Trump vs. The World: |
Featured in the Bucknell Humanities Center’s fall flyer: A Soviet Propaganda Poster, 1924, by Aleksandr Rodchenko, picturing artist Lilya Brik. She is yelling “Books,” and the side title says “on all the branches of knowledge.” This was an advertising poster for the Leningrad Department of Gosizdat (State Publishing House), which agency had nationalized publishing in the Soviet Union and assumed the de facto role of censor for the Communist Party. |
Alf Siewers | asiewers@bucknell.edu
“War is the health of the state.”
—Randolph Bourne
When the Bucknell Humanities Center recently announced its series of Tuesday afternoon talks this fall in a flyer, I was surprised to see that it featured a 1924 Soviet propaganda poster, in Russian, which related to none of the events. (Please note that this piece is a critique of Bucknell’s intellectual culture and not of the Humanities Center or its truly fine leadership, which I support.)
A little background:
The image included a young woman yelling “books” and was an advertisement for the state publishing house, which according to the Handbook of Russian Literature (Yale 1985) had by 1919 assumed control of all publishing activities in much of the former Russian Empire, including literary publishing, ranging from allocation of paper to what would be published. The model in the photo was a well-known Soviet artist, Lilya Brik, who in 1922 secretly became a member of the NKVD (a predecessor agency to the KGB), as agent 15073 of its 7th Secret Department, as revealed in a 1990 article after the fall of the Soviet Union. During the 1920s Brik had been rumored to be a secret police agent or informer because of her interactions with agents. Only a couple years before this poster was made, in 1922, scores of intellectuals had been forced to leave St. Petersburg in the so-called philosophers’ ships, expelled from the Soviet Union. This was during a time when, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn documented, the use of terror and persecution on a wide scale by the Soviet regime was already well underway.
Nazi terror bad, Communist terror, ok?
Now, admittedly, if a piece of Nazi propaganda art had popped up randomly in this context, or a piece of propaganda art associated with the regime persecuting the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Buddhist followers, or maybe even a positive image promoting Donald Trump, I would have been more surprised. And I would have expected an understandable outcry. But there was no outcry about this flyer, although we are on the cusp of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The new post-revolutionary order resulted in tens of millions of deaths, including millions in my own faith community, which is not coincidentally an historically under-represented religious minority in Bucknell’s predominantly White Anglo-Saxon Secularist Privilege (WASSP) culture today. According to scholars writing in The Black Book of Communism (Harvard 1999), a total of 80 to 100 million deaths worldwide occurred at the hands of communist regimes during the 20th century, following from establishment of the regime whose propaganda was featured on the flyer.
So, again, imagine the understandable outcry, if a Bucknell office used Nazi propaganda art featuring an SS agent, from minority groups persecuted by the Nazis, or those generally opposed to Nazism. Why not a similar outcry or exercise of better judgment in this case?
On WASSPness.
Partly I would guess because the culturally genocidal regime in question was Marxist and anti-Christian. Its attitude in that respect is socially acceptable sadly to some on our campus. Also it was targeting a form of Christianity that does not fit into the mold of Bucknell’s historic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) background, now morphed into WASSP (again, White Anglo-Saxon Secularist Privilege). The latter tends to lump together all forms of Christianity globally in a stereotyped mass of “dominant” and “oppressive” ideology. Campus WASSPness in some ways parallels the idea of “whiteness.” It’s so totalizing that it rarely if ever notices itself. It is a supposedly elitist frame of mind that is now trans-ethnic in American dominant culture as others aspire to join it. The fact that my faith community includes a variety of global racial and ethnic backgrounds with a very different history and generally a lower socioeconomic background from Bucknell’s WASSPness probably does not help increase sensitivity regarding the persecutions it has endured on three continents. So Slavic, Armenian, Arab, and African Christians are targeted by cultural genocide—so what?
Global blindspots.
WASSPness in America more generally undoubtedly is responsible also for our ho-hum attitude toward genocide of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, under the foreign policy of President Obama as endorsed and carried out by former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. In Clinton’s case, what other presidential candidate in modern times would be getting a free pass for having contributed, as Secretary of State, to genocide? Yet US efforts to support “moderate” Islamicist rebels against the Syrian government, to support the goals of allies such as Saudi Arabia, have led directly to funding and arms and aerial cover for forces killing and “cleansing” Christians and other groups from their ancient homelands, or forcing them into exile. It’s only one example of how the US remains in a state of perpetual war, even risking conflict with the world’s other greatest nuclear superpower, Russia, to support those Mideastern policies with their genocidal results. With the approaching 2016 election, the US is likely to morph even further into a one-party neoliberal/neocolonial regime pursuing such wars of aggression, under a Democratic Party incorporating the neoconservative wing of the GOP elite along with its ramped-up Wall Street backers.
Crickets chirping.
Meanwhile, look in vain on campus for memorial events and speakers lamenting the centennial of the start of mass communist persecutions against various faiths and other cultures, or for the victims of genocide in the Middle East today, or even last year for recognition of the Christians singled out and killed for their faith at Umpqua Community College in the US. Affected minority faith communities in the US can expect cold or no comfort amid the centennial and current genocide supported or tolerated by the American government. American WASSPness sadly seems capable of celebrating the achievements of selected culturally genocidal regimes of the past, even while tacitly supporting by its silence genocidal policies of the US in the present. Apparently, to parallel Orwell, in the eyes of certain kinds of privilege, some murderous totalitarian systems are more equal than others.
“War is the health of the state.”
—Randolph Bourne
When the Bucknell Humanities Center recently announced its series of Tuesday afternoon talks this fall in a flyer, I was surprised to see that it featured a 1924 Soviet propaganda poster, in Russian, which related to none of the events. (Please note that this piece is a critique of Bucknell’s intellectual culture and not of the Humanities Center or its truly fine leadership, which I support.)
A little background:
The image included a young woman yelling “books” and was an advertisement for the state publishing house, which according to the Handbook of Russian Literature (Yale 1985) had by 1919 assumed control of all publishing activities in much of the former Russian Empire, including literary publishing, ranging from allocation of paper to what would be published. The model in the photo was a well-known Soviet artist, Lilya Brik, who in 1922 secretly became a member of the NKVD (a predecessor agency to the KGB), as agent 15073 of its 7th Secret Department, as revealed in a 1990 article after the fall of the Soviet Union. During the 1920s Brik had been rumored to be a secret police agent or informer because of her interactions with agents. Only a couple years before this poster was made, in 1922, scores of intellectuals had been forced to leave St. Petersburg in the so-called philosophers’ ships, expelled from the Soviet Union. This was during a time when, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn documented, the use of terror and persecution on a wide scale by the Soviet regime was already well underway.
Nazi terror bad, Communist terror, ok?
Now, admittedly, if a piece of Nazi propaganda art had popped up randomly in this context, or a piece of propaganda art associated with the regime persecuting the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Buddhist followers, or maybe even a positive image promoting Donald Trump, I would have been more surprised. And I would have expected an understandable outcry. But there was no outcry about this flyer, although we are on the cusp of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The new post-revolutionary order resulted in tens of millions of deaths, including millions in my own faith community, which is not coincidentally an historically under-represented religious minority in Bucknell’s predominantly White Anglo-Saxon Secularist Privilege (WASSP) culture today. According to scholars writing in The Black Book of Communism (Harvard 1999), a total of 80 to 100 million deaths worldwide occurred at the hands of communist regimes during the 20th century, following from establishment of the regime whose propaganda was featured on the flyer.
So, again, imagine the understandable outcry, if a Bucknell office used Nazi propaganda art featuring an SS agent, from minority groups persecuted by the Nazis, or those generally opposed to Nazism. Why not a similar outcry or exercise of better judgment in this case?
