The other day I received an email from a lady I know in Hickory, asking me to look at a petition she’d signed opposing ending liberal arts classes at UNC. I clicked on the link to a website, read the petition, sat back and thought, The Governor wants to dismantle the liberal arts program at UNC?

Next I clicked on the News & Observer’s website to see just what the Governor had said – according to the newspaper, during a radio interview he’d explained he wanted to change funding of state universities to emphasize preparing students for jobs. He’d only said a critical word about two courses: Teaching basketball players at UNC Swahili (a course criticized during the athletics scandal) and ‘Gender Studies’ (which he doubted was touchstone to a job). Then he’d added, “I do believe in liberal arts education. I got one.”

Then I scrolled down the page to read the comments on the newspaper’s website and the world turned upside down into an elbow-throwing political brawl with people saying things like ‘the Governor’s against teaching liberal arts’ because he wants people to be idiots so they’ll vote for him. Sometime after that, 10,000 people had signed an Internet petition to save liberal arts programs at UNC – which, as far as I can tell, no one ever meant to ban in the first place.

When I finished reading, I wrote the lady back and explained the good news was the liberal arts are safe at UNC, and the bad news was we have a problem with political debates on the Internet – which are dysfunctional.