{"id":2357,"date":"2009-05-23T14:21:05","date_gmt":"2009-05-23T19:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=2357"},"modified":"2009-05-23T14:21:05","modified_gmt":"2009-05-23T19:21:05","slug":"on-liberty-universitys-short-sightedness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=2357","title":{"rendered":"On Liberty University&#8217;s Short-Sightedness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5g4l0GyiJRDeTC1MlnVptIz17R1wQD98BK5080\">has banned its College Democrats Club<\/a>, because &#8220;the Democratic party violates the school&#8217;s principles by supporting abortion, socialism and the agenda of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My instant reaction?<\/p>\n<p>Liberty University had enough Democrats <i>for<\/i> a College Democrats Club?<\/p>\n<p>I used to live in Lynchburg.  I knew Jerry Falwell, I met him a few times, I&#8217;ve spoken with him personally.  I have friends that attended Liberty.  I won&#8217;t say that Liberty is hardcore conservative, because it&#8217;s not.  I think it might be easier to find an atheist at Liberty than it would be to find a Democrat.<\/p>\n<p>Jerry Falwell is rolling in his grave right now.  No, Falwell would not have approved of the stances of the Democratic Party.  But Falwell <i>also<\/i> understood the need for <i>dialogue<\/i>.  You don&#8217;t fight ideas by banning the speech.  You fight the ideas with <i>more speech<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s something interesting about Liberty University that I&#8217;ll share.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 90s, I needed to use their library for some research.  Liberty has a nice library, and one thing that struck me as interesting was the bookplates in each book.  I&#8217;m paraphrasing from memory here &mdash; &#8220;While the contents of this book may not conform to the teachings of the Baptist Church and Liberty University, this book represents a viewpoint that one should approach with an open mind in the quest for truth.&#8221;  I thought that was pretty remarkable.  It was an acknowledgement that the way to challenge ideas is to be exposed to them, not by locking them away.<\/p>\n<p>Banning the College Democrats Club?  That&#8217;s not keeping an open mind at Liberty.<\/p>\n<p>Jerry Falwell would <b>not<\/b> approve of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, has banned its College Democrats Club, because &#8220;the Democratic party violates the school&#8217;s principles by supporting abortion, socialism and the agenda of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.&#8221; My instant reaction? Liberty University had enough Democrats for a College Democrats Club? I used to live in Lynchburg.<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=2357\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Liberty University&#8217;s Short-Sightedness&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[4108],"class_list":["post-2357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}