On WASSPness.
Partly I would guess because the culturally genocidal regime in question was Marxist and anti-Christian. Its attitude in that respect is socially acceptable sadly to some on our campus. Also it was targeting a form of Christianity that does not fit into the mold of Bucknell’s historic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) background, now morphed into WASSP (again, White Anglo-Saxon Secularist Privilege). The latter tends to lump together all forms of Christianity globally in a stereotyped mass of “dominant” and “oppressive” ideology. Campus WASSPness in some ways parallels the idea of “whiteness.” It’s so totalizing that it rarely if ever notices itself. It is a supposedly elitist frame of mind that is now trans-ethnic in American dominant culture as others aspire to join it. The fact that my faith community includes a variety of global racial and ethnic backgrounds with a very different history and generally a lower socioeconomic background from Bucknell’s WASSPness probably does not help increase sensitivity regarding the persecutions it has endured on three continents. So Slavic, Armenian, Arab, and African Christians are targeted by cultural genocide—so what?
Global blindspots.
WASSPness in America more generally undoubtedly is responsible also for our ho-hum attitude toward genocide of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, under the foreign policy of President Obama as endorsed and carried out by former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. In Clinton’s case, what other presidential candidate in modern times would be getting a free pass for having contributed, as Secretary of State, to genocide? Yet US efforts to support “moderate” Islamicist rebels against the Syrian government, to support the goals of allies such as Saudi Arabia, have led directly to funding and arms and aerial cover for forces killing and “cleansing” Christians and other groups from their ancient homelands, or forcing them into exile. It’s only one example of how the US remains in a state of perpetual war, even risking conflict with the world’s other greatest nuclear superpower, Russia, to support those Mideastern policies with their genocidal results. With the approaching 2016 election, the US is likely to morph even further into a one-party neoliberal/neocolonial regime pursuing such wars of aggression, under a Democratic Party incorporating the neoconservative wing of the GOP elite along with its ramped-up Wall Street backers.
Crickets chirping.
Meanwhile, look in vain on campus for memorial events and speakers lamenting the centennial of the start of mass communist persecutions against various faiths and other cultures, or for the victims of genocide in the Middle East today, or even last year for recognition of the Christians singled out and killed for their faith at Umpqua Community College in the US. Affected minority faith communities in the US can expect cold or no comfort amid the centennial and current genocide supported or tolerated by the American government. American WASSPness sadly seems capable of celebrating the achievements of selected culturally genocidal regimes of the past, even while tacitly supporting by its silence genocidal policies of the US in the present. Apparently, to parallel Orwell, in the eyes of certain kinds of privilege, some murderous totalitarian systems are more equal than others.
Policing and Race: The Nature of our Problem
Protester wearing an “Assata Taught Me” sweatshirt. Image from an October 9th article on
southjerseywatchdog.net
southjerseywatchdog.net
Alexander Riley | atriley@bucknell.edu
A democracy is a difficult thing to sustain. An informed, rational citizenry is essential, and this is especially so in dealing with points of significant social and political conflict and tension within a democratic society. Such tensions are constant at low levels, but they can percolate into serious discord and lead to the crumbling of major structures necessary for democracy to persist if they are not effectively mitigated by cautious, rational deliberation and analysis followed by reasoned policy.
For several years now, American society has been wrestling with difficult questions concerning the policing of African-Americans. Charged claims have been made about the police’s purportedly heightened propensity to resort to unjustified lethal violence against black suspects. How are we doing as a democracy in our responsibility to rationally and carefully sift through the differing claims being made on this issue with an eye to evidence and truth rather than the easy satisfaction of moral and emotional prejudices?
The short answer: Quite badly, and educational institutions, the mass media, and too many national political figures are by and large not much helping to resolve the problem. They are often making it worse.
The first thing one notices when one looks at the narrative presented by partisans who accuse the police of racist injustice in their dealings with black Americans is that it is often provocative, and sometimes even inflammatory. The Movement for Black Lives claims that there exists “a war on black people.” Black Lives Matter is still more emotionally pointed and critical: “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”
What evidence supports such strong claims? The activists would like to convince us that blacks as a population are statistically much more likely to be victims of lethal police violence than whites, and that this itself is evidence of the racist bias of the policing system. But these claims have been carefully investigated and they do not hold up. Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Baltimore police officer, looked closely at a version of this claim that was echoed in many media sites a few years ago. Its proponents purported that the data show that blacks are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than whites. Examining the same data set, Moskos revealed that the original analysis contained a number of significant methodological flaws and that the actual ratio of black to white police killings is approximately 4 to 1. Is this discrepancy, though much smaller, still unjustified, he asked? It is hard to have an intelligent position on that question, he argued, unless you include some important context: the black to white homicide ratio in the same population of examination was 15 to 1, and police killings of civilians are closely correlated with the homicide and violence rates in the communities they police, i.e., in communities where a lot of murders and other serious violent crimes are committed, we typically find more frequent police interaction with very violent individuals, which can be expected to end badly with some greater frequency than police interactions with citizens in communities with lower violent crime rates. So, given the great discrepancy in black and white murder and violent crime rates, we should probably not expect to see a one to one correspondence between black and white deaths at the hands of police.
Beyond the claims about the statistical propensity of black and white police killings, the activists often go on to point to specific cases that they believe to be evidence of unjustified and racist police action. But the details of those cases are seldom explored in any real detail; they are simply named and listed. What happens when we look carefully at them, on an individual basis?
Let us give the activists the benefit of the doubt and talk about just the cases they apparently believe to be particularly representative of the phenomenon and their claims. On the front page of the Black Lives Matter website, three such cases are represented with photos of the victims and hashtags stating their names.
Delrawn Small experienced an episode of road rage in East New York when he was allegedly cut off by another driver and then proceeded to chase the car for several blocks, finally exiting his car at an intersection to angrily confront and threaten the other driver, who turned out to be an off-duty police officer who fatally shot Small. The officer was stripped of his badge and is awaiting trial. Video of the event shows that Small was shot almost immediately upon reaching the car door of the officer, that is, he had not physically assaulted him, as the officer claimed. What precisely Small’s intentions were in pursuing and then angrily rushing to the car in the middle of a city traffic stop is unknown, but minimally it has to be recognized that no one other than Mr. Small himself was involved in putting him into the confrontational situation that wound up being lethal, and the officer was off-duty, and therefore not acting in his capacity as an officer of the law.
Alton Sterling, whose lethal encounter with police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana provoked protests, rioting, and the murders of three police officers in that city, had a previous conviction for resisting arrest while armed with a gun, and he was again armed and resisting arrest, reaching into his pants against police commands, when fatally shot. The video of this shooting clearly shows police struggling with him and ordering him to stop reaching for the weapon they had been alerted he was carrying.
Philando Castile also had an extensive criminal history and was stopped as a suspect in the robbery of a convenience store in St. Paul, Minnesota. Surveillance images of the robbery that have been posted online reveal a man who does look quite a lot like Mr. Castile. His girlfriend was in the car during the stop and claimed he had his hands in the air when he was shot, but her account has come under heavy suspicion as central elements of it have been revealed to be grossly inaccurate, e.g., she claimed no effort was made to apply CPR to Castile, which police records falsify. Castile’s case is, of these three, the only one that at this point does not present clear evidence that the escalation of the situation that led to the shooting was in large part the responsibility of the victim himself. The investigation is still ongoing. There has however already been some speculation, based on what officers at the scene are heard saying in the aftermath of the shooting, that Mr. Castile, who was apparently legally carrying a firearm at the time of the stop, may have acted in a way that seriously destabilized and degraded the situation, i.e., that he alerted the officer that he was carrying a concealed weapon and then inexplicably moved to put his hand into his pocket or waistband. Was he reaching for his wallet, as his girlfriend claimed, or for the weapon in order to present it to the officer? Whatever the reason, his action (failing to obey the command of the officer to keep his hands in sight) was not in keeping with the common sense protocol for concealed carry permit holders in such scenarios, and it directly put him in danger by presenting to the officer a potentially deadly situation of an armed robbery suspect reaching into a pocket against the order of the officer.
