The Hillsdale Forum February 2015

Forum
The Hillsdale
Historic
Hillsdale, home
of Hillsdale
College
Micah Meadowcroft
Interview With
Dr. Gamble:
Philosophy of
History
The Singular
They
Chris McCaffery
www.hillsdaleforum.com
ESSAYS 1
Editor-In-Chief | Chris McCaffery
Head Copy Editor | Chelsey Schmid

Assistant Copy Editors
Bethany Shuler
Breana Noble
Content Editors
Matthew OSullivan
Taylor Kemmeter
Andrew Egger
Ramona Tausz
Staff Writer | Andy Reuss
Featured Essayists
Micah Meadowcroft
Sean Kunath
Sarah Reinsel
Kirby Hartley
Head Designer | Meg Prom

Design Assistant
Grace DeSandro
Photographer
Elena Creed
Editor-on-the-Run | Wes Wright

Web Editor | Emily Lehman
Business Manager | Luke Adams
Faculty Advisor | Dr. John Somerville
Special Thanks to
Intercollegiate Studies Institutes
Collegiate Network
Dr. Richard Gamble
Dr. Jeffrey Lehman
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2 FEBRUARY 2015
E S S AY S
05

13

11

Historic Hillsdale, Home of Hillsdale College

How and why students should foster healthy
towngown relationships.
by Micah Meadowcroft
In Defense of the Singular They
I, you, he, she, and it should all use they.
by Chris McCaffery
Book Review: Particular Crossroads
15

26

27

John Keats Vision for Art

Truth, Beauty, and John Keats famous Ode.
by Sarah Reinsel
Fountain Pens
Kunath wants a more elegant pen, for a more
civilized age.
by Sean Kunath
A Humorous Something
Sigh. The Forum Staff.
OConnor and Percys religous fiction.

by Kirby Hartley
by Andy Reuss
INTERVIEWS
20

Interview with Dr. Richard Gamble

24
Compiled by Devin Creed

Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Lehman
Thinking about how we think about history, with

Associate Professor of History Dr. Richard Gamble
Defining the liberal arts, with

Assistant Professor of Education
Dr. Jeffrey Lehman.
Compiled by Weston Wright
MISSION
STATEMENT
February 2015
Volume III | Issue 7
The Hillsdale Forum is an independent,

student-run conservative magazine at
Hillsdale College. The Forum, in support
of the mission statement of the college,
exists to foster a campus environment
open to true liberal education and
human flourishing. We publish opinions,
interviews, papers, and campus news.
The Forum is a vehicle to bring the
discussion and thought of the students
and professors at the heart of our
school beyond the classroom, because
if a practical end must be assigned to
a University course, it is that of training
good members of society. The Forum
brings the learning of the classroom
into the political reality of campus. F
All uncredited photos by Elena Creed
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
ebruary 2015s issue of The Hillsdale

Forum is here. Inside: five essays
(including a review), two interviews,
a humor item, and, least of all, this letter.
Briefly, senior Sean Kunath explains why
he loves his fountain pens so much (page
10), and Assistant Professor of Education
Dr. Jeffrey Lehman explains just a bit of
what we talk about when we talk about
the liberal arts (page 20). Junior Micah
Meadowcroft takes longer to unpack the
relationship between the City of Hillsdale
and the college we attend (page 5), and
sophomore Sarah Reinsel explores pottery,
poetry, and truth and beauty with an essay
on John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn,
inspired by a lecture on conservatism and
the arts delivered by Greg Wolfe, 80 (page
13).
I take a stand for what I think is one of the
most unfairly-maligned usages in English
grammar on page 11, and senior Kirby
Hartley reviews Particular Crossroads, a
short book about Flannery OConnor and

Walker Percys faith, fiction, and southern
identity. Associate Professor of History
Dr. Richard Gamble sat down with senior
Devin Creed to discuss his current class
History and Philosophy of History, his
published books, and what he means by
historical consciousness. Finally, senior
Andy Reuss satirically reveals the real
story of our nations founding.
Behind everything inside this issue is a
fantastic staff of editors and designers who
make it all happen. Their skill makes this
beautiful publication possible and they are
to be congratulated for every edition.
The Forum can be a great opportunity
to have a conversation with the campus
community
and
develop
writing,
editing, and design skills; email us today,
hillsdaleforum@gmail.com.
Editor-in-Chief Chris McCaffery is a junior
studying history and English. He is a member of
the Dow Journalism Program.
LET TER FROM THE EDITOR 3
ESSAYS
ClipboardPageNumber JAN
Historic Hillsdale, Home of Hillsdale College

by Micah Meadowcroft
hen junior Forester McClatchey,

the
Collegians
cartoonist,
sketched a bewildered college
student faced with the improbable
varieties and combinations of
food available at the Hillsdale County Fair, what was
a joke about artery-defying fried fair food became,
for some, a cause for offense. A few Hillsdale
natives took to Facebook to vent their displeasure
regarding the cartoon, recalling a students
credit: Wikipedia
How and why students should foster

healthy towngown relationships.
fulfilling prophecy on the part of Hillsdale natives

and thoughtless immaturity on the part of Hillsdale
students. The temptation of the towns citizens is to
dismiss college students as entitled, if not actually
wealthythough that also seems a common
characterizationand as snobbish cosmopolitans
who think little of the towns rural roots and
inhabitants. Those offended by the cartoon saw it as
an attack on the county fair and all the farm culture
it represents. Offense can be found where one looks
for it, and, generally, these characterizations are
both unfair and self-fulfilling. The more that locals
assume that students are arrogant and standoffish,
the more distance they themselves contribute to the
divide, affirming the initial assumption that students
hold themselves apart.
For their part, students throw around the term

townie. In both its most and least charitable use,
townie is a catchall for any Hillsdale native. For the
majority of students it has merely replaced local
or native. But many students also use townie to
describe a particular kind of person, associating it
with poverty, crime, and substance abuse. In this
sense, a townie refers to the person female students
dread sharing a sidewalk with late at night, the kind
of person whom male students walking girls home
cant decide if it would be validating or merely
frightening to run into. Students dont think everyone
born in Hillsdale is this sort of townie, but the
connotations get confused until even the generalized
unfortunately-phrased restaurant review from 2013 use of townie carries a scent somewhere between
[Broad Street Market: uniting the campus and the methamphetamine and methane. Its a Here there
community, Hillsdale Collegian, Feb. 6, 2014], and be dragons, a lazy label for the unknown, and a real
complained that the cartoon was further evidence problem.
that the college students dismissed them as yokels. Until both sides of this issue are addressed, progress
Other locals replied in the cartoons defense. It was in improving Hillsdales town-gown relationship and
the kind of little flame war that sparks on social bringing the college and the city together in real
media all the time. It blew out almost immediately. community will be impossible. Human fallibility
The underlying sentiments at play, however being what it is, someones mistake will reignite
small the population that takes them seriously, old suspicions and undercut progress. While being
are the product of hasty generalizations and self- offended is a choice, it is our responsibility as Hillsdale
ESSAYS 5
students to not give occasion for offense. No one goes

to church with townies. You know those families and
you dont think of them with a label; you think of them
as individuals and as a community. Thats what we have
to do to play our part in healing whatever cultural rift
divides town and gown.
Either potentially giving offense or being offended
in interactions with the people of Hillsdale presents
one party with an opportunity to bear with the weaker
brother as the Apostle Paul commands in Romans.
Should education or economic situation ever truly
be a stumbling block to relationships with locals, it is
a chance to meet people where they are rather than
taking offense. It is vital to the health of the whole
Hillsdale community that students, rather than selfrighteously steeling themselves for martyrdom for
their sophistication, examine themselves to see if they
are not the weaker brothers, wanting comfort and
coddling.
In my first week as a Hillsdale student, I took an
assignment from the Collegian to describe Hillsdales
political tendenciesnot Hillsdale the college, but
the town. I wanted to be as real a reporter as I could,
so I got my notebook and pen and marched toward
Carleton Road with the intention of running into
people and interviewing them. I expected Id find the
busy sidewalks Id grown up with in Portland and many
eager interviewees wanting to talk about Governor
Romney and President Obama. I found one occupied
porch and empty sidewalks.
I didnt notice the porch was occupied at first. Or,
maybe I did, but convinced myself that I didnt because,
to be honest, I was scared. I didnt know how to interact
with what my memory paints as a grizzled older man
in a stained T-shirt and truckers cap, briskly swaying
back and forth on a rocking chair. He might have had
a cigarette. I didnt see a person; I saw a clich and
was intimidated. Here was a redneck. I noticed a little
girl on the porch with him and immediately started
theorizing about a dangerously simple family tree. This
was not the investment banker who fronts a band or
the unemployed barista that I was used tothere were
no tattoos or dreadlocks. Just a man on his porch in a
small American town and an accidental affront to my
suburban and urban sensibilities, colored as they were
by Larry the Cable Guy and the rest of the Midwest
that TV had to offer. My geography was bad. Id just
arrived. I certainly thought Appalachia and Wisconsin
6 FEBRUARY 2015
were a lot closer than they are.

