I would like to dedicate this column to Community Action and Social Justice, Students for Justice In Palestine, and everyone who has ever taken a Gender Studies class. Without you all, I would have little to assure me of my personal sanity.
Is America plagued by an epidemic of hatred? Keep your ear to the ground on college campuses and you might hear the rumbling of angry movements struggling against this epidemic.
Such hatred apparently manifests itself in myriad -isms: racism, sexism, classism and so forth. The movement against it — Social Justice — abhors such hatred: California’s anti-gay marriage law is reworked into “Proposition H8” and opposition to liberalizing immigration laws is skewered as unvarnished racism against Hispanics. Hidden behind a wall of obscurantism is the key premise: that there are simply no legitimate conservative arguments to engage with. Opposition to amnesty or same-sex marriage can only be explained by madness, irrationality or pure vitriol stemming from completely illegitimate beliefs.
This rendering of disagreements into moral crusades is even more bizarre when one considers the endless apologies that emerge from the right: one can’t listen to a speech on immigration by Tom Tancredo without hearing a dozen proclamations that he wants even more Hispanics in the United States if the process is legal and involves assimilation. If men of his ilk were truly agents of blind, irrational hatred, one would expect such hatred to manifest itself from time to time in his rhetoric. Did Stalin pay even a token compliment to the bourgeoisie? And yet, when Youth for Western Civilization brought Tancredo to campus, AU Students for Choice (huh?) organized hundreds of silent protesters to make a display against the supposed racism of the former Congressman.
As with all religious crusaders, though, the mission of the Social Justice advocates is not about the opponent, but about them. Agents of social change with an actual interest in changing hearts and minds engage not in finger-pointing and rigid ideological posturing, but in honest discussion and educational outreach. It is telling that Malcolm X was not the savior of the black cause in the 1960s, but a footnote in history to the conciliatory outreach of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the same vein, the heirs of the tactics of the former — self-proclaimed “queers,” “Chicanos” and “radical feminists” — are political street performers, not agents of positive change. At AU, they are identified by their claims to stand for the cause of “social justice” against “hatred.” But they further no cause except their own self-perception as an “involved” individual. They belong to an “I’m OK, You’re OK” self-validation club, not a social movement. To echo Barney Frank, they put pressure on nothing but the grass.
Campus supporters of Israel have been trying for ages to arrange a public debate between supporters and opponents of the state. Unfortunately, this seems to be verging on the impossible. De-legitimize the opponent entirely, and you have de-legitimized his argument — and thus, there is no need to combat it with facts or logic. After all, who needs to bother with debating an imperialist or a racist? And — here’s that vanity we just discussed — the person who calls out the agent of hate automatically assumes a morally righteous position. Ignore the other side. Dismiss it as imperialist, racist, homophobic, sexist — just make it illegitimate; make it go away. That’s what passes for winning an argument. And thus, the challenge to one’s own belief system is narrowly averted. Moral heroism is thereby attained, the dragon is slain, and the shadowboxer, assured of his vigilance, goes to sleep for the night, moving himself from one world of dreams into another.
Alex Knepper is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a classical liberal columnist for The Eagle. You can reach him at edpage@theeagleonline.com.
