When the president of the United States delivers the commencement address at your school, the appropriate response is gratitude. More than a third of the Calvin College faculty have signed onto a letter to President Bush explaining that they are "deeply troubled that you will be the commencement speaker at Calvin." "I can see that the Bush administration is gaining capital from this appearance," a former Calvin history professor opines, "but I don't see what it does for Calvin." Say what? The president of the United States is getting a bump up from Calvin and not the reverse? It's funny, when convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal gave commencement day addresses via audiotape from death row several years ago, there was no outcry--at least from within the campus communities--comparable to the uproar greeting President Bush.

This is another illustration of how polarized the left has become. To the leftist, Bush is unacceptable. It reminds me of the reaction in Berkeley when Reagan won in 1980. I was trying to study in my Durant Street apartment and a mob on the street was deafening me with "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ronald Reagan's got to go!" That was also the first year I heard the expression "politically correct" uttered without a trace of irony.

If Hillary were speaking at a Catholic college wouldn't conservatives protest? Is it ok to protest a Senator but not the President?

Would a third of the faculty sign such a ridiculous petition protesting Hillary? No, they wouldn't and they haven't.

No matter what people may think about any President who happens to occupy the Oval Office, he is due the respect of at least having people keep their mouths shut and treat him cordially as a sign of some consideration for the office.

The leftists have not learned this and have little respect for authority or institutions. They seem to look at everything with protest glasses on. They typically act like spoiled, immature children, which is what this seems to demonstrate.

Dan, please check your email. Personal matter.

Be well,

Sponge

Wow...as someone who teaches at a university, let me first say I've never heard of Calvin College. Secondly, I would love to sit through a commencement day that included a speech from the sitting President. I certainly wouldn't protest Hillary Clinton coming here either, but I probably would opt to skip that day...or maybe not. It's an historically relevant moment and I probably wouldn't want to miss it.

Hey Webster, I went to Berkeley, too.
Y'know the phrase "university without walls" to describe certain experiments in higher education? ... Some days that campus is "an insane asylum without walls".

Jeremiah,
yes, a lot of bright, over-confident folks with no life experience will have that bedlam unleashed look. You have to admit, though, it is a great place to be young. I have been an east coaster for most of my post-Berkeley days, and I do miss the weather.

Webster (81)

These folks really ought to read the works of A J Muste, the pacifist Christian and sometimes Marxits Lennist from nearby Hope College http://www.hope.edu/resources/arc/collections/registers/hope/muste.html

Read Mustes positions and thoughts on key moments in 20th century history and ask where the world would be had we followed his advice and examples.

Probably blogging in German; at least those of us who would survive the racial tests.
Bill

From the article: "In a poll before the 2004 elections, 80 percent of Calvin's student body said they planned to vote for Bush."

Yep, sounds just like Evergreen to me...

Calvin College is a Christian college, and, even though Melinda and her vast array of knowledge has never heard of it, it's a pretty good school. A lot of the faculty are Christian as well. And as Christians, they object to unnecessary and unjustifiable war. It's as simple as that.

I suppose I should weigh in on this. For one, my wife attended Calvin College several years ago, and also attended its close neighbor Cornerstone University. It doesn't really surprise either of us that Calvin has faculty protesting Bush's visit. Even though Calvin is a Christian College just like any other college/university in the US, it cannot escape the wave of liberal academics that has been overwhelming our colleges and universities since the 60s. When you are an academic endeavor you have to hire academics and when 70-80% of academics are liberals, those that claim to be Christians end up teaching at Christians schools.

As for the comments about an "unjustifiable war" I wonder when it was Christian doctrine/orthodoxy to allow a leader in a country to have rape rooms and commit mass killings of his people, while bribing UN officials with the Oil for Food program and keeping the majority of his country in utter poverty while living in palaces and mansions. If I remember correctly, when the Israelites entered the Promised Land, God commanded His people to do away with societies such as this. But I'm not a religion professor, so I just read the Bible, I don't try to interpret it so it fits my political beliefs.

Furthermore, it's a commencement address, not a political rally, not a campaign stop, and not an address to the nation, it's a commencement address. I'm not a big fan of Bill Clinton, but if he had given the commencement address at my university, I would have been there. I utterly detest the man's moral standing, but I wouldn't have protested his giving the address, he's a president, how many people can say they had the president give their commencement address. I had Karen Hughes give mine. Condeleeza Rice gave one at MSU last year, a minority woman who's risen to one of the top positions in the nation, also was the President of Stanford and should be a role model for minority women all over the country. But the liberals on campus who preach diversity and minority rights and affirmative action, etc. where equally willing to try to keep the voice of a powerful minority woman from being heard on the MSU campus. Sound a little hypocritical? But then again, this are the same type of people that would rather have Michael Moore throw underwear at them then have the President give their commencement speech. It's hard to have respect for people like that.