I noticed he had noticed that I had noticed him.
I stopped, and stammered out a request to interview
him for the Collegian, the student newspaper, as
I explained. He
assented,
and,
before I could
ask a question,
declared that I
looked like Elvis
Presley and that
that was a good
thing; I think he
said
blessing.
It was surreal. I
asked him about
politics, and he
said hed never
voted, but that
if he voted it
would not be for
Obama, because
a friend of his
complained about
the
president.
Ramsey seemed
his
preferred
candidate.
Romney?
I
clarified. Romsey,
yeah, he clarified further.
I finished my newspaper story with my label intact.
He had done nothing to dissuade me from the idea that
he was a redneck, and I took his words as confirmation
enough. I had met a townie. It took a year to get over
the culture shock of being a West Coast transient in
the middle of the Michigan mitten, a year for me to
begin to peel my labels off the town and its people and
to realize that the people I met at church and got to
know well enough to be comfortable with lived here
just like that man. Its taken longer for me to realize
that I did not know that man. I judged him based on
one American Gothic snapshot and one conversation
on a subject that he really had no need to know much
about. Im sure his concerns are of a more local and
immediate variety.
I was the weaker brother. City of Hillsdale, please
bear with me.
I DIDNT KN
WITH WHAT M
A GRIZZLED O
T-SHIRT AND T
SEE A PERSON
WAS INTIMIDA
For students not from the Midwest, especially

those not from small towns, there is a real sense of
foreignness to Hillsdale. For someone from the coasts,
Hillsdale without the college is a drive-through town
NOW HOW TO INTERACT

MY MEMORY PAINTS AS
OLDER MAN IN A STAINED
TRUCKERS CAP... I DIDNT
N; I SAW A CLICH AND
ATED.
in a flyover state. The risk for students, and even for

faculty, is that this is the place where the school is
and not ever the place where they are. For the student
only here for four years, its especially tempting to
let the familiarity and convenience of Wal-Mart and
the McDonalds drive-thru protect them from ever
needing to become a member of this strange new
place. When one never looks for what the town has to
offer, it becomes easy to say theres nothing here.
The most immediate solution to that problem
and the best way to learn the poverty of labels like
townie are the same: cross Carleton. Carleton Road
cuts Hillsdale in half. To the northeast sits the college,
to the southwest, an incredibly preserved historic
American town. Its convenient for never the two to
meet, but its lazy and eliminates an opportunity for
an education the college itself cannot offer. To know
and experience and be a part of a different kind of
life from both the one grown up in and the carefully

constructed one found on campus is an opportunity
for personal growth and an economic blessing to the
town.
Professor of Political Economy Gary Wolfram
and his wife, Mary Wolfram, are economic
development consultants for Hillsdale,
Michigan. Wolfram has taught at Hillsdale
since 1989. He said that when he first began,
town-gown relationships were moderately
nonexistent. In some ways, Im affirming a
trend rather than sparking a movement with
this essay. Wolfram said developments of the
last few years have led to students crossing
Carleton in increasing numbers and businesses
beginning to adjust practices to appeal to them.
As an example of that recent progress, the
college and the city are working to have a sign
set up on the highway that reads, Welcome to
Historic Hillsdale, Home of Hillsdale College.
Its not resentment or alienation or apathy thats
holding up the signs installation; rather, its the
Michigan Department of Transportation and
the permit process. We wouldnt have thought
of putting up the sign five years ago, Wolfram
said, illustrating the progress thats been made.
Wolfram points to the relationship between
Notre Dame and South Bend, Indiana, as an
model of a well-connected college community
for Hillsdale. It was not always so. As a runner,
Wolfram competed both in South Bend and at Notre
Dame. When he was in the town, there was no
indication that the university was up the road. When
he was at the school, the group spent no time in South
Bend. Thats changed since, and South Bend is now a
thriving college town.
That kind of community in Hillsdale can only
continue to grow if students continue to make it a
priority to explore the city, especially downtown.
Hillsdale may distinguish itself from other central
Michigan towns of its size through its connection with
the college, but, Wolfram said, the whole downtown
is a historic district. Thats something all its own,
and something students can treasure just as much as
natives.
A particularly popular and intentional point of
nexus between town and gown has been Broad Street
Downtown Market. Robert Socha, co-owner and
ESSAYS 7
manager, said hes seen the tavern become a place

where the college and community can come together
and celebrate life, have a great meal, break bread. He
has high hopes for Hillsdales future as both the college
and town grow, and sees Broad Street continuing to be
a place for dialogue and celebration.
Other downtown institutions have become crosscultural shared spaces as well. Wolfram pointed to
he said.
In Wolframs mind, the next step is not just for traffic
from the college to the town to continue to increase,
but also for traffic from the town to the college to
grow, and for the wider college communitydonors,
parents, and the restto discover Hillsdale. Socha
is an example of that last hope, as he and his family
moved to Hillsdale in 2013, only connected to the area
The ideal
should be to
participate
in and
learn from
Hillsdale
the town as
much as one
is able.
Heres To You Pub & Grub and Volume I Books as
successfully blending students and town residents
across socioeconomic lines. The Palace Caf, during
its late night weekend hours, has become a place where
students fill up booths next to crowded tables of locals.
Students proudly wear Coffee Cup Diner T-shirts. You
become members of Hillsdale by being members of
the institutions that make up the city.
Student groups are also beginning to recognize
that the towns problems can be their problems too.
Wolfram cited the volunteer group A Few Good Men,
Greek philanthropies, and other student organizations
as increasingly trying to partner with the town beyond
the college community. Not too long ago we had
members of the community come up and meet with
the student groups [to] try and help them find people
to partner with and [figure out] what to do to help,
8 FEBRUARY 2015
by Imprimis and a desire for his children to attend

Hillsdale Academy.
Traffic from town to college takes two forms. On
the one hand, Wolfram would like to see both further
dissemination of information about college events to
the town and greater attendance and engagement at
those events by the members of the town. Additionally,
he believes downtown stores, restaurants, and coffee
shops need to consider student schedules more in their
hours of operation. Many places close before students
have time to go down the hill.
Wolfram, the town, and the college are all
partnering to give opportunities for the larger college
community to encounter the city. The Wolframs lead
tours of historic Hillsdale during parents weekends
and Center for Constructive Alternatives seminars,
and this last parents weekend, stores stayed open
late for Awesome Autumn to provide the chance for
parents and students alike to encounter the shops that

make up the downtown. Youd be surprised by how
many have never been downtown, Wolfram said.
And its true that geography plays a part in it. The
concentration of businesses really is on one side of
Carleton, and the college community is mostly on the
other. If we can get retail to move its way up the hill
and college folks to move their way down the hill, then
it will help us create that interaction, Wolfram said.
In studying other college towns, Wolfram notes that
successful cities keep their graduates. He pointed to
Ann Arbor as an example of a city where students stay.
It works best when students settle down in a capacity
not directly related to the college.
Thats also an observation of Assistant Director of
Career Services Keith Miller. A member of Hillsdales
Tax Increment Finance Authority board, he noted,
I think that at this point, what hasnt happened,
is Hillsdale graduates staying here and founding
businesses that increase the employment base beyond
just people who stay and work for the college.
Miller graduated from Hillsdale in 2003. When I
was a student, I basically ignored the town, he said.
Those interactions he did have with locals were mainly

through his church.
Churches are a key part of facilitating interaction
and fostering community among the college and
town people. Their effectiveness is also almost entirely
dependent on the attitude of the student. Miller said
that when he was a student, church was just something
he went to with his friends because he felt he was
supposed to. It was too different from those churches
that hed grown up with in the American Southwest
for him to feel that he was getting anything out of it.
Frustrated by the absence of something cosmopolitan,
he didnt connect. Thats certainly still a temptation for
students. It is more than easy to just go to church with
school friends, stay for the service, and leave, without
real interactionsto dine and dash, so to speak.
After graduating, Miller left Hillsdale for almost
a decade before returning to work for the college.
He said he has found that his friends are mostly
faculty or somehow associated with the college. He
still considers it difficult to connect well with locals,
whether they are his neighbors at home or in the pew.
Theres a real cultural distance, partly because of his
ESSAYS 9
upbringing in a different culture and partly because

