success

We interview our recent libertarian speaker Tom Palmer and discuss our first speaker of this semester who offers a critique of the New Deal.  Also included is a discussion of American heroism and popular culture’s effect on the family, as well as a criticism of the REAL ID act passed in congress.

View contents »

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1. Prometheus Bound: The State of the Classics at Wabash
2. New Phoenix: The Other Cuts
3. Tom Palmer to Give Talk on Libertarianism

Of course, I’d never practically held that conservatism was the one true way to heaven. Nonetheless, writing for a distinguished conservative magazine, voting mostly Republican, and generally wishing that Uncle Sam would become less involved in my paycheck, how could I hold to a single philosophy in spite of the mounting evidence that neither a conservative nor a liberal government will solve society’s problems? I’m going to leave my conclusions on liberals to your imagination and elucidate what I discovered about conservatives.

It seems that conservatives never really seem to help those that nature attacks. Is there really a “good conservative” response to the crisis in Haiti? Can we honestly hope that individuals will just voluntarily organize, mobilize, and help an impoverished nation devastated by natural disaster?

I tend to think faith in humanity is naïve at best. People, both collectively and individually, are irrationally self-interested. So when life strikes, the world expects governments to provide aid just as they would expect Red Cross to do.

And perhaps not without reason. I see this firsthand in ΑΦΩ. My freshman year, I headed up gathering gifts for 50 children. Yet mobilizing collectors, let alone actually collecting funds, proved more excruciatingly slow than Alma Mater Sing. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Student Senators decided to allocate $1,000 to our cause in a matter of minutes.

Maybe it’s logistical convenience, or maybe it’s the involuntary nature of taxpayer “donations”. If government involvement in international humanitarian efforts is simply a matter of logistical ease, then our nonprofits seriously need to step up to the plate to avoid governmental power surges.

But I believe the problem runs much deeper. Humans aren’t stupid; they know that their donation (or lack thereof) likely won’t make any real difference. It’s the classic collective action dilemma.

My first understanding of the collective action conundrum came in Professor Ethan Hollander’s Survey of Comparative Politics. The class opened with an object lesson. Every student in the class received two points automatically. We had two options: we could keep the points for ourselves or we could donate one or both of our points towards a communal fund, which, if it reached 25 points contributed, would give everyone in the class three additional points towards his quiz grade added to the points he had accumulated.

The individual incentive was to keep one’s own two points and hope that everyone else contributed enough to put him ahead with a total of five points, while the person donating one point to the pot would  end up with four points. Of course, since everyone had this incentive, the problem was to get everyone to make a contribution to the class fund.

We gave pep talks, begging and guilting our peers into donating towards the fund. The professor collected our slips of paper and began to read them aloud.

In a class of 30 people, we didn’t break 20 points donated.

“Suckers!” he jeered. “People are selfish. Why else would we need government?”

Unfortunately, nonprofits can’t make you give blood or money. So service has turned to the government to fill the gap in donations.

The situation is identical to the participation crisis inherent to democracy. A good many believe that democracy will eventually degenerate into tyranny. As the populace’s apathy towards government increases, opportunities for abuses in power emerge proportionally. Ultimately, a tyrant (or savior depending on your perspective) enters, and eventually dies or angers a group enough to galvanize them into action.

Thus democracy is birthed anew from the ashes.

The goal for citizens, as I see it, should be to stave off this degeneration. For conservatives that believe a big government will inevitably and unnecessarily encroach on the rights of citizens, this means a commitment to civic engagement and keeping the government small.

From my perspective, this means individually serving—relentlessly diminishing the need for governmental action. And even when there’s not a pressing hurricane, tsunami, or earthquake, the underprivileged should be voluntarily assisted simply to maintain a flexible infrastructure of volunteers and good will.

It’s a system built on weakness, doomed to fail eventually. People are self-interested. But if enough suckers rise up to the call, then the invasion of indifference and tyranny can be warded off for that much longer.

Related posts:

1. A Call to Defend: An Interview with Bryan Wickens ‘91
2. A Time Honored Tradition: Wabash and Public Service
3. Talk Show Hosts Says Conservatism Advances Minorities

Dr. Tom Palmer: That’s a more difficult question than it may seem because I’ve been thinking about these questions for a long time. I would say that when I was very young I had a formative experience which was reading the essays of Frédéric Bastiat. Bastiat was a modest person, a French businessman and economist and was very active in the 1840s in France. I recommend his writing very highly; if you want to learn economics, one of the best things you can do is read Bastiat. Many great economists have stated this: Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek. Alan Blinder (who was on the Council of Economic Advisors under Clinton) said if you want to understand international trade, read Bastiat. Bastiat helps us to see the world in a new way that is very valuable, he talks about the concept of the seen and the unseen, what modern economists call opportunity costs, that every choice has a cost—that which is given up. This cost is usually clear to us in our personal behavior. If you are at the movies, you’ve given up some of your study time, for example. Normally we expect the benefits to be greater than the cost, but when collective choice is involved, this may not be the case. People only focus on what is seen—the benefit—and not what is unseen—the cost—the thing that did not happen, the choices that were not realized. Quite often we see behavior [by governments of all sorts] that imposes invisible, enormous costs on people, but awards benefits to a visible few and everyone says, “This is wonderful,” but the net outcome is the impoverishment of society. Once you get this, you can’t be a socialist, or at least a dumb socialist, anymore. It doesn’t make you into a Libertarian, but it sets up a world view in which you begin to think more systematically about choices.