Of the three cases then that the Black Lives Matter group features on their front page, one (Sterling) is a more or less obviously justified use of police force, the second (Small) is a clear example of reckless and aggressive behavior on the part of the victim directly precipitating a violent encounter that resulted in his death (and likely will soon add as a coda the conviction of his killer, who was not acting in his capacity as an officer of the law when he shot Small), and the third (Castile) is a case about which we still do not know enough to make a reasonable analysis. This adds up to something less than a vindication of the notion that there is a concerted attempt to target and terminate innocent, peaceful black lives. And these three cases arguably tell us nothing about the much more frequent, indeed typical example of police exercise of lethal violence, which almost always involves a suspect armed with a deadly weapon assaulting an officer.
Even the iconic case of the Black Lives Matter movement, that of Michael Brown, was revealed on investigation to deviate in fact almost completely from the emergent mythology of the case embraced by the activists. Brown had just committed a robbery at a convenience store and an assault on the store owner when he was stopped by Officer Darren Wilson. He promptly attacked the officer and tried to take his gun, then was shot while in full advance toward the officer after ignoring repeated orders to desist and comply. A grand jury, and then a Department of Justice investigation, did not find any evidence to merit charges against Wilson, whose life has nevertheless been thoroughly destroyed by the battering his reputation took at the hands of a hostile media. The accounts of witnesses who alternately claimed Brown had his hands up, or was on his knees, or was fleeing from Wilson when he was shot, accounts which were only very infrequently subjected to even the mildest critical questioning by media sources, were found to be complete fabrications.
Getting to the bottom of a complex social issue such as this one requires time, patience, and a rational mind open to evidence. The typical citizen, and here we must include the bulk of the activists who drive movements like Black Lives Matter, can, alas, be expected to fail to do their homework and to succumb to emotional passions with some frequency. Democratic polities assume that passions and a lack of and even a disinterest in education and knowledge are omnipresent difficulties to be confronted in the political life of a society. They attempt to mitigate these limitations in a number of ways. Educational and informational institutions are created with the express purpose of informing us about the facts and teaching us how to best go about ascertaining what the facts are, and national political leaders are counted on to provide an example of cautious, responsible, unifying civic spirit. How have those institutions and leaders done on this matter of race and police violence?
Look around colleges and universities and try to find broad and fair discussions of this problem. They are exceedingly rare. What one finds much more commonly is extreme political partisanship and moral self-righteousness, occasionally still masked in the façade of scholarship, but increasingly nakedly anti-intellectual and unreasoning. The most extreme and unfounded claims of radical partisan groups such as Black Lives Matter are swallowed whole and regurgitated in the form of lectures and ‘campus community events’ for students cowed into acquiescence by political correctness and the well-founded fear of the significant damage to personal reputation that often ensues from being labeled a racist.
And what about the mass media, which is charged with the task of reporting on these events and informing viewers and readers about factual details? These institutions have been even more egregiously negligent in their duty than the schools. Virtually every time a black man is shot by police anywhere in the country, no matter the circumstances and the dearth of details as the investigation takes place, the headlines scream the same incendiary lines and make no effort whatsoever to dig below the rhetoric of the activists, which coincides with the political sensibilities of most of those trained in journalism schools that have become openly politically partisan to the far left. We learn of another “unarmed black man” killed in “questionable” circumstances, and of accusatory accounts by family and purported witnesses who are certain that the victim was a hapless and innocent pawn in the game of viciously racist police, but when it is later revealed, as it too often is, that the unarmed man actually had a gun, or something that he was wielding as people wield guns and that therefore was reasonably interpreted by police to be a gun, or that he was in the process of physically attacking the police or refusing to obey orders given by the police that put them in serious jeopardy when he was shot, and that the glowing portrayal of the victim by family members somehow overlooked a serious criminal record and significant ongoing evidence of sociopathy, and that the alleged witnesses were not in fact present at the scene, or fabricated their stories out of whole cloth, the corrections appear (when they appear at all) not in bold letters on the front page, and with an apology for journalistic irresponsibility, but in small print, at the bottom of the page, displaced by other more recent events that will be reported in the same sensationalist, partisan mode.
Political figures also have grave responsibilities on this that they systematically ignore in the hopes of revving up emotional responses that will favor their own political prospects. In the immediate aftermath of the Philando Castile shooting, when very little was known except his girlfriend’s flawed narrative and a cell phone video she began recording only after the shooting took place, the governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, made the following public statement about it: “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have. … I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront that this kind of racism exists.” Several national political figures took to social media only days after the Sterling and Castile killings made headlines to make pronouncements based almost entirely on pre-fabricated political agendas rather than careful consideration of facts, in blissful refusal of any recognition of the contribution their intemperate statements would almost certainly make to further exacerbating tension and increasing the potential for rioting and violence against police and other citizens. Hillary Clinton lamented that “[s]omething is profoundly wrong when so many Americans have reason to believe that our country doesn’t consider them as precious as others because of the color of their skin.” Bernie Sanders tweeted: “The violence that killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile has become an all too common occurrence for people of color and IT. MUST. STOP.” Elizabeth Warren also used Twitter to directly invoke and align with the partisan critics of police: “We’ve seen the sickening videos of black Americans killed in traffic stops. Lives ended by those sworn to protect them. #blacklivesmatter” Here one sees leaders and figures of great moral responsibility in total rejection of any requirement to be accurately informed of events of a disputed and divisive nature before speaking publicly about them, abusing their authority and their influence in a manner that endangers every American and the very foundations of our democracy.
This is a spectacle that should make all Americans sad. And very nervous.
For several years now, American society has been wrestling with difficult questions concerning the policing of African-Americans. Charged claims have been made about the police’s purportedly heightened propensity to resort to unjustified lethal violence against black suspects. How are we doing as a democracy in our responsibility to rationally and carefully sift through the differing claims being made on this issue with an eye to evidence and truth rather than the easy satisfaction of moral and emotional prejudices?
The short answer: Quite badly, and educational institutions, the mass media, and too many national political figures are by and large not much helping to resolve the problem. They are often making it worse.
The first thing one notices when one looks at the narrative presented by partisans who accuse the police of racist injustice in their dealings with black Americans is that it is often provocative, and sometimes even inflammatory. The Movement for Black Lives claims that there exists “a war on black people.” Black Lives Matter is still more emotionally pointed and critical: “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”
What evidence supports such strong claims? The activists would like to convince us that blacks as a population are statistically much more likely to be victims of lethal police violence than whites, and that this itself is evidence of the racist bias of the policing system. But these claims have been carefully investigated and they do not hold up. Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Baltimore police officer, looked closely at a version of this claim that was echoed in many media sites a few years ago. Its proponents purported that the data show that blacks are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than whites. Examining the same data set, Moskos revealed that the original analysis contained a number of significant methodological flaws and that the actual ratio of black to white police killings is approximately 4 to 1. Is this discrepancy, though much smaller, still unjustified, he asked? It is hard to have an intelligent position on that question, he argued, unless you include some important context: the black to white homicide ratio in the same population of examination was 15 to 1, and police killings of civilians are closely correlated with the homicide and violence rates in the communities they police, i.e., in communities where a lot of murders and other serious violent crimes are committed, we typically find more frequent police interaction with very violent individuals, which can be expected to end badly with some greater frequency than police interactions with citizens in communities with lower violent crime rates. So, given the great discrepancy in black and white murder and violent crime rates, we should probably not expect to see a one to one correspondence between black and white deaths at the hands of police.