of the self-sustaining nature of the college. It creates
its own culture.
Miller said it can almost be compared to life around
a military base. Hillsdale College has a mission that it
is seeking to fulfill, and that mission builds, by default,
a kind of insular community. Army wives spend time
with army wives; the people of the college, with their
shared purpose, spend time with one another.
To Miller, that kind of cultural distance is selfperpetuating. Therefore, he said, I would love for
college students who are coming from a different
culture with different expectations, with chain
restaurants that dont serve liver and onions, to
understand that Hillsdale is a different thing.
community built around certain shared values and

purposes. That should never set the college at odds
with the town, but we should acknowledge that
it does create a distinction. Just as the man on the
porch didnt particularly care about national politics,
or politics in general, the priorities of Hillsdales
residents are different than the priorities of Hillsdales
students and teachers.
Hillsdale is not the colleges town, and Hillsdale
is not the towns college. The college desires to be a
national, even international school, and so the student
and faculty culture will never perfectly reflect that
of the town. But that is how it should be. The goal
should be for Hillsdale to be a college town, for that
is what distinguishes it from other small cities on the
rust belt. But historic Hillsdale has merit and beauty
in its own right, and while the college and town will
certainly grow together, the town will be healthiest
if its growth is parallel to, but not dependent on, the
college.
The student who feels a stranger in a strange
land in Hillsdale the town must first decide where
their place is. After knowing where they come from
and the significance of their home, they can learn
to appreciate Hillsdale more. Those differences
should, however, for all their foreignness, be felt not
as lostness, but as an alternative. For four years, or
for as long as you live here, you are presented with a
different way of living, a different way of becoming
human. Even as students study the liberal arts to learn
how to be a human being, reading the literature and
history of that subject, they live in a town of human
beings living just such a story. While you are here,
this can be your place, in some way. And its people, if
not yours, can be people worth learning from. F
He considers the question to be one of membership.

What kind of membership does he have in Hillsdale,
Michigan? For Miller and the rest of the college
community, answering that question takes a careful
consideration of both the time spent in a place and
the role played there.
Tenured professors with no intention of leaving
Hillsdale must make their own way in balancing
town and gown, for both are theirs; but for students,
here only a brief four years, and for other nonpermanent members of the college community, ideals
and limitations must be held in balance. Perhaps it
is useful to see the situation through a desacralized
version of the Christian call to be in the world, but
not of the world.
While students are here, at Hillsdale and in
Hillsdale, it is their place. They should steward it and
be a part of the community it has to offer. That means
being open to relationships with locals, whether
through church or work or food or shopping. That
means protecting not just the college and its mission,
Micah Meadowcroft is a junior studying history. He
but the people of Hillsdale and their culture. No
is
a
member of the Dow Journalism Program.
matter how foreign the county fair and its food are to
you, appreciate the richness of the community they
represent, a community you have the opportunity to
be a part of for a little while. The ideal should be to
participate in and learn from Hillsdale the town as
much as one is able.
That ideal must be tempered by recognizing
limitations. Students are here at Hillsdale to study,
and school comes first. Hillsdale College, through its
mission, curriculum, and size, does foster a unique
10 FEBRUARY 2015
Book Review: Peculiar Crossroads:

Flannery O Connor, Walker Percy,
and Catholic Vision in Postwar
Southern Fiction
by kirby hartley
Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery OConnor, Walker
Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern
Fiction by Farrell OGorman (2007) Louisiana State
University Press: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
arrell OGormans study of the similarities

between Walker Percys and Flannery
OConnors works pierces the banal to
draw associations between the authors
that significantly enrich interpretations of
their fiction and nonfiction. The scholarly
book is divided into four roughly 50page chapters that analyze each authors influences
and a 36-page chapter that surveys their lasting impact
on writers of Southern fiction. OGorman outlines
similarities between the authors, including the absence
of their respective fathers; the mentorship of the literary
duo Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate; the United States
post-World War II culture of modernism, scientism,
and secularism; Christian existentialism; a particular
understanding of grace and mystery that emerges from
their Catholic faith; and Christian realism. As OGorman
demonstrates throughout his study, the upbringing,
education, training, and idiosyncrasies of each author
account for their differences, but their striking similarities
result from their Southern literary environment, the postwar materialistic-scientific culture, and their Catholic
faith. OGorman convincingly argues that the works of
these two authors were part of a new era of fiction that
broke with both the past and the present: Old South
romanticism and scientific nihilism, respectively.
Chapter 1 gives biographical information on
these renowned Southern writers that lends a better
understanding of their fiction. OGorman emphasizes
OConnors battle with lupus erythematosus as coloring
her fiction. According to OGorman, she saw her own
illness as a metaphor for the modern era. In her fiction,
she connects her condition with the disorientation and
displacement of 20th-century humanity, which she in
turn connects with displaced persons and wayfarers
who are ultimately bound toward a homeland beyond

their imagining. OGorman demonstrates that the
authors understanding of the world through her illness
allowed her to create works enriched by instances of
grace.
His analysis of Percys family history of depression
and suicide similarly lends context to the characters in
his works (for example, Kate Cutrer in The Moviegoer)
and his emphasis on subjects like malaise, manicdepressives, and suicide. Additionally, the extensive
family background that OGorman draws out explains
Percys interest in a sense of decaying aristocracy and the
end of the Old South. This is due, in part, to the fact that
Percy was the inheritor of an aristocratic lineage.
OGorman also discusses both authors major
influences. For Percy, these are the loss of his parents in
his youth; his upbringing by his Uncle Will, a respected
author whose fiction expressed longing for a revival of
the heroes of the Civil War; his scientific training as a
pathologist; his bout with tuberculosis; his entry into the
Catholic Church; and his devotion to a life of philosophy
and fiction. On the other hand, OConnors impetus lies
in the loss of her father to lupus in her youth; her training
at the Iowa Writers Workshop where she earned her MFA
in Creative Writing and worked under the mentorship of
respected Southern authors like Allen Tate and Andrew
Lytle; the intensive Yaddo writing camp; her cradleCatholic faith; and her struggle with lupus throughout
most of her adult life. In sum, these authors
can both be characterized as broadly satirical writers whose
religious faith grant[s] them a rich perspective from which to
evaluate and criticize a Southern society in the midst of rapid
change from World War II
wherein they understood their own seemingly

burdensome histories [and illness] as opportunities
for a more fundamentally philosophical realization of
personal mortality coupled with a heightened need to
seek the eternal.
OGorman follows this expansive background on the
ESSAYS 11
formative years of OConnor and Percy with an analysis in

Chapter 2 of their literary, theological, and philosophical
influences. OGorman asserts that the literary vision in
each authors work was profoundly shaped by Christian
existentialisms sense of the lonely individual in a society
where traditional moral codes had collapsed and history
did not seem even a potential guide to meaning.
Additionally, he demonstrates through extensive
resources and analysis that OConnor and Percy were
influenced by the same great writers: the younger writers
libraries contained
identical works of
Jacques Maritain
[and also] Romano
Guardini and Gabriel
Marcel. OGormans
point is that both
authors
pursued
the answers to the
same questions and
that their respective
quests were fostered
by the same mentors
and thinkers.
This philosophical
and
theological
search culminated
in the need for a
concrete
fiction
about this existence and caused both OConnor and Percy
to form Christian realist-existentialist viewpoints. As
OGorman writes, these authors faith led them to a vision
that, in comparison with their Southern Renaissance
predecessors [Tate and Gordon], was virtually ahistorical
in its concentration on their contemporary moment.
Their fiction, though guided by Tate and Gordon, was a
backlash against both the nostalgic Romantic vision of
the Old South that their mentors created and the modern
fiction of faithlessness. Because of this, OGorman
argues, their fiction tended toward a Christian Realism
of the Here-and-Now that contains glimpses of divine
grace and revelation. Their fiction, in essence, takes
after Gordons in that it is a curious blend of neoThomist aesthetic theory that contains reverence for
high modernist technique. He further explains that the
Christian existentialist technique is comica detail that
explains the black and ridiculous humor in both authors
works.
OGorman proclaims in Chapter 4 that all these
preceding elements combine to allow OConnor and
T hese
Percy to radically [critique] both decaying Southern

