Letter: Not much changed
by Richard J. Peterson, Emeritus Professor
I read with some interest your recent coverage of Mark Steyn's Roe Howard Freedom Lecture on March 4, 2008. I was a member of that audience and I must say that I did not walk away from the talk "feeling thoroughly informed and entertained." I did walk away with a haunting sense of deja vu and some questions about the intent of the Row Howard Freedom Lecture series.
I take you back to 1966 to give an insight into the deja vu experience. In that year my undergraduate university invited a speaker to campus as part of a controversial speaker series. By 1966 the civil rights movement was in full swing. James Meredith had been the first black admitted to the University of Mississippi four years earlier and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were both fresh pieces of federal legislation. The Black Power movement was in its infancy but was on the scene. Civil rights workers had been murdered in Mississippi for their participation in Freedom Summer. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated three years earlier; Malcolm X, the prominent Black Muslim leader, had been assassinated a year earlier. The speaker invited to my campus would himself be assassinated within two years. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy would both die soon after. There was general unrest on campuses because of an escalating, unpopular war in Vietnam, and the free speech movement was given voice by Mario Savio on the UC Berkeley Campus. These were tense times - change was in the wind and the very foundations of our culture seemed by some to be threatened. Sometimes I thought the world was just coming apart - it was a commonly held sense. Everybody was looking for some answers.
Against the backdrop of tension and fear, our speaker's message was clear - unless we did something to stop the wholesale assaults on "our" culture, we would lose it. "We" would become a minority in our own country. On that day the enemy was the Jewish Communist conspiracy and the increasingly powerful black race. The speaker pointed out that he was not a racist - he actually agreed with the Black Muslims that racial separation was the best solution. He was concerned that unless we did something to recognize and act against these evil forces, our white culture was doomed. The speaker of the day was George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, in full ANP uniform. On stage he was flanked by an ANP flag, an American flag, and two stiff, vigilant storm troopers/bodyguards. He spoke to a standing-room-only audience that did not hesitate to respond to his talk with jeers, boos and applause.
The above is not intended to suggest that Mark Steyn is a neo-Nazi. I make no such ridiculous claim. I tell this story because it illustrates the important intersection between historical conditions and common, not new or innovative, themes or explanations of events - in times of grave social unrest it is quite usual to have someone construct enemies or demonize groups, to make claims about groups or activities as sources of real threat. Today we don't have assassinations and landmark federal legislation as backdrops, we have Sept. 11. We are in the middle of a very unpopular war, but now there is a connection, real or constructed, between this war and the precipitating event of Sept. 11: al Qaeda. Hate groups are on the rise, having increased dramatically since Sept. 11, according to those whose job it is to monitor such activities. Multiculturalism in its many forms - legal, illegal, celebrated, contaminating, degrading, or whatever - is in the air and seen as a threat by some and a blessing by others. The list could go on, but the point should be clear - these are tense times; change is in the wind and the very foundations of our culture seem by some to be threatened. And we have, of course, seen a good deal of demonizing and enemy construction since Sept. 11. The world sometimes seems to be coming apart. Simple solutions continue to elude us.
Enter Mark Steyn. The enemy is now not blacks, now Jews, not Communists, but radical Islam and multiculturalism. We have given too much away in the name of multiculturalism; so much that we are in danger of giving away the very essence of our culture. Steyn claims not to be a racist, but a culturist. Do you start to hear an echo? Steyn is just the latest in a long series of such claim makers. They come along when conditions are just right, when tensions are high and audiences are looking for some simple fix to complex problems. We can find them in every decade. Mark Steyn is a new personality with an old message. The conditions are right, the claims are made and the demons are created. We will all hear the message again in the next cycle of culture scares. No one knows who the enemy will be next time around. What we do know is that there will be a next time. Things work like that.
The Roe Howard Freedom Lecture series was designed, as I understand it, to bring a fair and balanced perspective to campus discussions, countering the perceived liberal bias of so many campus speakers. When I first heard this I was, of course, reminded of Fox News' claim of "fair and balanced" reporting to counter the so-called liberal media. (A careful, systematic study of the media, by the way, would reveal no such bias.) I hope Roe Howard does not go the way of Fox News and generate more heat than light. So far, I think the series is zero for two. Mark Steyn does not represent new and innovative approaches to political realities, he is a personality, a commodity, a brand. He sells himself. His ideas are not ones that can be discussed - they are accepted or rejected. He is part of the cacophony of the culture wars. The faculty's absence from the Roe Howard Freedom Lecture series should not be seen as an intolerance of ideas but rather as an intolerance of poorly constructed and supported analysis - both speakers' ideas and techniques are well known. Any college should dedicate itself to the furtherance of rational discourse based on sound reasoning and replicable evidence. Neither of the first two Roe Howard lecturers fit such a model. I hope the selection committee can do better in the future. Certainly, the right has better to offer.
Volume: 128
Issue: 13
Section: Opinions
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