I graduated from Calvin two years ago. My wife graduated last year, my father went to Calvin and my father inlaw is a prof at Calvin. Before my senior year I enlisted in the military. I spent that entire year nervous for myself and for my friends who were serving in the war. At that same time I also endured countless hours of anti-Bush, anti-military, anti-conservative rhetoric from students and profs. As a young man who was looking for an education and a little support for my choice to defend our country I felt none. I have NO problem with people of different political view points but it is that lack of respect for the office of President that is really making me so disturbed. That office represents everything that Americans have fought for over the years. I may not agree with every young Captain I see BUT I still salute them. So many of these young, religious and upper-class students feel such a need to be individuals that a summer of love flashback like protesting the President is too good to pass up (even if they are ignorant to politics or life for that matter). I am about to re-enter the civilian world and will be putting Calvin College on my resume. I am afraid that certain employers will now be looking down on Calvin and those who may praise Calvin for what has jsut taken place are probably not the kind of people I want to work for.

Posting with extensive LINKS in HTML availible at:
http://neoprose.blogspot.com/

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Christians of Conscience Stage Insurrection at Calvin College
President Bush’s Message of Theocracy Politics and Radical-Right Extremism Muted by Protest Involving Nearly One Thousand Undergraduate and Seminary Students, Faculty, and Alumni of Calvin College

While many were focused on the fight about the “nuclear option” in the US Senate a very significant event occurred in the all-American, conservative city of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In an “Open Letter to President Bush” published in a full page ad appearing in the May 20th, 2005 edition of The Grand Rapids Press, a diverse group of 823 “alumni, students, faculty and friends of Calvin College” told President Bush he could not expect support from their part of the Christian community for his political purposes. A second letter signed by 130 “concerned faculty, staff, and emeriti of Calvin College” also appeared in The Grand Rapids Press.

President Bush was the speaker at the 2005 Calvin College and Seminary Graduation – one of only two commencement addresses to be delivered by the President this year.

The 823 signatories of the Calvinist group urged President Bush “not to use Calvin College as a platform to advance policies that violate the school’s religious principles” and went further demanding the President “repudiate the false claims of supporters who say that those who oppose your (Bush’s) policies are the enemies of religion.”

The follow-up letter published by faculty members was tougher in tone and stated specific objections to Bush policies as well as their position on the role of faith in relationship to politics:

“We seek open and honest dialogue about the Christian faith and how it is best expressed in the political sphere. While recognizing God as sovereign over individuals and institutions alike, we understand that no single political position should be identified with God's will, and we are conscious that this applies to our own views as well as those of others. At the same time we see conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration.”

The protests were not limited to just those connected to Calvin College, hundreds, not merely “dozens” as erroneously reported by AP, included newly activated Western Michigan progressives who also turned out to demonstrate his presence. Bush, whose popularity in the polls is sinking, only now appears in very closely controlled environments. Calvin is the only occasion where the President has spoken, or is likely to speak to, this year in which the audience was not carefully-screened and selected.

“Tyrants maintained their power by isolating their citizens” Bush proclaimed, quoting Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 classic Democracy in America.

What could be more tyrannical that a leader afraid to face his own people, unwilling to answer unscreened questions from the press, eager to exploit the cultural differences of a diverse nation, and uninterested in the plight of the everyday citizen?

The stand and courage of these Christian Reformed few on the eve and in the wake of the failure of the live or die “nuclear option” must have Karl Rove and Bush’s handlers puzzled and embarrassed. This kind of encounter is not supposed to happen.

The stand taken by the Calvin College protesters was clear: The Rovian strategy of cultural division, the rape and pillaging by right-wing pundits that divide and conquer in an extremist campaign of hate that has left our political landscape smoldering, barren and broken is not “Christian”. Perhaps the time for fear mongering and narrow-minded partisanship in the name of God and religion is over.

