by Benjamin Kepple
On October 13th, a group of about 200 students felt it necessary to protest the evils of a voyage of a Genoan explorer attempting to find a new trade route to the Indies. Never mind that this voyage took place so far back in history that virtually no polity in existence today truly has a governmental system similar to those in power when this explorer left. Never mind that the vast majority of ideas and beliefs have changed since then. Never mind that this explorer died in relative obscurity and completely failed as a colonial administrator. It - everything - is still all his fault.
Two hundred students remembered you, Christopher Columbus, and reviled you on Your Special Day. Congratulations! How's it feel to be ranked up there with Stalin and Hitler and Mao on the Scale of Cosmic Evil Incarnate? What's this? You can't feel anything? Your bones have rotted into dust? Oh. Well, don't worry! These 200 students and the students who follow them will keep your memory alive with their bitterness, frustration, and anger. After all, it is all your fault. Racism. Disease. Slavery. Colonialism. Propositions 209 and 187. Affirmative action opponents. Republicans. All of these things are your legacy, according to those who curse your very name, those who wish you had never left the docks of Barcelona so very long ago.
You see, Mr. Columbus, you've become the whipping boy for a group of rather angry people who have but one multifaceted weapon left to promote their weakening agenda: emotion. Just the very words Columbian exchange bring to their minds thoughts of guilt, avarice, and intolerance. To them, the Santa Maria, Pinta, and Nina are the bearers of genocide, oppressive European culture, and patriarchal religious hiearchy. If they had their way, you would vanish from living memory and take your oppressive, European rape culture with you, you genocidal maniac!
But Columbus, or any interpretation of Columbus, is not the true problem.
After all, he is no longer on this mortal coil. His remains have been swallowed by the dust that gave him life. He doesn't even have a holiday on collegiate campuses anymore. It is now Indigenous Peoples' Day, a dubious holiday of murky origin, during which students are encouraged by leftwing campus activists, faculty, and administrators to Take A Stand against the Evil brought by European civilization to the obviously virgin, pristine shores of the Americas.
The true problem is that any positive interpretation of Columbus was not allowed. These selfappointed Inquisitors of History have deemed Columbus evil, and took it upon themselves to Take Action against that evil. Was their argument and agenda weak? Certainly. How did they get around that? Protest in such a manner that discourse was impossible. The opportunity for dissent by those who did not agree was scrapped in an emotional tirade.
The right to dissent on this campus is being increasingly shouted down by militants who have no respect or regard for opposing viewpoints, and this is an attack on the freedom of those who have the will or the capability to sit down and engage in rational argument about an issue or an idea. While the Far Left is by far the dominant player in squelching dissent under the heel of its boot, the Far Right is also occasionally to blame.
Without allowing for dissent, we do not have freedom. Without the freedom to discuss the validity of an idea, that idea becomes very weak. It is attacked and spat upon by those who do disagree with it.
The right to dissent is cherished among all people who support the freedom of speech. However, the right to dissent is not tolerated among the lunatic fringe of the leftwing. These radicals have shunned and criticized civilized discourse; their beliefs are so outmoded or truly bizarre that they cannot stand up to rational debate. Hence, their only weapons, aside from their shrill voices urging on the rest of the student body that ignores them, are the placards and cardboard signs they wear and carry, as if a thinking student is going to be convinced by a sign reading COLUMBUS = DEATH. If they do not agree with something, they shout it down. If they consider something to be a threat, they become violent. When they march, they will march through buildings and disturb classes, exhorting the students to Join the Holy Crusade. Yet no one joins. No one leaves their class. No one cares.
This simply serves to make the activists angrier. I often wonder how they keep going, for when they fight, they lose. They fight again, and they lose. They lose not to a secret conservative conspiracy, but to the student body whose political views have been expressed more by their apathy than by their activism. It is prima facie evidence that something isn't working when these activists can't even convince the liberal portion of the student body at one of the most liberal public institutions in the nation. Even many English professors think they are crazy. It explains why they are laughed at by the mainstream media and the mainstream culture.
Perhaps they can successfully rationalize why they lose. After all, they always claim that their opponents are racist, sexist, and tools of the white male power structure. Maybe this keeps the furnace of hatred and intolerance burning in their minds. I don't know.
The socalled champions of diversity and the oppressed are paradoxically, the most intolerant and oppressive people out there. Those who have even minor differences of opinion are not welcome. They are shunned and cast out of the group, as if they were lepers. For example, were I a member of BAMN, and say I had leftofcenter leanings, yet I had the temerity to suggest that perhaps affirmative action opponents had a leg to stand on with a meritbased approach, and that we should support affirmative action by heavily recruiting minorities ... exactly. I would be cast out of the group instantly. The members of these groups and the people who run them do not want to discuss the issues in a coherent manner. They do not want to sit down and duke it out with a conservative or even a traditional liberal over What Is Right.
As students, we must daily, it seems put up with the constant whining of these annoying, outoftouch leftwing activists. Constantly, their slogans are shouted from protestors and press releases: "Support Indigenous Peoples' Day! Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary! Raza si, Daily no!"
Everyone has the right to voice their opinions. The way that these protestors voice their opinions, everyone on campus must hear them. That does not mean, however, that anyone is going to listen.
Are you sick and tired of hearing these protestors? Are you sick and tired of being assaulted as a racist, a sexist, a fascist, and an oppressor because you won't buy into the logically flawed, emotionally charged rhetoric these activists constantly spew out? Are you tired of their hypocrisy and their refusal to even sit down and discuss things in a logical manner? Were you angry when BAMN disrupted the Shelby Township affirmative action rally, or disgusted when protestors disrupted your lecture? Stop holding this in. It's not healthy. Show them you're angry.
Hence, I've desginated November 15th of every year to be Indignant Peoples' Day. On this day, confront your local leftwing activist. Give him a piece of your mind. Show your general disgust with their unwillingness to compromise. Tell your ardent Socialist teaching assistant his ideas are ridiculous, and prove it. Then lambaste him for bringing his political beliefs into the class.
Tell your English professor you're sick of his political correctness, and challenge him to back up his statements. If you're taking the class pass/fail, you may even feel bold enough to publicly question how he ever managed to gain tenure.
Tell the preacher on the diag screaming about the evils of cigarette smoking, Catholicism, and homosexuality to either make some statements approaching rationality or save his breath.
The one mistake that the majority of students can make - whether you are a liberal or conservative - is allow for the marketplace of ideas to be shut down by a select group of self-appointed guardians of virtue. Whether these guardians are extremists on the left or extremists on the right, they should not be allowed to simply shout down those who oppose them. Rational discourse, the medium for the intelligent and civilized, is what must be maintained and used. Fortunately, the vast majority of us, on the Left or the right, do so at Michigan. However, we must be vigilant among those that do not, and work against them by attempting to engage in some kind of rational discourse. So feel free to celebrate Indignant People's Day. You have a lot to be indignant about.
Benjamin Kepple is EditorinChief of the Review. He has been indignant since 1986. Email your comments to him at bjkepple@umich.edu or sound off at mrev@umich.edu.