Koopman Unvarnished

Roger Koopman is at it again, this time introducing a bill bringing a House joint resolution requesting that a legislative committee study whether universities are stifling political speech and academic freedom. The resolution was discussed in committee in Helena on April 11. Since no one other than Koopman spoke in favor of it, it will likely die a well-deserved death.

There are a few issues here that need parsing. One is Koopman himself – were I to fervently believe that campuses are deliberately indoctrinating our youth, which I do not, then I would not want Roger to lead the fight against it. He’s unbalanced. This was demonstrated by his using the committee forum as a pulpit from which to attack John Vincent, his opponent in the last election. He accused Vincent of using his 30 year academic career to indoctrinate his students. Vincent objected, but was denied a forum to defend himself. From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle article by Walt Williams:

Koopman, in his closing remarks to the committee, mentioned that Vincent had taught school in Bozeman and was popular among students.

But, he said, parents, particularly conservative parents, “were extremely concerned about what he taught in the classroom and what he didn’t teach.”

“Educators defend educators, and educators tend to get tunnel vision about what they’re teaching,” Koopman said.

After the lawmaker had finished, Vincent attempted to address the committee again to defend his teaching record.

Committee chair Rep. Rick Jore, Constitution Party lawmaker from Ronan, wouldn’t allow it, and committee member Rep. Ed Butcher, R-Winifred, yelled that Vincent had a “political vendetta” and screamed “call security.”

Committee member Rep. Holly Raser, D-Missoula, chastised Koopman for making the personal attack, saying that leveling an “unsubstantiated” accusation during a hearing wasn’t appropriate.

Vincent tried to comment again, at which point Koopman told him, “Sit down and be a gentlemen for once.”

So it goes. For so long is Koopman is the point man, the attack on free speech on campus will be on wobbly wheels. But I do wish the subject would get a serious hearing. There’s little can be done directly about propaganda and indoctrination, as any cure would be more onerous than the disease. Despite Koopman, the best we can do on campus is to spur debate – to talk about it. Propaganda is like bacteria – it dies in the light of day. Once we are aware of it, it loses its potency.

And it does exist. It’s everywhere around us, in every newspaper and news broadcast on TV. It is both deliberate and inadvertent – there are indeed people in Washington whose job is to manage public opinion, to control the images we see. And the whole of public relations is an exercise in propaganda. It’s what they do, and we accept it as normal.

In its most flagrant form, talk radio, propaganda is least harmful, as it is easy to spot and ignore. In our culture – our movies that glorify war and America first – it’s more deeply rooted, and a negative. Our ordinary students leave school ready to join the military and fight for perceived “right”. Their life-long attitudes are set in cement via a deep, though mostly unintentional, indoctrination process. They reflect everything they see in the movies and on TV – they swim in it. Their education could set them free. Instead, it pours more water on them.

But ordinary students are everywhere, and in every country are put to use by the state. That’s always been the case. The most insidious form of propaganda is reflected in our educated classes. They are the most deeply indoctrinated for a simple reason – they think themselves immune to propaganda. I quote below from Konrad Kellen, from the introduction to the book “Propaganda”, a tract written by Jacques Ellul in the 1960’s:

…modern propaganda cannot work without “education”; [Ellul] thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary, he says, education , or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls “pre-propaganda” – the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as “facts” and as “education”. Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons: 1) they absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable information; 2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; 3) they consider themselves capable of “judging for themselves”. They literally need propaganda.

(As a blogger, I feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time. Surely he doesn’t mean me!)

Ellul thought propaganda to be a natural phenomenon, a product of mass media, and even serving a potential good. So though it pains to say it, Koopman is not necessarily wrong about propaganda on campuses – he simply misunderstands the process. He thinks it’s all done by liberals, and that it is deliberate. It is more general and more rote than deliberate. And Koopman’s method of countering it is scary – he wants a witch hunt. The campus, for all its flaws, for all the pressures exerted there by government and business to serve the powerful, is the best we have of open and free inquiry. It needs be left alone. Free inquiry does indeed go on there – I think that’s the part that’s keeping Koopman awake nights.

Koopman sees a world crawling with liberals when we are few and mild. He fears us, demonizes us in his mind. He’s Joe McCarthy without the endearing charm. In his paranoid vision, we are like leaches clinging to every living organism, spreading our disease. He is a hateful man. His presence in Helena is lice on the body politic.

In the real world, in every country, via culture and tradition and education, propaganda inculcates citizens in patriotism. Without it we could not have countries nor the soldiers willing to fight and die for ill-defined causes. Propaganda manufactures men like Koopman, so deeply indoctrinated in right winginess that he cannot distinguish between free and open inquiry and indoctrination.

What is the answer? Two things, neither of them oppressive or intrusive: 1) For the schools to teach critical thinking skills from a very young age; and 2) for the schools to expose the means and methods of propaganda. Right now they are doing neither, and so fail us miserably.

Even as Kellen tells us that education does not immunize us from propaganda, a certain type of education in rigorous thought processes is really our only hope.