Editorial
Edwards, Editor, 472-1766
Nelson, Editorial Page Editor
Steeves, Managing Editor
Pfanner, Associate News Editor
I Lisa Donovan, Associate News Editor
Brandon Loomis, Wire Editor
Jana Pedersen, Night News Editor
Representation needed
Parking committee lacks student members
A SUN President Bryan Hill sent a letter last semester
to Chancellor Martin Massengale and to Vice
Chancellors James Griesen and John Goebel asking
for representation on the Parking Advisory Committee
that would more fairly reflect student concerns.
Hill pointed out that students account for 70 percent of
the total parking revenue but currently represent only 40
percent of the committee. Student concerns easily can be
overlooked by university employees who make up the
greater percentage on the committee.
Hill’s suggestion was to increase student membership
to aDout percent or tne committee.
Massengale’s response to Hill was brief and to the
point: a kind, gentle no.
Once again, administration has promised to seriously
look at the parking problem at UNL, but, unfortunately,
when it comes to actually implementing solutions by
allowing students to have a bigger voice on an important
? committee, administrators come up with excuses.
Massengale’s excuse (in a letter to Hill) for not placing
! more students on the committee was that bylaws already
exist for the committee to change its membership. He
f added that, “I am very reluctant to make a change in the
Parking Advisory Committee other than those suggested
through the bylaws of the committee.”
Fine. But Massengale should keep an eye on the Park
ing Advisory Committee. If a change isn’t made, he
should take up Hill’s proposal himself.
A change in the committee would give students greater
| representation, which conceivably could swing parking
a__• .l _• c_
tuvvioiwua in uivii lavui.
As Hill said, “Administration now has an obligation to
solve parking problems.”
And part of that obligation is allowing students to be
represented fairly in the process.
~ Emily Rosenbaum
for the Daily Nebraskan
Analyze issues, then decide
Sometimes the wrong thing gets
into the wrong place — like C.J.
Shcper's column being in the Daily
Nebraskan Friday, Jan. 26.
One hopes that an editorial col
umn written by a news-editorial ma
jor would include some degree of
reasoning behind the argument, but 1
guess -in this case dial’s asking loo
much. Bad luck? Who knows.
Your argument that, if he (John
Joubcrt) had known he was going tc
be electrocuted for his crime, he
wouldn’t have murdered those “sweet
wonderful boys’’ (If they had beer
“spiteful, juvenile delinquents,: woulc
Joubcrt deserve a lighter sentence?;
is ridiculous, to put it mddly.
For one thing, people don’t sil
around debaung whether they arc going
out to kill and mutilate children de
pending on whether or not they’ll gel
fried. Deciding whether or not you’ll
risk getting fined for sneaking alco
hol into a public park, yes, but people
who can even hold the thought ol
such a hideous crime aren’t making
rational choices - murder isn’t a ra
tinnal rhnirp If’c a mnral
which is something you fail to grasp
— what the hell does I.Q. have to do
with anything? A person with an I.Q.
of 85 knows that killing children is
wrong. Do you really think there are
people walking around right now whe
are thinking of random and senseless
murder, kept in check only by the
. knowledge that they could gel the
chair?
You arc talking about an impor
tant moral issue here. Does society
decide, in this instance, that murder
by the state is justified? What mes
sage are we sending to the world and
to ourselves if we condone capital
punishment? And, more relevant to
your column, would it do any good?
This is the issue you fail to fully
address - as far as I can see, you were
revolted by the picture (a normal
response, to be sure), and since this
crime was indeed sick, you feel he
should die for it. Fine, but as you
admit, your “logic is mixed,” per
haps the only piece of true insight
your column gives us.
Because your logic is mixed, faulty
and unable to deal with any reality
other than your own reaction to the
crime and its consequences, do you
think the decision between the chair
or a life sentence should be decided
on the basis of how grossed-out the
judge got?
Consider also a man walking into
his bedroom to find his wife in bed
with his best friend -in a jealous rage
he grabs his shotgun and shoots them
both. Would he at any point during
this episode (which probably lasted
all of 10 seconds, as most heat-of-thc
moment situations do) sit down and
rationally consider his options and
the consequences of his actions? If
your answer is yes, as it was for a
psychopath like Joubcrt, then I think
you need to spend a little more lime
studying how real people in the real
world think, feel and act. You just
might learn something.
ultimately, yuur Mioucommg is
(hat you fail to see that in the scenario
I presented (and there are hundreds of
instances like that in our country each
year) murder happens when some
one is pushed, either by overwhelm
ing passions and cmoitons or by
permanent mental instability, to a point
where reason doesn’t fit into the pic
ture, where rational choices can’t be
made - the fact that somebody is
capable of committing murder should
tell you that calm reasoning has been
left behind. I hope that after some
thought, this bare truth might make
some sense to you.
And please, next lime you’re driv
ing down the interstate in hysterics,
%pull over until you get control of
yourself. You could kill someone.
Kirk Johnson
social services (between semesters)
fTHEITOT FWlAF1fTH£7f5TPTOARMRici)
! S’VIET LEADER IN IHEK>:. LEADER IN'
I 1
1
Can the right survive today?
Columnist ponders effect of communism s death on conservatism
The anticommunist left effec
tively disappeared with the
death of Henry “Scoop”
Jackson and the open declaration of
“neo-conservatism” — a term ratify
ing the nghiward lurch of a genera
tion of former leftists (mainly former
Trotskyites). The American right,
however, never opted out of the Cold
War: Anticommunism was the one
constant, unifying, highly diverse
tradition in the conservatism of the
post-WWII era.
