Photo: Max Goldberg/CC/flickr Under legislation pending in the Iowa Senate, public higher-education institutions like Iowa State University would be gradually liberated from the tyranny of secular-socialist faculty.

Whenever conservatives achieve, as they have achieved at present, a dominant political position, some of them continue to whine that “the culture” is in control of godless liberals beyond their reach. Exhibit A for the permanent secular-socialist Establishment is the news media, that great “enemy of the American people,” as Donald Trump puts it. But close behind it is higher education, that great bastion of “political correctness” where dedicated Alinsky disciples poison the minds of the children of the Heartland. No wonder a college education is inversely associated with support for our president!

In Iowa, however, a state where the GOP obtained “trifecta” control of the governorship and the legislature last November, a lawmaker has finally come up with a practical way to do something about the leftist tyranny on campuses, redeploying one of the Left’s own weapons, affirmative action.

A bill in the Iowa Senate seeks to achieve greater political diversity among professors at the state’s Board of Regents universities. Senate File 288 would institute a hiring freeze until the number of registered Republicans and Democrats on the university faculty fall within 10 percent of each other.



“I’m under the understanding that right now they can hire people because of diversity,” said the bill’s author, Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa. “They want to have people of different thinking, different processes, different expertise. So this would fall right into category with what existing hiring practices are.”

The bill would require the secretary of State to provide voter-registration data on all faculty at public universities for purposes of establishing the baseline for calculating “balance.” Job applicants could, of course, evade the witch hunt by changing their registration to the minority party (likely the GOP) or to “No Party,” or better yet, by declining to register to vote. I don’t know if the bill’s sponsor has thought that through and considered follow-up methods for ensuring “balance” — you know, examining applicants to determine association with un-American ideas like Obamacare and Agenda 21, perhaps using enhanced interrogation methods — but that could come later.

Technically, of course, the legislation does not favor either party, just as the Trump administration’s travel ban does not specifically target Muslims. But everyone knows who and what this is about.

I normally do not make a habit of drawing attention to the legislative offerings of random wing nuts, but there is something about Chelgren’s idea that makes me fear it will go viral and pop up in Republican-controlled legislatures everywhere. Ultimately, a lot of the more militant conservative activists would like to abolish “government schools” altogether and let education from pre-kindergarten through graduate school become the preserve of religious organizations and for-profit businesses. In the meantime, why not mess with the operation of public institutions as much as possible, vindicating the natural desire of hard-working American that their tax dollars only subsidize old-school instruction in the eternal verities, plus maybe football? In certain circles, it would be a definite crowd-pleaser.