The Shape of the Playing Field, Part 5

“Shut Up!” They Explained

Writer Mark Steyn has documented the slow decline of free speech (for conservatives, anyway) around the globe.  Unfortunately, Minnesota is busily manufacturing fresh examples to add to Steyn’s sad tally.

Nearly 200 U of M professors object to Condoleezza Rice's speech.  Yes, professors at Minnesota’s flagship public university—and temple of free inquiry—object to hosting a speech this week by George Bush’s Secretary of State.

One of my frequent Twitter sparring partners couldn’t be roused to criticize the would-be censors on campus: he preferred the safer ground of critiquing the “outrageous” word choices of those standing up for free speech. 

Steyn writes,

But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced.  If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all.

At the University's Morris campus, a professor is accused of urging people last autumn to steal and throw away copies of the campus’ conservative student newspaper.  It turns out that he objects to the sophomoric behavior of the paper’s sophomore writers and longs for a more genteel conservatism. 

The professor writes,

We do have conservative students here—I expect that the majority are more conservative than I am—but they also trend towards being more the reasonable, rational, educated sort of conservative.  Not the kind you’ll see on Fox News, and most unfortunately, not the kind who are (sic) likely to get elected (sic) to the Republican party.

Our MN-Morris professor expressed a thought on the left prevalent since before it was described by Irving Kristol back in the 1970’s.  Kristol wrote then,

It has long been a cliché of liberal discourse that what this country needs is a truly intelligent and sophisticated conservatism to replace the rather primitive, philistine, and often racist conservatism that our history is only too familiar with. 

Steyn attributes the left’s instinct toward censorship to a holdover mentality from the 1960’s, as he writes,

This is the aging of the dawn of Aquarius:  new blasphemy laws for progressive pieties.

Except that during the last Age of Aquarius we were urged to “speak truth to power,” “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  Now that the political left of the 1960’s (or its progeny) hold a monopoly on power at both the Federal and Minnesota state levels, priorities have drifted…elsewhere.

Most annoyingly, our local media have abandoned their role of watchdog over government and the elected officials in power.  Instead, they busy themselves with speaking truth to non-power, quibbling over the word choices of powerless Republicans  or declaring certain fashionable issues off limits to GOP criticism.

Governing is hard work, and apparently, holding those who govern accountable, harder still.  It’s much easier to go after the soft targets who can’t hit back and take on only issues favored by the Daily Show audience.

The Morris professor will be unaware that “reasonable, rational, educated” conservatives produce interesting ideas on government policy that are both effective and workable.  Unfortunately, those conservatives are almost never seen on Almanac or on a panel discussion at the Humphrey Institute.

Our state’s underfunded, but scrappy, conservative policy infrastructure produces policy ideas worthy of hearing, but you won’t hear them on The Daily Circuit or read about them in the Star Tribune.

It turns out that the commitment of Minnesota’s academic/media/political elites to the concept of an opposition party is to the idea, not the practice.