I adore the play “Our Town” by Thorton Wilder. It’s brilliant, imaginative, and heart-rending. But if the citizens of “Our Town” had a college it would be Hillsdale, and it would be quaint and precious and adorable and white and privileged and impossible.
If you look closely at Hillsdale and find yourself strangely attracted to it, don’t fight it. It’s a beautiful world that could function quite well in the kind of social and economic conditions of early 20th century small-town North-Eastern United States. Prosperous, homogeneous, safe, with an astonishing degree of social equality. The richest person in Hillsdale would have been a doctor, with a large house, and maybe a stable. And the poorest drunk in Hillsdale would still have been kindly cared for by a few of the citizens who would want to make sure that, no matter how little he deserved it, he didn’t end up too badly off, or frozen to death in a ditch some January morning. Maybe, as in the Andy Griffith Show, he’d be invited to sleep it off in jail one or two nights a week.
In this world, we all do our share. All of the able-bodied do their tasks, the women in the home, the men in the fields and offices and factories, the kids in the schools. And it works, because that man earns enough to support an entire family– all by himself! The teachers– those guys are pretty smart, so we teach our children to respect them. And we respect them. Crime? Not necessary because almost everyone is able to get by.
Except– there would be a drunk or two. But they wouldn’t be dealing whiskey or sneaking it in from Mexico. They’d steal it out of your kitchen cupboard while you were out hanging the wash. On the line.
In this era of American history, city government sometimes took over utilities to ensure that private gain did not come at the expense of public good. Boston took over their public transit; many cities built their own hydro stations. Nobody worried about whether or not it was “socialism”: it was just good common sense.
And an executive who paid himself more than 200 times what his average employee earned? Never! He’d hear no end of it from the church ladies.
It’s a wonderful world. From each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. And if you could take his group of people, all of the residents of this town, and transplant them all to a planet where they could live in isolation from the rest of the needy, greedy, violent world–and keep them from producing too many offspring–they would all live happily ever after.
And Hillsdale would happily produce all their pastors and doctors and teachers.
Lest you begin to think this is about race, consider this: any community around the world, given the prosperity and space and safety of early 19th century North-Eastern United States and Canada, would probably do as well. Given adequate space and food and supplies and wood and water and wildlife– we all would do pretty well, and we would all be relatively peaceful and humble. Look at Rosewood.
Look at Greenwood, Tulsa.
But take away all their property and force them all to take menial jobs and live in wretched poverty for a generation or two, and see what you get instead.
So what does happen when large numbers of people begin competing for a diminishing portion of these things? Conflict, crime, violence. War, of course. Hillsdale won’t produce the kind of leaders who can avoid it because their entire culture only works when there is more than enough for all of us. In conflict, Hillsdale can’t just assert that our culture is better than your culture; it must dominate.
Hillsdale is a quaint little gated-community of a college that has wonders and magic for all of its residents, and no relevance for the real world.
[whohit]Our Town: Hillsdale[/whohit]