Culture

By Mark Doggett

I was born the illegitimate child of an unwed teenage mother in post-war Germany. The prospects for a child conceived in that time and place were grim. My mother faced a difficult decision. Thankfully, abortion was still rare, and she chose instead to give me up for adoption—a decision that, in hindsight, was the best possible outcome. The alternative was likely a life of poverty and limited opportunity.

Post–World War II Europe was still reeling from the devastation of war. Unemployment was high, and cities and infrastructure were only beginning to recover.

At that time, even American missionaries with modest incomes were considered wealthy by German standards. For many Germans, life in the United States was little more than a dream. That dream took its first step for me with a letter from Frau Fiebiger, a German social worker who, in broken English, encouraged a visit to the local orphanage.

The paperwork required for adoption and immigration was daunting and costly. My adoptive parents had to gather birth certificates, income statements, health and marriage records, proof of citizenship—plus pay adoption fees. Then came the passport applications, letters to the Department of Justice and the American Consulate, all requiring notarized duplicates. They spent hundreds of dollars on copies, filing fees, and postage—a significant financial and time burden for a low-income preacher with a wife and two teenage children.

That effort brought me to the United States legally. Thirteen years later, my adoptive parents were finally able to help me apply for naturalized citizenship. As a child, I had no real understanding of how much effort was required to keep me here permanently.

I recall saying around age ten that I’d be fine staying a German citizen. But my adoptive parents assured me there would be more opportunities as an American. And boy, were they right. Becoming an American citizen remains the best thing that ever happened to me.

In Germany, education is government-funded—but tightly structured. Students are tested early and often for knowledge and aptitude. Those who don’t perform well are directed into vocational or trade schools. Those who excel are placed in academic tracks. The government doesn’t subsidize failure, and there’s no school choice.

Not so in America. Here, anyone can attend school regardless of performance, as long as they’re willing to work for it. I didn’t do well in school early on, but because I lived in the U.S., I wasn’t tracked into a life-long caste system. I found motivation in my last two years of high school and eventually earned multiple degrees. Hard work and determination—not test scores—made the difference.

As a citizen, I was able to apply for jobs I never would have qualified for otherwise. I went on to have a successful career in the aerospace industry as an engineer with top-secret clearance. None of that would have been possible without citizenship.

America is the most generous nation on earth. We want people to come here, succeed, and contribute to our communities. But they should do so through a safe and legal process. My adoptive parents’ sacrifice taught me that reward follows effort. I am grateful to be here, and I never take this country’s generosity for granted.

If you can’t come here legally, you shouldn’t be here. If you do come, work hard, stay out of trouble, and love your new country. We are Americans—no hyphens needed.

About Mark

Mark Doggett is a retired professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Western Kentucky University.

By Gary Houchens

The murder of Charlie Kirk has hit me like a ton of bricks. It feels very personal.  Of course, this kind of political violence impacts every American, but I was a bit surprised at my own deeply emotional response.

While I was aware of Charlie Kirk and his work, I didn’t know the man. I had never heard him give a speech. I didn’t follow him on social media. He was a generation younger than me. He was a professional activist whose mission field was college campuses, while I am a college professor whose activist mission tends to be in the world of K-12 education.

While we are both “men of the right,” my own level of influence is a sliver of Kirk’s. I’m barely known at the state level, and then within the narrow domain of education policy. Charlie Kirk was a massively popular influencer at the national and even global level.

I have been in higher education long enough to see leftist ideology take over college campuses and drive conservative voices into the shadows or completely out of the universities. So of course, I was heartened when Turning Point USA, which Kirk founded, began to open chapters across the country, finally giving young conservatives a strength in numbers to finally share their views in the open.

I was especially proud when, in 2024, the Turning Point chapter on my campus invited Kyle Rittenhouse to speak, and while there was a massive chorus of voices seeking to silence him and cancel his presentation, my university insisted that we would be an institution committed to viewpoint diversity and freedom of speech.

The Rittenhouse speech was a great example of Kirk’s approach: hosting a campus event that its sponsors knew would provoke the worst instincts of their opponents yet doing so in a way that utilized freedom of speech and argumentation as its key strategy for winning the public argument.

