Allow me to repeat a quote I used in a previous issue (Are We on Europe’s Path?, August 2005) from Heritage Foundation economist William Beach: “A citizenry that reaches a certain tipping point in dependency on government runs the risk of evolving into a society that demands an ever-expanding government that caters to group self-interests rather than pursuing the public good.” Two events this past week sent me back to that quote. One was the report from President Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform which, despite some positive elements, such as elimination of the alternative minimum tax, lacks the boldness for “simplification” that one would have expected, and is devoid of much enthusiasm for the supply-side principles, primarily tax rate reduction, that have been the drivers of the growth in American wealth and job creation over the past 25 years. The other event was the defeat and reversal (some call it “time out for repair”, but I wonder) at the polls in Colorado of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights law that has propelled that state to unprecedented economic growth over the past thirteen years. Advocates of similar “TABOR” plans in other states should now be concerned that this result will not be beneficial to their momentum.

Why do these things matter? Go back to the Beach quote above. There is a limit to the government dependency that can be sustained by a society that hopes to continue to be self-governing. It would be well to keep this in mind as debates on the various state and federal tax proposals work their way through the body politic.

“We have a responsibility to make sure our higher education system continues to meet our nation’s needs for an educated and competitive workforce for the 21st century.”—Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education.

In this excerpt from the announcement of the Secretary’s appointment of a commission to study and make recommendations on the future of American higher education, I have emphasized “educated” because, while we are appropriately very concerned with our nation’s competitive strength, its research and technological leadership, and providing its succeeding generations with the tools to excel in a globalized environment, we should also be concerned with the education of our youth, properly understood.

G. K. Chesterton understood education this way: “Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education.”

Continuing in this context of defining education, when we contemplate the mission of higher education, I am attracted to the statement recently adopted by Students for Academic Freedom: “The central purposes of a university are the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions, the teaching and general development of students to help them become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to a society at large.

Free inquiry and free speech within the academic community are indispensable to the achievement of these goals. The freedom to teach and to learn depends upon the creation of appropriate conditions and opportunities on the campus as a whole as well as in the classrooms and lecture halls. These purposes reflect the values—pluralism, diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness and fairness—that are the cornerstones of American society.”

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, in its 1998 booklet, “What Every Educated Person Should Know”, reminds us that the foregoing principles underscore a belief that a shared understanding, a shared knowledge, help unify and advance civilization, and that, indeed, the American system of self-government is uniquely premised on the need for a citizenry so educated in order to sustain it.

Regrettably, over the past several decades, there has been a breakdown in this commitment to a shared common core of learning and understanding—of our culture, our ideas, our ideals, our history—in short, of the foundations of our civilization and how we can sustain them.

It is in a spirit of hopeful revival of this commitment that I suggest the following questions and the issues raised by them for serious consideration by the commission:

**How should academic freedom be defined, and how has the concept evolved over the past century, particularly as to its intersection with intellectual diversity and free speech, properly understood? Has this evolution been beneficial?

**What should be the future of academic tenure?

**In the wake of the Gratz and Grutter Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action at the University of Michigan, absent legislative or judicial correctives, what should be the future of race-neutral admissions, enrollment diversity, and minority access to highly selective public institutions?

**What has been the value of the trend toward the “elective system”, and should we return to a universal core curriculum grounded in the Western intellectual tradition?

**What should be the obligation of higher education for the standards and accountability of elementary and secondary education to produce college readiness?

**How can we establish a system of K-12 teacher education and preparation in our public universities that will produce a sufficient quantity of highly qualified teachers necessary to revitalize elementary and secondary education?

**Considering the significant criticisms in the 2001 Knight Commission Report on Intercollegiate Athletics and its predecessor ten years earlier, what should be the proper relationship of major college sports with the mission of the NCAA Division I universities?

**What are the major drivers of the accelerating costs of higher education, and what can be done to mitigate them and slow the growth?

**How should the cost of publicly supported higher education be allocated among its primary constituents—students, the public sector, and the private sector?

Secretary Spellings has selected an outstanding group of scholars and education policy veterans for the commission, with a visionary leader as Chairman in my friend, Charles Miller. The subject matter could not be more urgent, and it is my hope that this group will produce a product that will engage all of us in an overdue and much-needed dialogue on the future direction of this institution that is so critical to the continuing success of the American experiment.

Thoughts on random issues in the public square:

• How quickly Bush began a turnaround with the Miers withdrawal, Alito nomination, Bernanke Federal Reserve appointment, and Iraqi voter approval of their constitution. Now if he can get really tough on domestic spending and much bolder on immigration policy, he will have turned the corner.
• The best (only?) decision to come out of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s office since the Katrina disaster is to propose legislation that will convert the large majority of New Orleans schools to charters under new management. What a transforming experience this will be for the thousands of children who have been condemned to these failed institutions and what great potential for the city to serve as a laboratory for innovative reform.
• Clearly, the Democrats are close to meltdown after their extreme disappointment that Karl Rove has so far escaped indictment in the so-called “CIA leak” case. As incredible as it sounds, it appears they actually believed that the investigation would result in sufficient grounds to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush! The depth of their hatred and paranoia never ceases to amaze.
• Kudos to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for introducing a bill that would give states and local communities the authority to enforce federal immigration laws. Hopefully, this is a small first step toward eliminating the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that undermine the rule of law. Next, she needs to work on eliminating our silly anti-profiling regulations.
• Religious persecution watch: According to First Things, new Air Force Academy regulations will ban anything that might be perceived as favoring a particular religion or even “the idea of religion over non-religion” except in “extraordinary circumstances”, which appears to be a veiled attempt to begin to eliminate religion from the ordinary life of our military in the name of “sensitivity”. Not a positive development.
• From the Texas Journal, a story on the frustration of parents with the performance of Coppell ISD, which is rated low-performing in student achievement by almost all indicators. Included is this excerpt from an administrator on the “best practices” approach of the district: “The principles are student-centered, experiential, holistic, authentic, expressive, reflective, social, collaborative, democratic, cognitive, developmental, constructivist, and challenging.” Is the resulting low performance any surprise?
• I continue to be inspired by one of the great unsung heroes, Ward Connerly, who continues to fight the unpleasant and underappreciated battles against racial preferences in the name of “diversity” in employment, contracting, and, most importantly, college admissions, which make a mockery of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His organization, the American Civil Rights Institute, deserves the support of every American who truly believes in equality under the law.
• One of the more historically significant “teaching moments” is about to begin in the form of the long-awaited trial of Saddam Hussein. Properly conducted, this process promises to be the most instructive event of the entire campaign to transform the Middle East, primarily because of its potential to not only inform rank and file Arab Muslims of the depth of the depravity of his regime, but to serve to educate them on the proper response to these crimes in a democratic order under the rule of law.