After that I was introduced to Ludwig Mises and Fridriech Hayek. In the course of that reading though, I spent a lot of time reading every anti-Libertarian approach as well and I never found any of them satisfactory. They make good points, I don’t just dismiss them, but I most of them are founded on fantasies, and I would include both right-wing and left-wing fantasies, about how the world works. I found that the Libertarian approach is more realistic, in some ways more modest and—at the same time—a more idealistic approach to the world.

I dropped out of high school—I did not like out of high school, it was very boring—and was told I could enroll in the University of Southern California when I was sixteen. Not an experience I’d recommend to other people [going to college at sixteen years of age]. I was the first to go to college in my family so I had no idea what college was like. I then transferred after dropping out and working for a couple of years: like I said, going to college at 16 is not a good idea. When I was 20 I went to St. John’s College in Annapolis, which is very similar to Wabash College in many respects. It was very good for me, I went on and did graduate work at the Catholic University of America in philosophy and did my doctorate in politics at Oxford University. During that time I was very engaged in politics: movements against military conscription, against registration for conscription, anti-tax movements and the like. In the late 1980s I convinced some people to put some money behind me and went to Austria and started a program smuggling books into the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. It was an interesting time in my life and I continued doing these kinds of crazy things and later became very active in the Arab world to promote ideas about liberty and established and still coordinate programs in fourteen different languages.

WCU: So you told us before you came that you were very excited to see the Pierre F. Goodrich Room. Can you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to see this room of our library?

TP: Pierre F. Goodrich was a very interesting man; I never got to meet him. He loved books and the life of the mind and was a very passionate and committed Libertarian. He believed that if people understood the interchange of ideas historically and the ways that the ideas of liberty emerged, people would then embrace them. Perhaps that was a bit naïve, but a good kind of naïveté to have. He favored open discussion and listening to other people and he would invite people to dinners, but the invitation came with a book and the expectation was that you would read the book, come to dinner at his home, and there would be an intellectual salon type of conversation.

So he saw the history of Liberty as a historical development to which many different figures and trends had contributed. I have benefited a great deal by learning from Mr. Goodrich; he was very interested in the Chinese classics and had an appreciation of the Libertarian elements in Chinese culture, elements that can be found in the writings of Mencius, Lao-Tzu, and so on. So to me this room is a monument to a life of thinking and contemplating and attempting to appreciate that liberty is the exception to human history. Liberty is a great accomplishment and certainly not the norm. This is something that the neo-conservatives who launched the Iraq War did not understand. Their assumption was that the natural equilibrium state of the human race is something like Indiana. Everyone lives like us, right? All of my life I’ve been free, that’s just how the world is. Of course a free society is not the natural equilibrium state of the human race; it’s an extremely rare occurrence. If you look at the wide span of human history, most people have lived as slaves under brutal forms of oppression by other people; most did not enjoy freedom of religion, freedom of speech or the freedom to come and go as they please. [The fact that we enjoy these freedoms] is a great accomplishment. Yet if the neo-conservatives had understood all this, they would have understood you can’t just kill Saddam Hussein and turn Iraq into Indiana. Maybe Iraq will become more like Indiana at some point, it may become more civil and a little more free, but this will not happen just because we removed the obstacle [of Saddam Hussein]. So Mr. Goodrich understood, in a unique way, how Liberty has developed through history, and this development is exemplified by the names on these walls and ends, interestingly enough, with the Declaration of Independence. I’ve always wanted to come and visit this room and get a physical manifestation of his understanding of history.

WCU: That’s really interesting; I’ve always been told that these names are just the names of great thinkers and accomplishments of history.

TP: Oh no, he definitely saw this as a history of freedom; there is a clear progression here. This is why it begins with Gilgamesh, the Urukagina, and others from Sumeria. You begin with the story of Gilgamesh, which is a story of checks and balances. Gilgamesh is the great and glorious king, but he goes to the house of every bride, to sleep with her before she is married to her husband. This, of course, means he rapes her—this is the great advantage of being the most powerful man, you get to rape all the pretty girls—and the people are upset about this, it’s humiliating and monstrous. So they pray to the gods and Ururu creates Enkidu and Enkidu goes to the city, confronts Gilgamesh, and they fight. This is the first story of checks and balances. So long ago, mankind realized the worst thing is to be subject to the arbitrary will of another person and to combat that you need some other power. You see this develop all throughout history. I don’t know if James Madison ever read Gilgamesh, but he put the same idea to work in our constitution. This kind of story about liberty unites all the names on the wall; it’s actually a fairly intelligible story from this perspective.

WCU: It seems today that no matter what side you’re on, the downfall of American democracy isn’t too far off. In the short years we’ve been alive, we have seen tremendous advances against liberty and freedom in America. The current trend seems to be away from freedom and I’d like to get your thinking on this.

TP: In other words, you’re very pessimistic. However, if any trend continues unabated, the world is going to hell. This is always true, yet it never happens. I’m less pessimistic. I think people are beginning to wake up. The predatory behavior of the Bush administration has been followed by the predatory behavior of the Obama administration and the cumulative effect is becoming more obvious to more people. I think that there is an awakening to the dangers of unlimited state power and the dangers of Caesarism: that the president is the manifestation of the people’s will and we must all follow him or somehow we are traitors. People are beginning to push back against that mentality. People are beginning to realize that the foreign policy adventures of the Bush administration have done nothing to advance liberty; they certainly haven’t advanced liberty at home; we have suffered a great many assaults on our freedom and witnessed a great number of assaults on the Constitution.

