And would you believe it is the "largest," the "biggest," the "fastest-growing" christianist school in the world? Well, it is. With the help of U.S. government money!
Hypocrisy abounds in the christianist fundamentalist world, which was one of the things the fabled Yeshua of the Gospels was said to despise, which makes it even more fun to point out and laugh at in the 21st century. Falwell had little use for our Constitution or our government, as does his son, yet they reach out with their greedy little paws to grasp taxpayer dollars to keep their miserable enterprise afloat.
If you read Liberty's promo material on the Net, one would think they are the cat's meow, so to speak. One would think that since day one in 1971 Liberty "university" has been a financial wunderkind! One would think that people all over the world, infected with the Liberty virus, have consistently donated monies to keep the "university" in the black so it could continue to train mindless and ignorant christianists to go out in the world and proclaim the same nonsense they were taught, like, for example, that there is a god who created everything that exists in six days because the Bible says so and every little thing in the Bible is the word of god to be taken literally and without question. And if one has a problem understanding something in the Bible, like, say, why god ordered parents to stone their children to death for not observing the Sabbath, they should consult with their spiritual advisors to get the "truth" as to the meaning of the passage.
Unfortunately, the truth is different. Liberty "university" has had financial problems for years. Evidently people don't donate as much money as is needed to keep the operation afloat. In fact, according to Time magazine, Liberty has been "between $20 million and $25 million in debt until this year. But when God called Jerry Falwell home last May, it turned out that he had a $34 million insurance policy. It was used to bail out his school."
Which raises another question: What insurance company would be so stupid as to a give an obese fathead a $34 million insurance policy? I dunno. I have a hard enough time getting decent car insurance and I haven't had a wreck ever or a ticket in over 50 years!
Alex Pareene, writing at Salon. com, notes that Liberty "university" "received $445 million in federal financial aid last year. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the way, received $420 million from the federal government."
The federal money was for Pell grants. "The school is the No. 1 recipient of Pell grant money in the state of Virginia." So the money went to students to pay for "tuition, room and board and other expenses." That makes it justifiable in the eyes of Liberty officials.
But why do the christianist Repugnicans in Congress, and all the teapot crackpots want to defund NPR and Planned Parenthood, both of which provide a real service which is available to all Americans, and not defund a right-wing, christianist fundamentalist school that teaches nonsense about the Bible, science and history?
What has happened, of course, is that the aforementioned representatives in our Congress do not understand nor do they care about the values that undergird and protect freedom in this country. They are driven, not by what might benefit the American people or by a sense of commonality or even by common sense, but by a religious and racial agenda that fuels meanness and hatred! Thus, they go after the weak and the powerless for they are the most vulnerable among us. And in that way they repay the corporations who own them body and soul and without whose resources they would not have been elected.
The funding of Liberty "university" by the federal government is symbolic of one of the things very wrong in our country. On Liberty's part, it is hypocrisy in spades. It makes the "christianity" promoted by Liberty laughable.
You will note I've consistently not capitalized the word, "university," in this diatribe. Liberty does not deserve to be called by that name. It is not a university in any sense. It is a mill that churns out christianist clones.
Please read Mr. Pareene's article here.
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