Another Crisis, Another Tuesday at the Fortress
So, a bomb threat at Liberty University. An emergency alert flashes across student phones, police swarm a traffic circle, and for a few hours, the carefully constructed facade of serene, godly order cracks. The official story is simple: a threat was made, authorities responded, the situation is under control. End of story. Move along. Nothing to see here.
But we’re not going to move along. Because this isn’t the story. Let’s be brutally honest. A bomb threat at a major university is a serious event, but at Liberty University, it feels less like an aberration and more like another symptom of a deep, systemic disease. This isn’t just about a potential explosive device near Williams Stadium; it’s about the explosive reality of an institution built on a foundation of political power, immense wealth, and breathtaking hypocrisy that has been detonating in slow motion for years. You don’t just get a bomb threat out of the blue. It happens in an environment. And the environment at Liberty has become a toxic pressure cooker of secrets, scandal, and score-settling. What a joke.
The Echo Chamber of Scandal
You cannot, and you must not, view this incident in a vacuum. To do so is to fall for the oldest trick in the book of institutional damage control. They want you to focus on the flashing lights and the police tape. They want you to see this as an external attack on a virtuous community. But the real threats to Liberty University haven’t been coming from the outside; they’ve been festering within its own hallowed halls for decades, nurtured by a culture of absolute power and zero accountability. This is the house that Jerry Falwell Sr. built and that Jerry Falwell Jr. nearly burned to the ground with his personal scandals (and let’s not forget the infamous pool boy). A bomb threat? That’s amateur hour compared to the reputational demolition job the university’s own leadership has been engaged in.
Think about it. We’re talking about an institution whose former chancellor was embroiled in a bizarre saga involving blackmail, extramarital affairs, and financial entanglements that sound more like a script for a bad soap opera than the resume of a spiritual leader. An institution that has faced lawsuit after lawsuit from former officials and students alleging a culture of fear, retaliation, and silencing those who dare to question the narrative. An institution that wields its massive, tax-exempt fortune like a political weapon, blurring the lines between education, religion, and raw partisan power-brokering. It’s a mess. And now we’re supposed to be shocked that its campus is the target of a threat? The real surprise is that it doesn’t happen more often. When you cultivate an image of being a fortress under siege from a secular world, you can’t be surprised when someone decides to test the walls.
Money, Power, and the Holy Smokescreen
Let’s follow the money, because it always, always leads back to the truth. Liberty University is not just a school; it is a financial juggernaut with an endowment well into the billions. Its online program is a cash cow of epic proportions, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into its coffers every year. This isn’t just about tuition fees paying for professors and dorm rooms. This is about an empire. An empire that pays its executives exorbitant salaries, invests in high-risk ventures, and showers money on political causes and candidates who align with its hard-right agenda. The university is a machine. A very, very rich machine.
So when a crisis like a bomb threat hits, you have to ask the cynical question: cui bono? Who benefits? In the short term, nobody. It’s chaos. But in the long term, it can be a useful distraction. It shifts the narrative. Instead of talking about the latest financial investigation or the lingering stench of the Falwell Jr. era, everyone is talking about campus safety. It allows the administration to play the victim, to rally the faithful against a common (and conveniently anonymous) enemy. It’s a classic smokescreen. A way to change the channel from the difficult, internal problems to a simple, external one. (I’m not saying they planted it, that’s absurd). I’m saying they know exactly how to leverage a crisis to their advantage. They’ve had plenty of practice.
This incident forces students and faculty to rely on the very administration whose trustworthiness has been repeatedly called into question. Trust us, they say. We will keep you safe. But can they be trusted with the truth? Can they be trusted with the university’s finances? Can they be trusted to uphold the very Christian values they supposedly champion? The record isn’t exactly stellar. It’s a track record of cover-ups and self-preservation, not transparency and accountability. That’s the real threat. Not a crank caller with a grudge, but the systemic rot from within.
A Future Built on Sand
What does the future hold for Liberty? They’ve tried to rebrand, to distance themselves from the cartoonish villainy of the Falwell Jr. years. They’ve installed new leadership. They talk a good game about reform and returning to their core mission. But is it real? Or is it just a new coat of paint on a rotting structure? An institution with this much money and this much political influence doesn’t just change its stripes overnight. The culture that allowed the scandals to happen in the first place—the culture of demanding loyalty over integrity, of placing the institution’s reputation above the well-being of its people—is deeply embedded in its DNA. It’s systemic.
A bomb threat is a fleeting moment of fear. It will pass. The alerts will be canceled, and students will go back to class. But the deeper, more existential threats remain. The threat of declining enrollment as parents question the stability and safety of the environment they’re sending their kids into. The threat of government scrutiny into its non-profit status as it behaves more and more like a political Super PAC. The threat of a generation of young evangelicals who are growing tired of the hypocrisy and the fusion of their faith with toxic political warfare. These are the bombs that are already ticking away, deep in the foundations of the university. This little incident on a Tuesday night? It’s just a tremor before the real earthquake. Mark my words.
The powerful men who run Liberty University will use this moment to project strength and control. They will hold prayer vigils and issue statements about resilience. But don’t be fooled by the performance. The real story is the one they are desperately trying to keep you from seeing: the story of an empire built on a precarious foundation of sand, with cracks spreading through the walls every single day. And it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down. This bomb threat wasn’t the explosion. It was just the fuse being lit.
