Wednesday, February 29, 2012  It's Not Free -- It's Expensive
Rick Santorum got himself some attention the other day when he
accused President Obama of being a snob for thinking everybody
should get a college education; like my mother said, some people
will do anything to get attention. Oh, Santorum got raked over
the coals for that! (According to the smart folks at RawStory,
though, he got a "round of applauds [sic]" from his Tea Party
audience.) Santorum had to do some damage control again,
explaining that he meant that college indoctrinates students and
changes their ideas.  I don't think Obama's a snob, and I do
think that Santorum is a dangerous, stupid fanatic. But I
couldn't help noticing, first, that there was some truth in his
complaint, and second, that there was nothing new about it. The
Right has been complaining that academia is too far left for a
long time. It goes back at least to William F. Buckley Jr.'s God
and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom," which
was originally publis