While there is no cause on which the practically monolithicrnAmerican establishment is as firmly united as it is in its commitmentrnto immigration yesterday, immigration today, and immigrationrnforever, a large number of the crises that currently agitaternit—terrorist attacks on American soil, the development ofrnopen spaces, air pollution, suburban sprawl, population growth,rnschool crowding, racial tension, illiteracy, the cost of healthrncare, and so on—are substantially the result of its liberal immigrationrnpolicies from 1965 to the present. If this contradictionrnwere owing to some complicated psychological condition suchrnas cognitive dissonance, resolving it might be as simple a matterrnas stating the obvious in clear terms, LOUDLY. Unfortunately,rnthe problem is a compound of the simpler and less tractablernweaknesses—greed, cowardice, hypocrisy, indifference, disdainrnfor the truth—to which human beings are prone, suggestingrnthat blind nature will have to take its course, as environmentalistsrnand free traders say it ought to, while conferring the luxurrnof splendid irrationality^ on the Vice President of the UnitedrnStates (who loves immigrants and trees equally), the SierrarnClub (whose Solomonic advice is that native-born Americansrnshould reduce their birthrate to accommodate more foreigners),rnand the likes of the environmentalist paper High CountryrnNews, which recentiy attacked the Border Patrol for tearing uprnNotion of immigrantsrnthe Sonoran Desert with four-wheeldriverntrucks in its zeal to arrest illegalrninmiigrants.rnOn second thought, it may be thernexplanation is, after all, psychologicalrnrather than moralistic, a matter ofrnmadness, not narrow rationalism: insteadrnof cognitive dissonance, a collectiverndeath wish, against whichrnthere seems from this vantage to bernno defense at all short of political revolutionrn(not necessarily the violentrnsort). Liberalism, which claims to be about love, is really aboutrnhate—hatred of reality—and just as love tends to turn outward,rntoward one’s neighbor, hate hirns inward, on the self which isrnthe most vicious and unnatural form of hate. The United Statesrntoday is the house that liberalism built: not divided against itselfrnbut rather united in an official spirit of self-hatred. It cannotrnstand much longer unless, rediscovering an affection that is notrnself-love but simply the understanding that charity begins atrnhome, the countr)’ as a whole reasserts itself to throw the neurotic,rnhumanly challenged rascals who beset it out. (A majorrneconomic depression could get the job done as well.) crncvSjGcKsrnVirtual Educationrnby Paul GottfriedrnHaving observed and worked for over 30 years in what is euphemisticallyrncalled American higher education, itrnseems to me that what is worst about it is not what it teaches butrnhow it misrepresents itself Contrary to the impression createdrnby neoconservatives and some misguided traditional humanists,rneducators (at least the ones I have known) do not corruptrnthe rising generation by lecturing on postmedieval or postmodernistrntexts. I would be exhilarated if most of my colleagues readrnWilliam of Ockham or Martin Heidegger—or belabored theirrnstudents with the ideas of these putatively subversive figures. Irnalso see no evidence that p.c. lightweights like Cornel West andrnAndrea Dworkin are being digested (if that is the proper term)rnin our classes. Professors are too busy enhancing their own evaluationsrnby making the kids feel good about the “college experience.”rnOn the basis of Ockham’s “non sunt multiplicanda entiarnpraeter necessitatem,” it appears foolish to manufacturernideational causes for what is simply crass behavior. In the 60’srnand 70’s, we mass-produced dummies with doctoral degrees,rnmost of whom had taken advantage of “defense loans” or somernother federal subsidy. We compounded the error by expandingrnthe number of degree-granting institutions which could providernjobs for the newly certified intelligentsia. A large pool of badlyrneducated high-school graduates, whose parents and the jobrnPaul Gottfried is a professor of humanities at ElizabethtownrnCollege in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and the author, mostrnrecently, o/”After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in thernManagerial State (Princeton).rnmarket wanted them warehousedrnfor four years, made the first twornblunders temporarily less catastrophic.rnAs long as there was disposablernincome (provided by both parentsrnworking) and a supply ofrnquasi-sentient bodies, higher educationrnwould remain a growth indusiry.rnBut the cultural result is burntoutrnwannabe intellectuals teachingrnthose whom my parents would havernrecognized as “definitely not college material.” Colleges arernbecoming theme parks. In return for inflated tuition, adolescentsrncan play at being students—a^ofiifz, as the Greeks used tornsay—without the dust and grime of hard work, or the advantagernof genetic predisposition. Parents pay for the admission card,rnand the reimbursed staff create the “virtual reality” of )oe orrnHeather College receiving an “awesome learning experience.”rnLike the staff of Disney World, academics and administratorsrnare trained to be nice, i.e. “student friendly,” and those intractablernsorts who don’t go with the program are financially penalizedrnand shunned.rnOne may be tempted to ask the state to enact solutions. Andrn”conservative” foundations have not been slow to call for politicalrnfixes, from government-mandated standards in the humanitiesrnand history to the appeal to courts to prosecute college administrationsrnfor violating the “First Amendment rights” ofrndissident professors. There are at least two problems involved inrn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn