Celebrating the Martyrs

Over at PrawfsBlawg, Paul Horwitz comments on Monica Goodling and Regent's religious identity (see our previous discussion here and here).  An excerpt:

But one may fairly worry -- for the school's sake, not ours -- about the high-wire act involved in living out a religious mission in the political realm.  This administration's highest desideratum seems to be personal loyalty to the President.  I confess to the view that personal loyalty is either not a virtue at all, or not a very high virtue.  But even if I am wrong about that, it is a quality that may come into tension with higher and broader values that I take it that Regent graduates at their best should personify.  The school itself understands this on a personal level, I think; the Globe story quotes one student saying of Goodling that she is a poor representative of Regent because "you should be morally upright.  You should not be in a position where you have to plead the Fifth."  Whether its administrators always take a similar view, or whether they ultimately are seduced by the lure of power itself, is another question.  It seems to me that the school might seek other numbers besides the number of its graduates serving in the administration.  What about boasting about the number of whistle-blowers it has produced?  Or the number of people who have stood in the way of senior officials and said "no" to unwise or immoral ideas?  Or the number of people who have resigned in protest from some high position?  I am thus sympathetic to the school's stated goals of sending its graduates to live out a Christ-centered life in public service, but hope they will spend as much time celebrating their martyrs as they do those who have gained influence in high places.