The “Root Cause” of Scott Walker—Black Migration Has Challenged the “Wisconsin Idea”
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s turn towards immigration patriotism has infuriated the national Main Stream Media and drawn new attention to a politician best known for taking on the unions in what was once the heart of the American Left. But the “root cause” of Walker’s rise is something that Walker himself probably doesn’t even recognize—the challenge to the communitarian “Wisconsin Idea” posed by the state’s black population.
The “Wisconsin Idea” is the concept that “the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state”–a statement of faith in the old Progressive idea that the university ought to do its utmost to spread the benefits of its knowledge to every citizen. First articulatedby UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904, this mission took shape in various programs designed to bring useful arts and technology directly to the people, in Wisconsin Public Radio (“The Ideas Network”), and of course, in working closely with the state government. Not surprisingly, Van Hise used his friendship with his former classmate Robert La Follette to create influential legislation taken for granted today, “including the nation’s workers’ compensation, tax reforms, and public regulation of utilities” [History of the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin]
To this day, the official center of Downtown Madison is a pedestrian-only, shopping/dining district called, fittingly, “State Street.” It runs for about a mile, and at one end is the State Capitol, while at the other end is UW-Madison, Wisconsin’s flagship university. It’s obviously designed to be the symbolic cultural center of the state, physically linking the two great institutional expressions of its people. For the Wisconsin Idea to work though, Wisconsin has to remain Wisconsin and retain its highly idiosyncratic culture.
The culture in Wisconsin is a simultaneously socially conservative and egalitarian ...
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