When "All Views Are Welcomed" Meets Real World Outcomes

 

When “All Views Are Welcome” Meets the Real World

In 2018, I wrote my first long-form blog post and a lecture outline addressing media bias, cultural contempt for rural America, and the narrowing range of acceptable viewpoints in higher education. The writing was raw, personal, and direct. I believed—perhaps naïvely—that if I explained who I was, how I lived, worked, failed, and succeeded, understanding would follow.

I shared that work with leaders at colleges and universities, including the president of William & Mary. I was not invited to speak.

Eight years later, I understand the moment more clearly—not because my views have softened, but because experience has sharpened them.

For transparency and historical record, the original 2018 piece remains available here, unchanged:
👉 Original essay (2018):
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1303156725583394267/7866210882328568973

What follows is not a correction of that work, nor an apology for it. It is an update—written with the benefit of time, restraint, and a clearer understanding of how institutions actually respond to dissent.

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What I Believed Then

In 2018, I believed that higher education still functioned primarily as a forum for inquiry. I believed that universities, when presented with a thoughtful challenge to prevailing narratives, would respond with curiosity—even disagreement—rather than avoidance. I believed that “diversity of viewpoints” meant what it said.

I believed that if I framed conservative, rural, and small-business perspectives clearly—without shouting, without caricature—they would be treated as legitimate contributions to the conversation.

That belief was sincere. It was also incomplete.

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What I Understand Now

The issue was never clarity.

The issue was courage.

Institutions do not struggle to understand conservative arguments. They struggle to platform them. Not because the arguments are incoherent or hateful, but because they introduce risk—social, reputational, and administrative.

Universities today are not neutral arenas of debate. They are risk-managed organizations. Every speaker is filtered not just for accuracy, but for predictability. The question is no longer “Is this argument defensible?” but “Will this argument create discomfort we cannot control?”

This is why institutions often say they value a “range of views,” while quietly limiting which views are granted a microphone. Diversity is welcomed—so long as it arrives already domesticated.

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The Chilling Effect Is Real

A statistic I referenced years ago has only grown more troubling: a majority of college students report being afraid to voice disagreement with their professors. That fear is not irrational. Students are acutely aware that grades, recommendations, and opportunities depend on alignment—or at least silence.

This is not how intellectual confidence is built.

A classroom where students fear asking the wrong question is not a classroom producing thinkers. It is producing performers.

Socrates warned us about this long ago. The unexamined life, he argued, is not worth living—not because answers are dangerous, but because unasked questions are.

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Rural and Conservative Voices Are Not “Exotic”

One of the most persistent misconceptions I tried to address in 2018—and still see today—is the idea that rural and conservative Americans represent some fringe or pathological subset of the population.

They do not.

They are small business owners, tradesmen, engineers, technicians, farmers, and operators. They run systems, build infrastructure, and maintain the physical realities upon which modern life depends—often far from the spotlight of cultural approval.

They tend to value:

• Self-reliance over performative grievance

• Accountability over abstraction

• Delayed gratification over entitlement

These are not extremist values. They are foundational ones.

Yet they are frequently depicted in media and entertainment as backward, ignorant, or morally suspect. That caricature persists not because it is accurate, but because it is useful. It simplifies complex social divides into moral hierarchies—and hierarchies are easy to manage.

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Why I Was Not Invited

With hindsight, the reason I was not invited to speak is straightforward.

I was not offering a contained critique.
I was offering examination.

I was not asking permission to exist within the framework.
I was questioning the framework itself.

Institutions can tolerate dissent that stays inside the fence. They struggle with dissent that asks who built the fence—and why.

That is not a personal grievance. It is an institutional reality.

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What Has Not Changed

What has not changed—despite the passage of years—is my belief that education should form independent thinkers, not compliant ones.

Knowledge is not the same as credentialing.
Education is not the same as indoctrination.
And disagreement is not violence.

If universities truly wish to prepare students for a pluralistic society, they must allow students to encounter serious disagreement in controlled, respectful settings—not outsource that encounter to social media, where it arrives distorted and weaponized.

Shielding students from ideas does not make them safer. It makes them brittle.

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A Standing Invitation

I no longer ask whether colleges are willing to hear these arguments. That question has largely been answered.

Instead, I leave a standing invitation—for any institution, faculty member, or student willing to engage in good-faith examination rather than performance.

