Newsflash: Liberal discovers Conservatives can be human

In other news, dog bites man. [Link]

I realize now that my prejudices against conservatives were, in many ways, just as uncompromising as the prejudices I’d often projected onto them. They were just people. Not issues. Not votes. People whose daughters go to school with my daughters, whose dogs run away and come back and run away again, whose hands found my shoulders and who didn’t judge, the night I wept over a friend who had taken her own life.

Some say there was a time when Americans got along better by not talking politics or religion. But extending kindness doesn’t have to mean keeping your mouth shut. I want to be friends with Republicans, but I don’t want to be friends with Republicans if I don’t also get to talk about why I think food stamps and socialized medicine are good ideas. Sure, I like to fish, but I don’t want to sit in a boat with someone for hours if we’re forced to keep quiet on the subjects about which we care most.Recently, Brandon asked me to help him with a eulogy for his father. It was a beautiful and confounding moment, and I almost missed the beauty of it. He’d texted his request, and a snarky part of me said that you don’t ask someone to help you with your father’s eulogy via text message. Then it hit me that of course he’d texted, because how could he call without crying? I was humbled by Brandon’s request, and haunted by my sometimes too-small capacity to offer grace to others.

Last year, a friend of mine had to pretend he’d voted Republican so he wouldn’t risk losing his job. A writer friend has made me stay quiet about her secret conservativeness, lest she be ousted from her ivory tower.

This is why we need safe places to talk politics and religion. We need to be able to say what we believe without belittling one another. We need to not pretend that things used to be easier when things used to be easier only if you were white and straight and a man. We need to stop imagining that things will get better if we keep hammering away at each other, because, every time we hammer, our resolve thickens and is harder to chip away at when we finally put those hammers down.

But, mostly, we need to listen. Not every conviction is worthy of respect, but when you hear someone out, you’re forced to acknowledge a person’s thinking and, thereby, his humanity.

The first step is believing that someone has come to their views honestly and sincerely.

Juan Williams Lessons Learned

Not all ideas from the Right are good, not all ideas from the Left are bad. and vice versa. Can we please listen to the other side and consider thoughtfully the worth and validity of their ideas? [Link]

So, in the year since being labeled a bigot, a bad journalist and fired from NPR, what have I learned?

The biggest lesson for me has come from the endless stream of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, who tell me they can’t believe the constant pressure in politics these days to keep quiet, shut up and bite their tongue for fear of being called a bigot, a crazy right-winger or a socialist lefty.

People are fed up with pledges that enforce far right or far left orthodoxy and being told they lack a spine when they listen to the other side of an argument or call for a political compromise to reach a solution.

Free Speech Example

It is sort of sad that this has to be held up as an example of how it is supposed to work. This should be the default, not the exception. [Link]

Here's the background, quickly: Recently, two student groups at George Mason University School of Law, the Federalist Society and the Jewish Law Students Association, have taken heat for inviting controversial activist Nonie Darwish to campus for a lecture. Specifically, the Council on American-Islamic Relationscalled on the school to disinvite Darwish because of her past statements regarding Islam. (Above the Lawhas more.)

So what happened next? Did GMU cancel the speech, as other institutions have done when faced with calls for disinvitations of unpopular or controversial speakers? Did it impose heavy security fees on the student groups, a sadly common tactic for campus censors looking to silence outside speakers?

No. Instead, GMU School of Law Dean Daniel Polsby got it exactly right. In a statement sent to students and faculty late last week, Polsby issued a stirring defense of free speech on campus.

I'm very pleased to reprint his statement in full:

It appears that there is need to clarify the policy affecting speakers at the law school.

Student organizations are allocated budget by the Student Bar Association in order to allow them, among other things, to bring speakers to the law school.  Neither the law school nor the university can be taken to endorse such speakers or what they say.  Law school administration is not consulted about these invitations, nor should we be.  Sometimes speakers are invited who are known to espouse controversial points of view.  So be it.  So long as they are here, they are free to say whatever is on their mind within the bounds of law.   They cannot be silenced and they will not be.

Just as speakers are free to speak, protesters are free to protest.  They must do so in a place and in a manner that respects the rights of speakers to speak and listeners to listen, and that is in all other ways consistent with the educational mission of the university.  Student organizations which hold contrary points of view have every right to schedule their own programs with their own speakers, and these speakers' rights will be protected in just the same way.

The law school will not exercise editorial control over the words of speakers invited by student organizations, nor will we take responsibility for them, nor will we endorse or condemn them.  There has to be a place in the world where controversial ideas and points of view are aired out and given space.  This is that place.

Daniel D. Polsby
Professor of Law, Dean

FIRE couldn't have said it any better. Every public college administrator in the country should read Dean Polsby's words—and follow his example.