In often uneasy alliance, anticom
munism permitted disagreements to
be glossed over for the duration of the
war. And the movement is diverse,
encompassing libertarians, “classi
cal” liberals, traditionalists, natural
rights advocates and religionists.
Of course, to be given the desire of
one’s heart is not an unmitigated
blessing: Conservatives who have lived
with the Cold War for their entire
lives now can be seen walking about
muttering to themselves and blinking
at a new world they do not under
stand.
Liberal pundits can scarcely con
tain their glee, and conservatives speak
iui ivai ui JirustlCilCC,
as they pose the question, “Is the
death of conservatism in the death of
communism?”
The obvious answer is that the
movement will not survive intact:
Someone will have to leave -- the
libertarians and the Burkeans will make
sure of that. But whether or not the
movement survives as a relevant voice
in American politics depends on who
else has to leave and why.
Some hints of the nature and sig
nificance of the division were given
at a conference last week in Clare
mont, Calif., organized'by the Clare
mont Institute, a conservative think
tank.
The conference, born of the mind
of William Rusher, publisher of Na
tional Review for more than 30 years,
was devoted to the “Ambiguous
Legacy of the Enlightenment,” an
admittedly odd topic from which to
glean the structure of post-Cold War
conservatism. Nonetheless, the clues
were pretty obvious.
The issue seething underneath this
apparently arcane subject revolves
around the depth of Enlightenment
thought in the American founding:
Docs the founding’s reliance upon
the “shallow Enlightenments” ofthe
English and the Scots doom the proj
ect, ultimately, to the paroxyislic
nihilism of the French Enlightenment?
A recent flurry of articles in Na
tional Review by several conference
participants has reopened old battles
and old issues. The division is deep
and fundamental.
On one side are conservatives like
the late Leo Strauss and his Clare
mont progeny, particularly Harry Jaffa
and Charles Keslcr. They argue that
the genius of the West -- and of the
United States’ founding — springs
Jim
Rogers
from the dynamic tension issuing from
its double commitment to reason (so
called) and revelation.
In his eloquent paper, Keslcr ar
gued that the American founding
reasserted the grand synthesis of rea
son and revelation found in the thought
of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The synthesis of Athens and Jerusa
lem is neither an absurdity nor an i
impossibility: Reason (socalled) and i
revelation are not contradictory, but
consistent and mutually supporting.
Thus, Keslcr praises the shallow
Enlightenments, and points out that
they did not share the anti-religious
bigotry of the French Enlightenment.
In reasserting Thomislic wisdom, then,
me proper arena tor slate action is
only where reason (so called) and
revelation coincide. i
In stark contrast to Kesler’s claim i
was Oxford University professor John
Gray’s argument that only faith, or
wholly theological reasoning, can
avoid the collapse of Enlightenment
reasoning, shallow or not, into an
abject nihilism. He repeals the me- (
dieval “I believe that I may under- i
stand.” 1
Weighing into the dispute was
Richard John Ncuhaus (author of ‘‘The i
Naked Public Square”) with his analy- i
sis of the logical end of the Enlighten- i
ment project in the writings of “lib- i
cral ironist” Richard Rorty. Theproj- i
eel collapsed in the “disintegration
of confidence that there are such stan
dards by which all rational beings arc
bound...”
Ncuhaus, as I take hirti, points out
the ultimate poverty of natural, i.e., i
non-fidelities, reasoning. I
In contrast, the Claremont conser- i
vatives insisted on the possibility of a
‘‘practical compromise” between
reason (socalled) and revelation. But
not just any understanding of revela
tion: Faith must be of an approved
kind; a faith that serves the American
regime.
Indeed, Tom West of the Univer
sity of Dallas even argued that the
American founding required a spe
cific theology w herein people approach
God as4 ‘almost equal.” He approved
of this and disapproved of the Au
gustinian and Calvinistic traditions
which, in West’s terms, has believers
‘‘cringing” before God.
And in so arguing. West approved
of the idolatrous impulse in the
American founding. After all, I pointed
out, the Original Sin was Eve’s desire
to approach God on West’s same terms.
Ernest van den Haag of Fordham
University and Gerhart Nicmcyer of
the University of Notre Dame sug
gest that such a theology of 4 4 sell
salvationism” dooms Enlightenment
“rationality” into the patent irration
alism of Rorty. The key figure in the
Jeclinc of Enlightenment thinking into
irrationalism isn’t Hobbes, as West
oclicved, but Pelagius -- the fifth
:cntury heretic asserting the auton
omy of the human soul.
The very possibility of belief in
Lhc face of the irrationalism of Rorty
is the question of moment -- the dic
lates of natural reasoning arc simply
rrelevant and imnotcnt. if not nosi
ivcly wrongheaded. The time for
synthesis has passed.
The key to answering the ques
ion, “will the right survive the death
>f communism,” is found in last week’s
nissing participant; the Christian nghl.
The survival of conservatism dc
xinds not simply on retaining the
"ass numbers in the Christian right,
lor upon a cynical exploitation of the
novemeni, but upon a full-bodied,
;onfidcnt assertion of Christianity’s
public philosophy.
That Claremont conservatives seem
mablc to understand the claims of the
Christian right only bodes ill for the
;onservative movement should Clarc
nont conservatives inherit the reigns
)f conservatism without a modifica
ion of their own public understand
ng of Christianity.
The time has passed fbr a syncretic
udge on fundamental issues.
Rogers is on leave from Biown Unlvcr
ilty in Providence, R.I. and a former editorial
>agc editor and columnist for the Daily Ne
>raskan.
