An 18-year old freshman is beat up for her political views and called a racist. Why? She is wearing a McCain-Palin campaign button.
Years ago a youthful thug murdered a young man for his high-priced sneakers. Decent, law-abiding folks wondered, What Is This Country Coming To? In another case, not long ago in Minneapolis, a young thug murdered to rip off his victim's designer sports jersey. Evil happens, its very banality — as political philosopher Hanna Arendt wrote, coining the phrase "banality of evil" — practically makes "normal" once unthinkable events in civilized society.
On election night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a blue state, my home state, comes a criminal horror story short of murder, but no less disturbing. It happened at a small private liberal arts college, Augsburg College, not far from the main university.
After taunting 18-year old freshman Annie Grossmann for wearing a McCain-Palin pin at an election night get-together, four hysterical women attacked her physically for her political views which, obviously, they did not share. After taking verbal abuse at the election party, Grossmann left after it became clear, at about 10 p.m., her candidates had lost. She was followed into the dark of night by the four women, and attacked in the shadows under a skyway on campus.
The four women, all black, called Grossmann a "racist." She knew none of them. Nor did they know her, at least to her knowledge. It was the McCain-Palin pin that set them off.
"Why do you call me a racist when you don't even know me?" she screamed. No answer.
Grossman then was felled by a blow to her face from the largest of the four who stalked her. Her head stuck a brick wall behind her. The other three women chucked, offering no help to their dazed victim. The banality of evil, as Arendt described Nazi atrocities, had asserted itself on another "cheaper" level.
That this happened on a college campus is hardly surprising. Campuses now ooze with creepy partisan intolerance. They are places mainly where left-wing academia hold forth, along with politically correct staff. Professors rule, often tenured ex-radicals from the Sixties, inculcating their students with their own one-sided, vitriolic, impenetrable rages and biases.
(Not surprising, at another private "liberal arts" college in Minnesota, a professor was recently dismissed for stealing McCain-Palin lawn signs, and taking delight in his crime. No remorse there! Such is the hubris of the clueless Left, perhaps beyond redemption. They probably don't know it, but they do the nation a grave disservice.)
Grossmann had been booed at a freshman "mixer" when she identified herself as a Republican. She is from Delta Junction, Alaska, you see, and naïve to this urban political prejudice. Her mother back home in Alaska is a Republican Party leader, a huge fan of Governor Palin.
Annie considers her governor to be a role model, something ardent leftists and envious feminists must surely deplore, as part of their knee-jerk, articles-of-faith shibboleths, their damn-the-conservatives mind-set. It is viewed somehow, why I am not certain, that stirring insipid ideological hatred is somehow, ah, "cool"? Go figure.
A newspaper says Annie's attackers might not have been Augsburg students. Somehow that makes a difference? Well, to the college, I suppose, it's a matter of proper image — a tribute to virtue. But what were the thugs doing hanging out at a campus party, taunting those who disagreed with their Obamamania, while the other "good" students did nothing? Who stood up for the 5' 2" 120-pound Annie? Who challenged the evil here? Nobody.
Grossmann is on the college's ladies' hockey team. She was excused temporarily from practices after suffering a concussion and blurred vision. Thankfully, her injuries are not thought permanent. Psychic scars will remain, though, along with a lesson in intolerance learned.
It was not the first time Grossman met political hostility in the land of Minnesota Nice. Even her bear-hunting in Alaska proved a sticking point. As reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune (11/02/08), we find these instructive paragraphs:
Grossmann's parents…said that in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Annie had trouble on campus because of her political leanings and for being a hunter.
Bruce Grossmann [Annie's dad] said a "PETA person" had to be removed from her dorm room because he was upset by a photo of her with a black bear she had shot. Also, he said, she attended an icebreaker on campus and was booed when she identified herself as a Republican.
"I don't think she was prepared for the close-mindedness," he said. "I told her she needs to take a lower profile [for the sake of] her academic and her sports careers."
Intolerance on college campuses, supposed bastions of free inquiry, is endemic. Campuses have become highly politicized. Free speech itself is imperiled by codes, by political correctness run amok. Professors rule. Conservatives are muzzled, and piled on, as Governor Palin was in the mainstream media. Most campuses are fiercely, irrationally anti-Republican, gone loco against conservatives, whose life and limb now may be in danger for expressing au contraire opinions.
