Common or Invented tradition

[Mark]

This compilation of primary documents, with short introductions by the editor along with an introductory and concluding chapter, is meant for classroom use. University classrooms, Jonathan Bean suggests, are virtual propaganda cells in which brave students who dare to raise any argument from the classical liberal tradition are " 'shut down' in silence" until they have parroted the "correct answers they have found in other discussion readers." This anthology, by contrast, aims to free students to "consider another way of looking at the world."

In my experience, this text actually represents almost exactly how the great majority of my students look at the world. But perhaps I'm the anomaly who somehow has student survivors of the Manchurian treatment administered to them in the academy. Supposing that college classrooms nationwide are sanitized of any germs of classical liberal thought before students are allowed to enter them, let us consider this anthology in the spirit in which it is offered. Appropriate for a classroom, let's start with a pop quiz:

What do the following have in common: Thomas Jefferson, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, William Graham Sumner, Warren Harding, H. L. Mencken, R. C. Hoiles [publisher of the Orange County Register and other newspapers with a libertarian editorial focus], Milton Friedman, Linda Chavez, Martin Luther King, Stephen Carter [the Yale law professor, author of Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, and defender of Sonia Sotomayor], and Antonin Scalia? Is it:
A. Little except they all discussed race, and most deplored racism, at some point in their lives, albeit for entirely different reasons and with little or no common philosophical basis otherwise—indeed, often for reasons that contradicted others on this list. Or is it,
B. They were all representatives of the "classical liberal tradition," all believing in and acting on its "fundamental doctrines of individual freedom from government control, the Constitution as a guarantor of freedom, color-blind law, and capitalism," in contradistinction to "left-wing liberalism, with its emphasis on group rights, government power, and hostility to free market capitalism" [and, usually, religious belief].
Jonathan Bean's answer, as you probably guessed, is (B), and this collection of primary documents is an argument in defense of the proposition that the classical liberal tradition, because of its hostility to government power and group rights, has been the primary force in forging racial justice and freedom in American history.

rest at

http://www.booksandculture.com/artic...tradition.html