Beyond the claims about the statistical propensity of black and white police killings, the activists often go on to point to specific cases that they believe to be evidence of unjustified and racist police action. But the details of those cases are seldom explored in any real detail; they are simply named and listed. What happens when we look carefully at them, on an individual basis?
Let us give the activists the benefit of the doubt and talk about just the cases they apparently believe to be particularly representative of the phenomenon and their claims. On the front page of the Black Lives Matter website, three such cases are represented with photos of the victims and hashtags stating their names.
Delrawn Small experienced an episode of road rage in East New York when he was allegedly cut off by another driver and then proceeded to chase the car for several blocks, finally exiting his car at an intersection to angrily confront and threaten the other driver, who turned out to be an off-duty police officer who fatally shot Small. The officer was stripped of his badge and is awaiting trial. Video of the event shows that Small was shot almost immediately upon reaching the car door of the officer, that is, he had not physically assaulted him, as the officer claimed. What precisely Small’s intentions were in pursuing and then angrily rushing to the car in the middle of a city traffic stop is unknown, but minimally it has to be recognized that no one other than Mr. Small himself was involved in putting him into the confrontational situation that wound up being lethal, and the officer was off-duty, and therefore not acting in his capacity as an officer of the law.
Alton Sterling, whose lethal encounter with police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana provoked protests, rioting, and the murders of three police officers in that city, had a previous conviction for resisting arrest while armed with a gun, and he was again armed and resisting arrest, reaching into his pants against police commands, when fatally shot. The video of this shooting clearly shows police struggling with him and ordering him to stop reaching for the weapon they had been alerted he was carrying.
Philando Castile also had an extensive criminal history and was stopped as a suspect in the robbery of a convenience store in St. Paul, Minnesota. Surveillance images of the robbery that have been posted online reveal a man who does look quite a lot like Mr. Castile. His girlfriend was in the car during the stop and claimed he had his hands in the air when he was shot, but her account has come under heavy suspicion as central elements of it have been revealed to be grossly inaccurate, e.g., she claimed no effort was made to apply CPR to Castile, which police records falsify. Castile’s case is, of these three, the only one that at this point does not present clear evidence that the escalation of the situation that led to the shooting was in large part the responsibility of the victim himself. The investigation is still ongoing. There has however already been some speculation, based on what officers at the scene are heard saying in the aftermath of the shooting, that Mr. Castile, who was apparently legally carrying a firearm at the time of the stop, may have acted in a way that seriously destabilized and degraded the situation, i.e., that he alerted the officer that he was carrying a concealed weapon and then inexplicably moved to put his hand into his pocket or waistband. Was he reaching for his wallet, as his girlfriend claimed, or for the weapon in order to present it to the officer? Whatever the reason, his action (failing to obey the command of the officer to keep his hands in sight) was not in keeping with the common sense protocol for concealed carry permit holders in such scenarios, and it directly put him in danger by presenting to the officer a potentially deadly situation of an armed robbery suspect reaching into a pocket against the order of the officer.
Of the three cases then that the Black Lives Matter group features on their front page, one (Sterling) is a more or less obviously justified use of police force, the second (Small) is a clear example of reckless and aggressive behavior on the part of the victim directly precipitating a violent encounter that resulted in his death (and likely will soon add as a coda the conviction of his killer, who was not acting in his capacity as an officer of the law when he shot Small), and the third (Castile) is a case about which we still do not know enough to make a reasonable analysis. This adds up to something less than a vindication of the notion that there is a concerted attempt to target and terminate innocent, peaceful black lives. And these three cases arguably tell us nothing about the much more frequent, indeed typical example of police exercise of lethal violence, which almost always involves a suspect armed with a deadly weapon assaulting an officer.
Even the iconic case of the Black Lives Matter movement, that of Michael Brown, was revealed on investigation to deviate in fact almost completely from the emergent mythology of the case embraced by the activists. Brown had just committed a robbery at a convenience store and an assault on the store owner when he was stopped by Officer Darren Wilson. He promptly attacked the officer and tried to take his gun, then was shot while in full advance toward the officer after ignoring repeated orders to desist and comply. A grand jury, and then a Department of Justice investigation, did not find any evidence to merit charges against Wilson, whose life has nevertheless been thoroughly destroyed by the battering his reputation took at the hands of a hostile media. The accounts of witnesses who alternately claimed Brown had his hands up, or was on his knees, or was fleeing from Wilson when he was shot, accounts which were only very infrequently subjected to even the mildest critical questioning by media sources, were found to be complete fabrications.
Getting to the bottom of a complex social issue such as this one requires time, patience, and a rational mind open to evidence. The typical citizen, and here we must include the bulk of the activists who drive movements like Black Lives Matter, can, alas, be expected to fail to do their homework and to succumb to emotional passions with some frequency. Democratic polities assume that passions and a lack of and even a disinterest in education and knowledge are omnipresent difficulties to be confronted in the political life of a society. They attempt to mitigate these limitations in a number of ways. Educational and informational institutions are created with the express purpose of informing us about the facts and teaching us how to best go about ascertaining what the facts are, and national political leaders are counted on to provide an example of cautious, responsible, unifying civic spirit. How have those institutions and leaders done on this matter of race and police violence?
Look around colleges and universities and try to find broad and fair discussions of this problem. They are exceedingly rare. What one finds much more commonly is extreme political partisanship and moral self-righteousness, occasionally still masked in the façade of scholarship, but increasingly nakedly anti-intellectual and unreasoning. The most extreme and unfounded claims of radical partisan groups such as Black Lives Matter are swallowed whole and regurgitated in the form of lectures and ‘campus community events’ for students cowed into acquiescence by political correctness and the well-founded fear of the significant damage to personal reputation that often ensues from being labeled a racist.
And what about the mass media, which is charged with the task of reporting on these events and informing viewers and readers about factual details? These institutions have been even more egregiously negligent in their duty than the schools. Virtually every time a black man is shot by police anywhere in the country, no matter the circumstances and the dearth of details as the investigation takes place, the headlines scream the same incendiary lines and make no effort whatsoever to dig below the rhetoric of the activists, which coincides with the political sensibilities of most of those trained in journalism schools that have become openly politically partisan to the far left. We learn of another “unarmed black man” killed in “questionable” circumstances, and of accusatory accounts by family and purported witnesses who are certain that the victim was a hapless and innocent pawn in the game of viciously racist police, but when it is later revealed, as it too often is, that the unarmed man actually had a gun, or something that he was wielding as people wield guns and that therefore was reasonably interpreted by police to be a gun, or that he was in the process of physically attacking the police or refusing to obey orders given by the police that put them in serious jeopardy when he was shot, and that the glowing portrayal of the victim by family members somehow overlooked a serious criminal record and significant ongoing evidence of sociopathy, and that the alleged witnesses were not in fact present at the scene, or fabricated their stories out of whole cloth, the corrections appear (when they appear at all) not in bold letters on the front page, and with an apology for journalistic irresponsibility, but in small print, at the bottom of the page, displaced by other more recent events that will be reported in the same sensationalist, partisan mode.
