{"id":17227,"date":"2012-05-30T20:18:45","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T00:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=17227"},"modified":"2013-08-16T00:01:06","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T04:01:06","slug":"rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/","title":{"rendered":"RH Reality Check smears Hillsdale College for pro-life sympathies"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"\"<\/a>There are few better online suppliers of premium-grade pro-abortion deceit<\/a> and hysteria<\/a> than RH Reality Check, a website whose “evidence-based<\/a>” approach to \u201creproductive & sexual health and justice\u201d can\u2019t help but elicit guffaws from those who know better.<\/p>\n

This week RH\u2019s Eleanor Bader caught my attention with an article<\/a> about a \u201cFundamentalist College Proud of [its] Close Ties to [Rush] Limbaugh.\u201d Lo and behold, it turns out she\u2019s talking about my own alma mater, Hillsdale College<\/a>, which, it seems to her is a hotbed of discriminatory anti-choice radicalism.<\/p>\n

Since I happen to possess a bit of firsthand knowledge about the place, perhaps I can help correct Ms. Bader\u2019s many misconceptions:<\/p>\n

As advertisers have scrambled to distance themselves from the ultra-conservative radio host in the aftermath of Limbaugh\u2019s vile attack on law student Sandra Fluke, those that stayed achieved BFF status from the Premiere Radio Network, the company that syndicates the 61-year-old former pill-popper\u2019s daily ramblings. Among the Limbaugh Loyalists was Hillsdale College, a 168-year-old private Christian school located in Hillsdale, Michigan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bader\u2019s characterization is incomplete. Hillsdale responded to the controversy with a statement<\/a> blasting Rush\u2019s original insult as \u201cdestructive to reasonable political discourse\u201d but welcoming his apology<\/a> and affirming that they would continue to advertise on his show because \u201che and his large audience have proved themselves friendly to the College\u2019s 168-year-old mission\u201d of educating for liberty. (And for what it\u2019s worth, the campus paper was considerably more hostile<\/a> to Limbaugh.) Unless Bader has an overall one-strike-you\u2019re-out standard for everyone whose political allies misbehave (and a quick search<\/a> indicates RH hasn\u2019t asked Barack Obama to ditch the far worse Bill Maher<\/a>), this is much ado about nothing.<\/p>\n

Also, it\u2019s accurate to call Hillsdale a \u201cChristian school\u201d only in the sense that the Judeo-Christian (and Greco-Roman) foundations of Western civilization are key components of the school\u2019s approach to teaching politics and history. But Hillsdale is not a sectarian<\/a> college with any sort of affiliation or allegiance to any church, or any kind of religious litmus tests for students.<\/p>\n

Bader next objects to Hillsdale\u2019s wholesale rejection of public money, a policy that frees the college from most government mandates. She says the school\u2019s really trying to remain \u201cfree from pesky rules against discrimination and bigotry\u201d:<\/p>\n

And what intrusive mandates they are, insuring that students are protected from discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, sex, and age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bader doesn\u2019t mention that Hillsdale actually has a better anti-discrimination record<\/a> than most liberal universities – not only is Hillsdale the nation\u2019s first college to expressly prohibit race- and sex-based discrimination in its Articles of Association<\/a>, but it enrolled blacks as early as 1844 and was the second college in the nation to admit women equally with men. Considering that Bader has to quote a website completely unrelated to Hillsdale to allege that the school has a problem with admitting \u201catheists, feminists, or members of the LGBTQ community\u201d (all of which I can confirm were present at Hillsdale), this complaint is similarly hard to swallow.<\/p>\n

Finally, we arrive at Bader\u2019s main objection – Hillsdale is too friendly with pro-lifers:<\/p>\n

Hillsdale students<\/a>\u00a0are encouraged to participate in the annual March for Life each January and are urged to join weekend pickets at an Ann Arbor Planned Parenthood. They\u2019re further primed to volunteer at local Crisis Pregnancy Centers, join the county Right to Life chapter, and link hands in a Life Chain along Highway M-99. Lastly, their classroom instruction is supplemented by a subscription to the right-wing Imprimis Magazine \u2014published monthly on campus, with articles touching a host of conservative themes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Too bad Bader doesn\u2019t mention who\u2019s doing the \u201cencouraging\u201d: not<\/em> the administration, but rather Students for Life, one of many campus clubs (and one I was a member of). Though she speaks as if she\u2019s quoting some official school propaganda pushing these activities, what she\u2019s really linked is merely SFL\u2019s profile on the college website\u2019s Clubs list<\/a> (other Hillsdale clubs, by the way, include College Democrats<\/a> and the Fairfield Society<\/a>, the latter of which is a discussion forum which, while not specifically liberal, is known for giving a platform to a range of perspectives falling outside what\u2019s commonly understood as the \u201cReligious Right\u201d).<\/p>\n

(Oh, and Imprimis<\/a><\/em> isn\u2019t a classroom supplement; it\u2019s a newsletter meant to share speeches from campus events with those beyond<\/em> the campus.)<\/p>\n

I would chide Eleanor Bader for lousy fact-checking, but that would imply that accuracy was what she was going for in the first place. The truth is that she simply can\u2019t stand the fact that there remain pockets of academia where students aren\u2019t taught to worship at the altar of abortionism, where the next generation is told that there are higher goods to which we should aspire<\/a> – liberty, virtue, reason, responsibility – than unconditional sexual gratification.<\/p>\n

Pro-choicers want to reach young people at their most impressionable, when their own propaganda can take root without competition. But by instilling in students better analytical skills and more enduring values, Hillsdale College inoculates them against such indoctrination – and stands as one of several bulwarks against the true fundamentalism of the secular left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s how Hillsdale really<\/em> works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":17302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRH Reality Check smears Hillsdale College for pro-life sympathies - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"RH Reality Check smears Hillsdale College for pro-life sympathies - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here's how Hillsdale really works.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-31T00:18:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-08-16T04:01:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Hillsdale.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"332\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Calvin Freiburger\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/6eb2bf94c8064b71953ba137bf413c4d\"},\"headline\":\"RH Reality Check smears Hillsdale College for pro-life sympathies\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-31T00:18:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-08-16T04:01:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/\"},\"wordCount\":892,\"commentCount\":10,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Media\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rh-reality-check-smears-hillsdale-college-for-pro-life-sympathies\/\",\"name\":\"RH Reality Check smears Hillsdale College for pro-life sympathies - 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Calvin is an editor and administrator for TheFederalistPapers.org, and his work has appeared on NewsRealBlog.com, PatriotUpdate.com, LifeNews.com, LifeSiteNews.com, RightWisconsin.com, AmericanThinker.com, Stream.org, AmericanClarion.org, and more. Please check out his official website, ConservativeStandards.com. 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Calvin is an editor and administrator for TheFederalistPapers.org, and his work has appeared on NewsRealBlog.com, PatriotUpdate.com, LifeNews.com, LifeSiteNews.com, RightWisconsin.com, AmericanThinker.com, Stream.org, AmericanClarion.org, and more. Please check out his official website, ConservativeStandards.com. 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