This seemed to be central to Charlie Kirk’s style. Watching videos of him interacting with hostile students on campus this morning, I was struck by his intelligence, charm, and generosity. He seemed genuinely committed to overcoming his opponents through reasoned debate and effective persuasion. In this sense, he was a great model for young people seeking to engage in public discourse in productive ways.

But of course, he was also a provocateur, a talent that in our social media-soaked era is also probably key to his success. It was one such provocative statement on Kirk’s part that caused me to quietly end my own brief affiliation with the Turning Point chapter at my university.

In January 2024, Kirk made statements attacking Martin Luther King, Jr. and questioning the legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kirk called on his followers to reject MLK as an American hero.

MLK was a complicated figure, to be sure, and I understand the argument Kirk was making about the unintended consequences of federal civil rights legislation, but the Civil Rights Act marked a major public policy victory over one of the great lingering evils of the modern age. Strategically, rhetorically, and historically, I thought Kirk was deeply mistaken to take this stance, and I felt compelled to disaffiliate with the organization as a result.

Not for a second did I think Kirk was a racist for his misguided position on Martin Luther King. But accusations of racism, fascism, misogyny, and hate have been part and parcel to the way the left has regarded Kirk, and how many on the left met the news of his murder.

Social media feeds last night were filled with posts either celebrating his death or rationalizing it in some way. The more diplomatic among these commenters would qualify their language with phrases like, “I don’t condone political violence, but…” (there is always some “but” to quietly justify or minimize the horror of leftist terrorism), while others just blatantly claimed Kirk got what was coming because of his alleged sins against various left-wing identity groups.

And here, I suppose, is where all of this feels so personal. Because, while I’m no Charlie Kirk, I too have felt the sting of brutal personal attacks for voicing opinions that most ordinary Americans held until just about the day before yesterday.

My life has never been threatened for the political things I’ve written and spoken about, but my livelihood certainly has, and I’m extremely blessed to work at a university that values and defends intellectual diversity (colleagues elsewhere have not been so blessed). I have faced unfair, questionably legal political repercussions that should embarrass and trouble Kentuckians of all parties.

I have been publicly vilified on social media, sometimes by former “friends,” and on the floor of the Kentucky Senate chambers by people who have never met me, with attacks on my character, my motivations, and my professional competence, all for my views on things like school choice, the relative size of the federal government, and the legal definition of marriage.

And of course I am not alone. For a generation or more, I have watched people on the left condemn every position even slightly right of center as fascist, dangerous, and bigoted. I know because, sadly, I was a person who used to make those kinds of false claims.

Political philosopher Yoram Hazony has written how this persistently false narrative about conservatives has the effect (perhaps intended) of delegitimizing the views of half the population. If you can dismiss a person’s views as hateful and beyond the moral pale, then you are justified in using institutional power to silence them. It’s not a stretch to then justify killing them if they can’t be silenced through other means.

Of course, the right has its own version of this pattern too. But the shamelessness with which so many people on the left, included people among our professional elites, feel free to condone violence to meet their political goals, is simply unparalleled on the right.

It makes me wonder, if someone took my life because of my perceived political views, would there be people who celebrate or rationalize it publicly (or privately)? As unlikely as this scenario seems given my relatively small role as a public conservative, I think the answer is yes. And that is deeply troubling, not just for me personally and my family, but for what that means for our democracy.

It’s especially grievous that so much of the vitriol directed at me, Kirk, and others is based on frankly false claims. Even if Kirk held truly reprehensible views, that would not justify violence against him, but he is not, in fact, a racist or misogynist, or any of the other terrible descriptors used against him.

In the hours after Kirk’s murder last night, it was revealed to me that a person who is very close to me personally has held a range of assumptions about things they thought I believe that are utterly incorrect. Not one word of the things they thought I believed was true.

If such deep misunderstanding is possible among those who love each other, what ocean of false assumptions are we harboring toward strangers we perceive as our opponents? What hope do we have for salvaging the American republic when we consider our interlocutors monsters?

I debate hard on the issues that matter to me, and I certainly think there are some ideas promoted by the political left that are frankly evil. But I try my best not to see the people who hold those views as evil. We have all been mistaken about things in the past, and we are all capable of growing and changing, and I am committed to using reasoned debate and civil persuasion to change minds and hearts.