Not to provoke.
Not to convert.
But to ask the kinds of questions that education once promised to ask.

The original 2018 essay remains as a record of what was offered then. This essay stands as a record of what has been learned since.

The door remains open.

Whether institutions choose to walk through it is no longer my concern.

When Grace Ends and Force Begins Is Not a Personal Choice

 When Grace Ends and Force Begins Is Not a Personal Choice

There is a quiet confusion running through American life, and it shows up everywhere — in politics, policing, churches, protests, and even the way neighbors now look at one another. We argue loudly about tactics and personalities, but underneath it all is a deeper fracture: we no longer agree on who decides when restraint ends and force becomes justified.

That decision has slipped from society into the hands of individuals. And history tells us that is always where order begins to fail.

Every civilization, whether it admits it or not, lives on a moral spectrum. At one extreme is raw passion — rage, vengeance, tribal fury, the intoxicating certainty that one’s anger is righteous. At the other is vice — cruelty, domination, indifference to human dignity. Virtue has always lived in the middle, defined not by softness, but by restraint, proportionality, and self-command.

Grace is what allows a person to remain there.

Grace does not erase judgment. It does not excuse evil or blur moral clarity. Evil remains evil regardless of how much grace one extends toward it. But grace governs the interior life. It answers a single, difficult question: What do I allow another man’s wrongdoing to do to me?

Without grace, outrage metastasizes. Hatred hardens. Passion pulls people toward extremes, convincing them that their emotional state authorizes action. That is how mobs are born — not from wickedness alone, but from unrestrained certainty.

Yet grace was never meant to govern society. It was meant to govern the soul.

Force is different. Force must be external, bounded, slow, and accountable. The moment individuals decide for themselves when grace ends and force begins, justice collapses into personal grievance. Fear becomes permission. Anger becomes authority. Civilization unravels not because people stop believing in morality, but because they begin believing only in their own.

This is why societies create law.

Law is not an expression of compassion. It is an act of moral delegation. It exists to answer, in advance and in public, the most dangerous question humans face: When is force justified? By answering that question collectively, society removes the burden of violent judgment from individual hands. It allows people to remain humane without becoming helpless.

When law weakens or becomes selective, the consequences are predictable. Individuals begin to self-authorize. Mobs form. Intimidation replaces persuasion. Exposure becomes punishment. Authority, sensing the loss of legitimacy, hardens and retreats behind anonymity. Masks appear — first among the crowd, then among those tasked with restoring order.

A society that tolerates mob coercion while condemning institutional restraint is not defending liberty. It is rewarding passion and punishing order. The center cannot hold when restraint is treated as weakness and outrage as virtue.

This is not a new insight. Scripture understood it long before modern politics forgot it. Christ warned against a people who require signs and wonders — spectacle — before they will believe. James, the most uncomfortable book in the New Testament and the most avoided in modern preaching, presses the issue further. He does not deny grace. He insists that grace produces discipline. “Be slow to anger,” he writes — not because anger is always wrong, but because uncontrolled anger cannot produce justice.

Grace, properly understood, is not permissiveness. It is self-governance.

And self-governance is what makes social order possible without tyranny.

The modern inversion is subtle but deadly. Grace is politicized and externalized, while force is privatized and internalized. Individuals claim the right to decide when violence is justified. Society hesitates to enforce shared standards. Passion masquerades as conscience. The result is not mercy. It is fragmentation.

A society that refuses to enforce its laws does not become compassionate. It becomes cruel, because it forces every citizen to decide for themselves when restraint ends and force begins — a burden no sane civilization should place on its people.

Grace belongs to the person. Law belongs to the people.

Grace exists to keep individuals from becoming monsters. Law exists so individuals do not have to become judges.

If we want fewer masks, fewer mobs, less rage, and more peace, the answer is not louder outrage or softer enforcement. It is a return to moral architecture — where individuals practice grace, and society practices justice.

That balance is not weakness.

It is civilization.

How Long Do Republics Last? America May Be Finding Out

 

How Long Do Republics Last? America May Be Finding Out

America’s Founders were not naïve. They did not believe democracy was inherently good, nor that people were naturally wise. In fact, they feared the opposite. That is why they gave us not a pure democracy, but a constitutional republic—layered, restrained, slow, and deliberately resistant to mob rule.

Measured honestly, it worked remarkably well.