traditions and the triumphant American culture that
was replacing them at the very moment when these
two concepts conflicted in the wake of World War II.
This chapter, though long in proving its point, does so
effectively. OGorman argues that their fiction is rooted
in the here and now but penetrat[es] the eternal and with
this vision is unique; additionally, their vision brought to
Southern authors a different outlook that served them
well in capturing the essential drama of Southern life in
the postwar era and
allowed them to
create a new literature
for the South.
In the fifth and final
chapter, OGorman
describes the legacy
of
each
author
in
contemporary
Southern
letters.
Though an interesting
afterthought,
this
section does not add
significantly to his
overall
argument
within this study.
P e c u l i a r
Crossroads is an
essential
starting
point for any serious critic of OConnor and Percy
due to the studys expansive background of the two
authors and their influences. Additionally, the depth of
OGormans analysis of their modes of writing couples
with an intensive understanding of their works, prose,
and lectures to create valuable intertextual insight. His
personal study of these quintessential Southern writers
and a body of over 90 works of external criticism from
such respected critics as Ralph Wood and Lorine Getz
distills their basic thought down to a mere 235 pages. The
structure of the work is easy to follow, despite its weighty
content, due to OGormans method of summarizing ideas
before transitioning to new topics and his useful subjecttopical index. OGormans main argument amounts to
an implicit statement that OConnor and Percy together
triggered a pivotal shift in literary thought because of the
environment in which they were immersed. F
two authors
are part of a new
era of fiction that

breaks with the
past and present .
12 FEBRUARY 2015
Kirby Hartley is a senior studying English.
In Defense of the
Singular They
by chris mccaffery
This essay was originally written for Dr. Daniel Couplands
EDU 101: English Grammar course.
elievers in strict proscription in grammatical

construction advocate the use of he as the neuter
singular pronoun. This is an imperfect attempt to
make up for Englishs lack of a natural neuter singular
pronoun. When attempting to follow a proscribed rule
and preserve the numerical consistency of pronoun to
antecedent, we are forced to imply meaning perhaps
unintended. He, though used grammatically as
neuter, cannot help but give the reader a masculine
meaning. Attempts to resolve this problem through
such constructions as (s)he, he/she, or s/he continue
the problem by forcing a consideration of gender
when none is needed or intended. Luckily, popular and
historical usage gives us a solution: the use of they in
the singular. By accepting the singular usage of they
already widespread colloquially, we gain a pronoun
that preserves meaning and maintains grammatical
consistency without sacrificing understanding.
The use of they as a singular, neuter personal pronoun
has been enjoyed by English writers for centuries.
Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tales, used they as
a pronoun for a singular noun. For example, the verse:
And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame,
They wol come up and offre in Goddes name,
And I assoile hem by the auctoritee
Which that by bulle ygraunted was to me.
(6.3858)
Here, the word whoso is used in the singular, in a

similar manner to the modern anyone. The pronoun
used to refer back to the singular, indefinite whoso
is they, normally a plural pronoun but used here in a
completely understandable manner. Henry Churchyard

has compiled many examples of the singular they
from historical literary sources. Offenders listed on
his website include Jane Austen, Thomas More, and
William Shakespeare; I appeal to authority and note
that our linguistic history offers few greater than these.
It was not until the 19th century that grammarians began
the attempt to tramp out usage of they as the genderindeterminate pronoun and relegate it to the pluralized
ghetto.
The usage of the generic they in no way impairs
communication. Unlike the use of he, a singular they
does not single out males when the meaning of the
sentence calls for men or women. It is not radical
feminism to suggest that proscribing a form of pronoun
usage that will give readers or listeners a picture of men
or a man, when that is not the intended meaning, is
not helpful to communication. Ben Yagoda writing
in the Los Angeles Times provides this example of a
sentence that is incorrect but grammatically perfect:
Man, being a mammal, breast-feeds his young. Man,
of course, is a singular noun as the subject of the
sentence, and according to grammatical proscription
ought to take the pronouns he, or his, or him. This is
made ridiculous by the actual meaning of the sentence.
Breast-feeding is not a male activity, unless youre a
grammarian. Without rephrasing, the sentence might
become, Man, being a mammal, breast-feeds their
young. They cannot fix a sentence completely, and
this instance ought to be rewritten; however, the move
from wrong and awkward to merely awkward is still
significant, and most sentences are blessedly free from
such awkward phrasing. Sometimes, rephrasing is a
necessary solution, but forcing a good sentence into
ESSAYS 13
The
sentence - wrangling
recommended to avoid the
problem can work atrocities on
elegant usage .
the contortions of proscribed grammar is unnecessary;

a solution already exists.
The use of they in the singular is already widespread.
When the 2011 edition of the New International Version
translation of The Bible was introduced, the translators
began to use the singular they in their translations. Their
decision was the result of an extensive survey of English
usage that showed that:
The gender-neutral pronoun they (them/their) is by far the
most common way that English-language speakers and writers
today refer back to singular antecedents such as whoever,
anyone, somebody, a person, no one, and the like.
singular syntactically, they clearly refer to more

than one person.
Each person is entitled to his (or her!) own
opinion, and many people are quite happy using
he in all cases. It can create confusion, however,
and the sentence-wrangling recommended to
avoid the problem can create needless extra work
and work atrocities on elegant usage. There is not
a person in the English-speaking world who, when
they read this sentence, would be frustrated by its
failure to communicate. Strictness in grammatical
proscription is often a useful, worthwhile, and
noble task that preserves essential parts of the
language from the degeneration and vulgarities
everyday usage imposes in it (who/whom is a
notable pronoun example). This is not one of
those cases. The battle was over before it started.
The singular they is a legitimate, historical,
grammatical, and sensible part of the English
language, and everyone would be a lot better off if
they accepted it. F
A usage with such widespread acceptance as the

singular they enjoys cant be hard to understand
for speakers of English. If languages purpose is to
communicate ideas, a language should effective at
doing that among a wide range of people. Were
the singular they at all uncommon, it would be
wrong to call for its acceptance, because it would
be imposing on the language something out
of the norm for most of the people who use it.
With usage as it is, it is more likely to seem out
Editor-in-Chief Chris McCaffery is a junior
of place to the majority of the people with whom studying history and English. He is a member of
you are communicating. Especially in the case of the Dow Journalism Program.
antecedents that are semantically plural, such as
everyone, the use of they is the most commonsense solution. Even though these words are
14 FEBRUARY 2015
John Keats Vision for Art

in Ode on a Grecian Urn
Greg Wolfes mission inspires a
reading of Keats well-known poem
by sarah reinsel
credit: Wikipedia
Keats structures the poem by introducing the urn

This essay is adapted from a paper originally written for
Dr. Lorraine Eadies ENG 330: Restoration and Romantic as a true piece of art in the first stanza, examining the
British Literature.
urns portrayal of truths about the human condition in
the middle stanzas, and concluding with his broader
Beauty is truth, truth, beauty.
argument about the relationship between art and life.
n his lecture Conservatism and the Arts: A Lovers The poem has an inner component where Keats uses the
Quarrel, [Hillsdale College, October 2014] Greg urn to demonstrate the truth of the human conditions
Wolfe argued that in order to conserve what is good, unfulfilled nature, fleeting passions, and troubling
true, and beautiful, the form of art must change so that it mysteries. There is also an outer argument, where Keats
remains in connection with the contemporary culture. defines the urns greater purpose as a true and beautiful
Because we are fallen, limited creatures, beautiful styles piece of art and holds it forth as an example of what
get hackneyed, Wolfe said, and used the fragmented all art should be. The urn, which permanently portrays
and modern style of T.S. Eliots poetry as an example the fragile, the unfulfilled, and the troubled, accurately
of how a modern style can convey conservative ideas. reflects the human condition. Keats argues that the
John Keats, in Ode on a Grecian Urn, has a parallel urn is a true work of art because it reflects a truth and
intent. The forms of art at play in the poem form a a beauty that will remain a lasting guide in a world of
striking contrast. Lyric, the (then) radical style of poetry unknowns.
Before continuing, it is important to acknowledge
that the Romantics favored, describes a subjective
and
distinguish the two levels of beauty present in the
experience of viewing a Grecian urn, the quintessential
example of an ancient and long admired form of art. urn and in the poem. The urn has a physical beauty in
This is imagination fully engaged by its images. That its images and form, and the poem certainly contains
Keats chose to write about an ancient urn, which has beauty in its language. However, the deeper beauty
persisted in its message for thousands of years, indicates that Keats perceives in the urn concerns its portrayal
his concern with art, its forms, its structures, and its of a truth about the human condition and how his
purpose. Like Eliot, Keats uses the contemporary style experience of viewing the urn leads him to it. The
of his day to describe and conserve the universal truth elements of beauty in the urns details about nature
of the human condition that he sees in the urn. The urn, may provide the viewer with a guide to interpreting the
an ancient art form, has clearly not stopped portraying a beauty of both the urn and the poem. Who can deny the
truth, but if artists had only communicated via urns for beauty of a tree permanently in the glory of its spring
thousands of years, clearly something would be wrong. blossoms? The viewer sighs, Ah, happy, happy boughs!
It is entirely fitting to Keats greater argument about art That cannot shed / Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring
that he uses his modern lyric style to describe an old adieu (2122). But because of the permanence of the
form of art. Forms of art may change over time, but the urn, the spring blossoms never turn into the glory of
beauty and truth they conserve and portray does not. green summer leaves; the trees, despite their physical
No matter the form, art should convey that Beauty is beauty, go unfulfilled like everything else on the urn.
The soft Ah, and the inability to say goodbye create a
truth, truth, beauty.
ESSAYS 15
melancholy and troubled tone; because of the inability

