Letters to the Editor

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Due to the volume of mail received regarding Benjamin Kepple's Jan. 22 "Worst of Winter" column, we regret that after this (April 1st) issue we shall not print any more letters about the subject. We will, however, do our best to put them up on our WWW site. Yes, we know what you're thinking: "Boy, I wish they did that over at the Daily with all those affirmative action letters." Ha, ha! But in all seriousness, we feel that the Letters page is best served by printing timely letters. We really appreciate your letters and we will do our best to either print them or put them up on the WWW page, or both. So keep those letters and flaming arrows coming. - Eds.

I wish I had time to pick out every illconceived notion that ol' Ben has written down here, but he must have his head up his ass most of the time. Especially since a good deal of Ralph Williams' lectures are on the various forms of oppression in societies past and present.

I am a recent convert to The Michigan Review's cause. After reading the Daily for six months, I happened to come across a copy of your newspaper, and I was pleasantly surprised. I was not aware that such a movement could or does thrive in a campus environment. You seem to hit every issue headon, as shown by the recent editorial by C.J. Carnacchio entitled, "President Lacks Character." It was nice to finally see my image of the President, i.e., an embarrassment that reflects on all of us, written down on paper.

However, I would like to make a suggestion to the editors regarding the editorial angle. Essentially, while the vicious, sarcastic, takenoprisoners approach may turn heads, it does nothing to help garner the respect that the conservative movement needs and deserves. To attract readers, you may need to be outrageous, but to keep readers, you need to be reasonable, presenting real problems and attainable solutions.

Also, personal attacks don't hold up in logical arguments. If you disagree with a specific individual's politics, use the intelligence that your collective staff clearly possesses to make valid arguments. Words like "stupid" and "stultifying" directed at other's viewpoints may make you look clever and witty, but uninformed. Seems like a copout to me. Just a few thoughts do with them what you will.

C. J. Carnacchio's "The Politics of Fear and Ignorance" is an interesting case of someone making some good points (against an admittedly easy target, to be sure), and then, in a needless attempt to demonize the opposition, so overstating things as to nearly succeed in making the 'bad folks' look pretty good.

One mistake Mr. Carnacchio makes is to list together "[s]treet demonstrations, burning newspapers, chanting slogans, threatening violence" as "methods militant campus groups employ" and examples of "the politics of the ignorant and vulgar." My knowledge of American history suggests that demonstrations of various kinds, in and out of the street and with or without chanting slogans, are part of our democratic traditions. These tactics have been well and nobly used by unions, civil rights groups, people opposed to wars, and a host of other causes on both the left and right. To conflate them with threats of violence or burning newspapers, both of which are highly undemocratic, is a foolish rhetorical turn that illserves Mr. Carnacchio if his point is that groups like BAMN are in no small sense purveyors of fascism, an opinion with which I would agree. But other groups who would and do use timehonored and fully legal tactics of protest should not have to wonder if they are being spoken about by the no doubt genteel Mr. Carnacchio; he appears to prefer that his protesters stay politely in the background, leaving the political process to the professional politicians. His claim that the "fate of affirmative action, as with all public matters, must be decided by the courts and legislatures, not by angry mobs" sets up a false dichotomy that ignores the necessary input of opinion from the people that representative democracy is supposed to serve.

If some people are vulgar or rude about how they make their opinions known, that is a matter for Miss Manners to 'tch, tch' about; it is not a basis to deplore legal protest. When newspapers are burned or speakers blocked from expressing ideas, no matter how unpopular, than I join Mr. Carnacchio in decrying such antidemocratic actions.

Political correctness is an easy target because it tend to be rigid and humorless, as well as puritanical, excessively judgmental, and unforgiving. Mr. Carnacchio runs the risk of doing something similarly doubtful by suggesting that Edmund Burke's statement about irritatingly noisy crickets and cud-chewing, silent cattle should warn us to be like the latter beasts. Personally, given those two choices in the world of politics, I stand with the former. But, of course, the real world rarely comes down to only two possibilities. Perhaps those of us who believe that democracy thrives on the active and vocal participation of its citizenry can find some other political beast to emulate.

I want to congratulate Andrew Golding on his fine coverage of UM basketball this season. Golding constantly interests me in the nuances of the game, and amuses me with his on the side "Basketball Notes." His reports of the often overlooked aspects of the game offer a unique look inside the world of basketball.

