Newt Gingrich at Liberty University

On the flipside of Bill Clinton at Michigan is Newt Gingrich at Liberty University. One school is progressive and well-respected, the other is conservative and non-accredited. One commencement speaker is a still-popular former president, the other is a forgettable and vindicative former Speaker of the House. One speech is realistic and inspiring, the other speech scares the hell outta me that there are people who think like this and are in positions of power and responsibility.

Clinton's speech addresses the unfortunate real problems in our world while giving us hints as to how we can best deal with them. Newt, on the other hand, plays to the crowd what they want to hear, that in a country where over ninety percent of its citizens believe in God, that religion is being successfully attacked from what appears to be a radical secularist agenda.

“We are told that our public schools can no longer invoke the creator, nor proclaim the natural law nor profess the God-given quality of human rights."

A public school can "invoke" (whatever that means) the creator because there is no proof of a creator nor is there proof that such a creator is the one that Grigrich wants public school to invoke. And the natural law? Is this the same natural law that claims there was no such thing as dinosaurs? Is this the natural law that refuses to recognize, through observations of nature, that species have not and do not evolve? As for the origin of human rights, if you want to believe God gave us human rights, then that's fine to believe that, but that is not a fact that should be taught in schools. (For one thing, no where in the Bible are human rights established, in fact, the God seems to violate human rights all the time).

"This anti-religious bias must end"

The anti-religious bias that Gingrich presents is a boogeyman. Secularism is not anti-religion, but it does not favor one religion over others. This is the problem that Gingrich and the Liberty University grads have. They want their religion favored over other beliefs, and they want the government to take a larger part in doing that. I am not anti-religion (though I do have biases), but I am fervently anti-religious fundamentalism, because that is the belief the only your religion and belief system matters, and that the religion that coming underattack by all leveheaded people. When Gingrich attacks anti-religious bias, he sure as hell isn't trying to defend Judaism or Islam.

Like anyone who speaks at Liberty University's commencements (re:McCain), Gingrich is a hack who is pandering to an interest group that has too much power in this country. He's not challenging the minds of the graduates with anything he said, he's only telling them what they want to hear, which I would imagine is what an "education" at Liberty University must be like.