The war on culture has been a many decade siege with an inexorable direction of attempted domination of the narrative by the left in almost every phase of life.  Classical natural law advocates and conservatives imbued with the notion that an unfettered forum of ideas without prejudice is the best means of preservation of individual rights and concepts regarding liberty, charity, opportunity, and progress, have been progressively exiled into the cultural wilderness.  It has been an assumption by conservatives that the pillars of life framed by the American nation’s reason for being as defined in its founding documents, the several thousand year multi-generational devotion to the religious concepts of a good life, and the cumulative success the nation has had in overcoming its flaws through at times bloody trial in defense of individual liberty, would resist any superficial, emotion driven narrative of attack aimed at destruction.  Despite the undeniable history of horrors propagated by the left in the hysterical excesses and overreach of the French Revolution, the many models of enforced servitude, vicious exploitation, mass death and imploded economies of the totalitarian left in the twentieth century, and the pathetic poor cousins of socialism surviving into the 21st,  the model of domination continues apace and has designs of global command.  The original model was victory through politics, the brutal techniques of the totalitarian parties, the National Socialist and Communist, eliminating all that stood in their way.  Their ultimate failure was  their insistence upon a forced overnight conversion of all under their reach,  that inevitably brought an aggressive response by freedom loving peoples sickened by their violent inhumanity.  The newer method is significantly more nuanced, but equally as committed to ultimate victory.  The left’s focus has not been on arguing the rational facts and philosophies that underpin the country, but instead, like a slow virus, infecting the forums for learning that have always been the source of revelation to their nations where truth, opportunity, and human progress reside.  The strategy has been the progressive takeover of cultural narrative, through owning the curriculum through every level of education, overwhelming the diverse voices in the entertainment industry, and turning the news and social media platforms into a propaganda amplifier that ghostlights all contrary opinion or resistance to the narrative.   The virus is now extending into every form of employment, ballot,  and institution, such that people must now fear their  non-aligned personal belief or expression could potentially eliminate their very means of life and productivity.  The darkness of the twentieth century driven by these forces, only barely overcome, appear about to return to full dark flower in the twenty first in the greatest of democracies.

It doesn’t mean that everybody is willing to go quietly into that dark night.  A considerable cadre of talents are recognizing the war for what it is, a coordinated attack on the very principles of freedom and rationality that lead to a good and just society.  They are beginning to fight back into the heart of the beast, the grip on today’s mind that is the education system and heart that is expressed in the entertainment industry.  Public education has taken multiple generations of the nation’s youth and filled them with national self loathing, elimination of rigor, and narratives of victimhood.  The result is an insecure, dependent, and passively aggressive society that feels no hope for the future without supervision, and no foundation of thought to help find their own way.  Hillsdale College, in Michigan, led by its President Dr. Larry Arnn, a historian and educator, has trailblazed a contrarian path to modern education that allows it to swing well above its size in the national consciousness.  Hillsdale, by refusing any governmental funding of education, has been able to steer clear of the progressive mandates, and define itself by a rigorous and classically based learning process and curriculum for its students.   The little college that could is producing graduates that understand the mechanisms of debating problems and forming answers for their own lives standing upon the shoulders of the great minds and ideas that have come before them.  Hillsdale is slowly injecting life and transforming the moribund conservative response to the radical left’s takeover of education, and others are taking note and building on the model.  For fostering proudly and defiantly through his campus the best that western civilization has to offer to a fertile young mind through education, Dr. Larry Arnn is Ramparts People We should Know –  #35.

Larry Arnn was born in tiny Pocahontas in rural northeast Arkansas, but due to his intellect and drive,  had the education of the elites.  Graduating from Arkansas State, he immediately widened his educational horizons by attending prestigious graduate school for his masters and Ph.D at Claremont near Los Angeles under the famed philosopher educator Harry Jaffa. This led to elite appointments at the London School of Economics  and Oxford University.  This brought him to the job that has defined his intellectual reputation as an expert in the life and career of Winston Churchill, when he was hired  as Director of Research for Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official historian.  Returning to the US, Arnn became one of the original founders of the Claremont Institute, one of the first conservative academically driven think tanks, and in 2000, became President of Hillsdale College, a small Michigan college that has always set its sights on classical education and under Arnn, a national powerhouse in conservative circles as a educational ramparts for debate, education, and talent extending out into our institutions.  The little college of Hillsdale under the leadership of Larry Arnn importantly however  for our future hasn’t stopped there. Hillsdale has determined to project its philosophy of education backward as well as forward, developing a K through 12 curriculum and onboarding for charter schools that are establishing themselves all over the country.  The schools are directed like a laser at countering the modern esthetic that children’s education should be self directed and without rigor.  Dr. Arnn through the college has developed online learning for adults as well that provides self study in philosophy, history , and religion that reinvigorates the whys of a fulfilled life  and society.  The wonderful lectures are available for all to see and absorb.  Churchillian vigor and respect for past greatness having much to teach us about our present imbues the diverse Hillsdale platform for learning. We are all the better for it.

Larry Arnn is Ramparts People We Should Know – #35 because he, among all people acknowledges that strong ramparts built upon the confidence that comes with knowledge are necessary to resist the ever more emotional and taunting pressure of the left to overwhelm society.  The left is pushing a world of fealty to false gods , or risk a life of condemnation and being ostracized.   It will take many, many more Dr. Arnns that confidently say no, stand athwart, and trust in the intellectually sentient being that is man to want more from life then simple existence.  We need to take his example, and encourage more of the same from our leaders.  Our leaders need to start standing up for what is right and good, and stop with their nonsense of avoiding offense.  If you can lead, lead.  If you can give, give what you can.  There is no time to doddle on the job ahead.