For example, the attempt to suspend the writ of habeas corpus by executive fiat; this is an ancient right and one of the most important elements of our freedom. This is one of the most important freedoms we have: you cannot be detained, imprisoned, and locked up on the say-so of one person or branch of government; you have to go before a judge and have due process of law. This way, two branches of government must agree that you may be detained, then there is a process to determine if you are guilty and how you should be punished. But the Bush administration said, “No! I’m designating you an enemy combatant,” and people disappeared under his and the Attorney General’s say-so. This is unconscionable, this is monstrous. This has been substantially beaten back. Another is the breach of the rule of law with Guantanamo. The previous administration said, “We’re exempt from American law, this is Cuba.” This is grotesque. Finally, the unnecessary wars into Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan war has gone completely off-track. We’ve gone from removing al-Qaeda to nation building—putting a Starbucks in every village—it’s just not going to work.

The other point I would make in this regard is that the last eight years have been pretty bad, especially in the United States, for liberty; it hasn’t been so bad for the rest of the world. China has made incremental increases in liberty; I wouldn’t call it a free society, but it has gotten more free and with 1.3 billion people, it should be heavily weighted on the scale of human liberty. But if you look at a longer term comparison, we live in possibly the freest time in all of human history. I will admit that these last 8 years have been retrograde in the United States, but overall there’s no Soviet Union, no gulag, no more slave labor camps, the Chinese Lao-Gai system is largely abolished ( the trend is very positive in China), the Apartheid is gone from South Africa, slavery by and large is gone. So looking at the question from that perspective, you are the freest generation of human beings who ever lived. Now, that might go up in a puff of smoke and we should always remember what happened in the terrible retrograde motions of the early 20^th century after the phenomenal advance of Liberty in the 19^th century. What happened in the late 19^th and early 20^th was the rise of anti-Libertarian philosophies: socialism, racism, imperialism, nationalism, and these won the day. The Libertarians were politically and intellectually in retreat and states were taken over by monstrous, tyrannical ideologies that killed hundreds of millions of people; we have since been recovering from that so we should never forget that these achievements are fragile. That said, I’m optimistic about the future.

WCU: So what do you think is the future of Libertarianism in America, especially with the rise of the Ron Paul movement and more college students interested in Libertarian ideas and authors like Bastiat and Hayek? Is there a future for Libertarianism in America?

TP: I do [think so]. I think that Ron Paul’s candidacy is an interesting lens to use to look at that. He was the only candidate out of eight Republicans who opposed the war. Naturally, that makes him interesting. You had seven who said, “Oh yeah, this war was a great success, bring it on,” and only one who said, “This was a tremendous and disastrous mistake.” This gave him a natural prominence and people began to listen to him as a consequence. This mobilized a lot of people to get into politics, which is a very positive phenomenon. I think it’s important that one focuses more on the ideas than on the candidate; I think that personality based political movements are always fragile and can have the danger of degenerating into cultish movements. But Ron Paul demonstrated that there is a natural constituency and a natural market for the ideas of limited government—that in a sense, limited government is sexy. A lot of people have thought big government programs are sexy because you’re helping people—again it’s the what is seen versus unseen phenomenon—you’re building pyramids, great engineering projects because our government loves us and cares for us and tucks us into bed at night and so on. But now it turns out that talking about the costs of all this is sexy; what have we given up? What have you given up in terms of your freedom, your personal autonomy, your ability to direct your own life, what price are we paying? The perfect example would be the massive social engineering project undertaken by the Clinton administration and the Bush administration to promote home ownership in America. Renting is bad, everyone must own a home and the consequence of this was they pushed interest rates down into negative territory; they pumped a vast amount of artificially cheap money into the housing market. They coerced and subsidized banks into lowering bank lending standards, which were boring. Asking if you can actually pay the loan, how dull is that, right? So we ended up with college students with no job, no income and no assets getting 105% loans to buy houses. It was all pretty cool… until it blew up, until the bubble burst. People then began to understand that there isn’t a free lunch; you can’t print money to create prosperity. I think that this [approach] is a way to be idealistic and realistic at the same time. We want the ideals of liberty and we’re realistic in that we understand those other ideals don’t work.

WCU: I would like to get your opinion about another prominent Libertarian movement, that of Ayn Rand. What do you think about what the Objectivists believe?

TP: Well first, Libertarianism is a political philosophy, it’s not a philosophy of music or architecture or any of those things. There’s aesthetics and appreciation of art and all sorts of other things in life. Libertarianism doesn’t claim to be everything; it’s not an all-encompassing philosophy. The element of the Objectivist that is oriented toward political philosophy has been Libertarian, so they are Libertarians. Now, some people, not all of them, have maintained that you can’t believe in Liberty if you don’t also believe all these other things: their views on metaphysics, theology, quantum mechanics, and all other sorts of things, and I don’t think that’s a justified view or that such a view is correct. In fact, people can have a multitude of reasons for believing the same things and it is not the case that we should not choose political allies because they don’t believe the same that you or I do on some other matter. When people were fighting communism, it would have been a very strange thing to say, “Oh, well I can’t make an alliance with you because you don’t go to the same church as I do or you listen to a different kind of music or something of that sort.” This would be a very strange thing to do. So in my view, the Objectivists are Libertarians and they understand that; they have a wider encompassing view about the world, and that’s fine. I found some of the elements about it very attractive, but I don’t subscribe to any philosophy set down by another person, such that I must accept all of it. I am admittedly eclectic in my views and my perspective is, if I have four reasons to believe that proposition
X is true, I am more certain of its truth than if I have only one reason.  I don’t find helpful those philosophical positions which argue “No no, you must have only one reason for believing this.” If the four reasons are compatible, if no combination of reasons rules out another, then there is no reason to throw any one out; why not embrace all of them? Now for example, respecting individual rights is an element in the achievements of human happiness.  I believe as a substantive moral commitment that self-directedness is an important constituent to a happy life. As Aristotle points out, if you are happy because of fortune you are not really happy; happiness needs to be an achievement. To achieve happiness, then, you need to be self-directed and have self-autonomy. Now it’s also the case that a free society that respects the rights of individuals is a much more fun place to live, it’s healthier and people live much longer. I don’t have to pick one reason I would embrace in order to support freedom, I think all of them are true. Consequently, I don’t think we have to say only this reason is the reason; I’m much more a compatibilist.

