The battle for the presidency continues. Debates, speeches and think-pieces have inundated the American public after two years of campaigning and many books have been published by conservative and liberal writers.
The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, who is not especially fond of public appearances, is going around the country promoting her first book.
Ann Coulter, a modern conservative bastion in turning liberal-lies into best selling books, seems to publish a book every month.
Michael Moore and Al Franken headline the liberal agenda debating the reasonability of white men and Bush policy.
The battle for the mind may be the greatest on college campuses. Moore is traveling to college campuses saying that the Bush Administration is going to reinstate a draft if re-elected. Radio talk show host Mike Gallagher is going to meet Moore head-on at Pennsylvania State later this month since they will have rallies on the same day.
There is a place on college campuses where the battle is the most brutal and where students are the most silent about it. That place is the library and ETSU’s Sherrod Library is no different.
The battleground is on the bookshelves. Anyone going to Sherrod Library to check out opposing viewpoints would not find any. That is unless the opposing viewpoint took place 30 years ago.
A reader can find Moore’s books, Al Franken’s and Molly Ivins’s to name a few Bush-haters, but do not hold your breath. You will not find one Coulter book nor any of Bill O’ Reilly books or any of conservative black economist and cultural critic, Thomas Sowell’s most influential works in Sherrod (two of Sowell’s best works on economics only appear in electronic form).
Students can find classics in conservative thought like Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind, Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences and Edmund Burke’s Reflections
Twenty minutes up the road at the new Northeast State library, the reader will find a wide array of the newest books of the Bush-haters and supporters. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s biographies are on the shelf of the Wayne G. Basler Library at Northeast State. Two of Coulter’s newest books are there as well. Hillary Clinton’s book is new at ETSU but don’t even think about finding Dick Morris’s critique of her work.
In my search for the truth on the subject, a professor at ETSU told me that faculty members order the books for Sherrod.
When I called a librarian at Northeast, the opposite was the case. The librarians order the books for the Basler Library. But, the main difference is that the librarians at Northeast order from both sides.
Conservatives should know what Karl Marx had to say about history and economics just as liberals should understand the Christian view of Arnold Toynbee. To not order certain books violates the free trade of ideas within a university.
There are enough books in American libraries with a social-progressive slant but does that mean conservatives should work to keep them out? Of course not. Social-progressives should not keep out the newest conservative and libertarian authors from expressing their worldviews.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many scholarly books have not made it into Sherrod, like Samuel Huntington’s newest book on immigration in America. Niall Ferguson’s books on the American empire, Jane Jacobs’s newest book on the death of Western culture in the U.S., and Donald Rumsfeld’s biographer, Midge Decter, have not made it onto the shelves at ETSU.
Sadly, if a student wanted to study the neo-con conspiracy theory, he or she would not find Paul Wolfowitz’s book and would find only one book from his mentor Albert Wohlstetter. On the other hand, Sherrod has most of Leo Strauss’s works on political philosophy.
This appears to be a failing not only on those who choose not to order conservative books, but on the students who do not notice it as well.
Who can the blame the students when most could not tell the difference between Kirk Russell and Russell Kirk?
There are resources for students on the internet such as ISI.org, Yaf.org, the Washington Times Book Review, the Conservative Book Club, the Acton Institute, Claremont.org and Straussian.net. These web sites all have book listings. These sites cover every classic subject such as economics, art, history, literature and philosophy.
The Straussian site even has one of the best listings of classical political philosophers on the net. Thanks to these sites students can choose where their loyalties lie.
More importantly, they can choose their own art and shape their lives with these books.
Mark Twain said, “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.