I hesitate to criticize Hugh Hewitt’s Weekly Standard articles, not because they’re awful on the merits, but because it’s practically a blogging cliché. It’s almost too predictable to bother. Hewitt’s latest, however, was too offensive to ignore.
You may recall recent reports on the systemic and widespread religious discrimination that has become common at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Ample evidence and first-hand accounts from many former and current cadets points to religious intolerance and harassment against anyone who’s not Christian, including incidents of mandatory prayers, proselytizing by teachers, insensitivity to religious minorities, and general endorsement of evangelical Christianity by school administrators.
A report prepared by my friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State effectively paints a picture of the Air Force Academy treating religious minorities as second-class citizens. The Pentagon not only acknowledged the seriousness of the charges, it immediately responded by creating a task force to address the religious climate at the Academy.
Hugh Hewitt, meanwhile, suggests there is no problem at the Air Force Academy.
Even a cursory review of AU’s “report” reveals it is built on multiple levels of undocumented hearsay. Over and over again the phrase “we have been informed” introduces an allegation of misconduct, or “we have received a host of reports” leads to a serious charge. There are zero footnotes and zero affidavits attached to the report.
Hewitt even suggests that the new Pentagon task force to rectify the discrimination be “put on hold” so as to avoid this example of “McCarthyism.”
It seems in reading over Hewitt’s piece that it’s really a “blame the messenger” problem. It’s not that Hewitt likes discrimination against non-Christians — he might, but it wasn’t fleshed out in his article — but rather than he doesn’t like the group that has uncovered the problem.
Indeed, the piece is filled with ad hominem attacks against Americans United and it’s director, the Rev. Barry Lynn. (Like too many conservatives, Hewitt finds it easier to make personal attacks than persuasive arguments.) Hewitt’s argument follows a certain child-like reasoning: Lynn is bad, Lynn is presenting an argument, therefore the argument is bad.
It’s a shame Hewitt didn’t think this through a little more. It’s not Lynn and Americans United who have gone after the Air Force Academy; it’s current and former cadets who’ve been the victim of discrimination and are looking for help. It’s not “hearsay” if the cadets have seen — and been the victim of — the harassment fist hand.
The problem has been identified and corroborated by those who have nothing to do with Lynn or his group.
Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, a White House attorney in the Reagan administration who graduated from the academy in 1977 and has sent two sons there, said yesterday that “a colossal failure of leadership is resulting in a constitutional train wreck” at the school. […]
Weinstein, in a telephone interview from his home in Albuquerque, said the Americans United report was “spot on.”
“The place is being held hostage in a vise grip by evangelical Christians, and people are terrified to come forward,” he said.
It’s that sense of fear that led AU not to include affidavits in its report. Hewitt may be confused about this, but when cadets are facing persecution for their religious beliefs, they’re sometimes a little concerned about letting civil liberties groups put their names on official complaints. Go figure.
The Pentagon’s task force, if sincere, will find an intolerable system that favors one religious tradition over all others. The task force hasn’t even been staffed yet, so we’ll have to wait a while for the results of its work. I have a hunch we’ll have to wait even longer for Hewitt’s apology to those who’ve been discriminated against.