There have likely been times, when under attack myself, that I have used less than noble rhetoric toward my attackers, and for that I repent and vow to do better. But in general, I try to stay committed – and I now renew my commitment – to engage those who disagree with me with respect, calm, and reasoned arguments, just like Charlie Kirk was doing yesterday when he was gunned down.

If we don’t repent – all of us, but especially our friends on the left – of the tendency to frame our opponents as moral monsters, Charlie Kirk will only be the first martyr in the bloodbath to come. Many more of us will follow.

Lord, save us from ourselves. Show us a better way.

Gary W. Houchens, Ph.D., is professor in the School of Leadership and Professional Studies and Director of the Educational Leadership doctoral program at Western Kentucky University. From 2016-2019 he served as a member of the Kentucky Board of Education.

By Mark Doggett

I recently listened to a podcast interview with Arthur C. Brooks, a social scientist and happiness researcher, who identified what he believes is America’s deepest mental health crisis. It isn’t just anxiety or depression. It’s a crisis of meaning.

Despite rising living standards and instant access to information, more Americans report feelings of emptiness, confusion, and despair. Suicide and depression rates continue to climb, especially among young adults. Loneliness has become so pervasive that the U.S. Surgeon General has called it a national epidemic.

Brooks argues that many no longer feel their lives matter—that they have a purpose beyond achievement, comfort, or online affirmation. The problem isn’t that we have too little, but that we have too little to live for.

Philosophers have long warned of this emptiness. Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French thinker, wrote that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” When stripped of distraction, we’re forced to confront the void—the aching absence of meaning. We chase entertainment, not because it fulfills us, but because it helps us forget how lost we feel.

Søren Kierkegaard called this the sickness unto death—not physical illness, but despair born from not knowing who we are or why we exist. His answer was not intellectual, but spiritual: a leap of faith toward something greater than the self.

C.S. Lewis echoed this idea in the 20th century: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Our longing for ultimate meaning may not be a flaw, but a clue.

Yet today’s culture leaves little room for that kind of reflection. We prize achievement over contemplation, opinion over wisdom, and consumption over contribution. Social media offers identity and applause—but it’s fleeting. When the likes fade, we’re left with the same old questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is worth suffering for?

Brooks argues that real fulfillment comes from four pillars: faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others. Meaning isn’t something you find—it’s something you build. It demands commitment and sometimes sacrifice.

Importantly, Brooks doesn’t limit meaning to religion, but he affirms that spiritual life—however defined—is essential to human flourishing. You can’t fill a spiritual void with productivity or pleasure.

We are creatures of purpose. When disconnected from community, tradition, or a moral vision larger than ourselves, something essential erodes. That erosion is now visible in both personal and public life.

This doesn’t mean rejecting science or progress. It means recognizing that progress without purpose is just movement without direction. Therapy and medicine are valuable, but they can’t answer life’s biggest questions.

In a world flooded with noise, the most radical act may be to sit still—and ask what our longing is trying to tell us.

Not everything can be proven. Some truths are self-evident. The real crisis isn’t in the mind. It’s in the soul.

About Mark

Mark Doggett retired last year as a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Western Kentucky University.

On April 3, 2025 Western Kentucky University’s Department of Housing and Residence Life hosted it’s 10th Annual Drag Show. Offering no age restrictions, the event, held at the publicly funded Knicely Conference Center, included at least one child. A photo of a four year old giving a dollar bill to drag queen Georgina George was featured in an April 4, 2025 article covering the event.

According to a 2024 article in WKU’s College Height’s Herald, the first Housing and Residence Life Drag Show occurred in 2015 at a campus residence hall. As the event grew it was moved to Downing Student Union and then to the Knicely Convention Center.

Calling for age restrictions and a ban on drag shows in publicly funded venues, Warren County Conservatives organized a petition drive which generated wide-spread interest. Over 400 people signed the petition. Twenty-five percent of respondents are WKU alumni.

Below, read community responses gathered through the petition.

Signatures and responses continue to be collected. Sign and share the petition, here.

Community Responses