Related posts:

1. Freedom Realized: Dr. Tom G. Palmer and Libertarianism Explained
2. Tom Palmer to Give Talk on Libertarianism
3. Dr. Tom Palmer on Realizing Freedom

Burton Folsom’s career has, in many ways, centered on rehabbing the reputation of capitalism in American history. A professor at Hillsdale College in south-central Michigan, Dr. Folsom received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University, received his master’s degree from the University of Nebraska, and earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pittsburgh. He has written several books, and their titles indicate the line of history that he pursues: Entrepreneurs vs. the State, The Myth of the Robber Barons, Empire Builders: How Michigan Entrepreneurs Helped Make America Great, and, finally, New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. His The Myth of the Robber Barons has become a cult favorite within conservative collegiate and intellectual circles, and his book on the New Deal has made considerable waves, being popular enough at the large bookstores to merit large stacks of the books being displayed in the history section.

In New Deal or Raw Deal?, Dr. Folsom systematically analyzes the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the New Deal, and he demonstrates how most of what we learned in high school is just simply wrong. Providing a brief biographical sketch of Pres. Roosevelt, he shows us that the president’s academic accomplishments were on par with those of much-maligned Pres. George W. Bush. One of the subjects that challenged FDR in particular was, of all things, economics. Economics was simply not one of his strong suits, and so his understanding of economics was greatly influenced by the academic economists that he surrounded himself with.

Discussing the Great Depression, Dr. Folsom argues that there are primarily three “credible causes that help explain how Americans slid into their worst economic crisis ever”. First of all, America had lent $10 billion to European countries during World War I. However, “almost all of Europe (Finland was an exception) balked at repayment and, in fact, soon repudiated their debts to the United States”. Second, there was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This act either added or raised taxes incredibly on imported items, such as Swiss watches. However, other countries retaliated and refused to import various American products. Therefore, American industry was hurt by that as well as by the fact that imported goods necessary for business were now more expensive. Finally, a third possible cause for the Great Depression was “the poor performance of the Federal Reserve”. The Fed raised interest rates multiple times, which made it more difficult for businesses to borrow money from banks for investments. Also, the Fed did little to timely intervene during the failure of banks, especially the Bank of the United States. Due to these reasons, as opposed to capitalist greed or underconsumption, the Great Depression happened, according to Dr. Folsom.

After analyzing the Great Depression, Dr Folsom attacks the alphabet soup of New Deal programs that many of us had to memorize back in high school history: the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration camps (FERA), just to name a few. This section is the heart of New Deal or Raw Deal?. For the sake of space, I will review what is perhaps the most outrageous of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs: the National Recovery Act.

According to Dr. Folsom, the NRA “allowed American industrialists to collaborate to set the prices of their products, and even the wages and hours that went into making them. Leaders in all industries, from steel to coal to shoulder pads and dog food, were invited to sit down together and write ‘codes of fair competition’ that would be binding on all producers in their industry. Laborers were often allowed to organize, and antitrust laws were suspended.” The logic behind this plan was the underconsumption theory of how the Great Depression began, which is that the Depression was caused by there being too little purchasing of products by consumers. Therefore, if people had more money, more products could be purchased and the consumption-production imbalance would be relieved. Roosevelt admitted that the NRA “was passed to put people back to work, to let them buy more of the products of farms and factories and start out business at a living rate again”. The head of the NRA, Hugh Johnson, declared that the program was a “Holy Thing…the Greatest Social Advance Since the Days of Jesus Christ”. And woe betide those who bucked the authority of the NRA! Since prices for products were set at a minimum, many companies saw diminished or evaporated profits and were forced to lay off workers. In order to turn a profit, some small businessmen tried to get around the NRA by offering discounts, paying lower wages to keep their employees employed, or simply ignoring the new regulations, and many of them were imprisoned or fined for doing so. For instance, Sam and Rose Markowitz of Cleveland were thrown into jail “because they cleaned suits for 5 cents less than the NRA code provides”. The NRA, however, was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional. The Schechter brothers of Brooklyn, who sold kosher chickens, were charged with, amongst other things, “allowing customers to choose the chicken they wanted to buy rather than demanding that customers select their chickens randomly from the coop.” The federal prosecutor, during the case, proclaimed that under the NRA regulations, “the customer is not permitted to select the [chickens] that he wants. He must put his hand in the coop when he buys from the slaughterhouse and take the first chicken that comes to hand. He has to take that.” At this, members of the Supreme Court literally laughed, and they eventually struck down the law 9-0. The NRA is representative of the controlling, beyond-the-pale regulations that FDR included in his New Deal policies. Many of them were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but not before many citizens suffered considerably as a result of them.

