You know that feeling people get when they drive past a car accident? It’s clear that the wreckage is terrifying, but they can’t bring themselves to look away. That’s how I felt wandering into DePaul University’s Cortelyou Commons on a rainy Chicago night in mid-October to attend “War With Iran?” Organized by the DePaul Conservative Alliance (DCA), this panel presentation kicked… return to article
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Reader Comments (9)Page 1 of 1 pagesWhen we get outside the gates of college campus sanctuaries, we find that most average Americans appreciate the opportunity to gain more insight into what they quite rightfully perceive (after 9/11, the shoe-bomber, 7/7, and 9000 or so other Muslim terrorist attacks, bombings, countless threats and promises) to be a threat to their security.
There have been many attempts such as this by college conservatives or Jewish student organizations to host people who dare to sound a warning about, and provide valuable insight into this threat. They are invariably met with protest marches, shouting down and often their events are canceled due to concerns for safety. However this particular event went down - I haven’t seen video of it - I think the author mischaracterizes and covers up the prevalent true nature of conservative sponsored events on college campuses.
Personally I resent one side being free to invite their speakers, put on their events and yell out loudly their opinions largely unchallenged, and another side not being afforded anything close to that luxury.
Posted by Natalie on Nov 18, 2007 at 10:57 PM The young man in the YouTube video from Natalie’s link has it dead on, right on the money. I’ll be showing that clip to my students.
However, although it is obvious that leftish types who shout down their rightish opposite numbers and refuse to allow the airing of their views are guilty of being boorish, illiberal fools, I think the same can be said about a number of public personalities and leaders who claim to be on the side of “right”, not least George W. Bush and the faction who brought him to power, and the media apologists who stump for both.
When, for example, discussions about the Iraq War are met with, “Are you with America or the terrorists?”, or equivalent dichotomies, it’s no less of a block to intelligent discourse. Patriotic but angry people who consider the war a terrible transgression find themselves forced into a false choice, as though the uncritical backing of that or any war is the difference between loving one’s country and its ideals, and outright treason.
It’s just a rhetorical tactic, to force the conversation into channels the dichotomists want to control.
The same is true of cultural imperialists who want to enshrine their own religious understandings within the law, particularly in the form of Constitutional amendments. Pluralism and active democracy is what they aren’t about. What both of those factions desire is mass conformity, in a way no different in spirit than any communistic suppressors they might point fingers at, for shutting down views they consider an impediment to their program.
In that way, although they’re not looking forward to the same specific goals as the jihadists, they certainly are cut from the same rigid, anti-pluralistic cloth.
Posted by Kuya on Nov 19, 2007 at 7:17 AM In that way, although they’re not looking forward to the same specific goals as the jihadists, they certainly are cut from the same rigid, anti-pluralistic cloth.
I think you vastly overstate the mindset of (I assume you mean) the “religious right”. Not only are you being inaccurate, but in so doing, you are demonstrating a fear-engendering, policy shaping agenda of your own. You’re putting average Americans, who simply resent long held standards and values being unjustly redefined and shut out of the public square, in the same cubby-hole as murderous, torturous barbarians, in an effort to demonize them and marginalize them politically.
Now of course the religious left employs its own “discourse blocking rhetoric” in order to move toward their socialist utopia. We are all made to feel guilty about not supporting government enforced redistribution, supposedly to help the poor.
The climate change hysteria is another perfect example of the left employing “discourse blocking rhetoric”. Anyone who dares to question the particulars of the relationship between CO2, the sun, man and warming, or the wisdom of putting world-wide brakes on growth and energy use is singled out as a “flat-earther”, or a “denier”, in reference to the Holocaust type.
No, George Bush and religious right have no corner on the “rhetorical tactics that force conversations into channels” market.
My opinion is that it’s far more common on the left, actually. And when it comes to the simple common courtesy of allowing others to present their views, they display little or no desire to even enter that market.
Posted by Natalie on Nov 20, 2007 at 8:47 PM Hello Natalie,
I suppose it’s a difference of experience between the two of us. It’s true what you say that lefty partisans can be guilty of forcing false choices with bullying talk, and the example you cite is a good one because when I’ve tried to talk to some acquaintances I know who are global warming partisans (e.g. mentioning Freeman Dyson’s skepticism about the computer models used to measure and anticipate climate change effects), I have been shut down and the conversation pretty much ends.Questioning the faith, yes? Guilty of heresy.
Yes.
Thank God for heresy. That’s only partly tongue-in-cheek.
(For the record, I think it’s mad not to rein in emissions by way of applied technology, and I don’t believe we have to scuttle economic development in order to do so. Using efficient approaches to energy is itself an aspect of that development, regionally and globally, but does require a future-oriented emphasis more so than an immediate-profit emphasis. The atmosphere is thin.)
But again, I have also had quite a few arguments online and in person with so-called “religious rightists” (forgive the generality) who are at least as intransigent as their lefty opposite numbers.