"Rave reviews" to The Michigan Review for their extensive basketball coverage. I have enjoyed Golding's columns, and look forward to his take on UM's NCAA Tournament run. Keep up the good work!

The events surrounding Ward Connerly's speech Wednesday night at the Michigan League have caused me to take a very pessimistic view of the social and political environment at the University of Michigan. I'm not sure which is more disgusting: the behavior of some of the affirmative action supporters, or the blatant abrogation of responsibility by those in charge of public safety at the Michigan League's ballroom.

Certain supporters of affirmative action may have claimed to have come for a debate, but when it came to hearing Mr. Connerly's position, it was obvious that they were not interested in engaging Mr. Connerly's mind. Instead, the typical interchange consisted of a question, an attempted response by Mr. Connerly, followed by an interruption by the questioner or the audience as soon as it became apparent that Mr. Connerly's answer wasn't agreeable to them. That these interruptions typically consisted of a mere rephrasing of the original question demonstrated the arrogant intolerance of such affirmative action supporters: to them it was inconceivable that Mr. Connerly could be so absurd and insolent as to disagree with them.

The abrogation of responsibility by the security officers and administrators consisted of their allowing a mob of affirmative action supporters to block the ballroom's only exit during the speech and in their eventual capitulation to the mob's chants "No one in! No one out!" i.e., unless the protesters were let into the ballroom (which was already filled beyond capacity), the protesters were not going to let anyone out of the ballroom. As the mob pushed against the door so as to pin me between it and the door frame, one of the two campus security officers guarding the door looked at me and asked "What do you expect us to do?" I suggested that he call for additional police officers as the force of the throng pushed me back into the ballroom. After a few minutes of negotiations by administrators who used walkietalkies to communicate between the doors, those of us who wanted to leave the ballroom were allowed to exit with all the dignity of released hostages: walking a gauntlet of thugs who counted aloud the number of each departing attendee. I didn't stay to see if the campus security officers and administrators honored their promise to let in one protester for every exiting attendee.

It is a humiliating lesson in pragmatism for an individual to back down upon confrontation by a mob of thugs who threaten to initiate force; it is a moral outrage, however, when officers of the law, those to whom we've entrusted the right to use retaliatory force, decline to use it while witnessing an individual being threatened. Peaceful sit-ins are one thing, but for protesters to shove and forcefully block a means of egress constitutes an initiation of force that must not be tolerated in a civil society. Such a capitulation by the administration is a symptom of and contribution to the erosion of the liberal principles of toleration, free expression, and the renunciation of the use of physical force as a means of dealing with people.

Unfortunately, capitulation to the initiation of physical force is not new to this administration. Witness President Bollinger's unprincipled response to the Latino protesters who stormed into and disbanded the reception he was holding for student government leaders last year. Rather than demand that the trespassers cease their disruption or face forcible removal by security officers, the reception was cut short and certain of the thugs were rewarded with a personal meeting with President Bollinger weeks later.

In Wednesday's Michigan Daily, associate provost Lester Monts said that Ward Connerly "should know that his ideas may not be well-received at the University of Michigan." Mr. Monts' statement, made in his capacity as an administrator, is a sad commentary on the intellectual climate at this campus. Perhaps in addition to warning future controversial speakers, Mr. Monts will also warn would-be attendees that the administration places higher value on mob appeasement than on their physical safety.

This letter goes out to Benjamin Kepple. When I got to Michigan as a freshman, I was immediately shocked and actually a little worried when faced with a campus paper that was literally brimming with so much vomitous rot. Of course, I'm talking about our Daily. A few long weeks later, I was really quite excited when I found the Review which was indeed a refreshing change. Then, you decided to misinterpret a pro-affirmative action letter I wrote to the Daily, and I stood slackjawed and mouth agape as you proceeded to raze my letter to the ground. That's beyond me now.

Getting to the point finally I read your "Class Selection" bit today, and laughed mightily. No, I'm not going to criticize. I will say this though: you're a funny bastard. I may think that some of your ideas are the self-important stylings of an old-school nincompoop, but please keep on writing. You're very good. I enjoy it, and I agree with you often. I'm sure many others do as well. Good luck the rest of this year.

This article was published in the 1 April 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 16, Number 9).
For questions or comments, see the Contact Information page.