to say adieu to springtime, nothing can change, develop,
and be fulfilled. So while a superficial and earthly beauty
is present, it pales in comparison to the greater, more
beautiful truth that the urn portrays about the troubled
and unfulfilled condition of man.
Clearly, then, within Keats argument that art should
direct people to a greater truth and beauty is the urns
portrayal of the truth of mans unfulfilled and troubled
state. The urns images, forever frozen in time and forever
on display, reflect the timelessness and permanence of
mankinds state in the world, with all of its passions
and struggles as intricately intertwined as the carvings
in the marble. For example, the famous image of the
Bold lover, paralyzed forever without having achieved
his kiss with the fair maiden, evinces an aching sense
of an unfulfilled love. The viewer, upon observing this,
says, Yet do not grieve; / She cannot fade, though thou
has not thy bliss / For ever wilt thou love, and she be
fair (1820). The slightly bitter tone of this speaker
suggests his awareness of the fleetingness and fragility
of beauty and youth in real life, which is paradoxically
contrasted by the very permanence of the beauty of
the figures on the urn. However, this preserved state of
outward beauty has the far darker consequence of love
forever unfulfilled. The bold lover will always love, but
it will never be reciprocated, and the fair maiden will
never be anything but pretty. Yet there is a far deeper
beauty to be found in the urn because it reflects the
truth of the human condition. The frozen lover on
the urn demonstrates how love and life go unfulfilled,
permanently and universally, and the frozen loveliness
of the fair maiden, by its very permanence, makes
apparent the fleetingness of outward beauty.
The paradox between the permanent and the fleeting
continues in the urns portrayal of human passions as
fragile and ephemeral. Indelibly part of mans condition,
they are forever preserved in the artwork on the urn. The
urn inspires a series of emotions and rapid questions
from the viewer. In the first stanza, the viewer asks
questions using highly charged phrases such as mad
pursuit, struggle to escape, and wild ecstasy, which
cast a tone of anxiety over the images on the urn (910).
This anxiety, coupled with the ardent lovers in the second
stanza and the passionate language in the third, makes
for a wrenching representation of human emotions,
which swing highly and wildly with More happy love!
More happy, happy love! (25) before burning out and
16 FEBRUARY 2015
leaving a heart high-sorrowful and cloyd, /

a burning forehead, and a parching tongue
(2930). Cloyd, which means burdened,
or surfeited (Cloyed), implies that what
was once enjoyed has now become excess,
completely unable to provide any sort of
fulfillment. The urn does not elevate the
viewers opinion of human passions or
contain a glamorous beauty; rather, it causes
the viewer to use the language of both thirst
and a sorrowful, burdened heart to express
his response. The language of this response
is so searing and penetrating because the
viewer has realized a truth: the passions
of the human condition waver, fluctuate,
and burn out. The overarching beauty of
the urn stems from this truth because the
urn provides the viewer with this portrayal
of the human condition and the viewers
reaction and analysis of human passions
demonstrates that he is using the urn as a
guide to beauty and truth.
The fourth stanza enters into the realm
of speculation about the urn, in which
Keats addresses the overwhelming presence
of mystery in life. Keats contemplates the
image of the sacrifice, with a priest leading
a heifer decorated with garlands to the altar.
However, this sacrifice has some ambiguity
and mystery around the edges because
he is unable to determine anything else
about the image. He is led to supplement
this scene by imagining a little town on a
coast or a mountain that is empty because
of some religious celebration pertaining to
the priest and the sacrifice. The key lines,
however, come at the end: And, little town,
thy streets for evermore / will silent be; and
not a soul to tell / Why thou art desolate,
can eer return (40). Not a soul to tell
suggests a greater, completely unknowable
mystery, which will remain unknowable
despite any speculations by any viewer. The
streets will always remain silent because
the urn is frozen in time. The way in which
the urn leaves the viewer to muse upon the
mysterious details of this town represents
how wondering at the unknowable, going
without answers, and simply not being able
to know everything is an unavoidable

part of the human condition. In his
lecture, Wolfe too addressed this value
of ambiguity in literature. To recognize
that ambiguity is the nature of our
experience is to be reminded of a need for
humility, he said. Mystery and ambiguity
are humbling in that they make obvious
the limits of human knowledge and the
difficulty of putting morals into practice
(Wolfe). Keats acknowledges this limit of
knowledge through the use of ambiguity
in the fourth stanza, and then defines the
limits of knowledge more directly in the
final lines of the poem, when he describes
how time and mystery will humble and
waste man, but knowledge of beauty and
truth will remain.
From the fourth stanza to the fifth,
Keats crosses over from exploring the
nature of the human condition as treated
by the urn to exploring the relationship
between art and life, holding up the urn
as an example. The way in which the urn
engages its viewers in the mystery of the
empty town demonstrates how art can
both communicate with a part of the soul
that is often unreachable and address
complexities that may be far beyond ones
individual perception. Keats says to the
urn, Thou silent form, dost tease us out
of thought / as does eternity (4445).
The urn, as a true piece of art, gently
tugs its viewer out of a disconnected
contemplation into a contemplation in
communion with the piece of art, just as
the thought of eternity pulls an individual
out of his disconnected time and place,
or even his disconnected life, and into a
conception of time far more complex and
profound than his individual, unfulfilled
life. This sort of connected contemplation
that art can create is also hinted at earlier
in the poem, through the image of the
musician:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeard,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone (1114).
ESSAYS 17
The unheard melodies of the musician indicate how the

urn connects directly with the mind, or rather, how it
pipes to the spirit, which connotes a more mysterious,
inexplicable communication that is forged with the
imagination. Keats shows through the urn that not only
should art reflect the human condition, but it should
also completely endear or captivate the spirit and
imagination of its viewers, directing them to beauty and
truth.
In the final five lines of the poem, Keats completes and
unifies his argument, defining the end and purpose of
art through the urn. Art, as a lasting guide to truth and
beauty, will also remain a comfort and a trustworthy
source of knowledge in a world where the unfulfilled
and unexplained often leave man otherwise perplexed.
Keats says to the urn, When old age shall this generation
waste, / Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe / Than
ours, a friend to man (46-48). The contrast present in
the first line between the passing of time that wastes
and ages and the urn that endures encompasses all
that Keats saw on the urn in the previous stanzas. The
permanently unfulfilled state of the images on the urn
mirrors the permanently unfulfilled condition of man,
and will remain a truth for generations to come when
the lives of this generation have passed. In a world of
woe that transcends all generations, the urn remains
a friend to man and a knowledgeable and trustworthy
Sylvan historian, (3) as Keats describes in the first
stanza, that comforts its viewers with its beauty and
truth. Keats personifies the urn, which breaks a silence
and speaks aloud its famous line, Beauty, is truth,
truth, beauty (49), with a tone of wisdom or counsel.
Keats response to this comment, that is all / Ye know
on earth, and all ye need to know (4950), answers the
problem of mystery present in the fourth stanza, where
he demonstrated that one cannot know everything. The
18 FEBRUARY 2015
urn, however, suggests that beauty and truth are things

that, in a world of unknowns, one has the ability to
know, especially through art.
The final lines reveal the numerous levels of ideas
at play in the poem, all of which point toward Keats
concern with the purpose of art in life. He uses a
new form of poetry to describe an old form of art,
demonstrating how they both portray and conserve
beauty and truth. He uses the urn to portray the truth of
the human condition, in all its unfulfilled struggle and
troubled passions, with a beautiful lyric that engages
the viewer and shows how the urn is a perfect example
of what art should be to its viewers. He addresses two
layers of beauty: that which is aesthetic and that which
transcends. The urn is beautiful because it depicts the
truth. In the fourth stanza, the urn engages its viewers
in a mystery, and in the final stanza, Keats broadens
this idea by suggesting mystery and ambiguity in art
forge a connection with its viewers and thus better
communicate truth and beauty as a guide in a world of
unknowns.
So many critics of this poem dislike the final two
lines because of their lack of clarity; however, Cleanthe
Brooks argument that they must be read in the context
of the entire poem bears a great deal of weight (133).
The urn says, Beauty is truth, truth, beauty because it
is a piece of art, whose purpose is to convey these ideas
in an indescribable communication with its viewers.
Read in this context, Keats line does not seem so very
different from Fyodor Dostoevskys line in The Idiot:
Beauty will save the world. As Greg Wolfe argues so
eloquently in his book, titled after Dostoevskys line, art
conveys a beauty that will guide people back to truth
when all else is obscured. Keats, as it seems from this
poem, would agree. F
Sarah Reinsel is a sophomore studying English.
IInterviews
nterviews
INTERVIEWS 19
Interview with Dr. Richard Gamble