Our nation is less for all this nonsense. Does poet Yeats's famous "centre" not hold? Can civility survive? Today, are the nation's worst "…full of passionate intensity"? Do "the best lack all conviction"? * So it seems.
Another palpable example of partisan evil asserting itself occurred six years ago at the political pep rally masquerading as a memorial service in Minneapolis. At that raucous "service" in 2002, a disabled fellow from St. Paul, confined to a wheelchair, came to what he thought was to be a memorial service for Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila. He wanted to pay his respects to the senator who had helped him overcome some disability claim issue.
Not reported by liberal news media at the time (except CNN), likely a fact also for Annie Grossmann's story today, was the fact that the guy in a wheelchair was spat upon. Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) was merely booed. But the man in a wheelchair was struck by a big wad on the nape of his neck. His crime? Well, he had a "Norm Coleman for Senate" campaign button on his wheelchair-hung jacket, soon to be ripped off angrily by a partisan Democrat who ran away, laughing at his boorishness.
Certainly in these two cases, and countless others, ideological hatred has left its indelible mark. As for that election night assault at Augsburg College on November 4, 2008, what happened to 18-year old Annie Grossmann was a double whammy; it combined racism and ideological hate. Either way, or both, it's reprehensible to its heart-of-darkness core, banality of evil to be deplored by all right-thinking Americans of whatever party or political inclination. Will they?
* "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1923)
“…the Hitler Stalin pact was just two tyrants feasting on the spoils of those weaker, but never an alliance, whereas the Spanish Civil War, was a life and death fight between the left and the right of that country.”
This is the customary metaphor used to visualize the political spectrum [assuming one exists].
As Ray observes [1], authoritarianism is inherently Leftist; therefore, I prefer a spectrum in terms of the level of government control, which ranges from total control on the Left to no control on the Right. This would place modern authoritarian systems on the Left, differing only in their fantasy ideologies, e.g., nobility of the worker, nationalism, racial superiority, etc. to appeal to “the volk”. This would also help solve the problem of those like McVeigh who believed the U.S. government was a bully and for whom there is some reason to believe lived in a fantasy world [2], placing him more correctly on the Left..
[1] “Looking at history more broadly, however, we see that authoritarianism is central to Leftism and that Leftists are in fact dedicated practitioners of it – so what Leftists oppose is not authority as such (or there would be no Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc.) but only authorities that they do not control; and what conservatives favor is not any and all authority but rather carefully limited authority – only that degree of central authority and power that is needed for a civil society to function.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=4F727F1C-01F2-44AA-93B1-ECCB922B38C3
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh
yonkel
“metal bracelet things” OK, I’m glad you are thinking out of the box. Now if you can throw out the right/left idea for a moment and think of authoritarianism and tyranny as totalitarianism with it’s opposite being anarchy then we can make progress. After all that is what progressives want, correct? Saying that they don’t meet is like saying the Crips and the Bloods hate each other so they must be different. Newton gave us the law of opposing forces and it applies as well to political ideas as it does to billiard balls. Did you ever try to shoot the cue ball directly at a ball up against the cushion? Hit it straight on and it just bounces back against the cue ball. Hit a glancing shot and you can get the action you want. Not that this explains all political movements, but it does show the signs of a wasted youth and a basis for visualizing something other than a bounded straight line. Eliminating the line in favor of a circle would go a long way toward stopping the good guy/bad guy paradigm.
Sedonaman
“authoritarianism is inherently Leftist” or “McVeigh was a leftist”? Those ideas do not fly with me. McVeigh may have been an anarchist with NO ideas on how to fix the country, much like the assassin that shot Stolypin in 1911, but he was neither right nor left.
Sedonaman,
Coming from an ideological bias in which I both rationally and emotionally believe, I would like to concur with Ray’s observation concerning authoritarianism. But I’m afraid your inference is too self-serving and the article itself essentially reduces the argument (defining Mussolini as Leftist) to:
“His No. 1 priority was simply to rule — a good Leftist goal.”
I note that Ray avoids mention of Mussolini’s extensive assistance to the Nationalist forces in Spain, forces in open conflict with a leftist regime.
