Editorials

We take it back

Switch her to the neutral column

It was just Tuesday, in an editorial about the Ebola Scare that has rattled Harrison's civic "leaders," that we listed North Arkansas College as among the various local institutions that had backed out of playing host to a group of distinguished visitors from West Africa.

But now the school's president, Jackie Elliott, says the college hadn't backed out at all. "We certainly respect the overall decision to postpone the visit," she explained in a press release. "However, Northark did not contribute to the discussion to postpone."

Oops. Our mistake, and apparently the mayor's, too, for he listed the college among those organizations who'd disinvited the visitors--along with the local hospital and school district. We had no reason not to believe him; he's a good man and he's been a source of reason, calm and real leadership in this little fit of hysteria that has overtaken a good town. Maybe he took Northark's silence for consent when others were backing out of the visit. Anyway, our apologies.

When a town has trouble, it tends to break into three groups: those who actively aid and abet the evil afoot; those (like the mayor) who have the courage and conscience to speak out against it; and a third section of the public, often the largest, who when faced with a moral challenge mainly want to dodge it. And just hope the crisis will go away without their doing anything to meet it.

So we will now move North Arkansas College and its president from the aid-and-abetters column to the moral neuters. Those are the types in any community who are dedicated only to staying neutral between right and wrong. ("We certainly respect the overall decision to postpone the visit. However, Northark did not contribute to the discussion to postpone.") Not that Northark's president spoke out against it, either. She just went along quietly.

It's a familiar type--the Good German, the accomplice who keeps his mouth shut and just plays along. ("I only work here.") We know the sort well, having watched them in (non)action for years.

And to think, this comes from an "educator"--someone who's undertaken to mold the character of the next generation, whether she's aware of it or not. It's enough to make an observer wonder if colleges have their students read Tocqueville or Burke or even our own Founding Fathers any more. ("These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country . . . ."--Thomas Paine, The Crisis.)

Harrison's crisis-in-a-teapot scarcely bears comparison to The Crisis of '76, yet it was Harrison's own, and it soon became clear who its real leaders are, and who are only summer soldiers, the kind of bureaucrats who just go along to get along. We've watched that sort over the years, too, and if no evil ever came from them, neither did any good. Edmund Burke said it: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing . . . ."

Editorial on 08/29/2014

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