Compiled by Devin Creed
History has come a long way since the giant ants of Herodotus. Though history has abandoned the mythic,
it can still suffer from poor interpretation and philosophy. Dr. Richard Gamble is helping students explore
different sorts of historical consciousness in a traditional Hillsdale course on The History and Philosophy
of History. The Hillsdale Forum spoke with him about the genesis of the course, Whigs, John Lukacs, and
civil religion.
Youre teaching a class on the History and Philosophy of History this spring. Could
you talk a bit about how you started teaching this class and what it covers?
I saw the class in the catalog in the course offerings
for the history department, and I was interested in the
kinds of questions that a philosophy of history class
explores. That interest goes way back in graduate school
to some of the first classes I had in my Ph.D. program
and some of the books I read in them. I wanted to share
some of those books which were so important to me.
At the time Paul Moreno was teaching it and there had
been a limited amount of student interest at the time, so
he was willing to have somebody else teach it. I taught it
pretty much experimentally with a handful of students
around a seminar table. A student at the time who was
very interested in the course talked it up for a year or so
and the next time I taught it I had maybe 30 students,
and it really took off. It still puzzles me a bit why there
is so much interest in it, because we deal with the most
abstract questions there are. I warn students that every
day we think about thinking about history. Why that
20 FEBRUARY 2015
fascinates people Im not entirely sure, but Im glad

it does. Its the kind of intricate interior question that
fascinates me, and I love watching how people in the past
have thought about the past, about how history works.
Im most interested in the train wrecks, bad philosophy
of history. Its intriguing to watch to what goes wrong
and how it goes wrong and what the consequences are of
that philosophy of history going wrong. I keep teaching
the course and it has maintained a high level of student
interest. I had thirty students last time, with twentyfive or so this coming semester. A lot of the books Ive
kept the same, some of them I dont dare take out of the
course, for they are indispensable: [Herbert] Butterfields
Whig Interpretation of History, [John] Lukacs Historical
Consciousness, Michael Oakeshott, R.G. Collingwood,
and a C.S. Lewis essay. I keep playing around with the
others. This year Im reintroducing E.H. Carrs book
What is History?, which is a materialist view of history.
Who is your favorite example of a train wreck or bad philosophy of history?

Probably George Bancroft, the most widely-read
celebrity American historian in the 19th century. He
wrote his multi-volume history of the United States
and started publishing it in the 1830s, and was still
revising it in the 1880s. Its estimated that one out of
every four households in America owned his histories.
He knew everybody, he served in the Andrew Johnson
administration as a foreign minister to Prussia, he
knew Bismarck; he had an extraordinary career. But
he imbibed a really high octane version of German
idealism, which he combined with transcendentalism
and unitarianism, and its just fascinating to read his
histories and see how he does what he does. It almost
reads like a parody of what Herbert Butterfield warns
against in the 20th century. Its so easy to show what hes
doing. My American Identity class is almost 400 years

of train wrecks, but I think it teaches something very
important. We teach good writing by giving students
examples of good writing, but also pointing out the
flaws in their own writing, logic, syntax, and grammar.
Were in the business of pointing out mistakes. I think
theres a parallel to historical thinking. You have to learn
how to see, you have to learn how to hear these flaws in
historical thinking in order to recognize the good stuff.
You learn by reading the good stuff but you also learn a
lot by reading the bad stuff and being able to recognize
it. As historians, we learn how to develop this eye by
having these errors pointed out to us. We learn how to
discern high quality historical thinking along the way.
Whos your favorite example of a historian with a good philosophy of history?

Ive learned the most from Herbert Butterfield and
John Lukacs. Lukacs has been central to how I think, to
what I aspire to accomplish, since I first read Historical
Consciousness in the late 1980s. I think I found a
copy of Historical Consciousness in a used bookstore
and didnt even realize how significant he was, didnt
realize that people I knew knew him, never imagined
that I would one day get to know him, certainly never
imagined that blurbs by him would be on the back of
one of my books and that he would review the other
one for the Los Angeles Times, its just mind boggling
to me. Hes been really formative in teaching exemplary
handling of the nuances of history and teaching me
what it means to be cautious as a historian, not to
make evidence tell you more than it can tell you, not
to push too hard on a thesis, how to deal with what
Butterfield calls the texture of the past, to guard myself
from oversimplifying things, to force them into a mold.
Lukacs is very sensitive to language, to patterns of

thought, to how fluid and complex cause and effect can
be, and I end up quoting him at least once a week in
class. He has a gift for memorable phrases. In fact, I just
quoted him on Christmas Eve, the line that something
is true but not true enough. Just to understand what
that meansa historian can tell you all true things
about an event, or a time period, or a person, but has
left something indispensable out of the story, which
changes the interpretation, changes our perception of
it. So its true, but not true enough. Its very difficult
to cultivate that ability and check myself to make sure
Im not misleading the reader in any way. Im always
daunted by the fact that when we say things and put
them into print we keep saying them. When somebody
picks up that book five or ten years from now we are still
saying that thing. Thats a little bit scary.
INTERVIEWS 21
Given the way that these ideas have affected your own writing, lets talk about the
relationship between Lukacs, Butterfield, and your first book.
The War for Righteousness was a revision of my doctoral
thesis at the University of South Carolina, which I completed in
1992. I had been assigned to read Butterfield in my first Ph.D.
graduate course in the fall of 1986, dont think I understood it.
I get more out of it each time I reread it. In writing the book I
was guided by Lukacs. I was trying to model what I was doing
off of what I read in Historical Consciousness. Nobody ever
told me to do this, nobody ever recommended that I do this. I
just decided that this is what I wanted to do. The way he sets up
a hierarchy or concentric circles, the way ideas can work out
into the culture and back again was what fascinated me. This is
very difficult to demonstrate, and Im not sure I was successful,
but I tried to imitate and model what he was doing, to see
how ideas work in a culture. At the time I didnt understand
these things the way I understand them now. I understand
more clearly now what I was hoping to do 25 years ago. I tried
to build the work using concentric circles, starting with the
way the ideas as they were taught in seminaries, in colleges,
and in universities. I then watched how those ideas were
implemented in the churches and in interdenominational
organizations. I looked at how it affected missionary activity
overseas, and finally

looked at what they
were saying about
foreign policy.
I
watched
these ideas
take
root,
watched as
they tried to
implement
them through
the course of
the war, first as
Americans trying
to come to terms with
credit: Youtube
a European war, and then
as Americans and Christians
confronting America in a world war. Then I returned to
America, trying to bring the circles back in again. I massively
reworked my dissertation in 1994, and that is more or less the
version that came out as a book in 2003.
You said you did not completely understand Lukacs and his ideas when you wrote The
War for Righteousness. How did that change when you wrote your second book, In Search
of a City on a Hill?
What I tried most consciously to experiment with
and implement in In Search of a City on a Hill was to
take Lukacs idea which he repeats many times in
Historical Consciousness that it is often more important
to know what peopled do to ideas than what ideas do to
people. I tried to watch that happen with the one phrase
city on a hill. I was able to do that over a four hundred
year period and write a micro-history, a history of a
phrase. I wanted to figure out what happens when John
Winthrop in 1630 takes the phrase you shall be as a
city on a hill out of the gospel of Matthew and puts
it into his sermon A Model of Christian Charity, and
its my conviction that those words do not mean the
same thing. Spoken by a different person, in a different
context, in a different time, and spoken for a different
purpose, they become transformed. Something happens
to those words when they are picked up and moved. In
the same way, something happens to the phrase all men
22 FEBRUARY 2015
are created equal when its lifted out of the Declaration