From the ratification of the Constitution through the mid-20th century—nearly 180 years—the American experiment held together through civil war, industrial upheaval, immigration waves, and global conflict. That is an extraordinary run by historical standards. Most republics fracture far sooner.

But something changed in the 1960s, and we have been living on institutional credit ever since.

The shift was not merely political. It was cultural and philosophical. Rights began to detach from duties. Outcomes were elevated above process. Courts and administrative agencies increasingly replaced legislatures. Moral urgency became a justification for bypassing restraint. Law stopped being a framework for coexistence and became an instrument for signaling virtue and punishing dissent.

None of this happened overnight, and much of it arose from real injustices that demanded correction. But the logic quietly changed. The republic was no longer to be reformed carefully—it was to be fixed, quickly, by those convinced they knew better.

That is always a dangerous moment in the life of a republic.

The Founders assumed something they could not enforce by parchment alone: a shared civic culture that valued restraint as much as justice. Once that culture erodes, the structure begins to strain. The brakes still exist, but fewer people remember why they matter—or why they should tolerate losing.

Today, the warning signs are not subtle. Politics is increasingly moralized and existential. Geographic and cultural divisions deepen, with entire regions feeling permanently outvoted and dismissed. Administrative governance expands while democratic consent weakens. Law is treated less as a neutral process and more as a weapon to achieve preferred outcomes.

History tells us what comes next, though not always in dramatic collapse. Republics rarely die all at once. They hollow out. They decentralize. They harden. They reconfigure into something narrower, less tolerant, more brittle.

Rome did not “fall” in a year. It transformed over generations.

So how long does America have?

Not tomorrow. Probably not even in the next decade. The nation’s economic inertia, federal structure, and sheer scale buy time. But the form of government the Founders designed—the balance of liberty, restraint, and mutual tolerance—appears increasingly fragile.

A sober estimate would suggest that within the next 25 to 40 years, America faces either a significant constitutional reconfiguration or a soft decentralization driven by cultural fracture. Within a century, the original republic may exist more as a memory than a lived reality.

This is not pessimism. It is pattern recognition.

Republics do not fail because people talk about decline. They fail because people forget why limits exist in the first place. They fail when passion overwhelms process, when majorities forget they can become mobs, and when power is pursued without humility.

The fact that many Americans are beginning to ask these questions—without hysteria, without hatred—is not a sign of decay. It is a sign of awareness.

Whether that awareness arrives in time remains the open question of our age.

Faith, Action, and the Uneasy Place of James

Faith, Action, and the Uneasy Place of James

I question the doctrine of faith alone as it is commonly taught.

If the Bible is, as my Lutheran pastors have consistently taught, the Word of God, then all of Scripture must be taken seriously, not selectively. Yet in both modern practice and historical theology, the Book of James occupies an uneasy place—affirmed in words, but rarely engaged in action.

Pastors insist James is not ignored. Yet in over thirty years of attendance within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, I cannot recall a single sermon or sustained teaching centered on it. At some point, lived experience matters. When a text is consistently absent from formation, its influence fades regardless of official statements.

This matters because James directly challenges a shallow understanding of faith. It does not deny faith; it tests whether faith exists at all.

James asks a simple question: If belief produces no action, what kind of belief is it?
His conclusion is equally simple: Faith without works is dead.

Historically, Martin Luther struggled with this text, famously calling James an “epistle of straw.” While Luther did not remove James from the canon, his discomfort reveals a genuine theological tension—particularly in light of his emphasis on justification by faith articulated in Romans. That tension was never fully resolved; instead, it was often managed by prioritization.

That prioritization has consequences.

James does not argue that works earn salvation. He argues that works reveal faith. Belief that produces no outward action is indistinguishable from belief that exists only in words. Even demons, James notes, believe—and tremble.

This is not a contradiction of faith. It is a clarification of it.

The Christian Church has wrestled with such tensions since its earliest centuries. Efforts at unity—such as the Council of Nicaea—were not born of harmony, but of deep disagreement. Political authority sought theological coherence for the sake of stability, yet division persisted. Over time, those divisions hardened into institutions, dogmas, and eventually wars—Catholic and Protestant killing one another over differing interpretations of the same Christ.

What is striking is not disagreement itself, but how often disagreement gives way to dismissal.

I recall asking a question of my pastor—openly, during a congregational setting. The question was straightforward: If the Bible is, as we are consistently taught, the Word of God, why is the Book of James never taught?

