There is a scandal on this campus. The most vocal self-declared "progressives" and "conservatives" at Duke are actually the exact same people, and no one is saying anything about it.
You know who I'm talking about. They run organizations like the Duke Conservative Union and the Progressive Alliance. Their political views are strictly wed to the group (the left or the right) they pledge allegiance to, and their ideas about everything - from the war in Iraq to abortion to capital punishment - can be discerned without talking to them. They write Chronicle letters-to-the-editor, usually brimming over with an air of moral superiority, decrying one policy or another and poking at their "opponents." They call themselves either "progressive" or "conservative," but really they are two sides of the same coin. For this column, let's just call them preservatives.
The worst crime these preservatives commit is not self-righteousness, but rather that they don't actually say anything. Having found a group to which they feel they "belong," they simply spin progressive or conservative rhetoric, in part to prove to the other members of their group just how progressive or conservative they are.
Here I would like to show three devices preservatives use in their rhetoric to sound credible without actually saying anything, and then suggest an alternative:
- Instead of debating ideas, the preservative spends his time debating whether certain ideas should be debated. After Laura Whitehorn, a political "activist"/"terrorist" who blew up part of the U.S. Capitol in 1983, was invited to speak on campus in March, the DCU published a full page ad in The Chronicle asking readers to "tell Duke President Nan Keohane [and others] YOU DON'T WANT THEM TO USE YOUR MONEY TO CONDONE TERRORISM."
Why on a college campus, allegedly devoted to intellectual discussion, are we wasting time deciding who should and should not have a voice? The progressive preservatives, of course, were quick to point out the hypocrisy of their right-leaning (and freedom-of-speech loving) brethren. The progressives, however, wreak of hypocrisy too, because they were employing many of the same tactics the conservatives are now using when, two years ago, protests erupted over the publication of David Horowitz's slave reparations advertisement in The Chronicle. Said one letter writer at the time: "Too often in this country people take cover under the fiction called 'freedom of speech' in order to give credence to their racist pathologies." Horowitz was labeled a racist (maybe he is); Whitehorn a terrorist (quite possible, too). Either way, the labels are not really relevant, because no one, not even the all-knowing preservatives, should be deemed the suitable arbiters of what is and is not appropriate speech. What's particularly annoying about this preservative tactic is that it's often done to silence fellow preservatives (like Horowitz), whose hollow rhetoric could be refuted easily, but who instead are given more attention than they could ever possibly deserve.
(As a side note, it is true that politically-active, non-preservatives come to campus to speak. But too often, guest lectures denigrate into political circle jerks when only those with the same political views as the lecturer show up to the speech. Slam poet Saul Williams gave a provocative and entertaining talk on MLK Day, but unfortunately got off easy with the questions because the preservatives in the audience were ideologically aligned with Williams already and chose to blindly cheer him on instead of actually - gasp!- challenge what the guy was saying).
- The preservatives routinely misuse historical analogies as a way of oversimplifying issues and in lieu of doing their own research.
A recent column on these pages pointed to the "immense similarities" between the situation in Germany in 1939 and Iraq in 2003. The column concluded with the proclamation we should go along with whatever our leaders tell us. The problem with the column, of course, is that the analogy doesn't work: Unlike Hitler, Saddam is not actively trying to conquer a large section of the world. And while Hitler was in power only five years before the Munich Agreement ceded part of Czechoslovakia (then known as the Sudetenland) to the Germans in 1938, Saddam has been president of Iraq since 1979, and when he did try to go after Kuwait, in 1990, America didn't appease him.
While historical analogies can certainly be useful, too often preservatives use them loosely, without much attention to detail. Then again: Why bother doing research when you can just rattle off some dates and sound like you're saying something substantial? In truth, if all of the historical analogies employed by letter writers and columnists in The Chronicle and other publications since Sept. 11 are accurate, not only is Saddam the same as Hitler, but Hitler is the same as Ariel Sharon, who is the same as Bush, who is the same as Osama, who is the same as Yassir Arafat, which, by the transitive property of equality, makes Sharon the same as Arafat, the same as Saddam, etc.
Now, I don't like Bush and I don't like Osama, but if you can't see the difference between the two, you can't see the advantages you might have in defeating either of them. While comparing Hitler to Sharon or Arafat may catch people's attention, that's really all it does, because it provides no helpful information and only serves to antagonize those who disagree. It may provoke a big reaction, but nothing is actually being said.
- History begins on the date that is most convenient to advance a preservative's argument. The preservative never views history in the long-term. Time only begins when it is politically convenient for it to begin. While a conservative preservative might use Sept. 11 to show why America needs strong military and intelligence agencies, rarely will he bother acknowledging what happened prior to that date which may have helped lead to the disaster. And preservatives of all political stripes exploit history for their own agendas when it comes to the Middle East, a region created either thousands of years ago, in 1948, in 1967 or in 2000, depending on what you're trying to prove.
These are just a few of the ways preservatives use rhetoric to blow steam without advancing any sort of idea. But do not be so cynical as to think this is what politics should actually be about. And don't think what I'm advocating is moderation. What I'm advocating is a changing of the guard. Make no mistake about it: Right now, the preservatives are the most vocal "political activists" at Duke, and on a university campus, I don't think this should be the case. What I'm suggesting is that those who are sick of the preservative mentality do something.
How? Well, that's where it gets tricky, but I have a place to start: See, the problem with the preservatives isn't only that they say nothing, but they also create nothing.
You want to see creation? Last year, Mary Adkins and Adam Bloomfield were upset over how our University dealt with disordered eating on campus. Their provocative play, The Perks of Disordered Eating, led to scores of conversations across campus about how we deal with the issue. That is political activity. Two kids in my freshman dorm wanted to combat hunger in Durham and thought it was unfair how the University took back students' left-over food points at the end of each semester. They negotiated with the University and created the Duke-Durham Hunger Alliance, which, through two food point drives, has raised $15,000 from students' unused food points. That is political activity.
Maybe you don't have the ability to create something on those scales, maybe you do. But whatever the case, don't be inactive. Don't let the preservatives be the loudest voice on campus.
Lucas Schaefer is a Trinity junior.
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