Republican Columnist, Steve Chapman, who writes for the
Chicago Tribune has recently written two spectacular columns about
Republican-led voter suppression efforts today.
Highly recommended.
Stephen Carter, Bloomberg columnist and professor at Yale,
wrote a very thoughtful and challenging mock commencement address that is also
very much worth reading and thinking about.
It is pasted below in full.
Dear Class of 2014: Thanks for Not
Disinviting Me
May
15, 2014 By Stephen L. Carter
Members of
the Class of 2014, I salute you. My warmest wishes on the occasion of your
graduation from this fine institution. And,
before I go any further, I would like to express my personal thanks to all of
you for not rescinding my invitation. I know that matters were dicey for a
while, given that I have held and defended actual positions on politically
contested issues. Now and then I’ve strayed from the party line. And if the
demonstrators would quiet down for a moment, I’d like to offer an abject apology
for any way in which I have offended against the increasingly narrow and often
obscure values of the academy.
In my day,
the college campus was a place that celebrated the diversity of ideas. Pure
argument was our guide. Staking out an unpopular position was admired -- and
the admiration, in turn, provided excellent training in the virtues of
tolerance on the one hand and, on the other, integrity. Your generation, I am pleased to say, seems
to be doing away with all that. There’s no need for the ritual give and take of
serious argument when, in your early 20s, you already know the answers to all
questions. How marvelous it must be to realize at so tender an age that you
will never, ever change your mind, because you will never, ever encounter
disagreement! How I wish I’d had your confidence and fortitude. I could have
spared myself many hours of patient reflection and intellectual struggle over
the great issues of the day.
Ladies and
gentlemen, you are graduating into a world of enormous complexity and conflict.
There are corners of the globe where violence and war and abject oppression
still dominate. Capitalism is concentrating wealth in fewer hands but, in the
developing world, lifting tens of millions out of poverty. Traditional
societies are caught in an increasingly desperate struggle between the perils
of fundamentalism on the one side and the perils of modernism on the other. Given your generation’s penchant for shutting
down speakers with whom you disagree, I am assuming that you have no intention of
playing any serious adult role in mediating those conflicts. And that’s fine.
We should leave the task of mediation to those unsophisticated enough to be
sensitive to the concerns of both sides.
Besides, you
will face more important problems. Once you depart the campus, the world will
make unjust demands on you. You will have to work for a living. You will have
to put up with people whose views you despise. Fortunately, as long as you
don’t waste precious time reflecting in a serious way on the issues of the day
-- or, worse, contemplating the possibility that you might be mistaken on a
question or two -- you should have plenty of hours for Twitter and Google
Hangout and the nonstop party that every truly just society was meant to be.
Indeed, a
lack of reflection can be of enormous assistance to an act of protest. Consider
the contretemps at Smith College over the invitation extended to Christine
Lagarde, the head of the International Money Fund, who has decided not to
attend. Were one to think seriously about the implications of the anti-IMF
argument -- and, please, ladies and gentlemen, do nothing of the kind! -- one
would also presumably have to bar from the stage Lagarde’s fellow conspirators,
particularly leaders of the IMF’s biggest financial supporter, the United
States of America. (The Tea Party, happily, opposes the IMF. Perhaps one of its
leaders might be invited next year.)
Then there are
your fellows at Rutgers University, who rose up to force the estimable
Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state and national security adviser, to
withdraw. The protest was worded with unusual care, citing the war in Iraq and
the “torture” practiced by the Central Intelligence Agency. Cleverly omitted
was the drone war. This elision allows the protesters to wish away the massive
drone war that President Barack Obama's administration has conducted now for
more than five years, with significant loss of innocent life. As for the Iraq war,
well, among its early and enthusiastic supporters was -- to take a name at
random -- then-Senator Hillary Clinton. But don’t worry. Consistency in protest
requires careful and reflective thought, and that is exactly what we should be
avoiding here.
The literary
critic George Steiner, in a wonderful little book titled "Nostalgia for
the Absolute,” long ago predicted this moment. We have an attraction, he
contended, to higher truths that can sweep away complexity and nuance. We like
systems that can explain everything. Intellectuals in the West are nostalgic
for the tight grip religion once held on the Western imagination. They are
attracted to modes of thought that are as comprehensive and authoritarian as
the medieval church. You and your fellow students -- and your professors as
well; one mustn’t forget their role -- are therefore to be congratulated for
your involvement in the excellent work of bringing back the Middle Ages.
Now, before I
close, I would like to address those members of the Class of 2014 who might
think that it’s wrong to ban speakers whose views you reject. Your reactionary
belief in tolerance and open-mindedness is truly distressing. I beg you to remember
that every controversial question has only one answer. You have absolutely
nothing to learn from people whose opinions you dislike. And now, graduates, before things go too far
-- before you run the risk of being thought to be on the road to becoming
responsible adults -- please, rise to your feet, and, speaking with one voice,
shout me down! Thank you.
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