Civility For Me, But None For Thee

Civility goes only one way these days. [Link]

In the last few days, it seems every third liberal columnist and commentator has taken to libeling the Tea Party Movement, referring to it as (take your pick) terrorists, suicide bombers, hostage takers, the Hezbollah faction of the GOP, traitors, nihilists, anarchists and people suffering from halitosis. (The last reference is made up; the rest of the descriptions are real.) Even a few politicians are getting into the act.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” Representative Mike Doyle said in a recent meeting between Democrats in Congress and Vice President Biden. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.” And according to several sources in the room, Biden added his two cents, saying, “They have acted like terrorists.” (Biden denied using the “terrorism word” to CBS’s Scott Pelley. His role was to act as group psychiatrist. “I just let them vent,” Biden claims.)

All of this is terribly confusing to me. After all, during President Obama’s Tucsonspeech-qua-sermon, he told us that in the aftermath of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords it was important that “we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” We need to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.” And then there was this: “We can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country.”

I don’t know about you, but it’s not quite clear to me how accusing one’s (law-abiding) fellow citizens of being terrorists and part of the “Hezbollah faction of the GOP” helps us to heal and sharpens our instincts for empathy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say those words are meant to wound. You might even conclude from what liberals are saying the Tea Party Movement is comprised of people who aren’t simply wrong but who don’t love their country.

But saying that would be wrong. Why on earth would liberals do something like that? After all, they care– deeply care – about civility in public discourse. I know because they tell me that all the time. But perhaps I should amend that last statement. Liberals –not all of them but more than a few of them – tell us of their concern about civility in public discourse, but only when it works to their political advantage. So they hyper-focus on rhetorical decorum when it’s part of an effort to implicitly blame conservatives for an awful shooting spree that killed six people and badly wounded 13 others, including a member of Congress, even though there was not a scintilla of evidence the person who pulled the trigger was a conservative or was acting out of conservative principles.

Some people might call this slander.

But no matter; it was a political opportunity to seize, and Lord knows political opportunities shouldn’t be lost.

This goes back to the old saying, "Conservatives think Liberals are wrong, Liberals think Conservatives are evil."

First Annual Everybody Draw Mohammad Day

I understand that Muslims may be upset. That's fine, they can be upset but they do not get to threaten bodily harm for speech. Allah can take care of himself and he doesn't need you killing people in his name. [Link]

Via Dan Savage's blog at The Stranger, some clever chappie (I don't know who) has declared May 20, 2010 "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day," in support of Matt Stone and Trey Parker and in opposition to religious thuggery. Why May 20? I haven't a clue, though it could have something to do with Otto ascending the throne of Greece. Or, more likely, King Sancho IV of Castile's founding of the Study of General Schools of Alcalá.

I will be employing my tremendous skill as an illustrator, of course, and expect that my colleagues will do the same. If they refuse, they will be declared weak-kneed, namby-pamby, quisling infidels and will be shamed on this blog (Though such idle threats rarely work these days; perhaps I could threaten them with a painful death, which seems to do the trick). If readers would like to show their solidarity, please email your Mohammad masterpieces to me here: mmoynihan at reason.com. The best ones will be published on Hit & Run, which, along with the concomitant death threat, is reward enough.

Theories on The Kanye West/Taylor Swift incident

All funny, but I like this one best. [Link]

Theory: It was an altruistic attempt to give celebrities something to weigh in on besides Michael Jackson
Propagated by: Anyone who’s read People, TMZ, or any other media outlet in the “let’s find the 10 people we know who will provide a sound bite on anything” school of reporting.
It’s been far too long since we’ve had reason to randomly call upon Donald Trump for a completely irrelevant opinion—and lord knows nobody wants to talk about health care. This also dovetails with the larger, all-encompassing theory that Kanye knew exactly what he was doing by seeking out negative attention, ensuring that everyone would be writing about him the next day—and also writing about how many people are writing about him. Obviously, the man’s a genius.

Studying Conservatism in Academia

In a place where diversity is always encouraged except in thought. [Link]

The unfortunate fact is that American academics have until recently shown little curiosity about conservative ideas, even though those ideas have utterly transformed American (and British) politics over the past 30 years. A look at the online catalogs of our major universities confirms this: plenty of courses on identity politics and postcolonialism, nary a one on conservative political thought. Professors are expected to understand the subtle differences among gay, lesbian, and transgender studies, but I would wager that few can distinguish between the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, three think tanks that have a greater impact on Washington politics than the entire Ivy League.
Why is that? The former left-wing firebrand David Horowitz, whom the professors do know, has a simple answer: There is a concerted effort to keep conservative Ph.D.'s out of jobs, to deny tenure to those who get through, and to ignore conservative books and ideas. It is an old answer, dating back to the 1970s, when neoconservatives began writing about the "adversary culture" of intellectuals. Horo witz is an annoying man, and what's most annoying about him is that … he has a point. Though we are no longer in the politically correct sauna of the 1980s and 1990s, and experiences vary from college to college, the picture he paints of the faculty and curriculum in American universities remains embarrassingly accurate, and it is foolish to deny what we all see before us.

