Why Trump attacks liberal education

Liberalism is a political and social philosophy that promotes democracy, freedom, civil liberties and limited government intervention. On the other hand, the goal of Christian nationalism is to restrict freedom and civil liberties through government intervention. And so, Christian nationalism is fundamentally opposed to liberalism. But, it is liberalism’s freedoms that made America a great nation. Restricting freedom diminishes us. 

Liberal education provides a broad understanding of the sciences and humanities, and emphasizes critical thinking. And it instills the values and skills needed to meet life’s challenges and enable people to contribute to a modern, complex, diverse society. From its founding, knowledge has been key to America’s success.

The mission of both science and universities is to search for truth. Their focus is on facts. Religion relies on faith, a belief that something is true in the absence of facts and physical evidence. When facts conflict with religious belief, as in the case of evolution and the story of creation, religions must either reconcile faith with truth or deny truth. Because facts don’t change, truth deniers perceive facts as the enemy. This is the basic reason that Christian fundamentalists, who dominate the Trump administration, have declared war on our universities.  

JD Vance further explained in 2021, when he told the National Conservatism Conference that, “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country” and that to “rebuild the nation along the lines of white Christian nationalism, the universities must be destroyed ... the professors are the enemy.” 

Vance grew up in poverty in Appalachia. Raised by his grandmother, he came from a broken family and a drug-addicted mother. A bright student, he received financial aid to attend the University of Ohio. He then went on to earn a law degree from Yale. While there, his education was financed by student aid grants and a small student loan. What is it that made him so mad that he bites the hands that fed him? 

He is a religious extremist who wants a white Christian nationalist country. That idea must be rejected just as it was by the founders of our nation. Their goal was freedom of the people, which they knew was incompatible with any theocracy. 

Trump, always the opportunist, supported the Christian nationalist Project 2025, and they elected him. He recognized this diabolical scheme was unpopular and had no qualms about denying any knowledge of it while campaigning. In his words, “I haven’t read it … I’m not going to read it.” And yet, he is enacting it, following it in lockstep to dismantle government agencies; attack universities; end diversity, equity and inclusion policies; shift FEMA costs to the states; freeze federal assistance; target National Public Radio; and more.

Kevin Roberts, head of The National Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, revealed its objective when he said in July 2024, “[this] second American Revolution” would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” If Trump, Roberts and the Christian right achieve that objective, it will be the ruin of everything that has made America great and for which the first patriots shed their blood in the Revolutionary War.

It is up to today’s patriots to defend America against this misguided rebellion by the radical right who want to destroy what made America the greatest nation in history: liberalism, civil liberty and democracy. Republican radicals take pleasure in denigrating liberals and liberalism, but they are denigrating America’s heritage.

Rather than shying away when the far right spews its criticisms, Democrats should proudly defend liberalism. If Democrats cannot defend America, who will? In this age when fiction is presented as fact and our government is staged as reality TV, nothing is more important.

And we must protect and defend liberal education. Our universities are the safeguard of truth, facts and knowledge. The objective of the right’s attack on our educational system is an ignorant populace unable to think for themselves or distinguish truth from deception. That populace would be malleable and receptive to a totalitarian government. America becoming a modern-day Nazi Germany or Communist Russia is an ending too sad to contemplate.

– Bob Topper, syndicated by PeaceVoice