I wonder if it would not help matters here to recalibrate the political spectrum GPS by keeping in mind the three power coordinates that some have used to assign political position as needed: community, capital, coercion. Some may prefer to exchange “labor” for “community” and “government” for “coercion,” but I think the model is generally helpful determining which source of power is articulating a position and exerting its leverage in order to control events at any point in time in a dynamic society. To the extent that advocates of community and capital compete to control the established coercive instruments and to implement policies favorable to their respective interests one might desginate those interests as “leftist” or “right-wing” respectivley.
Is it not generally true, historically speaking, that labor/community has sought to wrest control of its interests by sooner or later consolidating command and control on behalf of those interests (trade unionitsts, univeristy intellectuals, anarcho-communists, et al) ceding that control to its most effective leaders who all too often thereupon manifest the proclivities for authoritarian violence and ruthlessness frequently ascribed to leftists (hence leftism’s “friendliness” to certain types of authoritarian regimes)? Has not capital typically in reaction sought to reassert its authority through appeals to and enrollment of its constituents (financial, military, institutionalized religious, et al) in public repression or destablization as deemed necessary, often times with equal violence and ruthlessness? To the extent that reactionary measures issue from those seeking preservation of the status quo, those measures are all too often seen as “conservative” whereas those actions instigated by community endeavoring to reform or disestablish existing authority are seen as “progressive,” “reformist,” or “leftist.” But maybe all we really need to do is to follow the money.
BTW,memetically speaking, “liberals” have the propaganda advantage (who could be opposed to “reform?”) whereas “conservatives” are have a lot more explaining to do as establishment apologists. Conservative media spokesmen have attempted to change that perception, but unfortunately have compounded the error by employing “liberal” as the epithet of choice whereas “leftist” would be more accurate, wouldn’t it?
Sedonaman,
I disagree with the assessment “authoritarianism is inherently Leftist” (we may be saying the same thing, so forgive me if this seems redundant). That would transform every authoritarian from Egypt’s pharaohs to the Muslim Caliphate to Genghis Khan to Kaiser Wilhelm into leftists. Nor is every leftist ideology ‘inherently’ authoritarian (i.e., anarchists deprive us of our choice of government even as they ‘liberate us’ from government). It is true most leftist ideologies are authoritarian because they either a) put the interest of the collective ahead of that of the individual (and the only way of achieving that is to increase the objects of government and extend control) and/or b) they assume people are incompetent to manage our own affairs. Therefore, what distinguishes leftist authoritarianism from non-leftist authoritarianism is not liberal v. conservative; it is a simple matter of whether the government doing the oppressing has a socialist agenda driving it to excess. Another way of saying this is: what is the motive driving the coercion? Monarchies from pharaoh to Kaiser Wilhelm believed they were specially privileged by G*d (or gods) to rule. Their motivation was divine-right masking a lust for personal power. Socialist regimes, on the other hand, believe they have the right to override personal freedoms “for the greater good”. Their motivation then is a theorized societal right-to-rule (masking a similar lust for personal power).
Conservatism can be several things as represented by cultural-values. Therefore, we have to be specific when we say conservatism is non-authoritarian or anti-authoritarian or counter-authoritarian (Islam is both authoritarian and conservative). Only democracy and American-conservatism (and its near cousins) have, as theoretical bases, ‘limited self-government and are, thus, non-authoritarian (though democracy has limited applicability). Yet, even this is overstatement because government is, by definition, coercive. The only ideology truly anti-authoritarian is anarchism; which American-conservatism is not. Somewhere between this conservatism and anarchism is libertarianism (which is a sort of ‘radical-conservatism’ in that it seeks to actually roll government back without destroying it completely).
There are a couple of reasons socialism has been so much more oppressive and aggressive than even the rule of elites. First is, if a single autocrat is bad, a swarm of grasping, amorally self-righteous, bullying autocrats is worse. The second reason has more to do with circumstance than ideology. The rise of socialism coincided with the explosion in technology (some have argued technology is the root problem, but I disagree). The destructive capacity of governments, rogues and resistance multiplied many times over what it had been. Where, in the sixteenth century, the capacity of armies was limited to small areas and more a nuisance to production and non-combatants, it began in the late 18th century to involve and impact large populations. Combine this new power both for construction and destruction with the involvement of the general population in the making of policy (populist revolt) and we arrive at the 19th–20th century mass-deaths by ideology. All of a sudden we had thousands of raving ideologues armed with the latest in mass murder. The French Terror was, thus, augmented by advanced musketry and the guillotine; communism by railroads, machine-guns, telegraph, mustard-gas and barbed wire; the Nazis and Imperial Japan by radio, airpower, buzz-bombs, submarines, and gas chambers. Death became easy to inflict, especially with moral restraints removed.
