When was the last time a political controversy-other than the prepackaged presidential debates-raised the blood pressure of the Wash. U. student body a single millimeter of mercury? As Alberto Gonzales is fond of saying, “I can’t recall.”
The impending visit by our disgraced former Attorney General has provoked an array of objections. His $30,000 fee is much too large, his abuses of power too stomach turning. Student Life weighed in with an editorial entitled “Let Alberto Gonzales Speak.” Obviously I agree, but it is a cowardly defense of free speech that has to keep distantiating, reminding us how much it hates the speech itself. There is something vulgar in stating the obvious: We should let everyone speak.
I’m not worried about Student Life editors, who occasionally get things right, as they did on Friday in an eloquent smackdown on anti-intellectual crazy-Christian legislators. Of course, they ignore the obvious solution to the whole problem: privatize the public universities. But that’s not the point. The vast majority of your fellow students don’t even care about THAT. To them, the most exciting development of the year is the new green wool Banana Republic top coat. Regardless of the false sense of political involvement that Friday’s political poll claims, the majority of us should have checked the box marked “I am disturbingly apathetic.”
The subtle political minds overheard in Bear’s Den remind me of the vast right wing conspirator Paula Jones who once asked, “The Republicans? Are they the good ones or the bad ones?” Forty-eight percent of our network’s Facebook users do not even express a political view. Although I am usually loathe to quote Ann Coulter, “the swing voters [are] the idiot voters because they don’t have set philosophical principles. You’re either a liberal or you’re a conservative if you have an IQ above a toaster.” That’s true Ann, but if your IQ is above that of a jackass or an elephant, you’re either a libertarian or a socialist.
This article is an appeal to those very few to reconsider what a protest of Gonzales really means. The supreme irony of students protesting Gonzales is that our “right” to protest is the exact justification for the government’s response to 9/11, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, illegal detention, wiretapping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of torture, etc. Gonzales will say, “Look, this is why we have to torture enemy combatants, why we are above the law: so that American citizens can be free to protest our actions here at home.”
My view of protesting has been deeply influenced by the anarchist Peter Graeber, a professor of anthropology at Yale who was denied tenure for purely political reasons by the liberal staff. (He was too far left for them, adding to my bafflement at Neoconservatives who talk about a Marxist conspiracy in Academia. Very few academics are really radicals-they’re just left of center cheerleaders for State Power. To real radicals, Bush, Clinton and Obama are all the same.) His view is that participating in protest tacitly acknowledges that the State is the legitimate holder of power and user of force. By protesting, we beg our oppressor to be nicer to us, to treat us kindly. Instead, Graeber advocates a policy of “direct action, with its rejection of a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behaviour, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative-all of [which] emerges directly from the libertarian tradition.”
What would using direct action mean in the situation of Gonzalez? Firstly, it means that speech is not even an issue. The use of torture and illegal detention is the problem. Government has failed, and American citizens have a moral mandate to physically stop the abuses that are occurring at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. That is why Clinton and Obama represent the same position as Bush: The first one of them to reject the appropriation bills that pay for war and for torture will be the anti-war candidate. As far as I know, the only candidates who voted against paying for war, and thus, are anti-war, are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. As Robert Byrd once remarked, “there are few men of great courage.”
Student Union’s use of student funds to finance a speaker who most students find morally objectionable adds a delicious layer of irony to the debate. SU practices a smaller version of the exact same system advocated by our national government: wealth redistribution. Instead of allowing students to make their own decisions about how to use their dollars, SU knows better than we do. Not unpredictably, if you scrutinize the funding patterns of student groups, the rich tend to get richer and the poor get poorer. The Budget committee gets to practice petty favoritism, fully funding their friends’ groups, and the officers get to flesh out their curricula vitae with real technocrat experience.
No doubt, there is more than a typological difference between the SU and the US; the activities fee is consensual, taxes are enforced from the barrel of a gun. If I found the fee vehemently objectionable, I would have gone elsewhere. My point is that the same inefficiencies in a miniature command and control economy persist, and occasionally, in situations like the Gonzales visit, the moral objections to wealth redistribution emerge. Part of my activities fee is now going to support a supporter of state-sponsored terrorism. We all should be placed on the no-fly list.
For all of my sound and fury, I will always stand with the people of the street. At 6 p.m. on Feb. 19, students who care about our country and abhor torture will come together at 560 Delmar with our peace signs, our megaphones and our witty chants. Mostly, it will be an exercise in hipster fashion and the desire for an “authentic” counterculture experience. Some words of wisdom will be spoken; lots of stupid things will be said. You might even be able to tell your children one day that you have an FBI file.
Look for me there. I will be wearing my Ron Paul shirt and my tin-foil hat. One side of my sign will protest Gonzales and torture; the other side will protest the protesters who every day, through our benevolence and liberal hearts, tacitly agree that State is King. We perpetuate our subservience, speed up the loss of liberty, enable torture.
Steven is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail [email protected].