{"id":1191,"date":"2008-10-10T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T13:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2008-10-10T09:00:42","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T13:00:42","slug":"i-met-weavers-teacher-my-politics-601","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/2008\/10\/10\/i-met-weavers-teacher-my-politics-601\/","title":{"rendered":"I met Weaver’s Teacher: My Politics 601"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It didn’t take long for me to realize that in the Academy, Republicans are pretty rare. Now, Democrats are practically nonexistent in conservative Evangelicalism, but there are only about three more Republicans in academia.<\/p>\n

So in the middle of my second year at IU and in the middle of the neo-cons’ Contract with America<\/a>, I asked myself, “Do I really want to set myself up to defend the GOP in hostile territory? Can <\/em>I defend them?” And I decided early on that I would never publicly identify my politics. Instead, I chose to defend my religion and my Christian brothers and sisters in fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

Now you’d have to be really a dink to not understand that my religious culture made me a card-carrying, loyal-to-the-end Republican. But no one seemed to really overtly<\/em> mind. I “came out” to two fellow Republicans privately, and one left-leaning classmate called me out during the Eli\u00e1n Gonz\u00e1lez affair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It took me awhile to realize how exactly far left my professors were<\/em>, probably because they were not<\/em> the God-hating, hammer-and-sickle-wielding, rank relativists I was taught leftists would be. Most of my time at IU was spent learning a new vocabulary and sharpening new tools to understand either side of the political spectrum. Yes, these profs marched on Washington to hear MLK. They protested Vietnam (after they had served in the military themselves). They self-identified as “marxissant<\/a>” although they were openly and regularly critical of Marxism (true-blue Marxists are rather dull, materialistic Johnny-One-Notes in their social critique). They were peaceniks. Their ideas about “radical democracy” were simply a new way to frame socialism. Instead of “revolution,” they talked about “turns” (see the juggling of the metaphor there?) — ideological<\/a>, critical<\/a>, aesthetic<\/a>, rhetorical<\/a>. Realizing that communism itself was an abysmal failure, they removed and re-framed the important values differently under the moniker “democracy” and “equality” (since equality was the legit Constitutional partner<\/a> to “liberty”).<\/p>\n

Rhetoricians do that.<\/p>\n

Look at the patron saint of American rhetoricians — Kenneth Burke<\/a>. Every contemporary student of rhetoric hears Burke’s story as a morality tale for scholars of rhetoric and critics of culture.<\/p>\n

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I can’t find a brief summary of the event<\/a>, so I’ll just repeat it here. Burke was asked to speak at the 1935 Writers’ Congress — a Communist-sponsored event for the literati. His speech urged his audience to drop the term “the worker” when writing to the American working class because it held no resonance for them. It might have worked in Europe where centuries of aristocracy held sway over the proletariat. But in America, we’re all “middling.” Upper and lower and middle classes — we all try to act middle.<\/p>\n

Instead Burke proposed that the group use the term “the people” — a much more American term.<\/p>\n

They hated <\/em>the idea. The audience read it as disloyal to their cause. They shouted him off-stage. The experience haunted him the rest of the day:<\/p>\n

But when the time came for criticism, . . . it was a slaughter!\u00a0 Mike Gold<\/a> and Joe Freeman<\/a> \u2013 they just tore me apart: \u2018We have a snob among us\u2019 \u2013 and so on.\u00a0 And when I was going out of the hall I heard a girl in front of me say: \u2018And yet he seemed so honest!\u2019 I went home and laid down, and just as I was about to fall asleep, I\u2019d hear \u2018Burke!\u2019 \u2013 and I\u2019d awake with a start. Then I\u2019d doze off again, and suddenly again: \u2018Burke!\u2019 My name had become a kind of charge against me\u2014a dirty word.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, Burke never actually joined the Communist party because he was disillusioned with Communism after the Soviet participation in the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Soviet invasion of Finland. He remained a political independent the rest of this life.<\/p>\n

For rhetoricians, the morals of the story are:<\/p>\n