Profiles in arrogance

I suspect that this debate over Commencement speakers is only exciting us Washington insiders. But for what it’s worth, my take is that those people who turn their backs on the speaker are demonstrating that they’ve failed to absorb one of the key lessons of a liberal education: That you should be open to perspectives different from your own. The act of turning your back is indicative of a closed mind and an arrogant belief that nothing anyone says could possibly make you rethink your position. Having said that, I suspect that the protesting New School students behaved in exactly the way John McCain’s advisors wanted them to. Like the Hotline, I suspect that his Chief of Staff is deliberately stoking the argument with his criticisms of the New School protestors. They have done far more to buttress McCain’s conservative credentials than his speech at the thoroughly obnoxious Liberty University did.

Now, one of the joys working at FP is that we agree on very little, which leads to good vigorous debate: There’s no back-turning in the lunch room at 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW. And as if to prove the point, Carolyn told me that she thought the protestors were exercising a legitimate right and were representing a noble tradition of student protest. On the first point I totally agree with her. On the second point I dissent a little. What makes student protest noble is when it is brave and these protestors weren't. It is not like this is a police state and they are going to be rounded up like the first people to stop clapping after Stalin’s speeches were. Equally at the New School they’re unlikely to face the disapprobation of their peer group. I doubt very much that the anti-McCain student speaker Jean Rohe has harmed her career prospects. Indeed, she is enjoying a rather elongated fifteen minutes of fame at the Huffington Post.

It is depressing to think that standards of civility in political discourse have now dropped so low that some of America’s brightest young minds think that the most intelligent thing to do when encountering views aliens to their own is to turn their back.