Who Frogmarches Whom?

Introduction

There have been some interesting doings back there on the East Coast. My friend Nick Solheim gave a speech to the Boston College Republicans. Apparently someone in the upper reaches of authority there knew which levers to pull, and so the chapter president subsequently denounced Nick’s speech. And then they invited a Democratic legislator to address them the following week in order to demonstrate how flexible in the joints they were.

A big part of Nick’s address was exhorting his listeners to be prepared to die for what they believed, because the opposition was certainly prepared to kill for what they believed. There were other important things that were said, but that was the gist, that was the takeaway. This seemed way too strident to those who want to believe that we are all just liberal democrats in this Montessori kindergarten of ours. While important differences remain, we are all committed to playing well with others, as well as not running with scissors. The only problem with this is that—as the recent pattern of violence attests—it is simply not true. We are looking at actual arson, actual riots, actual shootings and, most importantly, actual gaslighting. It is an approach that has been tried before. “The people answered and said, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?” (John 7:20).

If you would like to read Nick’s speech, you can find it here:

But then, the National College Republicans, appalled at the treatment Nick had received, grabbed the Boston chapter where the pants hang loose, and frogmarched them to the curb.

So the question before the house is this. Whose perspective is being suppressed? Was it Nick’s when his speech was repudiated by his host? Or was it the local chapter when their perspective was escorted gently but firmly down the front steps and to the street?

Another Item of Interest

There is of course a student newspaper at Harvard, The Crimson, but there is another one, a conservative alternative called the Salient. The students running the Salient, if their board of directors were another ship, have passed them by, and are now off the starboard bow. I hasten to clarify my meaning. The students appear to be decidedly to the right of their overseers, and so when they published something that indicated as much, the board shut down publication until the extent of the outrages could be determined. The story about that can be found here.

Quoting from the article . . .

Now I am admittedly old school, and believe that Hitler was actually problematic because he wanted Germany to belong to the Germans, Poland to belong to the Germans, France to belong to the Germans, and so on down the road, as far as the Panzers had gas for. You know. If he had actually meant to stay put, such an admirable sentiment could have been aptly summarized by the words above. Had this speech to the Reichstag actually been advancing German isolationism, I believe that many of us would have been standing on our chairs and waving our hats. But alas. He was lying.

But is there any evidence that the current “America first” sentiment that animates much of the new right is at all interested in anything comparable? So why should we be distraught if their truths sound a bit like Hitler’s lies?

But bless me if I haven’t wandered off the main point. The issue here is the lame gatekeeping. A conservative board shutting down a conservative newspaper because of a phrasing that reminded somebody of Hitler’s lies? Even if some of the student writers were being naughty and secretly following Nick Fuentes for their historical insights, that is the kind of thing you deal with by means of an internal review, and a reassignment of said fellow to the sports page—if the Salient has a sports page. If they don’t, the board could make them start one. You don’t shut down the whole operation over something like this unless you are broadcasting the Purity of your Virtue to your actual masters.

Unless you are flinching because you are feeling the heat of the progressive gaze.

You Can’t Work for McDonald’s . . .

But as the saying goes, you can’t work for McDonald’s and sell Wendy’s burgers. Gatekeeping is inescapable. Someone is always going to gatekeep someone else. If there are no guards at the gates, then there are no gates. And if there are no gates, then you have no functioning society at all.

So there is no fault in disavowing a speech that you believe was out of line with your central mission. There is no fault in expelling a chapter that you believe is out of line with your central mission. There is no fault in shutting down a newspaper that started spouting off with things that were out of line with your central mission. To be able to do such things is an essential part of having a chapter, or a national organization of chapters, or a student newspaper.

No culture, no society, can function without discipline. There must be defined boundaries. But this does not make the applied discipline wise, prudent, or good. I can believe that spanking disobedient toddlers is a necessary part of life, but that does not mean that we must defend some angry parent abusing their kid. Gatekeepers are sinners too. Enforcers of standards are necessary, but enforcers of standards are also fallen.

And so all of this leads to the question that I hope my regular readers were anticipating, which is by what standard? Remembering all of this, and what Aragorn meant when he said that “men are better than gates,” we recognize the need to distinguish Isengard from Gondor—and then defend the right one.

When that chapter repudiated Nick Solheim, the problem was that they were wrong. They were wrong on the merits, and they were wrong about what the mission of their chapter was.

Free Speech and the Challenge of Platforms

In a free society, different organizations are free to set their own boundaries. Editorial choices are not censorship, even though editorial choices exclude certain perspectives. So there is the challenge of who you invite to your platform, and there is the very different issue when deciding to go stand on someone else’s platform. And the central thing we need to understand is that this kind of choice is not a matter of cooties. It is a question of prudence and strategy.

I would be happy to appear on other platforms with people I would not invite to stand on my platform. My standard for speaking elsewhere (other than time constraints and strategic value) would be whether or not I would have free rein to speak my mind while there. I would speak to a society of atheist homosexuals, if they did not place any a priori restraints on what I could say.

Another example would be that of responding to someone on X who popped off with an insult directed at me, and they were kind enough to tag me. If I click on their profile, and they have 17 followers, some of whom are likely sisters and mom, and I reply to their insult, I have just handed them a big microphone. I have just made their day, and why would I do that? If the same insult is aimed at me, but it is from someone who has 100,000 followers, they have just made my day.

Yet another issue would be platforms ostensibly dedicated to the advancement of “hearing from all sides.” They would have an obligation to have much greater latitude in who they would invite, and their responsibility would be to provide a point/counterpoint approach. For an example of how not to do this, a few years ago I was invited to address the Oxford Union, and after a few cordial exchanges, was unceremoniously dumped after Pressures Were Applied.

Of course they were.