The George W. Bush Fiasco at Tyndale: A Sad and Shameful Episode in Our History

On Tuesday, September 20, the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, was due to speak at an event organized and paid for by a Tyndale supporter as a means by which people who do not know much about Tyndale could be introduced to the mission of Tyndale.

He was to speak on the role of faith-based institutions in the world of higher education, a subject on which he has a unique perspective as the author of significant, ground-breaking policy in this area during his years in office. The speech was an opportunity for Tyndale to make its case, through a high-profile political figure, for the legitimacy of a Christian university operating in public as a recognized, accredited institution of higher education even though it is privately-funded and even though it dissents from the reigning secularism of the contemporary culture.

I would have thought that anyone supportive of Tyndale would be happy to see this dialogue beginning to occur in the heart of secular Toronto. If Tyndale is to grow and develop as a Christian institution it must secure funding and, more importantly, public recognition as a legitimate alternative to publicly-funded universities. Otherwise, it might as well go back to being a school for the preparation of clergy only. If what we want is to bring Christ into the midst of the public square and bear witness to him there, then having this kind of dialogue with the kind of people who would have attended this event is exactly what we should want to see occur.

But not everybody thought so. A small group of ideologically-driven, left-leaning, former students decided to put up a website, start a petition that accused George Bush of being a war criminal and call for the event to be canceled, Bush's speech to be censored and Tyndale to apologize for having the temerity to invite him to speak.

This led to the cancellation of the event. By whom? We don't know. Why? We don't know. Tyndale's official spokesman has gone silent and faculty and staff have been asked to keep quiet. Why? Nobody knows. What happens next? Good question.

I want to point out a few things here that ought to be taken into consideration in formulating an evaluation of this situation.

First, the tone of smug, self-righteousness, judgmental, condemnation of a fellow Christian by those who profess to be Evangelicals should be a dead give-away that this whole crusade of censorship is not a good thing. George Bush is a sinner just like you and me. He had perhaps the most difficult and complicated job in the world in 2001 and he undoubtedly made some mistakes, although he also did many fine and commendable things. Would any of us have done better in his place? It is easy to think so and easier still when you are blinded by Utopian ideology.

The angry, secular Left hates George Bush because he is not a socialist. That is the fundamental reason they attack him. Barack Obama does not get the vitriol, the hatred, the slanderous attacks, the rush to judgment that Bush gets because Obama is perceived as left-leaning. Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He didn't. Obama promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He didn't; in fact, he helped start a new one in Lybia. Obama increased the unmaned drone strikes on terrorist targets in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan that have killed many civilians. Obama ordered a Navy Seals team to enter a foreign country and kill Osama bin Laden. That got a few murmurs of disapproval from the Left for a week or two. But generally speaking when Obama does it the Left goes tsk, tsk and then shifts the blame (somehow) to George Bush. The Left does not hate war or violence; it just hates such things if the Right does them and if they can be turned into a stick with which to beat their enemies. Much of the anti-Bush hate is just partisan politics and it stinks of hypocrisy. It is distressing to see Tyndale students and alumni get caught up in the hypocrisy of the angry, secular Left.

The ambivalence of Evangelicals over certain of his policies has caused his natural allies to speak up less vociferously in his defense than they normally would do for a fellow conservative and fellow Evangelical Christian. This factor has made it possible for the Left to demonize Bush to a ridiculous extent and get away with it. He has been turned into a symbol of all that is evil; he is Capitalism, War, Violence, Exploitation, Imperialism, Racism and Sexism all rolled up into one neat package suitable for burning in effigy and spitting on.

In this frenzy of hate stoked by the Left one thing has been forgotten. George W. Bush is also a man. He is a son, a father, a husband, a sinner, a believer and a flesh and blood human being. There is more to the man than just decisions surrounding the Iraq War. He encouraged faith based organizations to get involved in social service work instead of marginalizing them. (I don't fully agree with this program but I acknowledge his good intentions.) He did much for the relief of suffering caused by AIDS in Africa. Ask any African. And he did as much as he could under the constraints of political realities to protect innocent, unborn human beings from the cruel knife of the abortionist.

I have no problem with people disagreeing with his politics; let's have the debate. I would defend George Bush on many points and criticize him on others. But to turn him into the devil incarnate, someone we should not even talk to, someone we should piously separate ourselves from like the Pharisees separated themselves from classes of ritually unclean sinners - that is not following Christ. It is unfair, nasty and unchristian. It is also no way to run a university.

A university should be a place of debate, dialogue and sharp, but civil, disagreement. It should not be a place of propaganda, censorship and angry self-righteousness. All over North America we are seeing marching, chanting protestors shutting down free speech and threatening or carrying out physical violence against Jews, conservatives, Christians, pro-lifers and others. The police have been used to silence the pro-life witness at the University of Calgary and the University of Ottawa. Ann Coulter was prevented from speaking at the University of Ottawa by an angry mob. Modern universities have speech codes, speech police and ideologically narrow boundaries in which public speech is allowed. This is one reason why we need Christian universities - to uphold the noble Western tradition of free speech and open debate.

So when the tactics of the angry, secular Left are brought into the Tyndale community it is doubly sad. Why should anybody bother to make donations to allow us to operate if we are no different from the secular universities around us? Why should students come and pay high tuition to Tyndale when they could go to York and watch angry, left-wing mobs shut down free speech for half the price?

There are a hundred campuses in Canada that would refuse to listen to George Bush. If one or two gave him him a hearing, would the sky fall? We hear a lot about diversity and tolerance but we should remember that those who talk loudest about diversity and tolerance are not talking about ideas. When it comes to the clash of ideas they are rigid, narrow and intolerant. For them diversity and tolerance apply to incidentals: the color of the skin of the person making the speech not what he is saying. Thomas Sowell and Allen West are tolerated - so long as they keep their mouths shut. The same applies to Prem Watsa.

There is an old joke about diversity as applied to the Political Science department. There is the Black Marxist professor, the woman Feminist Marxist professor, the lesbian Marxist professor and the token white male Marxist professor. There is the kind of diversity the Left admires. Heaven help us if we allowed a capitalist professor anywhere near the place.

If the students who were upset would have devoted their website to a discussion and debate over the moral issues raised by Bush's presidency and would have stuck to the issues leaving personalities and partisan politics out of it, they could have done a good service to their university and to the public. If only they had wanted dialogue instead of shutting down the event. They got what they wanted but in the process they did themselves no credit.

What I find so sad and shameful is that they instead chose to adopt the tactics of the angry Left: propaganda, censorship, shouting down and demonizing. Those methods owe more to Saul Alinsky than to the Sermon on the Mount. In important ways they are just as violent as George Bush. Politics for them is war carried on by other means and those with whom we disagree are the enemy, not merely wrong.

We saw this with the viciousness of the attacks that were launched on Tyndale's president by one of the group in particular. (I'm not linking to their stuff; I just can't bring myself to do so. You can look it up if you like.) Sarcasm, insinuation and assumptions about motives are just not fair or good.

You can believe the president of Tyndale did not handle this well but we all should remember that we lack knowledge that might put his actions in a different light - just like we lack knowledge about the situation George Bush faced, which might put his actions in a different light as well. Being president of anything is hard. Setting up a website and taking pot shots is a lot easier.