of Independence and put into the Gettysburg Address,
even if the author believes he is being faithful to the
original meaning. The author is a different author, the
context is a different context, the event is a different
event, the occasion is a different occasion, and the
purpose is a different purpose. The purpose of the
Continental Congress of using that language in the
Declaration is different, regardless of any discussion of
right or wrong, than the purpose in 1863 when Lincoln
quotes those words. The historian of ideas has to be
super sensitive to all those nuances. You might miss the
most significant things if you ignore those nuances. That
doesnt mean that a historian believes those words can
mean anything, that they are utterly open-ended, but it
does mean that context matters. These are real human
beings, saying or writing these things at a real moment
in time, to a real audience, and those words are going to
be used in a real way. And then if somebody else a

day or a century later uses those words, they
may be different yet again. You have
these layers and layers and layers.
Back to the example of city on
a hill, you have Jesus words
quoted in gospel of Matthew,
you have Chrysostom writing about them centuries

later, you have Calvin quoting Chrysostom, you have
John Winthrop quoting them, and then you have
Ronald Reagan quoting Winthrop quoting Jesus. These
layers build up and build up and it takes a lot of hard
work to pay attention to what;s actually going on.
At the end of the book you talk a lot about the danger of
decontextualizing phrases and then using them in the political realm.
Whats wrong with American civil religion?
Theres a problem of civil religion whether it
appears in Rousseau, or Hobbes, or Locke. Civil
religion is not a uniquely American problem. I need to
address the problem while wearing different hats: I have
concerns as a historian that we have to pay attention in
this careful way so we get the history right. Then I have a
concern as an American, because I want to get the history
right so I understand America and what it has been. I want
to understand the American experience, to understand how
America has talked about itself and whether that is healthy
or unhealthy. But then I consider my primary concern as
a Christian. America is not eternal, history is not eternal,
but Christianity is about forever, so this is a higher priority
for me, and my concern is that because of those principles
that I tried to map out earlier, I believe that when the Bible
is appropriated for purposes different from or alien to the
purposes of the church, this will change the meaning of the
Bibles words, will do damage to those words, will miseducate
people and mislead them as to what those words mean. If
you take the phrase city on a hill and lift it out of its original
context, if you transpose it from the identity of the church
and move it over to America, it doesnt survive the transfer.
My argument is that it distorts both our understanding
of the church and its mission, and America and what its
capable of doing. If we take the spiritual language of the city
on a hill it can mislead us about what the earthly or political
the mission of the church is supposed to be. We can end up
secularizing or politicizing the church without even realizing
it. In the very same moment we can end up, through the
same exchange, in spiritualizing the nation-state. The same
transaction can lower the calling of the church, trivialize its
significance, and it can exaggerate the calling of the nation
state, can over-spiritualize the calling of the nation state. As
Christians we need to be able to tell the difference; we can

affirm both as good in Gods purposes, but having distinct
purposes and callings, one eternal and one temporary, one
being spiritual and one being mundane. Thats at the very
heart of what I do, trying to sort out that confusion. One
of the things that started distressing me about a decade ago
was that I realized that criticism of civil religion was coming
almost exclusively from the political and theological left
wing. Orthodox Christians and political conservatives were
just about silent on the question of civil religion. I couldnt
stand what I was seeing happen to the Bible, Christian
theology, political rhetoric, and it seemed like conservative
Christians and conservative Americans just werent noticing.
This is what attracted me to Dr. [Darryl] Harts work. I dont
want this to sound arrogant, but were in a pretty small
group. Generally, self-described conservative Americans
tend to be supporters of civil religion because they have
come to the point that they think that if you criticize civil
religion youre criticizing America. And it is unbelievably
difficult to get people to understand that just because I dont
want America described as if it were Jesus doesnt mean that
I dont love America. You can love America as your home,
as your place, even enough to defend it with your life, but
this doesnt mean for one minute that you have to confuse
it with a member of the trinity. We seem to have lost our
ability to love our country in a normal way. America doesnt
have to be turned into something its not, it doesnt have to
be inflated or turned into an abstractionI dont know how
to love an abstraction, but I know how to love a place and
how to love people.
Devin Creed is a senior studying English and economics.
INTERVIEWS 23
INTERVIEW
WITH DR.
LEHMAN
Compiled by Wes Wright
How were arts and sciences

traditionally understood?
Hillsdale College greatly values its core, those classes that

unite us and provide an introit into the liberal arts. With
Russell Kirk we recognize the ability of the liberal arts
to order ones soul, to turn ones attention to the higher
things. Yet while we can speak of the liberal arts generally,
it is often difficult for Hillsdale students to justify their
interpretive or theoretical viewpoints. Lamda Iota Taus
lectures on literary theory and classes like The History and
Philosophy of History currently seek to remedy this issue,
and we at The Hillsdale Forum thought a discussion
of the classical division of disciplines would add to the
conversation.
We spoke with Dr. Jeffrey Lehman about the traditional
understanding of arts and sciences:
24 FEBRUARY 2015
Although the terms art and science were

used in various ways throughout Western history, one
typical way was to see them as distinct yet complementary
forms of knowledge that result from mans reasoning about
himself, the world, and God. For the ancients, an art
(Greek techne, Latin ars) was knowledge of how to make or
do something; it was knowledge that yielded a product of
some sort.
A science, on the other hand, was something that began
with self-evident principles and yielded universal knowledge
of the natures of thingswhether plants or animals, angels
or God. Some pursuits were arts and not sciences, some
sciences and not arts, some both. For example, geometry
was considered a science insofar as it began with selfevident principles and worked out the universal, necessary
implications of those principles (e.g., Proposition 1.47 of
Euclids Elements: In right-angled triangles the square on
the side subtending the right angle is equal to the squares
on the sides containing the right angle). Geometry was
considered an art insofar as it leads to knowledge of how
to make certain thingsultimately, the five perfect
solids (i.e., the tetrahedron [pyramid], octahedron, cube,
icosahedron, and dodecahedron). The construction of these
solids is the crowning achievement of Euclids Elements.
What was the traditional division puts himself in an excellent position to cultivate the
moral and intellectual virtues that free him from vice
of the sciences?
and ignorance. Thus, when we speak of liberal arts and

liberal education, the sense of liberal we have in mind
is what is conducive to liberating the mind and heart.
Toward this end, the liberal arts and liberal education
are meant to assist the diligent, well-disposed student
in his pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful.
The servile arts aim at fulfilling fundamental human
needs, for example, for food, shelter, clothing, etc.
Because the needs of the human body must be attended
to, the human race has had to develop these arts in
order to take care of these basic necessities of life.
The fine arts, by contrast, aim at producing pleasant
things, such as beautiful poetry, paintings, sculptures,
and so on. The ancients divided the good into three
basic types of goodsuseful, pleasant, and noble. The
servile arts produce useful goods, things desirable for
the sake of something else. The fine arts give us things
How would a better understanding that are pleasant in themselves, not simply for the sake
of this division help students?
of something else. To laugh, to sing, to create beautiful
By acquiring a better understanding of the division artwork: these are good for their own sake. Finally, the
and methods of the sciences, students stand to gain ancients saw the liberal arts as yielding noble goods
a firmer grasp of whatever they study while here by receiving training in the liberal arts, the student
at Hillsdale as well as anything they might study stands to grow in moral and intellectual virtue, thereby
throughout life. In the pursuit of wisdom, students ennobling his soul.
make headway by understanding how the various Do the fine arts bridge the gap
disciplines fit together and how what they are working between the liberal and the servile
on in any particular course relates to the larger aims of arts?
liberal education.
Although they may not always do so, they certainly
What are the differences between can. In fact, the line between pleasant and ennobling
the liberal, the fine, and the servile goods can at times be hard to draw or to discern. The
arts?
fine arts fit naturally with the liberal arts, being distinct
The liberal arts in particular and liberal education in yet complementary ways of enriching our minds and
general are the surest, most time-tested way to direct hearts.
students toward a life that is truly free. The liberal arts
Editor-at-Large Weston Wright is a senior studying
develop foundational skills that free an individual to speech and political economy with a minor in classical
investigate the order in things, especially in human education.
speech and in nature, while liberal education facilitates
the free pursuit of more universal knowledge that
involves historical, philosophical, and theological
inquiries. The liberal arts and liberal education are not
certain, guaranteed paths to freedom; to think so would
be to deny the very freedom this tradition of education
seeks to enliven and foster. Rather, by developing these
skills and growing in such knowledge, the one who
studies the liberal arts and engages in liberal education
Once again, different authors have divided the
sciences differently, but one prominent division is that
of Aristotle, a division handed down to the Middle
Ages by Boethius and championed by Thomas Aquinas.
Among the speculative sciences (as opposed to the
practical sciences), there are mathematics, natural
philosophy [or science], and theology. These sciences
were distinguished by their objects and by the method
used to pursue knowledge of these objects. Fundamental
to all these sciences is arrival at a knowledge of causes.
As Aristotle puts it in his Physics, men do not think
they know a thing till they have grasped the why of
it (which is to grasp its primary cause) (194b1921).
When the mind arrives at knowledge of a cause, it
comes to rest.
INTERVIEWS 25
Fountain Pens
by sean kunath
hould you use fountain pens? This may

