I have mixed feelings about my alma mater, Clemson University. I enjoyed the time I spent there on its beautiful campus, located in a comfortable small town in upstate South Carolina. I earned a master's degree in U.S. history there in 1994, and was privileged to study under a respected group of historians and alongside a number of promising young scholars. Yet Clemson is one of those state land-grant universities where athletics often take precedent over academics, and it operates according to the neocon values of corporate hegemony, religious fundamentalism, and macho bumper-sticker patriotism.
It is a place where curricula are often shaped by the demands of big business; where the administration can't be bothered to maintain placement files on students and alumni, but finds the time to sell their personal information to local car dealerships; where band directors are fired for encouraging their charges to turn their backs on the stadium Tyrannovision when it interrupts their halftime shows with commercials; where football is king, and the ultraconservative head coach proudly shares his faith in The Lord with his "boys," who happily accept his witness in between cash payments from agents and wealthy alumni.
It is also the home of Terry Don Phillips, a man who has recently undergone a personal and political transformation.
Phillips, who is presently CU's athletic director, was born and reared in east Texas, where he was instilled with a belief in self-sufficiency and a fundamental aversion to government intervention in the lives of individuals. He was taught that people should take care of their own problems, and that a strong work ethic is the only cure for such social ills as poverty and homelessness. For most of his adult life, Phillips was "about as hard-line conservative as you can get."
Then life threw him a curveball. In 1995, Phillips's eldest son, J.D., was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had been hearing voices, babbling incoherently, wandering aimlessly around his Lafayette, Louisiana community. At first, medication and therapy successfully kept his disease in check; but then, as so often happens, J.D.'s illness cycled out of the control of his meds, necessitating a change in the approach to his treatment. His new medication was effective, but produced side effects that required additional medication. More relapses and setbacks followed.
Terry Don Phillips and his family had pledged to do what they could to help J.D.; but like many families coping with mental illness, they soon found their resources stretched to the limit. They turned to the mental health system for assistance, but found that its resources had been compromised by budget cuts, political grandstanding, and general neglect. Lacking the public profile and lobbying power of education, physical health care, and other vulnerable public institutions, mental health care is often an easy target for conservative politicans seeking to cut taxes and reduce spending on social programs. As a result, the American mental health care system is presently in a shambles.
This discovery made Terry Don Phillips angry: angry enough to begin speaking out. He now discusses his son's illness openly -- not just to the mental health advocacy groups to which he has pledged his support, but also to alumni groups, business leaders, politicians, and the media. Through it all, he has been explicit about how his experiences have altered his political beliefs. "This is a collective issue on society," he recently told the Greenville News. "[A]ll families have some broken pieces in them that need help beyond what mom and dad can do, beyond what my mom used to preach to us. God love her, she did a great job with us kids, but these people living these tormented lives need our help."
OUR help. Not the help of an "evil" government, but OUR help. Because according to the blueprint that our Founding Fathers laid out for us, we ARE the government. Government that is instituted by us and derives its just power from our consent; that strengthens families and communities, protects the rights and welfare of individuals, and works toward the common good; that does the work that we want and need to be done, but that we cannot accomplish alone. And if that government needs some of our money to do that job, that's OK. It's still OUR money, because it's OUR government. That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway.
But most of us, for most of our lives, have heard a different interpretation of government. Government, we've been told, is a malevolent entity that seeks to stifle our creativity, strip us of our individuality, interfere with the virtuous actions of the free market, rob us of our hard-earned money, and make us dependent on its godless institutions. The only solution, we hear, is to divest ourselves of that government, to opt out, to turn its stewardship over to self-appointed guardians of "freedom" and "morality" who will shrink and weaken a government built upon public consent to ensure public welfare until it can be drowned in a private bathtub. We will then live in an "ownership society," where we will each be captains of our own destiny, liberated from the fetters of soul-destroying dependency.
That's bullshit. Pure, unadulterated, un-American bullshit. When government ceases to ensure the public welfare, there are only two possible results: tyranny and anarchy. We got a taste of the latter as a result of the government's pathetic response to hurricane Katrina. We have received an ever-increasing dose of the former from that government ever since 9/11.
The nasty strain of "conservatism" that has developed in this country over the past three decades is underpinned by a fundamental disregard for human suffering. But when individuals infected with that strain or those close to them experience such suffering, the veil is lifted, and reality sets in. That's what happened to Terry Don Phillips, who as a result has embarked upon a long, challenging journey -- one in which I wish him well. I hope that one day he will be compelled to broaden his quest for change. Perhaps he will exert a positive influence upon his university, and upon the corrupt institution of college athletics. As a Clemson alumnus, I would be pleased to see that happen. As a mental health worker and an American, I am proud of what he has already done.
That's the way political cultures are transformed: one mind at a time. In many ways, the story of Terry Don Phillips parallels the stories of Richard Clarke, Kristen Breitweiser, Cindy Sheehan, and John Murtha -- people from divergent backgrounds who once supported people and policies that they now see as bankrupt. Their transformations are often partial, and focused on a single issue or set of issues; but all have been shaped by tragedy -- tragedy to which our current leadership has proven woefully unresponsive.