Why They Hate Education

JD Vance (Yale Law ‘13), has called university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Viktor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination” of universities. Vance laid it all out on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on May 19, 2024:

“Universities are controlled by left-wing foundations. They’re not controlled by the American taxpayer, and yet the American taxpayer is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to these universities every single year.”

I’m not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orban has ever done [but] I do think that he’s made some smart decisions there that we could learn from.

His way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”

Yet what, exactly, constitutes a “conservative idea?” That dictatorship is preferable to democracy? That white Christian nationalism is better than tolerance and openness? That social Darwinism is superior to human decency?

Why? Because the greatest obstacle to dictatorship is an educated populace. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.