In New Deal or Raw Deal?, Dr. Folsom deftly articulates a fresh view of the New Deal and of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. He demonstrates that Pres. Roosevelt, while he probably had good intentions at heart, prolonged the Great Depression, habitually toyed with the truth, used the New Deal to further his political ambitions, and otherwise behaved in a manner hardly befitting a person often credited as being one of the greatest presidents of the United States. There are two sides of every story, and we finally get to see the other side of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Dr. Folsom’s impressive tome. Wabash should welcome Dr. Folsom when he lectures here, and hopefully his talk will encourage Wabash students and faculty to give the old myths that we learned about FDR a new look.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Burton Folsom’s Critique of the New Deal

The responsibility of deciding which faculty to cut was placed on the shoulders of Dean Gary Phillips and the division chairs. After much deliberation, they submitted their reports and the final decisions were made. The College is decreasing the faculty in two ways. On the one hand, current faculty members are being let go, and on the other hand, retiring faculty are purposefully not being replaced.

The department alterations are obviously not equal across the entire curriculum or even by division. The cuts were certainly not satisfactory to everyone, and no one would have expected them to be. Any rational person would not have been excited about the decision-making process as if it was like choosing which ride to take at an amusement park, but the simple fact of the process being “hard” does not exempt the changes from scrutiny. The committee made each change based upon some idea about the value of different subjects for the liberal arts. The purpose of this article is to examine the method used by Dean Phillips and the division chairs to decide what departments would be reduced. I, as a Classics and Latin major, was of course disappointed to hear that my beloved subject was included in the cuts. Therefore, I will concurrently analyze the Dean’s process and how well Classics meets the standards.

In considering the cuts, we must also keep in mind the particular Classics department that was targeted for decrease. We are not talking about an ailing or even average portion of the college, rather one that has grown and produced over time. For instance, a few years ago a section of Latin 101 had to be removed, because the department did not have the resources to support it. The professors in the department are all internationally renowned in their fields, and the department has sent students to prestigious graduate schools like Brown University and the University of Michigan. This semester the department had six senior majors.

Due to the cuts, the Classics department will be lowered from three professors to two. The dynamic of this department is interesting, because Professors Leslie and Joe Day count as only “one” professor, although their contribution to the college far exceeds that of one person. Also, for the last three semesters Professor Claudia Zatta has been teaching as a visiting professor. So very soon the department will go from having five people to only two. The cuts to the Classics department will certainly damage the three majors it offers (Greek, Latin, Classical Civilization), and furthermore the overall education provided by Wabash College will be worse in the future. Hopefully, by observing the process chosen by Dean Phillips we can understand more thoroughly how the decision to shrink the Classics department was made and then determine whether this choice was wise for Wabash College.

In December, I sat down for an interview with Dean Phillips to discuss what exactly occurred last semester. After the interview, he supplied me with a list of the criteria the committee considered for different departments over the course of the decision-making process. Throughout the rest of this article, I will consider their criteria and use them to determine the value of classics to the liberal arts compared to other subjects. The criteria are provided below.

1. The overall mission of the College to provide students with an excellent, high quality liberal arts education for the 21^st century;
2. College-wide commitment to maintain maximum, high quality student engagement in classes, labs, and studios with the lowest possible student/faculty ratios;
3. The 2008 Strategic Plan goals to strengthen interdisciplinary and international teaching and learning at the College;
4. The historic strengths of the College in attracting and retaining students;
5. The financial needs and opportunities of the College;
6. The needs and interests of students attracted to departments and programs across the College;
7. The need for a diverse faculty
8. The need to support three strong academic divisions;
9. The need to support general education and all college courses;
10. The need to support majors and minors;
11. The potential of individual faculty members to contribute to the College’s mission;
12. AAUP guidelines regarding renewal of appointments

* I will exclude criteria 7,9,11, and 12, as my ignorance concerning them is too great for me to say anything.

I will address the first criterion last as it requires the most attention, so I will begin with the second. The quality of class size will necessarily become weaker when faculty are cut, so the question here is which subjects by nature can survive with larger classes. Classics struggles with a larger class size more than most subjects, like physics, for example. The difference between ten and twenty students does not really alter what goes on in your average physics class, because most courses are lectured-based. A classics course, however, is significantly altered by even small additions, because the classes are discussion based and involve significant student participation. According to this criterion, the Classics department should be supported more than other departments, because the effect of an increased class size is more severe for classics students.

The third criterion, which focuses on interdisciplinary courses, is vital for the current state of the College. With an overall reduced faculty size, it is necessary for departments to become more flexible, so that the curriculum can use them more broadly. Classics is by far one of the most interdisciplinary departments on campus. A plethora of its classes are cross-listed as art, language, and history because by nature classics studies broad areas of inquiry. Furthermore, the classics courses could potentially function as rhetoric, philosophy, religion, and political science. Again, the Classics department meets the criterion used by the Dean better than the majority of other departments on campus.

The fourth criterion involves the historic strengths of the college. When I asked Dean Phillips what these strengths were, he responded, “The sciences…, those that support pre-law, the strong liberal arts, preparation for business…, the religion department, and teacher education.” Obviously, Classics is not listed among these, but should it be? To answer that question, I will turn to the very beginning of Wabash’s history. The College’s current website states that Caleb Mills founded Wabash with the goal “that the institution be at first a classical and English high school, rising into a college as soon as the wants of the country demand”. As far as history is concerned, no stronger evidence for Wabash as a classical institution might be found than the words of the College’s founder.

The fifth criterion does not seem to apply to specific departments throughout the college, unless you consider the cost of the “capital” needed to sustain a certain department. If we judge the departments by how much it costs to run them, Classics would be the ideal department, for it needs no technology, instruments, supplies, or laboratory, and can be taught in any building on campus. Other departments, however, take up greater space and require much more energy for equipment.