But there is hope when people can come together for spirited discussion and learn to respect each other.

The late Paul Lyons, a professor at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey until his death, in January, recognized the problem but proposed something far more radical than anything David Horo witz has considered. And that was to persuade his liberal colleagues to teach courses on conservative political thought. Lyons was an American historian who wrote about the 60s and made no secret of his liberal politics or his loathing of Reagan and post-Reagan conservatism. But he was also disturbed by how few colleges offer courses on conservatism, treating it as a "pathology" rather than a serious political tradition, and by reports from his conservative students that "most of their liberal professors blow their comments off." So he not only posted a course on American conservative thought in 2006 but also kept a diary about his teaching experience. That diary has now been published, along with some of his own essays, in American Conservatism: Thinking It, Teaching It (Vanderbilt University Press).
The diary is fascinating and reassuring, at least about our students. Lyons's class was split almost evenly between liberal and conservative students, who had no trouble arguing with each other. They seemed to understand what thin-skinned professors wish to forget: that intellectual engagement is not for crybabies. The students had loud debates over Reagan's legacy, Bush's foreign policy, religious freedom, abortion, even the "war on Christmas"—and nobody broke into tears or ran to the dean to complain. And the more the students argued, the more they came to respect one another. According to Lyons, students learned that that conservative guy was no longer just the predictable gun nut or religious fanatic. And the conservative students learned that they had to make real arguments, not rely on clichés and sound bites recycled from Fox News.
There were many surprises as the students examined the history of conservatism. The biggest one, for both Lyons and me, was how attractive all the students found Whittaker Chambers and how much they enjoyed his cold-war memoir, Witness. Who knew? If anything, the liberal students were more enthusiastic because they saw Chambers as an idealist participating in a cosmic battle between good and evil, which is how they saw themselves. Apparently it never occurred to them that conservatives, too, could be idealists. Even Lyons caught the bug, admitting that before reading Witness he had considered Chambers a "degenerate," but now saw him as a "compelling if sad figure." It turns out a book can change your mind. Again, who knew?
The course was wide-ranging and gave the students a good sense of the various strands of conservatism. They read selections from Burke, Maistre, Hayek, Buckley, Ayn Rand, Irving Kristol, Allan Bloom, and many others, including Lyons's personal favorite, Peter Viereck. (Now, answer honestly, dear reader of The Chronicle Review: How many of these authors have you yourself read?) Lyons also invited to class a young colleague, who had recently won tenure and was rumored to be a conservative, to talk about living as an ideological minority in the university. She told them how hard it had been and why she had kept her politics hidden until she got tenure. Apparently she had had a sharp political argument with one of her senior colleagues shortly after she was hired, and he told her that unless she moderated her ideological views, she would never get tenure. Whether this was a prediction or a threat was unclear, so she took a vow of silence. Lyons was appalled.

Free Speech on Campus

But only if you have approved ideas. [Link]

At the end of the evening, Prof. Cloud stepped up to the microphone to ask a question, which was actually a little speech. Even though the protocol for such occasions restricts audience participants from making their own speeches, I did her the courtesy she tried to deny me by letting her talk.

She presented herself as a devoted teacher and mother who was obviously harmless. Then she accused me of being a McCarthyite menace. Disregarding the facts I had laid out in my talk -- that I have publicly defended the right of University of Colorado's radical professor Ward Churchill to hold reprehensible views and not be fired for them, and that I supported the leftist dean of the law school at UC Irvine when his appointment was withdrawn for political reasons -- she accused me of whipping up a "witch-hunting hysteria" that made her and her faculty comrades feel threatened.

When Ms. Cloud finished, I pointed out that organizing mobs to scream epithets at invited speakers fit the category of "McCarthyite" a lot more snugly than my support for a pluralism of views in university classrooms. I gestured toward the armed officers in the room -- the university had assigned six or seven to keep the peace -- and introduced my own bodyguard, who regularly accompanies other conservative speakers when they visit universities. In the past, I felt uncomfortable about taking protection to a college campus until a series of physical attacks at universities persuaded me that such precautions were necessary. (When I spoke at the University of Texas two years ago, Ms. Cloud and her disciples had to be removed by the police in order for the talk to proceed.)

I don't know of a single leftist speaker among the thousands who visit campuses every term who has been obstructed or attacked by conservative students, who are too decent and too tolerant to do that. The entire evening in Texas reminded me of the late Orianna Fallaci's observation that what we are facing in the post-9/11 world is not a "clash of civilizations," but a clash of civilization versus barbarism.

Shouting conservative speakers down seems to be a popular hobby on campuses across the nation. Free speech is only for those who toe the party line.

If your only response to a speaker is to shout them down, you must not have a convincing counter argument.