Yet, this fails to capture the difference in destructiveness as between 20th century free and totalitarian societies, plus why post-totalitarian societies succeeded in toning down the atrocities while retaining high levels of socialism. This suggests a third element, which is ‘socialism has (hopefully) learned from and adapted to its own worst excesses’ (i.e., totalitarianism [aka extreme-socialism] is barbaric and self-defeating of its own ends). The cost in lives of this lesson was enormous and is still dangerously ignored. Early 20th century socialists lacked direct experience of totalitarian excess (though they should have realized it well enough based on the French experience) to appreciate how little freedom they’d retain under their chosen masters; and how little restraint they’d have over them. Socialism, demands of change without regard for consequences, and hastiness in satisfying these demands far too often ends tragically. Socialists ignore the lessons of history; with genocide, democide, tyranny, global war, political war, and the crippling of commerce the likely result. Non-socialists can also make such mistakes and behave as badly, but the record implies a quantum increase of it when socialism is in the driver’s seat. That non-socialist regimes don’t with the same frequency may only demonstrate they a) have less need to satisfy extremists, b) a single self-assured despot is less dangerous than a mobocracy, and/or c) socialism is a volatile transition state between relatively peaceful freedom and a relatively peaceful global despotism.
Freedom is a semi-stable balancing act with anarchy on one side and tyranny on the other. Within a fairly wide swath, free republics are relatively stable. We know this to be true because free societies need little policing or encouragement. But, push things too close to the sides where unstable anarchy and tyranny have greater sway, and things quickly shift outside our control. Anarchy leaves us open to the first bully to come along to make us slaves. Similarly, extreme tyranny begets revolt (leave people nothing more to lose and they do push back). From absolute tyranny to anarchy takes us from tight control to utter chaos and vulnerability, placing both in the region of greatest instability, yet opposite in natures. This ultimate region is so unstable it cannot long exist and generally self-corrects. Thus, there does exist some topography of political states wrapping back on itself. What is wrong in the right-left circular picture, then, is the choice of end points and overall shape. It is not a true circle because there is a relatively wide, flat dimpled region of stability in the top-middle with sharply down-turning sides running to the bottom area of maximum instability. The overall topography must then be more heart-shaped. It is not extreme liberalism on the left to extreme conservatism on the right (which is not extreme in any sense of the word). It is from anarchy to tyranny, with degrees of freedom in between.
Michaelbp,
Mussolini was indeed a socialist. A mistake a great many people are taught is to think of the fascists and Nazis as the polar opposites of socialism (aka, the left). This notion is part of the propaganda growing out of the inter-war rivalry between national and internationalist socialists, reinforced during WWII by the need to make common cause with communist-Russia against the Nazis. In order to justify the partnership in the public-mind, the true natures of nationalism and socialism were blurred; leaving us a legacy of thinking fascism and Nazism ‘conservative’ ideologies, which they are not. In fact, WWII began more as a fight between varying socialisms (including Roosevelt’s New Dealers) than one of freedom versus fascism. Often, the issues are confused and altered in the midst of these struggles so that, by war’s-end, no one properly remembers the cause. The Nazis began their program intending to conquer Europe while annihilating communism. They begged and bullied Britain to stay out of it, but the British knew soon they’d have to fight anyway. With the British in and Roosevelt spoiling to get into the fight on the side of internationalism, it was only a matter of how and when we’d join the fight. Somewhere between the locking of Nazi with Soviet horns, freedom was drawn into the battle; and that changed the dynamic. Suddenly, America’s own socialists came out of the woodwork rewriting the recent Spanish Civil War as proof that internationalism and freedom had common cause in resisting the Nazis; masking we had as much to fear from communists.