Criterion six essentially asks how many students take classes in different departments across the curriculum. I do not believe distilling the value of a subject to the number of people who patronize it is wise, but, as the Dean said in our interview, it is necessary to do so when making the decisions he did. In the future, Biology, Chemistry, Math, and English will have at least three times more professors than Classics. Are three times as many students taking classes in these departments? Religion, History, Economy, and Political Science will have at least twice as many. Again, I ask are twice as many students in these classes? Furthermore, the Physics department will have three professors, so do they have more students as well?

In order to compare the utilization of different departments by students, I formulated data with the “search for sections” program on “Ask Wally”. The website provides the number of students for each class taken in a semester. These numbers are in no way exact, but they at least give a decent approximation of how many people take classes in different departments throughout the curriculum. I have compiled data on the number of students in different departments from the last five semesters. I found the total number of students who took a course in a certain department during each semester and then averaged the five totals. Also note that I counted each half-credit class as half of one student.

The data demonstrate that in fact the Chemistry, Biology, and Math departments do not have three times as many students as the Classics department (Chemistry and Biology do not even have twice as many).  The data for History, Religion, Economics, and Political Science is consistent with the future ratios. Physics actually has fewer students than classics. Therefore, on the basis of this criterion, either the Classics department should have a greater number of professors or many of the others should have been cut as well.

In order to consider criterion eight I will need to look at the cuts more generally. The teaching core at Wabash has decreased by eight professors, but the cuts were aimed disproportionately at Division II with five professors being removed. Division I lost two, while Division III lost one. Division II must now bear 63% of the cuts. The reality of the cuts hardly seems to speak to maintaining “three strong academic divisions”.

Criterion ten focuses on supporting majors and minors. The only other departments that contain more than one major as Classics does are Math, Art, and Modern Languages. Because the Classics department is unique in having three majors, it will suffer even more than the other departments that were cut. As Professor Leslie Day said in a Bachelor article, “New Plan Cuts Faculty” (10/23/09), written last semester, “We are dismayed about the department because [the plan] means that we have been cut by 30%, which means that when we’re offering three majors we can’t do it. Something’s got to give.” The Classics department will not be able to support the three majors that it does now with only two professors. Dean Phillips said in the interview that this time of changes is “interesting and exciting, and the suffering departments, who might not agree, need to imagine how it can be interesting and exciting”. The Classics department has been bound by these cuts, and will not have the capacity to achieve what it is capable of with the proper resources. The remaining classics professors will hardly be able to imagine how the future of their curriculum will be interesting and exciting, because so much of their curriculum has been severed entirely!

Now we turn to the first criterion, which is very open, because it depends on what definition of the liberal arts the adjudicator uses. Classics, however, would fit into any reasonable definition that could be produced. I asked Dean Phillips what his definition is during our interview, and he provided me with a two-fold explanation. He said, “I think it depends upon where you start. I like to start with the ancients. Liberal arts are at the root those fields of study, those inquiries, those questions, and that knowledge that frees people. If you go back to classical Rome, you find the distinction between those who are free and those who are in servitude. The liberal arts is that training, that experience, that knowledge, that awareness, that capacity that makes for free human beings.” We see immediately that studying classics is at the heart of what makes Wabash College a liberal arts institution.  If our aim is to understand how we might become free, then we need to study how the Romans tried to free themselves. As ancient Rome is a major focus of the classical studies, Dean Phillips’ own definition relies completely on the Classics department.

So we see that classics fits perfectly into the Dean’s first explanation, but simply inquiring into what the Romans studied is much different than actually being educated in those areas. Dean Phillips’ second explanation addresses the other aspect of how certain subjects bring people to freedom. “[The liberal arts] expand the capacity of men (speaking of course about Wabash) to engage the world in a variety of ways that enable them to have capacities to deal with the challenges of the world. To do that effectively, you need to know something about the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the fine arts.”

The focus of the Dean’s definition is a multiplicity of different studies, and would consist of exposing students to many ideas in general. With this definition, however, no differentiations can be made between subjects at all. Rather than certain fields of study being more or less beneficial to the liberal arts, it would seem that we should just study a hodgepodge of different subjects.

This supposed equality of the contributions of different subjects to the liberal arts makes the importance of every department relative to what the student desires, which is usually based on his career goals. The Dean seems to be attuned to the effects of qualifying the value of different departments, because he said that, “what our students need was a driving question in all of this [the decision-making process]”. If we distill the essence of our college into accommodating the fancies of eighteen-year-old boys, then we will become a trade school specializing in pre-law and pre-med.  The shortsightedness of this logic is exposed when we ask what the college would do if the majority of students demanded classics rather than pre-med in ten years. Would we then fire chemistry and biology professors and hire more classicists?

The Dean’s explanations of the liberal arts miss its most crucial element entirely, that we are at Wabash College to become excellent men. The true value of the liberal arts is that it forces those under its tutelage to grow in mind, body, and spirit. How does it do that? The liberal arts shapes average men into outstanding members of society by challenging them. All of our beliefs and opinions are scrutinized and tested throughout our four years here, and it is this trial that makes the liberal arts incredible.

As Dean Phillips said, we are here to learn how to think and address the challenges of the world. But what are these challenges? They are many and varied, but most fundamentally they are those questions that perplex us and yet must be answered. Herein lies the importance of studying classics.

The important questions of life have been around as long as man has, and therefore countless numbers of men and women have been faced with the same questions about life that we do everyday. We must study how ancient peoples dealt with issues of, for instance, morality, politics, and sex in order to understand our own relationship to these issues. To ignore the wealth of knowledge and experience that comes before us is unwise, and therefore we must explore the passions, hopes and dreams of ancient peoples.

