Groveling before Social Justice Protests

Jay Schalin and Shannon Watkins once again prove that the Popery emanating from the Martin Center is intended to take its readers to brave new worlds Where No Conservative Could Ever Recognize Himself. 


This time the cause celebre is the Silent Sam statue controversy in Chapel Hill. And the staff of the Martin Center thinks it has discovered the reason that protesters did not pull down the statue or punch neo-fascist hate-mongers in the face: They want their readers to know that the authority of the kakistocracy was on full display 'standing athwart' the lunatics of social justice. It was the remarkable influence of a couple dozen (smiling and friendly) campus and local cops, the fear of (non)consequences from a free speech policy that hasn't been promulgated, and the (un)remarkable (non)bravery of the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to listen to the barbarism of articulate students and faculty, that held the mongrels of liberalism in check. What courage! What fortitude! What bullshit.   

This piece is so stunningly misinformed that it is difficult to know where to begin. Let's just stick with the most obvious errors – and even then there are more than just a few.

The most critical oversight here is that Schalin and Watkins are so afraid of liberal and lefty boogie men, that they are constitutionally incapable of even acknowledging that Gorka, and the neo-fascists who showed up to ‘defend’ Silent Sam, aren’t really the kind of people with which thoughtful conservatives would identify. These are people whose only purpose in life is to provoke and denigrate others. Despite what Martin Center apologists might want to believe, there isn’t a whole heck of a lot of educational value in the vile things Gorka and the Heritage of Hate proponents regularly upchuck. More importantly, the threats, urgings of violence, and calls for government repression and punishment of those who disagree with them, make the occasional outburst from lefty protesters look like the inept ramblings of people who can't quite figure out how to push back against professional bullies. 

Similarly, Schalin and Watkins seem incapable of recognizing that the monuments legislation that has created all of these problems was just another example of abuse of power in name of hyperpartisan hyperagitating. What possible and reasonable interest would the state legislature have in regulating the decisions of local jurisdictions about how they handle statuary in public spaces? This law was nothing more than a little treat of red meat to hold the loyalty of the disappearing and soon-to-be-extinct Cultists of the Lost Cause.

So, having failed to identify the real sources of disruption, incivility, and hate that are the primary issues in this story, Schalin and Watkins then proceed to get a whole host of facts wrong. Here are just a few:

1. The University didn't "handle" the protests at all. It was the protesters who handled themselves. No one from the University administration told them how to act. The authoritarian blinkers that Schalin and Watkins wear seem to make them blind to most of the relevant facts about the actions and motivations of the protesters. The fact of the matter is that it wasn’t the presence of police – that has never stopped an angry crowd – but rather the choices the protesters themselves made not to waste their “oft-excessive passion” (in non-Martin Center parlance, that would be their time and energy), or allow themselves to lose their wits and fall prey to temptation (sic!), “no matter how intent on causing mayhem they were.”

This kind of lackadaisical interpretation would be silly if it weren't so sad.

2.  It is a radical misdescription of events and developments to assert that “there are certainly signs indicating that the protesters are unreasonable” because of demands that Chancellor Folt take unilateral and illegal action to remove the Silent Sam. I don't know what planet Schalin and Watkins were visiting over the last few weeks, but over in Chapel Hill those demands quickly dissipated after the Chapel Hill administration and faculty leadership explained that the problem was not one the University could solve on its own, but a problem with the law itself. The only people who kept insisting that Folt act were those who were out of touch with the unfolding discussions about the statute. But off somewhere on the planet of ideological prejudices, Schalin and Watkins could only see and hear uninformed lefties; everyone else with a brain in their head was already talking about how to change or work around the law. 


Indeed, at the public forum on Silent Sam, there was not a single individual who spoke who claimed that the Chapel Hill administration had acted inappropriately, several speakers admitted they had earlier misunderstood the situation, and if you listen closely to what was said at the forum, you will note that there were numerous speakers who complimented the Chancellor for her efforts to fight the law, wished her success, and committed their support.

In any case, and again, the real question here is why Schalin and Watkins didn’t call out the law for what it was – a stupid piece of hyperpartisan legislation.

3. It is crude, unadulterated apologetics for Schalin and Watkins to suggest that the UNCCH Trustees were somehow responsible for “hosting a public forum to allow individuals to ‘express their thoughts’” about the Silent Sam issue. That idea came from Folt and her advisers. She said as much at the beginning of the public forum. And it was a brilliant public relations move, since it effectively forced the UNCCH BoT to proclaim itself for or against removal of the statue.

Folt had to force the BoT's hand because of their deafening silence. The fact of the matter is that neither the UNC Board of Governors nor any of the campus Boards of Trustees said a word about this legislation when it was being formulated. Faculty leadership told them the law would interfere with the efficient and effective management of campus resources and the educational climate. In fact, not only did the Boards not utter a peep when this stupid legislation was being drafted, the Board of Governors actually violated the principles of good governance when they insisted that President Spellings and Chancellor Folt not act independently of the Board in managing the issue. Legally speaking, the Board has no such authority. This was hubris in the extreme.

But perhaps there is an explanation for Schalin and Watkin failing to note the culpability of the Trustees in this mess, and failing to note that the Board of Governors acted inappropriately. After all, the Martin Center has claimed influence over the legislature and the boards, and since the kakistocracy now controls the legislature, the Board of Governors, and soon the Boards of Trustees since the General Assembly (in HB17, and unconstitutionally) stripped away all of the Governor’s appointment authority to Trustees positions, it should come as no surprise that the hacks at the Martin Center would attribute more to the actions of their ideological heroes than is warranted. And it would be no surprise if they hesitated to call out a dumb act by the kakistocracy, since of course the Martin Center would have to own it.

4. It is a howler of twisted logic for Schalin and Watkins to claim “it seems that the university’s newly implemented free speech policy has so far proven to be effective: Participants at both the public forum and within the auditorium where Gorka spoke were warned that anyone who substantially interrupted the event would be subject to university disciplinary action and possible arrest, and would be escorted out of the building.”

One reason this is so twisted is that the warnings that were issued have been for several years standard fare at potentially controversial gatherings on campuses. So unless those formulating those statements could see the future, and composed the warnings in anticipation of a not-yet-conceptualized statute and policy, Schalin and Watkins must have been tricked (sic!) into making fallacious causal claims.

A second and more important reason this is so twisted is that there is in fact no UNC free speech policy! The law requires a policy in order to be implemented, and the Board of Governors only proposed one in November. Since the UNC Code requires a 28 day waiting period between presentation and vote, the full Board won’t even vote on it until December 15 -- if then. (Why “if then?” You can say you heard it here first: the legislation is probably unconstitutional).

Now I suppose that in the dimension of time-space occupied by Martin Center writers, time's arrow can be reversed, and disagreement with the kakistocracy before the promulgation of a law can be punished after the promulgation of that law. But in the dimension of time and space the rest of us occupy, individuals cannot be punished for violating policies that do not exist.

The point here: don’t forget that your goofy philosophy professor told you that you could always identify an argument with no legs by looking for that most basic of logical fallacies, post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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If this is the kind of pablum that passes as thoughtful conservatism today, it is probably just as well that Canavan, von Hayek, Kendall, Burnham, Kirk, Viereck, and Buckley aren't around to disown their ostensible allies at the Martin Center. But I am confident they aren’t turning in their graves, either, since it is virtually certain they wouldn’t commit the same mistake as a nitwit like me, and actually take this stuff seriously. Then again, as my namesake once said, “wise men are more dependent on fools than fools on wise men,” so I will just resign myself to playing the fool for thoughtful conservatives more wise than I.