The response was not theological. It was not pastoral. It was not even dismissive in tone—only in substance.

“Reed, you think too much,” he said, and then moved on.

The moment passed quickly, but the lesson was clear. The issue was not the question itself, but the act of questioning. Inquiry was treated not as a pursuit of understanding, but as a disruption of order.

That response illustrates a broader problem. When institutions prioritize harmony over truth, questions become liabilities. Yet Christianity was never built on the absence of tension. It was built on wrestling—Scripture with Scripture, conscience with doctrine, faith with lived reality.

James unsettles because it refuses abstraction. It insists that belief must become visible. And visibility is inconvenient.

If you see someone hungry and wish them well without feeding them, James asks, what good is that?
Faith expressed only in speech is not faith completed—it is faith unfinished.

This is why action matters.

Not activism.
Not performance.
Simply presence.

Leave the woman alone.
Go kneel beside her.
Offer companionship without judgment or spectacle.

That, James would say, is faith made visible.

Virginia's All In: School funding questions asked and go unanswered.

 

The Daily Press wrote an opinion today. Pandemic funds were used in 2024 to promote Glen Youngkins's All-In approach to helping students catch up. The Daily Press fails to peel back the onion if it were as to the real causes of student achievement decline, and I address that in the last few sentences of my opinion. The hard questions were not discussed in the opinion, and I suspect it is because Virginia legislation may have or may not have earmarked funds for the same program in 2025. Federal funds may have needed to be earmarked for 2025 to implement the same programs as in 2024. The Daily Press now seems to be asking for volunteers without calling out the legislatures who failed to fund the program in 2025. The question is why? Is the Daily Press unwilling to dig deeper knowing it was the Democrats in legislation that did not fund 2025? I would like to know the answer please. 

Al con, 

It's a lovely article and opinion. However, there are many concerns, and of course, the Editors should have mentioned an essential piece of information. The Editors wrote, "School Districts should take advantage of the All-In programs when the next academic year starts." The (All-In) funds from 2024 are all but spent as detailed, in your opinion. Did the Democrats, who control the legislation in Richmond, include money in the 2025 educational funding for All-In practices such as tutoring, absenteeism, and literacy? Are the Daily Press editors now asking for volunteers to keep this program alive? Are you asking teachers who are overworked and need more pay to volunteer now? Are you asking teachers to produce the miracle of teaching two grades in one year to help kids when, in some cases, they don't even show up for school? Please review and tell us if the State Legislature has earmarked money for the All-In in 2025. You could ask the convicted felon in Richmond for his take. When will the Daily Press staff step up and be literacy volunteers? Where is the Daily Presses program to help others, or are you here to point fingers? Then, of course, one should be mindful of the parent's responsibility to ensure their children get the extra help. Someone has to provide a place to live. Someone has to give a good breakfast. Someone has to make sure the child goes to school. Someone has to make sure homework is done. Someone must ensure the child takes their education seriously and listens to the teachers. With quality parental involvement and funds provided, All In will succeed. With quality parental involvement, the whole system can succeed.

The war on poverty and how to climb out of this hole created.

 

Ms. Tingley, a retired school superintendent and college professor, wrote a rebuttal to the war on poverty in the Williamsburg Gazette on 6-1-2024. She attacked with a typical liberal attack of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is hard." She is right. It is hard without some skills you can offer for employment besides flipping a hamburger. The truth is some could not flip a hamburger if they wanted to or cook one to the proper degree as needed for a healthy meal. Urbanization is one of the direct causes of this phenomenon and, of course. Some high schoolers don't know the difference between a straight-blade screwdriver and a Phillips. How can they survive with little education? I offer my ideas on the war on poverty through the leanse of Been There Done That. We have forgotten how we got here through high school shops, future Farmers of America, and community skill centers in every town.