This aspiration to understand our world and ourselves separates classics from many other departments on campus. The other departments are important in their own right, but a math class for instance will never address the question of what it means to be a good father, as classics might while reading Homer. Regardless of what profession we will one day practice, whether doctor, lawyer, businessman, or artist, the majority of us will be a father, and we will certainly not turn to mathematics for advice. This disparity between subjects demonstrates the importance of classics in each of our lives for addressing vital issues of humanity.

Finally, we must turn once more to the history of our college for guidance about how classics contributes to the liberal arts. Rev. Elihu Baldwin, the first president of Wabash College, explicitly addressed the importance of studying the classics in his inaugural address. “It is quite unnecessary to illustrate the influence of the ancient classics, in imparting a natural, lucid and eloquent style of composition. The literature of Christendom is in truth, so radically founded upon them, that their study is all but indispensable to a perfect acquaintance with the most modern treatises. And then how impossible to appreciate the giant struggles of these distinguished ancients in conquering civil freedom, or the defences which their forecast planted around it, without consulting their authors in their own language!”

Throughout this article, I have shown how Classics stands according to each of the criteria that Dean Phillips used to make decisions about which departments would be changed. In each of the categories, Classics met the criterion valiantly and demonstrated its overall value to our College. Further than this simple abstract value, the Classics department at Wabash College has done nothing but produce and grow. And yet, this beloved department was still punished. The College has bound the Classics department with chains that will inevitably inhibit its fecundity. If the administration has not dealt with classics as our founders would have it, I must ask if the value of the department has been grossly missed. And if the administration is acting without wisdom, what will be the cost for dear old Wabash?

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1. New Phoenix: Prometheus Bound
2. New Phoenix: The Other Cuts
3. Less is More: Wabash Culture and the Conservative Movement

In case if you were wondering, REAL ID stands for “Rearing and Empowering America for Longevity against acts of International Destruction.” Like the PATRIOT ACT before it, this law has little to do with security and more about codifying information all in one spot. In this case it is information on the American people in the form of a national identification card. Granted, the law stipulates that states will issue the cards; however, the transformation will be carried out by the Department of Homeland Security, who will have the power to regulate the design and content of all state driver’s licenses, and require that all of the underlying state databases be linked into a single national database. Even the passing of this law should be suspect. The Act was placed in H.R. 1268, known as the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief. It was placed in the bill as a rider, an additional provision having little connection with the subject matter within the bill. Since H.R. 1268 was widely regarded as “must-pass” legislation, it was passed in the House on May 5, 2005 by a 368-58 vote and was unanimously passed in the Senate on May 10, 2005. The Senate never discussed or voted on the Real ID Act specifically and no Senate committee hearings were conducted on the Real ID Act prior to its passage. A May 3, 2005 statement by the American Immigration Lawyers Association said: “Because Congress held no hearings or meaningful debate on the legislation and amended it to a must-pass spending bill, the REAL ID Act did not receive the scrutiny necessary for most measures, and most certainly not the level required for a measure of this importance and impact. Consistent with the lack of debate and discussion, conference negotiations also were held behind closed doors, with Democrats prevented from participating.”

The law itself is frighteningly Orwellian in its scope. Consider this: Federal agencies would reject licenses or identity cards that do not comply, which would force Americans accessing everything from airplanes to national parks and some courthouses to have the federally mandated cards. There is even consideration of placing radio-frequency identification chips on the cards, a form of biometrics. If this seems unlikely, I would encourage you to look to your passports. Since 2006, passports have had these chips embedded within the cardboard that binds the passport together. What is stopping the federal government from implementing fingerprints and other biometric data on the cards? If you think this is farfetched, Europe is already on the verge of doing so. A January 2008 statement by the ACLU of Maryland says: “The law places no limits on potential required uses for Real IDs. In time, Real IDs could be required to vote, collect a Social Security check, access Medicaid, open a bank account, go to a Redskins game, or buy a gun. The private sector could begin mandating a Real ID to perform countless commercial and financial activities, such as renting a DVD or buying car insurance. Real ID cards would become a necessity, making them de facto national IDs.”

States, however, are fighting back. As of right now, 25 States have passed, or are in the process of passing, legislation that opposes the REAL ID Act on the grounds that it violates the Tenth Amendment. Sadly, my home state of Florida and the State of Indiana are willing to comply with the law. President Barack Obama and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano have stated that they oppose the law and seek to change it or are not even willing to enforce it, due to its controversial nature.

Americans do not need to be reared and empowered for longevity against acts of international destruction. Americans do not need a big brother government watching over them in the name of “security”. This fear-mongering rhetoric does nothing but increase the people’s suspicions about the government’s actions. “Those who seek to lose a little freedom,” Ben Franklin once said, “in order to gain a little security deserve neither.”

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Luke Messer, class of 1991, is running for a seat in the House of Representatives in the 5^th District. Luke grew up in Greensburg, Indiana and was raised by a single mother who taught her children that they could do anything they wanted to do.  He came to Wabash with these same dreams and graduated with a major in Rhetoric in 1991.  He then went to Vanderbilt Law School and came back to Indiana to practice law.  He has served as a State Representative, passing legislation that changed the high school dropout age from sixteen to eighteen.  From 2001-2005 he served as the Executive Director and Chief Spokesman of the Indiana Republican Party.

