THE PREENSTERS

Liberal activist Sally Steenland is soliciting donations to pay for a ten-thousand-dollar full-page ad she ran in the Grand Rapids Press on Friday.  Steenland is a teacher in Washington D.C. and part-time consultant for a new think tank founded by former officials of the Clinton administration.  She advises the leftist think tank on religious matters.

The ad Steenland purchased sports 823 names of Calvin College graduates, students, faculty, and others who were opposed to President Bush giving Saturday's commencement address to Calvin's seniors.  Steenland and the gang complained that Bush over the past years of his presidency has violated many deeply held principles of Calvin College, coddled the rich at the expense of the poor, desecrated the environment, and misled the country into war.

Whether or not Bush is a coddler, desecrator, and misleader I'll leave to others to sort out.  However, I must say it takes a big dollop of preening moral pridefulness for Bush's protestors to indict the president of violating the "many deeply held principles of Calvin College".  Let me state the obvious.  Steenland and company are not Calvin College.  Calvin College is Calvin College, and Calvin College warmly and enthusiastically invited President Bush to give this year's commencement address.  I'll leave it to Calvin College to know its "deeply held principles" better than a D.C. partisan activist and her supporters.

Therefore, my objection to Steenland's solicitation of funds to pay for the ad is that the ad is objectively false in its statement to the public.  I do not doubt that she and her fellow signers of the ad sincerely believe that Bush has transgressed against THEIR deeply held principles, but their moral pride has run amok when they impute their righteousness to those for whom they do not speak.  Indeed, their public preening of positions they believe are so obviously righteous that only a moral reprobate could dissent -- only that sort of certitude justifies pulling the hometown welcome mat out from under the President of the United States -- has blinded these preensters to their own arrogance.

After all, folks, whatever happened to the old-fashioned hospitality of welcoming the president of whatever political stripe to town to celebrate an important event in our community?

Comments

[MW]

Quoth LAW: "After all, folks, whatever happened to the old-fashioned hospitality of welcoming the president of whatever political stripe to town to celebrate an important event in our community?"

Amen to this. Some hospitality: "I invite you to come for supper, I welcome you absolutely, but I'm going to take out a full-page ad in the local paper to let folks know that I disapprove of your beliefs and even question the sincerity of your faith."

Sheesh. Excuse me if I am underwhelmed by my colleagues' notion of "hospitality."

[The Executive Director]

Hi, MW.

Thanks for your comments.

I would have thought having the President of the United States give the commencement address at a small college would have been a sufficiently special event to unite that institution regardless of individual political differences.

I think it was, which tells me that the protestors inordinately value their political opinions over the comity of their fellow faculty, alumni, and students. I think this is unfortunate. It is troublesome when politics are more important than the social ties that bind us.

Moreover, it becomes repellant when religion is trucked in to sanctify the primacy of political divisions.

At least their protest produced a moment for the rest of us to reflect upon the permament things that make for a good life.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director

[Andy Postema]

Here! Here! "Holier than thou" is the phrase that comes to mind for the Preensters. Its more important for them to make their political positions known to the world than stand with their colleagues to welcome a president to town. Politics are important and expressing your opinion is too. But at the end of the day isnt it friends and family that count the most?