When following Bush’s dream for our generation, the supposed “road of Providence” or plainly stated “God’s will”, there can be no compromises. Politicized Christian leaders from the radical religious right, like James Dobson, have already called the compromise over the Senate rules nuclear option a “betrayal” and “treason”. Bush may have reached the high water mark of his path to unquestioned political power, hidden by the noise of the right’s corporate media machine, and this dangerously deceptive “Christian” crusade. Bush’s handlers were never about religion, in their quasi-Christian heart of hearts, they seek power and homogeny.

Calvin College’s “intellectual” Christians have succeeded in calling on Bush to reexamine his faith stating, “By their deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible. Your deeds, Mr. President – neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and misleading the country into war – do not exemplify the faith we live by.”

Why is the Insurrection at Calvin Significant
It is very important for the radical right to paint the incident at Calvin as a single, non-event, particularly to other parts of the Christian community. Calvin must be shown as being a religious school outside of their fundamentalist or evangelical “base”.

What would happen if at many other religious events, there were Christians of conscience actively voicing their objections to various Bush initiatives and his continued use of the “religion card”? Just as the president stated to the world in the State of the Union in 2002, Bush and his supporters push people of faith into his own good vs. evil, binary worldview, “Are you with us, or with the terrorists”. The discovery that one can be a good Christian or person of faith while objecting to parts of the Bush Doctrine and policy spells real disaster for the neo-conservative agenda. This reflection by individual Christians on specific, singular decisions, past actions and missteps of the administration is their worse nightmare, the collapse of a faith-based following within their political base.

Much like the Crusaders in the Middle Ages were given the Pope’s protection to cross Europe and the Eastern Orthodox Empire to fight in the Holy Land, Christian hot button issues are being used to give a number of lesser agenda items and right-wing Republican candidates “free passage” across a diverse American political landscape. As some of the Calvin alumni have pointed out in their interviews with the media, it is the “emotion and passion” of key religious fighting words such as “abortion” and “gay marriage” that are key to leveraging political support from the greater Christian community. Their arguments emphasis each issue and position demands evaluation through the eyes of the faithful under God’s grace, not dictated by politicians laying claim to knowing God’s will.

European motivation for their holy crusade was the terrible terror of death and famine that accompanied the Black Plague, as well a long string of devastating wars between kingdoms and nationalities. The call to the Crusades was to be their salvation. Today, Bush propaganda and the noise machine drum the beat responding to of the rise of fundamentalist Islam, terrorism, and a seeming unstoppable march of popular culture leading to what they view as a decline in moral values, family traditions, and the rise of secularism.

As Rev. Tom Sullivan, substituting for Rush Limbaugh on the radio while Rush was in court, said, “There is a war between secular and non-secular America”. The language of the radical right continues to climb the scale of hype and hate using the terms of “revolution”, “civil war” and “religious war” which is still out there since 1992.

However, things among conservatives may be falling apart. Pat Buchanan, in a May 17, 2005 article in the Washington Times, declared” "The conservative movement has passed into history," and "It doesn't exist anymore as a unifying force". He further stated "There are still a lot of people who are conservative, but the movement is now broken up, crumbled, dismantled.”

Just as the Crusaders of old discovered after bloody, hard fought battles with an enemy, who was more likely to negotiate a peace than were their own zealous allies, many Christians are starting to express their reservations about Iraq, the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, tax breaks to the rich, support of corporate agendas, and forced democratization through some form of Pax Americana.

Some argue that democracy, just as in Christianity, is a personal choice and that change comes from within, and is not to be forced on people or nations from outside. They look at the profits and gains that come from contracts in Iraq and the continuing loss of the life there and ask, “What are we doing? If this is God’s plan, why is it so difficult and costly?”

Only days before at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on May 19, 2005, President Bush quoted an Army Chaplain stationed in Iraq saying “The safest place is in the center of God’s will”. Politically, among many fundamentalist support networks and communities, continuing to convince his followers that he is following “God’s will” is critical.

This is why “non-Christian” behavior by Bush and members of his administration, even such things as Dick Cheney’s “F--- Yourself” uttered in the Senate cloak room or the image of Bush flipping the bird, must be immediately suppressed and hidden from the public. Today’s would be “Crusader Kings” must be pure, and their claim to have God’s voice must be above reproach.

The message from the Calvin crowd is clear: Only God determines God’s will, and it is through His Grace that we should love one another, and it is very dangerous for politicians to drag Our Creator into the muck and mess of divisive American politics.

Many courageous Calvin supporters, students and faculty put it directly to George Bush… Mr. President, if you are thinking of using God to endorse your policies and ideology with Calvin’s commencement as a PR backdrop we’d rather that you’d do that somewhere else, or better yet not at all.