Political figures also have grave responsibilities on this that they systematically ignore in the hopes of revving up emotional responses that will favor their own political prospects. In the immediate aftermath of the Philando Castile shooting, when very little was known except his girlfriend’s flawed narrative and a cell phone video she began recording only after the shooting took place, the governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, made the following public statement about it: “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have. … I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront that this kind of racism exists.” Several national political figures took to social media only days after the Sterling and Castile killings made headlines to make pronouncements based almost entirely on pre-fabricated political agendas rather than careful consideration of facts, in blissful refusal of any recognition of the contribution their intemperate statements would almost certainly make to further exacerbating tension and increasing the potential for rioting and violence against police and other citizens. Hillary Clinton lamented that “[s]omething is profoundly wrong when so many Americans have reason to believe that our country doesn’t consider them as precious as others because of the color of their skin.” Bernie Sanders tweeted: “The violence that killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile has become an all too common occurrence for people of color and IT. MUST. STOP.” Elizabeth Warren also used Twitter to directly invoke and align with the partisan critics of police: “We’ve seen the sickening videos of black Americans killed in traffic stops. Lives ended by those sworn to protect them. #blacklivesmatter” Here one sees leaders and figures of great moral responsibility in total rejection of any requirement to be accurately informed of events of a disputed and divisive nature before speaking publicly about them, abusing their authority and their influence in a manner that endangers every American and the very foundations of our democracy.
This is a spectacle that should make all Americans sad. And very nervous.
The Myth of the Rich’s “Fair Share”
Justin Pinard
justin@thecounterweight.net
justin@thecounterweight.net
It has, in the last several years, become one of the greatest political and social debates so far of our generation: the attacks to and fro regarding “the one percent,” “the ninety-nine percent,” wealth inequality, and wealth redistribution. This child of the worldwide Occupy movement has forced its way into this year’s election season, and may very well determine the victor of that race.
Accusations of rampant crony capitalism, a lack of government regulation and oversight, and a malicious plot by the top one percent to control everything, have been made since the fall of 2011. Attacks are leveled at many people, both specific individuals and larger demographics: the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, down to the owners of major media outlets and corporations, to a much wider-applied “upper-class white male” grouping.
These people, it is claimed, manipulate elections and acquire economic monopolies that triple and quadruple their already huge profits. From there, they exact total influence and control over the government and, eventually, the people themselves. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator from Vermont, is perhaps the most well-known of these crusaders; even Hillary Clinton, who is the wealthiest candidate in the race behind Donald Trump, has moved to attack “Wall Street cronyism” and the purported evils of wealth accumulation.
One of the great mysteries of this phenomenon, however, is not the aforementioned claims of inequality and unfairness, but rather the proposed solutions to these inequalities, and the remedies to cure what they claim to be a disease on American democracy. One of the most well-known and agreed-on of these solutions on the American left, is an even higher progressive tax; that is, to tax the richest Americans even more, while lowering taxes on everyone else.
Some, probably many, of you will agree with such a proposal – and why not? On paper, increasing the tax rates on the one percent will increase government revenue, decrease income inequality, and allow for further tax cuts on the middle class. If one were making $4 million annually before taxes, and a fifty percent income tax were put in place for those making over $1 million, he would still have $2 million left over to spend – which seems fair in the long run. But it isn’t as simple as this.
Senator Sanders and many other liberal politicians often claim while on the campaign trail, that the rich need to pay their fair share. What a confusing phrase; where did it come from? What exactly is a “fair share” – how can we quantify it? Is it a fifty percent income tax? Seventy-five percent? Ninety percent or more? Does anybody even really know? Thus stems the problem with this solution.
Even if we take Senator Sander’s proposed tax plan, which puts high-end incomes around fifty-two percent, what is keeping the government from increasing this as time goes on? The income tax has increased gradually through time ever since its implementation in 1913 – and what is keeping this trend from continuing, unabated?
On top of this, Sanders’ proposed payroll tax increases and Wall Street speculation taxes – the latter of which would greatly affect the millions of middle-class Americans that do trade on the stock market – would spread the misery onto millions of unsuspecting Americans, not just the rich. Add to these tax rates the various property, sales, state and local taxes, and nearly every American family would be paying an excessively high - and frankly, unwarranted - percentage of their income to the government in taxes (especially in states that have a propensity for higher taxes, like California, Oregon, New Jersey, and my native New York).
Arguing that the government has the right to place a certain income tax level on someone due to their wealth – the justification being that the government is making that person pay his or her “fair share” – is dangerous indeed. If the government can tax one’s property freely at any rate because it is fair, then what is keeping the government from, in the future, extrapolating this “fairness” to even higher levels, so as to bring people to financial ruin, or to bring the country to economic collapse through job outsourcing?
The power to lay and collect income taxes has been clearly established as a distinct power of the federal government by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution; and the Supremacy Clause of that same document establishes federal law as the law of the land. Theoretically, then, as state nullification of federal laws has been ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, there is no limit as to the income tax rate that the government can place upon the citizenry.
Montesquieu and Lord Acton both famously said that men with power will ultimately be corrupted by it, and will abuse that power to whatever end. Similarly Locke said that government “has no other end but the preservation of property” (within which he included oneself as one’s own property). I think it is high time that we think very long and hard about these ideas, lest we forget those great republican ideals that the United States was founded upon. After all, it was the violation of the right to property – and unfair taxation without representation – that started the whole American Revolution in the first place, nearly 250 years ago.
Accusations of rampant crony capitalism, a lack of government regulation and oversight, and a malicious plot by the top one percent to control everything, have been made since the fall of 2011. Attacks are leveled at many people, both specific individuals and larger demographics: the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, down to the owners of major media outlets and corporations, to a much wider-applied “upper-class white male” grouping.
These people, it is claimed, manipulate elections and acquire economic monopolies that triple and quadruple their already huge profits. From there, they exact total influence and control over the government and, eventually, the people themselves. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator from Vermont, is perhaps the most well-known of these crusaders; even Hillary Clinton, who is the wealthiest candidate in the race behind Donald Trump, has moved to attack “Wall Street cronyism” and the purported evils of wealth accumulation.
One of the great mysteries of this phenomenon, however, is not the aforementioned claims of inequality and unfairness, but rather the proposed solutions to these inequalities, and the remedies to cure what they claim to be a disease on American democracy. One of the most well-known and agreed-on of these solutions on the American left, is an even higher progressive tax; that is, to tax the richest Americans even more, while lowering taxes on everyone else.
Some, probably many, of you will agree with such a proposal – and why not? On paper, increasing the tax rates on the one percent will increase government revenue, decrease income inequality, and allow for further tax cuts on the middle class. If one were making $4 million annually before taxes, and a fifty percent income tax were put in place for those making over $1 million, he would still have $2 million left over to spend – which seems fair in the long run. But it isn’t as simple as this.
Senator Sanders and many other liberal politicians often claim while on the campaign trail, that the rich need to pay their fair share. What a confusing phrase; where did it come from? What exactly is a “fair share” – how can we quantify it? Is it a fifty percent income tax? Seventy-five percent? Ninety percent or more? Does anybody even really know? Thus stems the problem with this solution.
Even if we take Senator Sander’s proposed tax plan, which puts high-end incomes around fifty-two percent, what is keeping the government from increasing this as time goes on? The income tax has increased gradually through time ever since its implementation in 1913 – and what is keeping this trend from continuing, unabated?
On top of this, Sanders’ proposed payroll tax increases and Wall Street speculation taxes – the latter of which would greatly affect the millions of middle-class Americans that do trade on the stock market – would spread the misery onto millions of unsuspecting Americans, not just the rich. Add to these tax rates the various property, sales, state and local taxes, and nearly every American family would be paying an excessively high - and frankly, unwarranted - percentage of their income to the government in taxes (especially in states that have a propensity for higher taxes, like California, Oregon, New Jersey, and my native New York).
Arguing that the government has the right to place a certain income tax level on someone due to their wealth – the justification being that the government is making that person pay his or her “fair share” – is dangerous indeed. If the government can tax one’s property freely at any rate because it is fair, then what is keeping the government from, in the future, extrapolating this “fairness” to even higher levels, so as to bring people to financial ruin, or to bring the country to economic collapse through job outsourcing?