Luke Messer was recently on campus to discuss with the Wabash community his campaign and how he plans to change Washington.  In this discussion, Messer presented himself as a man who passionately wanted to change the way Washington and the political system works.  He is not running against a Democrat at the moment, but he is running against thirteen term incumbent Dan Burton.  Luke feels that Burton has been in Washington for too long, and that reelecting the same person to Congress year after year inhibits the opportunity for new ideas and a change in Washington.  To combat this Messer is very strongly in support of writing a bill that limits the number of terms a Congressman can serve.  This is just one of the many plans that Messer has if he has the opportunity to serve in Congress, but his main focus is on Indiana and his family.  Luke is the father of three, and his wife is far from the traditional politician’s wife.  Jennifer Messer attempts to stay as far away from politics as she possibly can, and while some might see this as a negative to the Messer campaign, it is truly a positive because it keeps Messer grounded on what is truly important in the long run.  If Messer defeats Dan Burton in the Republican primary, then he is most likely going to win the Congressional seat, because the 5^th District is one of the state’s most Republican districts, along with the 4^th District.

Carlos May is another young Republican throwing his hat into the national politics rings.  Carlos is a member of the class of 2001 and is running for a seat in the House of Representatives in the 7^th District.  Carlos was born into a military family that had him moving throughout the United States and Europe until his family settled in Indianapolis when he was in the eighth grade.  After graduating from Zionsville High School, Carlos came to Wabash and graduated in 2001 with a BA in Political Science. He then went straight to law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.  Carlos has worked for the Indianapolis Mayor’s Office, and has devoted much of his life to public service.

Carlos too recently came to Wabash and spoke with the Conservative Union about his campaign and his hopes for the future election.  In this interview Carlos described the difficulties of running in a district that has sent a Democrat to Congress for the past eight years.  May feels that he can reinvigorate a voting bloc in the seventh district that has remained silent for quite some time, the Hispanic and youth vote.  May is 30 years old, and feels that getting the youth involved in the election is a huge component of his campaign strategy.  He also sees his Hispanic heritage as an advantage as well.  He told a story of a man of Hispanic heritage who was a hardcore democrat but said that he would support May if he ran because of the appeal of having a Hispanic in office.   The main reason May is running is a devoted passion for public service, a passion that has its roots in Wabash.  May described how Professor David Blix first put the idea of public service into his head after the two had dinner at the FIJI house.  May saw himself going to med school after his Wabash career, but Dr. Blix presented the idea of public service, and for May there was no looking back.  Another professor that had a huge impact on May was Dr. Edward McLean, or, as May referred to him, “Fast Eddie” McLean.  May credits McLean with leading him to Conservative ideals, ideals that led May to run for Congress.  As he stated it, he believes in lower taxes, strong national security, individual freedoms, and most importantly limited government, all of which are represented in the Conservative message.

Luke Messer and Carlos May are not the only young Wabash men that are throwing their hats into the political arena.  Charlie White, class of 1992, is running for Indiana Secretary of State, and Secretary of State Todd Rokita, class of 1992, is running for the House of Representatives in the fourth district upon hearing the news that Rep. Steve Buyer will be retiring due to family health issues.  All of these men make the Wabash community proud for their contributions to public service and the public good.  Wabash has had a long history of producing men who wish to enter the public sphere, and it is a tradition that will endure long into the future.

Related posts:

1. College Republicans to Host Luke Messer ‘91
2. A Career Public Servant
3. Carlos May ‘01 Eyes Washington

Brian Bowman was born July 24, 1985 here in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He graduated from Southmont High School in 2004 and joined the United States Army in August of 2006. During his career, he was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Campaign Star, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, the NATO Medal, and the Combat Medic Badge. In January of last year he was stationed with the 1^st Battalion, 12^th Infantry Regiment, 4^th Brigade Combat Team, 4^th Infantry Division, headquartered at Fort Carson, Colorado. The unit was deployed to Afghanistan in May of last year. His death and that of two teammates were the result of improvised explosive devices and heavy fire coming from insurgents. The service Mr. Bowman has rendered for his country can never be repaid. He was described by many here in Crawfordsville as a beloved member of the local community.

Wabash College, as well as Crawfordsville, has a rich tradition of service, from General Lew Wallace to Charles D. Herron. Some return home, though sadly some do not. Regardless of one’s personal stance on war in general or a specific war in particular, the option of serving in the military is to be respected and not taken lightly. The honor that comes with such a post is unlike any prestige associated with any other organization or institution.

Stemming from personal experience, I have known a great many who’ve taken up the call to duty. As I write this, my cousin Lance Corporal Eric L. Altergott has arrived in the Mediterranean before heading for Afghanistan. He is currently in the service of the United States Marine Corps as a jet mechanic. Among the many aircraft he repairs is the Harrier, capable of vertical takeoff and landing. My family could not be more proud of him.

Many of my high school classmates answered the call as well; some enlisted in the Army and Marine Corps, and another was accepted to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He is currently on the Navy Midshipman football team. Another close friend is enrolled at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The two academy men will have the unique experience of becoming officers in our nation’s military. Whether you enter the military with hopes of its helping your education or having the experience itself be your education, you cannot lose.

A lot can happen in the time we are here at Wabash. Those who started their careers in the last years of the 1990s could probably not have foreseen the events of September 11, 2001, or the impact it would have on our national security. Certain individuals believed their country needed them and joined its armed forces. Some of these people have perished; others survived. Specialist Brian Bowman joined the fight. How could he possibly have known how it would turn out? The chance of death is always there during war, and his sacrifice is unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence in a war like Afghanistan. But it was not an unnecessary one. His death served as a reminder of mortality and of the courage needed to operate in danger’s path. Mr. Bowman is one of our nation’s heroes.

Whether you agree with the wars or not, we must respect and honor those who put themselves at risk for a greater cause than self. Maybe service is something you will consider immediately or later on after Wabash. Part of the proud history of America is the rich tradition of service that we see every day. If you get a chance, thank a soldier or a veteran. It’s people like Brian Bowman that show us what it means to always fight. We must never forget him.

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