It’s surely because of several of my own views, not least my attitudes on marriage rights
...I want you to be able to marry whoever you love…
and the Iraq War
...in the last 4 years I’ve had three “friends” and two family members call me a traitor in anger! That’s just bitter.
...it’s because of those views that I’ve smacked heads with more of the rightish kind of dogmatism than the leftish. But I don’t respect left-dogmatists either. In a nutshell, they both shout or talk stridently a lot, and do not listen, ever.
That means they already think they know it all, that they have nothing to learn from the other. That’s illiberal (in the classical sense, not this blue-v.-red, either-or, “opposite of American” stuff that’s called “liberal” in sneering media-hyped tones… there’s that false dichotomy again).
I try to take people as individuals and speak with them and hear them out about what they think, but it is easy to get overly general, so I take your point about (accidentally) implying that all “religious rightists” think monolithically, or that regular folks singing psalms at worship are like suicide bombers.
Nonetheless, I do feel that the president and at least his more shrill apologists have helped create an atmosphere in which ordinary folks who don’t buy the “with us or against us” line get drowned out by all the shouting, in regards to this war in Iraq. You may know, I’ve thought all along it was a monumental travesty, if putting the brakes on jihadism was the goal.
And regarding your point about a fear-engendered policy of my own, I actually do have a deep feeling of foreboding about any religion, Judeo-Christian or Chic-Pagan or Caliphate-Islamist, that is able to lay hands on the law and bend it to their doctrinal will, since I consider the law to be a bludgeon, at best a bridle, almost always. I want religious values and behavioral limits to be personal, a matter of individual conviction and discipline, not enforceable by law. I think only devotedly secular legal norms can uphold real freedom of religious expression, or free expression of any kind.
I simply don’t trust, and do expect the worst from, those who approach their attempt to control the power of the law from the position of certitude that religion fosters (including secular “religion”, e.g. Maoism). It’s that assuredness that they have the whole truth. Yes, people like that are scary. I don’t want them to control the law, majority or not. They never doubt their own righteousness. That’s a dangerous way to think. Dangerous for the rest of us.
Like I said, in large part it’s a matter of personal experiences. But I will keep your criticism in mind.
That’s what good liberals do, if they’re really liberal and not collectivists.
Posted by Kuya on Nov 21, 2007 at 10:00 AM “Personally I resent one side being free to invite their speakers, put on their events and yell out loudly their opinions largely unchallenged, and another side not being afforded anything close to that luxury.”
Right on, Natalie. This is the reason that I’m going on tour next week myself, to promote “Judaeo-Terrorism Awareness Week.” Remember how Israel dropped over 1 million cluster bombs on civillian neighborhoods in Lebanon last year - just one incident in a long string of ‘terrorist attacks’’ that the US media pretends never happened?
For quick updates on my tour, be sure to tune in to Fox “news.” You know that Fox will make sure that both sides are heard.
Posted by Nike on Nov 23, 2007 at 1:57 PM Uh huh, and in so doing you would no doubt beautifully illustrate my point.
You would not be shouted down, have things thrown at you, or have your event cancelled. Perhaps a few meek and mild marchers with signs, but that’s about it. Fear not.
And of course Israel had no reason or justification for dropping bombs on Lebanon. Just woke up one day and felt like bombing someone. Haven’t you ever felt like that?
Posted by Natalie on Nov 24, 2007 at 5:41 PM Chavez takes “rhetorical tactics that force conversations into channels” to a whole new level.
How’s this for a guilt trip?
Posted by Natalie on Nov 24, 2007 at 6:13 PM Yes, “with us or against us”, or as he apparently believes, “with me or against the country”.
The little red book thing has been done. Incredible that the connotations escape him.
Or maybe they don’t at all.
Posted by Kuya on Nov 26, 2007 at 7:00 AM Hi, y’all!
The right-wingers need a new generation of easily manipulated myrmidons. It’s as simple as that.
Since we’re talking about Iran, I read in yesterday’s paper that Iran put a freeze on it’s nuclear weapons program back in the fall of 2003. That means the Bushllit administration has either been inept in its intelligence efforts, or just plain lying to us for the past four years. Either way, samey- same.
OH! OH! I just remembered ! You know how right-wingers go on and on about the freemarket ? It occurred to me that maybe the reason right-wingers are not appreciated and invited on many college campuses has to do with the fact that intelligent and educated people CAN SEE THROUGH THEIR LIES AND PROPAGANDA, AND DON"T LIKE THE SMELL, LET ALONE THE SOUND OF BULLSH**IT! If there’s no demand, why provide a supply? Jeez, even the KKK is smart or un-stupid enough to know to stay away from Howard University.
Once you learn to think critically right- wing propaganda is insubstantial and ineffective. Its falseness becomes apparent. That, or you turn to the dark side and use its methods to serve your corporate Sith Lord. Right, Natalie?
Posted by Aunty Rightwing on Dec 6, 2007 at 12:04 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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