The power to lay and collect income taxes has been clearly established as a distinct power of the federal government by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution; and the Supremacy Clause of that same document establishes federal law as the law of the land. Theoretically, then, as state nullification of federal laws has been ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, there is no limit as to the income tax rate that the government can place upon the citizenry.
Montesquieu and Lord Acton both famously said that men with power will ultimately be corrupted by it, and will abuse that power to whatever end. Similarly Locke said that government “has no other end but the preservation of property” (within which he included oneself as one’s own property). I think it is high time that we think very long and hard about these ideas, lest we forget those great republican ideals that the United States was founded upon. After all, it was the violation of the right to property – and unfair taxation without representation – that started the whole American Revolution in the first place, nearly 250 years ago.
When asked for comment on the Milo Yiannopoulos event
Photos by Ethan Wise and Maggie Fischer
Ethan Wise, Editor-In-Chief
editor@thecounterweight.net
editor@thecounterweight.net
The bold sections are questions that we were asked by Elizabeth Worthington, who wrote the article in The Bucknellian about the Yiannopoulos event.
The responses are a joint statement by Tom Ciccotta, ‘17, President of Bucknell College Republicans, Ethan Wise, ‘17, President Bucknell University Conservatives Club, and Colby Rome, ‘17, President Young Americans for Liberty, who hosted Yiannopoulos.
What was your primary motivation for bringing Milo to campus?
Correspondence started when Tom emailed Milo Yiannopoulos about his and others’ experiences dealing with overwhelming political correctness and perceived progressive bias here at Bucknell, and asked Milo to be a guest on our radio show. Milo indicated that he would instead like to come and speak at the University, free of charge.
A lot of people are questioning this decision and wondering why you didn’t choose a less extreme/controversial conservative. Thoughts/comments?
The vast majority of Milo’s views are not extreme and are held by many Americans, but perhaps he gets that reputation from his style and schtick. Milo is the only conservative or libertarian speaker in recent Bucknell history who filled an auditorium with college students, and for that reason, he was the perfect choice.
What do you think about the political attitude on campus in terms of openmindedness and composition of liberals versus conservatives?
To generalize and say that all on the right are more open-minded than those on the left is an incredibly absurd statement. But generally, those who have opposed events similar to these across college campuses typically consider themselves to be on the left side of the political spectrum.
Were you surprised by student reaction? Specifically the tearing down of the posters?
We were disheartened and disappointed by the response of some in the Bucknell community who thought it was acceptable to deface or destroy our posters, or found personal attacks a justifiable or productive form of discourse.
I’ve heard that professors have told some of their students not to attend. Do you think this defeats the purpose of free speech?
It doesn’t necessarily defeat the purpose of free speech, as choosing not attending is a form of expression, however it defeats the purpose of a liberal education where students should be provided the tools to come to their own conclusions and be responsible for their own destinies.
How do you define the boundary between free speech and hate speech?
We believe that all speech should be permitted, with the exception of direct incitements of violence. The best way to defeat ideas is not to censor them, but to challenge and defeat them.
If you believe someone is wrong, the best way to beat them is to shine a spotlight on their ideas and to challenge them, not try to hide them or prevent them from being heard.
How can Bucknellians benefit from this speaker?
Bucknellians will be given a glimpse at alternate perspectives that are very often not presented, and even intentionally skipped altogether. This was clearly evident by the response of some in the faculty who signed the petition to cancel the event or actively encouraged their students not to attend.
Anything else that you deem relevant or notable or want to make sure people hear, please include.
University of Michigan recently hosted Milo, and the article about the event in their student newspaper included a quote from the university spokesperson, who said: “ The university feels so strongly about [freedom of speech] that our commitment is codified in an official policy, called a Standard Practice Guide. ” In the Standard Practice Guide, it states that “ Expression of diverse points of view is of the highest importance...The belief that an opinion is pernicious, false, or in any other way detestable cannot be grounds for its suppression.”
We call upon this university and its administration to adopt a similar policy, giving all members of this University the right to set forth their views and opinions. Although the student handbook states, “We affirm that diverse experiences and perspectives in the classroom and across campus enhance everyone’s educational experience,” there is no specific mention of freedom of speech or expression similar to that aforementioned. You cannot have one without the other.
The responses are a joint statement by Tom Ciccotta, ‘17, President of Bucknell College Republicans, Ethan Wise, ‘17, President Bucknell University Conservatives Club, and Colby Rome, ‘17, President Young Americans for Liberty, who hosted Yiannopoulos.
What was your primary motivation for bringing Milo to campus?
Correspondence started when Tom emailed Milo Yiannopoulos about his and others’ experiences dealing with overwhelming political correctness and perceived progressive bias here at Bucknell, and asked Milo to be a guest on our radio show. Milo indicated that he would instead like to come and speak at the University, free of charge.
A lot of people are questioning this decision and wondering why you didn’t choose a less extreme/controversial conservative. Thoughts/comments?
The vast majority of Milo’s views are not extreme and are held by many Americans, but perhaps he gets that reputation from his style and schtick. Milo is the only conservative or libertarian speaker in recent Bucknell history who filled an auditorium with college students, and for that reason, he was the perfect choice.
What do you think about the political attitude on campus in terms of openmindedness and composition of liberals versus conservatives?
To generalize and say that all on the right are more open-minded than those on the left is an incredibly absurd statement. But generally, those who have opposed events similar to these across college campuses typically consider themselves to be on the left side of the political spectrum.
Were you surprised by student reaction? Specifically the tearing down of the posters?
We were disheartened and disappointed by the response of some in the Bucknell community who thought it was acceptable to deface or destroy our posters, or found personal attacks a justifiable or productive form of discourse.
I’ve heard that professors have told some of their students not to attend. Do you think this defeats the purpose of free speech?
It doesn’t necessarily defeat the purpose of free speech, as choosing not attending is a form of expression, however it defeats the purpose of a liberal education where students should be provided the tools to come to their own conclusions and be responsible for their own destinies.
How do you define the boundary between free speech and hate speech?
We believe that all speech should be permitted, with the exception of direct incitements of violence. The best way to defeat ideas is not to censor them, but to challenge and defeat them.
If you believe someone is wrong, the best way to beat them is to shine a spotlight on their ideas and to challenge them, not try to hide them or prevent them from being heard.
How can Bucknellians benefit from this speaker?
Bucknellians will be given a glimpse at alternate perspectives that are very often not presented, and even intentionally skipped altogether. This was clearly evident by the response of some in the faculty who signed the petition to cancel the event or actively encouraged their students not to attend.
Anything else that you deem relevant or notable or want to make sure people hear, please include.
University of Michigan recently hosted Milo, and the article about the event in their student newspaper included a quote from the university spokesperson, who said: “ The university feels so strongly about [freedom of speech] that our commitment is codified in an official policy, called a Standard Practice Guide. ” In the Standard Practice Guide, it states that “ Expression of diverse points of view is of the highest importance...The belief that an opinion is pernicious, false, or in any other way detestable cannot be grounds for its suppression.”
We call upon this university and its administration to adopt a similar policy, giving all members of this University the right to set forth their views and opinions. Although the student handbook states, “We affirm that diverse experiences and perspectives in the classroom and across campus enhance everyone’s educational experience,” there is no specific mention of freedom of speech or expression similar to that aforementioned. You cannot have one without the other.
The Great Facebook Debate
In The Bucknellian article published on March 3rd, junior Tooba Ali, who started the ‘safe space’ Facebook event commented: “Somehow the people who told us ‘you should hear both perspectives’ were belittling us and preventing us from even going together as a group.”