Ms. Tingley is correct when she writes concerning the war on poverty. The war on poverty has failed due to today's partisan politics. We seem to keep doing the same things to prevent poverty and expecting different results, and that is a form of madness. Ms. Tinsley writes, "We don't all get to start at the same starting line."  All are 100% true. We should acknowledge the luck of the draw and the family we are born into; not one of them is the same nor provides the same outcome and opportunities. Ms Tingley writes about how "life is hard." Well, who said life was supposed to be easy? Life is hard. for all of us. Yes, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is hard. Who said it was easy? For a child in poverty, the best chance of breaking the cycle is the parent's love of education and realizing that education is the most important and best way out of poverty. Someone has to be there to tell the child to go to bed. Someone has to say to the child to do their homework. Someone has to teach the child to respect and mind the teachers. Someone has to remind the child that through hard work, rewards are plenty. Someone has to put food on the table. Someone has to give their life and be willing to go without and give the child a chance. A sacrifice must be made. Without the sacrifice of the child born of your own flesh and blood, the child will follow the parent into poverty as, indeed, the sheep follow each other over the cliff when the wolf attacks. 

Through our love of our fellow man, we have created unintentional consequences concerning human life where the survival of the fittest, a natural law of living on this rock, has been compromised. To end poverty is relatively simple. Urbanization of our communities has left many without the skills to survive when we give without asking for anything in return. The idea of everyone getting a college education (Obama) was an unrealistic vision and a political lie for votes.  

I grew up poor, leaving a broken family unit in a pickup truck, bag of clothes, and tent at age 20. I relied on my rural skills of hunting and gathering food right there in front of me. I had the skills to survive. My trade work at that age came from my time working rural farm jobs as a young adult, and of course, I was an accomplished welder at the age of 14; my time in Future Farmers of America and Shop in my high school years afforded me the skills needed to survive and have never asked the government for one darn dime. Today, I am a millionaire who is still living off those same skill sets. I was determined to put myself through night school college. To end the war on poverty, we must return to our rural roots; shop class reintroduced at the middle school level of k-12 will go a long way to defeating this unnecessary enemy created by our love of our fellow humans. 

Mom is trying to get us food

Mohammed Ugbede Adaji posted a picture. He asked, what does the picture mean? Many responded. 

Mohammed is a Facebook friend, and I enjoy our conversations. We don't get mad, we don't threaten, we don't spew unwise words over differences of opinions. Mohammed is from Nigeria, and I have found the people I interacted with educated, wise, and wonderful. I am thankful to be allowed to be a part of his world. I have realized that social media ills and hate are an American problem. America has a real problem with division, and one has to wonder if this divide is intentional, created by the media and politicians to harness power for themselves. 

It's a very touching photo with some vital lessons, wrote Benny Peters Adaji.

1. "Both are families, and irrespective of what happens to any of them, the children will be motherless. So, the first thing is that personal survival is vital. You need to be alive to do what you need to do. 

2. Your being alive comes at what cost? Who suffers at the other end of your survival? So, in life, it's vital that you think of others too. 

3. In life, value comes first. If one must survive, it must be the one with higher value, and you will agree with me that fish are made to be food for humans, not the other way around."

I was asked to opine.

It's a challenging picture to reflect upon. I had read others' points of view and thought for a long time before responding. Everyone who has responded shows a warm heart and deep thinking. I will share another view that I may not like. To think, one must have two people in one's head to weigh the pros and cons.

Life is hard. We toil at our work, some of us in miserable conditions, some as slaves. We humans suffer greatly while riding this rock. In the end, we have but a chance to meet death with a smile and move on into eternity. Life isn't fair or unfair; it's a bit more complex. A blend of circumstances, choices, and luck. Some things may seem unfair, while others may feel just. It's all about it's personal perspective.

To the picture: If a shark comes along and eats the fish, Mom, and her babies to survive, do we accept that as nature's survival? Nature operates on principles of survival of the fittest, adaptation, and natural selection. It's about organisms evolving traits that help them thrive in their environment and pass those traits on to future generations. It's not about fairness but rather efficiency and effectiveness in adapting to the challenges of existence.

In this case, Fish Mom gives her life to feed a family of humans through natural selection. However, will the fish children learn what a hook is and be aware of it? No, the answer is no; they will bite the same hook in a matter of minutes. Humans are like that.

Humans see obvious danger; we watch people die in wars, and we see the history of evil, yet we continue to create wars and live in sin even though we have watched others perish needlessly. As humans, we never really progress in our human nature. We see the fish bite the hook, and like the fish, we still bite the same hook, not really learning from history. We are but sheep, following the sheep leader over the cliff. It is then the reason why we need better sight. Only God can provide that sight through his teachings, allowing free will. Evil is the absence of God in our lives. With God, we live in the green meadow, not at the bottom of a cliff.