Education and Early Career
Born in Rhode Island, McLaughlin earned two master's degrees (philosophy and English literature) from Boston College, and a Ph.D. (philosophy) from Columbia University. Upon entering the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church and being ordained a priest, McLaughlin spent years as a high school teacher at Fairfield College Preparatory School, a Jesuit prep school in Connecticut, where his arrogant mannerisms earned him the nickname "Father God." A Republican, he originally opposed the Vietnam War and, in 1970, sought permission from his order to run for a seat in the United States Senate, representing Rhode Island. His superiors denied him this. McLaughlin defied his superiors and ran anyway, losing to the incumbent four-term Senator John O. Pastore.
Through a friendship with Pat Buchanan, McLaughlin became a war supporter and a speech writer and advisor to U.S. President Richard Nixon. Because priests are not allowed to take on political jobs, he was ordered by his Jesuit superiors to return to Boston and, rather than obey, he left the Society of Jesus.
Prior to entering broadcasting, he was associate editor of America, a weekly opinion journal published by American Jesuits. From 1981 to 1989, McLaughlin was Washington editor and author of the monthly political column, "From Washington Straight," for National Review.
Read more about this topic: John McLaughlin (host)
Famous quotes containing the words education and, education, early and/or career:
“If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)