We can only assume she was referring to Tom Ciccotta’s post in the event page, as we are unaware of any other posts to the event page by members of our organizations. We were understandably confused by this statement, for Tom’s post was very cordial and respectful. But we’ll let our readers decide who is being belittling whom.
Below you’ll find exactly what Tom posted in the ‘safe space’ Facebook event page (directly below), as well as what a student against the event posted in the official event page created by Tom:
I’m the person who arranged MiIo‘s visit to campus, and for what it’s worth, there’s probably nobody more anti-Trump on this campus than me. As a libertarian, I’m probably on the same page as you all on a lot of issues. I believe in absolute social freedoms and privacies, like the right to abortion, gay marriage, gender pronouns, reassignment surgery, etc. I’m the member of a multi-racial family (my sister is South Korean), I visited New Hampshire during their primary to campaign for a Latino-American candidate, attended a Bernie Sanders rally, and I’m currently arranging a political comedy event between my club and the Bucknell Left and the College Democrats. Divisiveness isn’t really part of my nature.
For what it’s worth, on the Joe Hogan podcast, Milo revealed his support of Trump isn’t all that serious. In fact, based oft my off-the-record relationship with Milo, I can say that his most controversial statements are almost never serious or entirely serious. There seems to be a fear that Milo will cross the line Thursday night, but who has crossed the line so far’? Our posters have been ripped down and defaced. And due to potential fears for our safety, the administration has decided for Thursday to place a plain-clothes officer right outside of where we’ll be eating during our club dinner. I ask you all to consider whether that’s more of a reflection on Milo and his message, or on some Bucknell student’s inability to carry themselves maturely in the face of adversity (as displayed by the actions of a few individuals in destroying and defacing $220 worth of our posters).
In my opinion, the most efficient way to defeat fringe and radical opinions, is to challenge them rationally and maturely. The information section of this event page is dripping with emotional language, and I guarantee that it is in your best interest to not approach Thursday night this way. I don‘t agree with everything that Milo says, but isn’t that kind of the point’?
We been surprised at the lack of willingness to talk to me or one of the members of my club directly about this event. There have been a few people who have reached out to me, and I can honestly say that those conversations have been incredible, and eye-opening. My personal hero, Walt Disney, said “We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us”, and these conversations have further revealed for me that Mr. Disney’s sentiment here is undeniably true of this world we live in and of the human condition.
Thursday night’s event is truly an incredibly experiment and opportunity for Bucknell students to show their ability to behave civilly and rationally in a truly challenging situation. If the attitudes we’ve seen so far this week manifest themselves in Trout Auditorium on Thursday night, Bucknell students will risk their reputation on a national level, just as it happened at Rutgers last week. That story was the number one trending story on Facebook, and the focus wasn’t on Milo, it was on the student’s misbehavior and disruptions. I’m quite busy managing my work and preparing for Milo’s visit/responding to hate mail this week, so I won’t be responding to this post, but please feel free to reach out to me (tjc024@bucknell.edu), if you’d like to briefly chat in person. I’d be more than willing to take the time to sit down with you, and address your concerns.
- Tom Ciccotta
Hey Tom,
Couple things –
First of all, you’re clearly an extremely open minded and progressive guy. You don’t support an openly racist, sexist, and ethnocentrist presidential candidate; you haven’t ruled out a presidential candidate despite his lesser background as Latino, and you’ve even managed to accept your sister despite her Korean heritage! Wow, good for you – you clearly have a lot of world view and perspective.
We lesser Americans are also truly grateful that you’re able to find it in your heart to grant us equal freedoms like marriage – well, even though you sort of don’t have a choice anymore. But that’s fine. Thanks so much anyway. I also greatly appreciate you allowing me to make decisions about my own body! Because that’s absolutely something that concerns you.
Now that we’ve established how much alike we are – let me bring something attention regarding the emotional language that your event page is “dripping” with. If you had time for more than a “brief chat” about the issues that burden your fellow students here on a daily basis, you would understand that when a person’s ability to feel safe is threatened, it makes them speak in an emotional way. I can imagine that you can start to put yourself in these shoes since apparently tearing down posters is enough to make you feel so scared that you require the protection of a law enforcement officer.
Speaking of posters, since economics is the preferred veil of power and authority that I know that right wing rhetoric favors – you printed $220 worth of posters! Wow! How much are you paying Milo, then? And how much of that money is being contributed by me, and by other students that are gay, transgender, feminist, black… or just not white male republicans? If you truly hold all of these socially liberal views, then I have to assume that you’re fiscally conservative. If that’s the case, we that do not support this event that are paying for it would be more than happy to accept a refund from you.
Thanks so very much for your time and attention.
We can only assume she was referring to Tom Ciccotta’s post in the event page, as we are unaware of any other posts to the event page by members of our organizations. We were understandably confused by this statement, for Tom’s post was very cordial and respectful. But we’ll let our readers decide who is being belittling whom.
Below you’ll find exactly what Tom posted in the ‘safe space’ Facebook event page (directly below), as well as what a student against the event posted in the official event page created by Tom:
I’m the person who arranged MiIo‘s visit to campus, and for what it’s worth, there’s probably nobody more anti-Trump on this campus than me. As a libertarian, I’m probably on the same page as you all on a lot of issues. I believe in absolute social freedoms and privacies, like the right to abortion, gay marriage, gender pronouns, reassignment surgery, etc. I’m the member of a multi-racial family (my sister is South Korean), I visited New Hampshire during their primary to campaign for a Latino-American candidate, attended a Bernie Sanders rally, and I’m currently arranging a political comedy event between my club and the Bucknell Left and the College Democrats. Divisiveness isn’t really part of my nature.
For what it’s worth, on the Joe Hogan podcast, Milo revealed his support of Trump isn’t all that serious. In fact, based oft my off-the-record relationship with Milo, I can say that his most controversial statements are almost never serious or entirely serious. There seems to be a fear that Milo will cross the line Thursday night, but who has crossed the line so far’? Our posters have been ripped down and defaced. And due to potential fears for our safety, the administration has decided for Thursday to place a plain-clothes officer right outside of where we’ll be eating during our club dinner. I ask you all to consider whether that’s more of a reflection on Milo and his message, or on some Bucknell student’s inability to carry themselves maturely in the face of adversity (as displayed by the actions of a few individuals in destroying and defacing $220 worth of our posters).
In my opinion, the most efficient way to defeat fringe and radical opinions, is to challenge them rationally and maturely. The information section of this event page is dripping with emotional language, and I guarantee that it is in your best interest to not approach Thursday night this way. I don‘t agree with everything that Milo says, but isn’t that kind of the point’?
We been surprised at the lack of willingness to talk to me or one of the members of my club directly about this event. There have been a few people who have reached out to me, and I can honestly say that those conversations have been incredible, and eye-opening. My personal hero, Walt Disney, said “We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us”, and these conversations have further revealed for me that Mr. Disney’s sentiment here is undeniably true of this world we live in and of the human condition.
Thursday night’s event is truly an incredibly experiment and opportunity for Bucknell students to show their ability to behave civilly and rationally in a truly challenging situation. If the attitudes we’ve seen so far this week manifest themselves in Trout Auditorium on Thursday night, Bucknell students will risk their reputation on a national level, just as it happened at Rutgers last week. That story was the number one trending story on Facebook, and the focus wasn’t on Milo, it was on the student’s misbehavior and disruptions. I’m quite busy managing my work and preparing for Milo’s visit/responding to hate mail this week, so I won’t be responding to this post, but please feel free to reach out to me (tjc024@bucknell.edu), if you’d like to briefly chat in person. I’d be more than willing to take the time to sit down with you, and address your concerns.