Both nationalism and socialism grew out of the same ideological brew we call the late-18th century enlightenment, and both aimed at replacing elite-rule with collectivist-rule. Nationalism is not quite socialism, but neither is it socialism’s antithesis, antagonist nor incompatible. The prime example of this latter case is national-socialism, aka Nazism. Fascism is less radically socialist than nationalism, yet it also has elements of socialism (e.g., corporatism, syndicalism). A ‘fasci’ is a bundle of sticks representing politically a league or consortium. Italian fascism, then, combined various political parties to achieve greater strength. This league included several socialist and nationalists groups. Spain’s nationalists were even less socialistic than Italy’s fascists, but it is just as misleading lumping them in with American-conservatives or any other ‘conservatism’ (Nazism and fascism were/are radical departures; making them anything but conservative regardless which conservative politics is meant). Early 20th century Spanish-conservatism had to do with preserving aristocratic and ecclesiastical power (two things American-conservatism has never done), but the coalition fighting the communist and comprising Franco’s forces included many who were, themselves, socialists. How then can we say the Spanish Civil War was a simple fight between socialists and their ‘polar opposites’ the nationalists? Mussolini supported Spanish-nationalists because both were anti-communists grappling with radical-socialists devoted to delivering their countries into the hands of the Soviets. All over Europe, communists and radical-socialists, spurred on by Russia, were making common cause to bring about a world-wide revolution not unlike the radical turbulence of the 1960s. The methods of dealing with them (killing, political-imprisonment, deportation, &c) may have been excessive, but, by every measure we have, had the tables been reversed it is probable the atrocities would have been as bad or worse. A great deal of attention has been given to idolizing the internationalists (aka, radical-socialists and communists) fighting an uphill battle against reactionary Spain in defense of human liberty, but scant attention is given to who started the fight, their actual goals, how they might have achieved some of their goals less violently, or how things might have ended in one oppressor replacing another. The track record for socialist regimes is just not that good, and considerably worse than purely nationalist (i.e., dimly socialist) regimes.
So what is nationalism that we can straighten out this mess and differentiate it from socialism? Theoretically, nationalism is an ideology, sentiment, culture, or social-movement focusing on ‘the nation’ (a distinct people or identifiable group, e.g., Aryans, Germanic peoples, Italians). Historically, when the French Revolution began the unraveling of established European politics (aka, sovereignty vested in the crown) and the separation of ethnic groups from crowned heads, a good many thinkers cast around for alternate theories for a new basis of sovereignty. One of the ideas they hit on was nationalism. Thus it was that late 19th century composers Chopin and Wagner wrote music idolizing ‘nationhood’ (people + land), Russia embraced its age-old the concept of ‘rodina’ (motherland), and Bismarck created Germany out of weak, orphaned principalities. So far, nothing here to say these states cannot be both nationalist and socialist, right? Most of them were both. They all drank from the same cup of liberalism ignited in America, but strangely altered and spread through French conquests. At the same time, a parallel socialism was on the rise; begun by Marx and Engels, threatening to annihilate newly forged national identities, and absorbing the remnants into one global super-state. This, of course, was communism, aka internationalism. From this we can see that, although nationalism and internationalist-communism are, indeed, mutually antagonistic, nationalism and the more general socialism are not. It was the very real threat of radical overthrow that lead nationalists to suppress internationalism before this new super-state could take root.
While thinking about all this, remember continental Europe did not have the same liberal legacy as Britain, with its own liberalism having quite another character. Where John Bull’s liberalism was about preserving ‘ancient rights’ vested in the individual; continental liberalism is more about rectifying ancient wrongs by nobles against the middle and lower classes. Continental liberalism is about classes and achieving equality without much reference to or regard for the individual. Therefore, when continental Europe’s politics fractured it was along Jacobin-aristocratic lines. Aristocrats (aka, European conservatives), until well into the Cold War, were no more nationalists than they were socialists and distained both ideologies. Remember, to an aristocrat, borders and land matter more than nationality or ideology. Until recently, European-nationalism was by default and to some degree socialist, and no more conservative than communism. More recently, European-conservatism has dropped much of its aristocratic bent as a lost cause, focusing mainly on anti-socialism. It is still less nationalistic than early 20th century nationalisms.