seem like a rather straight-forward
question with an answer decidedly in the
negative, but I hope to make the redeeming
argument for this relic of a bygone era by
demonstrating its superior functionality and
formality.
In the past, when I have extolled the virtues
of the fountain pen to some one or other
person, the most common retort is: How is a fountain pen
better than a regular ballpoint, which is just the fraction
of the cost? My answer to this question falls into two
categories: utility and form.
In terms of utility, a fountain pen beats out a regular
ballpoint pen in a variety of ways. Its chief benefit is that
it exerts less strain on the hand in the course of writing.
When you use a ballpoint pen, you have to use a good deal
of pressure for the ink to mark the paper with a consistent
line. Not only that, but you have to hold it at a severe angle
to the paper in order for the ink to flow with gravity and for
the ball to interface properly with the paper. Since the ink
feeds through fountain pens using both gravity and capillary
action (and the ink is so much less viscous than ballpoint
ink), you do not need to press nearly as hard or hold the
pen nearly as upright. This shallow angle and low-pressure
allows the writer to write for longer since he is straining his
hand so much less. Furthermore, fountain pens are more
intuitive, giving you sensitive feedback from the paper so
that you can adjust your grip for smooth writing.
Fountain pens also provide the user with a greater retinue
of color options than a traditional ballpoint. At the store,
the most widely available colors are black, blue, red, and
green. If you want to find a wider array, youd have to scour
the Internet or an art store. Consider, then, Diamine Inks,
an English company that has manufactured fountain pen
ink for over 150 years and offers over a hundred different
colors for your pens. Other companies make their own inks
as well, and each companys unique recipes can result in a
single color having a plethora of shades. This abundance
of colors allows for a personal fine-tuning that is unheard
of with ballpoint pens. Furthermore, these inks extend the
usefulness of the fountain pen indefinitely. The refillable
26 FEBRUARY 2015
nature of fountain pens allows for one pen to use a variety

of colors, and if you run out of ink, you simply buy a new
bottle, whereas youd typically discard a ballpoint pen (if you
dont lose it first). This contributes to a long life with proper
maintenance.
Fountain pens also exceed ballpoints in a variety of nonutilitarian ways. For instance, ballpoints, being cheaply
and quickly made, are uniform. Fountain pens (while still
manufactured in large quantities) possess an undeniable
aesthetic that sets them apart. Furthermore, each fountain
pen can be uniquely modified for the pleasure of its specific
user, making it a much more personal item than a ballpoint.
The wide variety of body types, weights, feeds, and nibs
allows for making a very personal choice in a fountain pen
that is simply not available to someone using a ballpoint pen.
In the end, fountain pens elevate our writing to something
solemn and grand. Even a small doodle takes on a new
depth when made with a fountain pen.
However, in all fairness, it should be noted that fountain
pens do have their drawbacks. They require more upkeep
than a cheap ballpoint. The water-based ink takes longer
to dry, smears easily, and is susceptible to running if gotten
wet. A fountain pen is more delicate and prone to damage
than a ballpoint pen. Because they last much longer than
ballpoints, they tend to be more expensive. Finally, fountain
pens are not as portable as ballpoints since they leak and
stain more easily than ballpoints.
In the end, I exhort you to own at least one fountain pen. I
believe that you will be able to recognize a sizable difference
in quality and comfort from a standard ballpoint. And while
fountain pens can run into the hundreds, you can find very
affordable ones for $15 from Pilot. F
Sean Kunath is a senior studying Latin.
Satire: Careful research indicates that the

intent of the founders was pretty racist
by andy reuss
colonial correspondent
HILLSDALE COLLEGE, Kendall
Hall (Hillsdale Spectator wire)
Recent studies at Hillsdale College
have concluded that, contrary to
popular belief, the Founding was
in fact racist and sexist.
Yeah, it turns out that the
Founding Fathers kind of hated
white guys. After all, the entire
project started because some
rich W.A.S.P. was a jerk to the
colonists, said Dr. ClaremontDallas, professor of politics. The
Declaration makes some grand
gestures about Laws of Nature,
but in the end, the real beef is
with the King of Britain a white
man.
Dr. Claremont-Dallas went on
to explain that the Constitution
and the Federalist Papers remain
even better examples of rampant
racism and sexism.
What do you think a more
perfect union looked like to the
Framers? One that was singlehandedly mismanaged by an
ivory fool? No. ClaremontDallas said. The Constitution
is predicated on the notion that
when government is left in the
hands of men, it will inevitably go
wrong. If men were angels is the
thinnest veil imaginable; more
like you guys are terrible, and its
only a matter of time until you

mess everything up!
The student body was shaken
by this discovery, as it undermines
the historical understanding
of the Founding. How are we
supposed to believe in a system of
government if it isnt constructed
in order to provide white males
political advantage? a freshman
student was overheard, saying.
My faith in this country is
shaken. Im not sure what to do.
Other students have publicly
rejected the conclusion, arguing
that it is an unfair and unfounded
claim.
I suppose you think the
exclusion of explicit mentions
of race in the Declaration or
Constitution shows some sort
of apprehensiveness towards
institutionalized racism, too?
said a senior politics major who
wishes to remain nameless.
Clearly, the men and women of
the Revolutionary era would not
have fought a war if they didnt
believe white males would always
be fully capable of governing
without restraint. I have a hard
time imagining Betsy Ross
finishing that first flag without
including a little embroidered
patriarchy! at the bottom.
To
the surprise of many

on Hillsdales campus, the
announcement caused little, if
any, reaction among the greater
political audience.
SureI guess you could say
that the Founders didnt like white
guys? Im not sure that it matters,
since the government they
created worked out pretty well,
sophomore Timothy Sticknie
said. The society wasnt perfect,
but then again its been better
than just about any other. F
Class President Andy Reuss
is a senior studying politics and
English.
SATIRE 27
28 FEBRUARY 2015
Illustration by Grace Desandro

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Forum

Editor-In-Chief | Chris McCaffery

Head Copy Editor | Chelsey Schmid

Head Designer | Meg Prom

Editor-on-the-Run | Wes Wright

Like The Hillsdale

Historic Hillsdale, Home of Hillsdale College

John Keats Vision for Art

OConnor and Percys religous fiction.

Interview with Dr. Richard Gamble

Compiled by Devin Creed

Thinking about how we think about history, with

Defining the liberal arts, with

Volume III | Issue 7

The Hillsdale Forum is an independent,

All uncredited photos by Elena Creed

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

ebruary 2015s issue of The Hillsdale

short book about Flannery OConnor and

LET TER FROM THE EDITOR 3

Historic Hillsdale, Home of Hillsdale College

hen junior Forester McClatchey,

How and why students should foster

fulfilling prophecy on the part of Hillsdale natives

For their part, students throw around the term

students to not give occasion for offense. No one goes

were a lot closer than they are.

For students not from the Midwest, especially

NOW HOW TO INTERACT

in a flyover state. The risk for students, and even for

life from both the one grown up in and the carefully

manager, said hes seen the tavern become a place

by Imprimis and a desire for his children to attend

parents and students alike to encounter the shops that

Those interactions he did have with locals were mainly

upbringing in a different culture and partly because

community built around certain shared values and

He considers the question to be one of membership.

Book Review: Peculiar Crossroads:

arrell OGormans study of the similarities

who are ultimately bound toward a homeland beyond

wherein they understood their own seemingly

formative years of OConnor and Percy with an analysis in

Percy to radically [critique] both decaying Southern

are part of a new

era of fiction that

past and present .

Kirby Hartley is a senior studying English.

elievers in strict proscription in grammatical

Here, the word whoso is used in the singular, in a

completely understandable manner. Henry Churchyard

the contortions of proscribed grammar is unnecessary;

singular syntactically, they clearly refer to more

A usage with such widespread acceptance as the

John Keats Vision for Art

Keats structures the poem by introducing the urn

melancholy and troubled tone; because of the inability

leaving a heart high-sorrowful and cloyd, /

to know everything is an unavoidable

The unheard melodies of the musician indicate how the

urn, however, suggests that beauty and truth are things

Interview with Dr. Richard Gamble

fascinates people Im not entirely sure, but Im glad

Who is your favorite example of a train wreck or bad philosophy of history?