Yale Honors Theocratic Mass-Immigration Opponent

Honored

Yale University's decision to name a new residential college after Benjamin Franklin is more controversial than it seems. (Almost all the controversy has centered on the decision to retain the name of Calhoun college.)

Franklin was, by modern standards, a theocratic radical who denied the adequacy of human reason without divine illumination to solve practical political problems. He also attributed America's military success to praying to God and argued for prayer in public assemblies, as one can see in his motion in the Constitutional Convention defeated by Broadway-Hit Hamilton:

The small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other ... is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. ...

In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?

In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection.- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor.

And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that "except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.

If students are looking for more reasons to be outraged, one of Franklin's most famous essays, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc., acknowledged as an important work by men like Adam Smith and David Hume, criticizes mass immigration. Franklin argued that vast numbers of immigrants would alter the language and political mores, are only required in countries where bad marriage laws discourage indigenous reproduction and organic increase, and runs contrary to the natural preference of people to associate with those of their own kind. It is interesting in light of how wildly objectionable these views are today that Yale's President Peter Salovey has promised, trying to appease protesters over Calhoun, to increase the number and funding of centers where non-white students can associate together. Apparently, Salovey thinks there is something to some birds of a feather flocking together.

Franklin aside, Yale has been praised for naming its other new residential college after, I kid you not, a "saint" of the Episcopal Church in America, Anna Pauline Murray, who while unknown to the public is a perfect storm of leftist symbolism: an African-American, homosexual woman with an impeccable record of Ford-Foundation-funded feminist, pro-abortion, civil-rights and labor activism. According to the Yale Daily News, more than half of students surveyed said they believed that "the [Yale] Corporation sought to 'check all the boxes' by choosing Murray given her race, gender and sexuality." That doesn't seem unlikely.