- Tom Ciccotta
Hey Tom,
Couple things –
First of all, you’re clearly an extremely open minded and progressive guy. You don’t support an openly racist, sexist, and ethnocentrist presidential candidate; you haven’t ruled out a presidential candidate despite his lesser background as Latino, and you’ve even managed to accept your sister despite her Korean heritage! Wow, good for you – you clearly have a lot of world view and perspective.
We lesser Americans are also truly grateful that you’re able to find it in your heart to grant us equal freedoms like marriage – well, even though you sort of don’t have a choice anymore. But that’s fine. Thanks so much anyway. I also greatly appreciate you allowing me to make decisions about my own body! Because that’s absolutely something that concerns you.
Now that we’ve established how much alike we are – let me bring something attention regarding the emotional language that your event page is “dripping” with. If you had time for more than a “brief chat” about the issues that burden your fellow students here on a daily basis, you would understand that when a person’s ability to feel safe is threatened, it makes them speak in an emotional way. I can imagine that you can start to put yourself in these shoes since apparently tearing down posters is enough to make you feel so scared that you require the protection of a law enforcement officer.
Speaking of posters, since economics is the preferred veil of power and authority that I know that right wing rhetoric favors – you printed $220 worth of posters! Wow! How much are you paying Milo, then? And how much of that money is being contributed by me, and by other students that are gay, transgender, feminist, black… or just not white male republicans? If you truly hold all of these socially liberal views, then I have to assume that you’re fiscally conservative. If that’s the case, we that do not support this event that are paying for it would be more than happy to accept a refund from you.
Thanks so very much for your time and attention.
Colby Rome
colby@thecounterweight.net
colby@thecounterweight.net
Politics of the day seem to indicate that the time is ripe for a third party candidate to win a significant portion of the nationwide Presidential election vote: a recent Monmouth University poll shows that in a hypothetical three-way race of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Gary Johnson, the hopeful Libertarian nominee garners 11% of the vote to Hillary’s 42% and Trump’s 34%.
Americans are becoming more and more disillusioned with our two-party election process as a result of the establishment’s lack of respect for voters’ choices.
Let’s first examine the Democratic race. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, while only trailing Clinton by a relatively small margin in pledged delegates (based on state primary results), receives virtually no support from superdelegates (who have supported Clinton over Sanders by a 16 to 1 margin).
Regardless of your opinion on Senator Sanders’ political positions, the overwhelming establishment support of Clinton in spite of the nearly split primary delegate count (read: the people’s votes) is an indication that the establishment does not respect its base.
In a recent interview after winning several primaries by enormous margins, Senator Sanders asked superdelegates, “If a candidate wins your state by 40 or 50 points, who are you going to give your vote to?” Clinton’s establishment connections run deep, from profiting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street speeches to the Chair of the Democratic National Committee who served on her 2008 campaign for President.
“A wasted vote is voting for anybody you don’t believe in.”
- Gary Johnson
I personally do not align with Senator Sanders’ proposed economic policies, but I can nonetheless acknowledge his fairly consistent record as a member of Congress over the past quarter century. Thus, I have difficulty comprehending the support for a person with such a weak record in support of social freedoms as Hillary Clinton. The fact is that Clinton opposed a freedom as basic as same-sex marriage as recently as 2008 and only recently flip-flopped positions in order to attract more votes.
The Republican primary is likewise in disarray, and voters are becoming (or will become) disillusioned with their party as well.
Consider first the anti-Trump Republicans: a large portion of the Republican base says they will not vote for Donald Trump, even if he is the eventual nominee. Assuming the national election is between Trump and Hillary, who will this group of Republicans throw their support behind?
Next, let’s consider the pro-Trump Republicans. A possible scenario for the GOP, thanks to John Kasich remaining in the race, is a brokered convention in July. This will almost definitely result in someone other than Trump receiving the nomination, despite Trump holding the greatest number of votes! Will these Trump supporters support the GOP’s new candidate, or sit at home in November?
I predict that Bernie Sanders, despite receiving the votes of roughly half of the Democratic base, will lose the nomination to Hillary Clinton. I am not as confident in predicting that Donald Trump, despite narrowly missing the required delegate count to secure the nomination, will be replaced by Cruz or Kasich to take on Clinton.
Regardless, the establishment of each party respectively will do everything in their power to stop outsiders like Trump or Sanders to be nominated, and the result is that approximately half of each party will be alienated and left without a voice.
This November, we should not be motivated to vote simply to keep the other side out of office but rather to vote for the best possible candidate. I implore all disillusioned voters this November to take a good look at Gary Johnson and the party of minimum government and maximum freedom: the Libertarian Party.
Ethan Wise, Editor-in-Chief
editor@thecounterweight.net
editor@thecounterweight.net
Somewhere Between a Conservative
and a Libertarian
It can be boiled down to two words: I’m anti-authoritarian.
Recent movies have helped to remind me just why I’m anti-authoritarian; post-apocalyptic series like The Hunger Games and the Divergent series in particular. They have many things in common, but they all circle around the liberation from an authoritarian regime.
This is also a common theme found throughout human history, including recent history.
The leading cause of unnatural death during the 20th century was due to authoritarian regimes. Between the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao alone, close to 70 million innocent lives were lost. That’s nearly a quarter of the current population of the United States. We, as the human race, cannot allow ourselves to repeat the mistakes of the past.
I caution those wanting more comfort and security at the cost of giving the government more power. If you give the government an inch, it takes a mile. Every mile it takes, is a step towards an uncontrollable authoritarian regime.
This may seem extreme or even laughable to some, but I’d ask you, how did Hitler, Stalin, or Mao get all their power? Were they born with it? Did everyone willingly just give up their freedom for authoritarian rule?
The answer is self-evident. They amassed their power over time, taking every inch they could, under the guise of nationalism, “the greater good,” or “progress.”
The founders understood this all too well. That’s why the Declaration of Independence states, “...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” as a safeguard against potential future authoritarian rulers.
For the well-meaning liberals who believe that all of today’s problems should be solved by the government, I ask you to take a second and ask, would you like it if you were giving these same powers to someone you knew would exploit them for their own purposes?
You give the government the power to make healthcare insurance mandatory today. But what if years later, in a strange turn of events, the government then says purchasing a firearm was necessary for the security and well being of its citizens, under the same argument?
We must all act as if every inch we give the government was being given to an authoritarian dictator, because one day it just might be. In the words of Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman, “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”
Friedrich Hayek echoed this sentiment in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, stating “The danger is not immediate, it is true, and conditions in England and the United States are still so remote from those witnessed in recent years in Germany as to make it difficult to believe that we are moving in the same direction. Yet, though the road be long, it is one on which it becomes more difficult to turn back as one advances.”
The majority of millennials today have had the luxury of never experiencing or seeing first hand true authoritarian governments. We cannot let that lull us into a false sense of security, and shrug it off by saying oh that would never happen here. I have news, it can.
Two words: Donald Trump.
Did you expect him to gain as much popularity as quickly as he did? If you’re a liberal, are you afraid of what might happen if he actually became president? I propose we make government small enough that it doesn’t matter who’s in office because they won’t have enough power over it’s citizens to dictate their will.
Our ancestors fought for our self-evident right to choose our own destiny. As a result, the idea of America, and the most prosperous and free nation ever to exist in the history of mankind was created.
We cannot let that slip away. I refuse to let freedom be nothing more than a story passed down generation to generation. Or worse, false stories of perilous times. Stories like President Snow in The Hunger Games or Jeanine in Divergent tell their constituents to keep them in fear of their own free will.
As Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
There will always be evil people. We must diligently work to deny them a platform powerful enough see their dreams become a reality. We must continue the fight to pass down freedom to our children, and our children’s children.
That is why I’m a Conservatarian.