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Hillsdale College Should Please Come Again

MAYVILLE – Let’s pick up where we left off two weeks ago.

“It’s so necessary to remember where we were yesterday so that we might have a better understanding of where we are today, particularly with respect to our founding principles, to continue to maintain them, pass them on one generation to the next,” President Thomas Jefferson, played by historical actor-interpreter Bill Barker, told an Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, audience at Chautauqua Institution.

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By contrast, others who have aspired to be – and some who have been – president of the United States have harbored no aspiration to “remember … our founding principles, to continue to maintain them, pass them on one generation to next.”

They, like their ideological ancestors – including those whom Edmund Burke, the great Irish-born member of the British Parliament, described in his Reflections on the Revolution in France – have aspired not to improve the old order but to tear it down and replace it.

Along that line, one candidate, campaigning for an American political party’s presidential nomination, chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture’s gotta go.”

Learning of this chant as one of his assistants read it in the Washington Times, author and lecturer Dr. Russell Kirk, one of the 20th century’s great defenders of Western civilization, shook his head, snickered at what the candidate had said, and jokingly called the candidate “one of our great moral leaders.”

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Those taking any one of many American oaths of office swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Hillsdale College has even bigger missions, including preserving, protecting, and defending Western civilization.

It’s that simple, it’s that big, and it’s that important.

And Hillsdale College, founded in 1844, does it well.

Extraordinarily well.

Hillsdale’s mission doesn’t, by any means, cease at the boundaries of its southeastern Michigan campus.

The college, for example, conducts freedom fora, open to the public, at various locations.

In 2022, one venue was the Chautauqua Suites Hotel and Expo Center in Mayville, an excellent location for such an event.

This two-day event on “Freedom and Western Civilization” took place on days – Aug. 16 and 17 – when not only locals but also summer visitors could attend.

And many, many did.

So many that Hillsdale would do well to make this venue a regular one for its fora.

In short, Hillsdale should please come again.

If you attended this event, you already know why you should go again.

If you didn’t attend this event, you’d do well to attend another Hillsdale College event another time.

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According to Hillsdale, its freedom fora “provide two days of thought-provoking discussions organized around six lectures by three of Hillsdale’s finest professors. Guests will delve deeply into the meaning of freedom from an interdisciplinary perspective by examining politics, economics, and literature.”

The local forum in 2022 featured two presentations each by Roger Butters, associate professor of economics; Khalil Habib, associate professor of politics; and David Whalen, professor of English.

Such fora are worthwhile for adults of any age.

They’d be particularly good for high-school pupils thinking of attending college, plus their parents or guardians, to give them a taste of courses and subjects they’d do well to include in any college course of study.

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Education at its best nurtures what Burke more than two centuries ago called “the moral imagination.”

Part of nurturing the moral imagination is including in any college education a broad liberal-arts program, which gives students an appreciation for major fields of study.

Another part is to give students what Jefferson called “a better understanding of where we are today, particularly with respect to our founding principles, to continue to maintain them, pass them on one generation to he next.”

You’ll experience this too when you attend a Hillsdale College event.

This was the first Hillsdale College event for Dr. Randy Elf, who was the then-assistant to Dr. Russell Kirk.

COPYRIGHT ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF

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