Wouldn’t it be nice if so-called liberals actually protected the world’s liberal order? My New Year’s resolution aside, I am grateful whenever everyday people take liberal elites to the toolshed. Such an occasion occurred in Elyria, Ohio, last week, when a jury ruled Oberlin College must pay $44 million to a small business the college’s administrators had smeared and blackballed. This punitive award calls attention to how profane enlightenment has turned liberal elites into enemies of the working-and-middle classes. They have no-one to blame but themselves.
The framers of the constitution never envisioned a liberal order detached from God, family and town. After all, Washington was a devout Anglican, Adams was devoted to wife Abigail, and Franklin was devoted to hometown Philadelphia. Sadly, today’s liberal elites reject those attachments as constraints upon social progress, meaning they have forgotten Aristotle’s definition of politics: the practical science of making citizens happy.
Now, it is crystal clear that “deplorable” working-class voters are rejecting globalism, and middle-class voters are revolting against academic, bureaucratic, corporate, media, and political elites throughout the developed world. Further, these everyday people have clearly defined grievances:
- Academic elites reject open-minded education to advance political indoctrination.
- Bureaucratic elites (unelected, powerful and unaccountable) adjust, audit, inspect, plan, and regulate private citizens.
- Globalization transfers America’s wealth from the industrial heartland to cosmopolitan elites.
- Mainstream media elites don’t report and inform, choosing to tilt public opinion toward made-up liberal ideals.
- Political elites undermine national sovereignty with open borders and multiculturalism; pushing made-up utopias that increase the costs of energy and housing.
Thomas Jefferson opposed the sort of illiberalism that is now rampant on college campuses. Today’s academic elites have muzzled open and honest discussion, which broadens a student’s general knowledge and experience, in favor of political indoctrination. To wit, virtue-signaling administrators and students, hellbent on social justice, went too far at Oberlin College, because a small-town jury ruled against the college in defense of truth, justice and the American way. To be sure, there is a lesson to be learned.
As fate would have it, the day after Trump’s election, a black Oberlin student presented Allyn Gibson with a fake ID to buy alcohol from Gibson’s Food Mart and Bakery. Gibson, who is white, refused the sale, realized the student was shoplifting two bottles of wine, and called the police. When the shoplifter fled, Gibson pursued, and a scuffle broke out in front of the food shop. By the time the police arrive, Gibson was helpless on the ground, being kicked by the shoplifter and two (black) female students. Obviously, crimes were committed.
Oberlin administrators should have disciplined the students and paid Gibson’s medical costs, but decided to declare war on a “racist” family business. Not only did administrators allow students to cut class to protest in front of Gibson’s, but the dean of students (Meredith Raimondo) sent out fliers accusing the business of a “long account of racial profiling and discrimination.” Further, Oberlin canceled all catering contracts with Gibson’s, pushing the Gibson family into financial duress.
When the Gibson family asked Oberlin to publicly refute the false claims of racism and reinstate Gibson’s catering, the college countered with demands that Allyn Gibson drop the assault charge and the family promise to call the school – not the police – whenever students stole from Gibson’s. This was absurd, since the shoplifter had already confessed Gibson “was within his legal rights” to detain him and was not racially motivated. Not only did the Gibson family not agree to Oberlin College’s terms, they won their law suit.
$44 million should get the attention of Oberlin’s Board of Trustees and result in consequences for the administrators that encouraged students to smear and employees to blackball a small business over a made-up outrage. Think about it: a business with no history of racism defended its property from a common thief, and Oberlin’s response was to invent a “hate crime” on behalf of a black student. Oberlin College appears guilty of illiberal groupthink, but the bigger sin is charging parents $69,000 a year to have their children brainwashed.
A truly enlightened “liberal order” empowers citizens to make their own choices, but does not expect science and reason to replace the church, family, and community – because societies will always be populated by vulnerable men and women. In short, no central state can meet the needs of its citizens. I am not surprised that it took a jury of the Gibson family’s peers to rescue their business. Elyria might be a small town, but its red-state residents know the difference between right and wrong.
And that is Oberlin College’s failing: it neither knows nor teaches right from wrong. How morally perverse is Oberlin, making Gibson’s miserable after not making students honorable. It would be nice if the millions awarded to Gibson’s stopped the modus operandi of liberal elites, but their “profane enlightenment” will continue destroying the liberal order. It is sad but true they will continue belittling Christians, passing laws that undercut families, and ignoring the needs of small-town America.
