I guarantee that the students and instructors will be gobsmacked over her intelligence and knowledge.
I guest lectured in about a dozen UK universities and in my lectures there was always some US student studying abroad for a semester of two. Always, that student was unprepared and unable to defend the greatness of America and were beat into submission, assuming all the fasionably anti-American elitist snobbery of the UK “intelligentsia.”
I, on the other hand, while not brilliant was an unapologetic American, proud of the country and was lucky to have been educated to defend America and what is stands for and has done to advance civilization and freedom.
I think she will be a welcome presence in her classes/lectures and she will be doing the educating. . .good for her.
I guarantee that the students and instructors will be gobsmacked over her intelligence and knowledge.“This fall, she’ll be studying in England for 6 months.”
I guest lectured in about a dozen UK universities and in my lectures there was always some US student studying abroad for a semester of two. Always, that student was unprepared and unable to defend the greatness of America and were beat into submission, assuming all the fasionably anti-American elitist snobbery of the UK “intelligentsia.”
I, on the other hand, while not brilliant was an unapologetic American, proud of the country and was lucky to have been educated to defend America and what is stands for and has done to advance civilization and freedom.
I think she will be a welcome presence in her classes/lectures and she will be doing the educating. . .good for her.
Your comment puts me in mind of this old thread which starts out,Greetings all. I am a politics student at Cambridge University (UK) and I am currently investigating American conservatism. As this seems to be a very well used and articulate forum, I was hoping that you would be willing to discuss your political beliefs. As you may be aware, much of Europe operates with a very different set of assumptions about the world to those in evidence here. Without wishing to offend anybody here, would you mind answering a few questions?This elicited a response from me which included
It is sometimes noted that Americans have a need to affirm the superiority of America, whereas the same might not be true of the typical country whose name you might arbitrarily select from an Atlas. I suspect that that is true, for the simple reason that America was purpose-built to be an exemplar, and consequently America must either excel or fail.The questioning Brit seemed taken by that point about “America as exemplar.” But in what way is America an exemplar? I put it to you that the American Constitution is an exemplar of two related things:The mission statement of the Federal Government is the preamble to the Constitution. But a true mission statement is a bumper sticker, and in that spirit the mission statement is
- belief in freedom, and
- belief in progress.
“to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” But a belief in liberty is a belief in progress, in the sense that liberty empowers change - and change which doesn’t produce progress is pretty certain to produce regress. Indeed, the word “progress” occurs in the Constitution. Precisely once, in Section 8 of Article 1:
The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .You can, no doubt, believe in progress, in a pie-in-the-sky sort of way, without believing in liberty. But you cannot believe in liberty without believing in progress. The question which the Framers of the Constitution submitted to history was whether liberty would lead to progress. And this question is still being debated. There is plenty of evidence on which to base your answer to this question. On the positive side, in addition to the “voting with your feet” argument is the fact that an American secretary today would have to think long and hard about changing circumstances with Queen Victoria (1820-1900, approximately) because of all the "progress of science and useful arts” just since 1900. Plastics. Electric power and electric appliances, lights, and tools. Central heat. Refrigeration and air conditioning. Gasoline and automobiles, aircraft and affordable transport to/from anywhere in the inhabited world, x-rays and MRIs and CAT scans, and medicines unknown back then. TV, radio, computers, telephones.I will leave the negative side to others, noting that IMHO they will boil down to cynicism.
The primary problem in attempting to defend American Conservatism lies in the fact that it is hard to do in Newspeak - and that is what we are trying to do. From the moment you think of yourself as “conservative” you are thinking uphill. There aren’t any conservatives in America - not in the sense in which people hear the word. As I outlined above, the Constitution is based on the premise that liberty would produce progress. People condemn conservatism. If you want to market a product, the first thing you do is to promote the idea that it is new. Your opponent, at least in America, will claim to be “progressive” - while opposing the freedom to try things which may produce progress of by and for the American people. Your opponent will claim to be “liberal” - while opposing liberty.