Why so uptight about certain views?

I read the suggestion once that maybe cigarettes have a good feature in our society. They are a sedative. We are challenged these days for having a relaxed and reasoned debate. Why the new complexion in discourse? You might suspect I'll cite the media. Well yes. Tech has brought along a sea change. 

As the cacophony of public voices has gotten wider - by an incredible degree in fact - people have of course wanted to express themselves in a way that gets noticed. It is predictable human nature. I remember back in the caveman painting days of early cable TV news, George Will being struck by the change he saw. "So many angry people. . ." Will noted in a TV interview. 

Will must be getting up in years now. He writes like he wants to remind us of his education. Sentences too long - a trait that was once admired or at least countenanced in the most erudite circles. 

William F. Buckley the great conservative used "big words" and had long sentences too. He had the "Firing Line" TV show. By today's standards Mr. Buckley spoke way too slow. He and George Will were ideological brethren. They were conservatives who were really impossible to defeat in a debate. Well congratulations to them and I really mean that. People who put forward a well-developed body of principle are always to be admired. 

So shall we "follow the leader" and vote for the hard right Republicans all the time? No! So am I presenting a contradiction here? No! Here's a paradox: as much as the "conservatives" plead with us about how their thinking reflects the "real world," well I'd suggest that a different perspective would be offered. Again to quote my old college friend Brad from the Iron Range: people like Buckley "don't care about people." 

And my, this would raise the hackles from the political right. Raising hackles has rather become what the political discourse has devolved to. 

 

To the present 

So now we have the quintessential polemicist in Charlie Kirk not just shouted down - well, you know what happened. The shooting of Mr. Kirk appears to be a teachable moment on how our public discourse has devolved. Maybe I should just say "evolved." We must accept the new reality, adjust to it, cope with it. 

The news story has gone beyond the mere assassination. There are offshoots, one of them being this wave of people being fired or suspended for speaking lightly on the subject. Of course it's difficult to define "speaking lightly." There is some overt celebration of the act. That's pretty "out there" and worthy perhaps of some drastic action. 

I posted the following comment to Yahoo! News a couple days ago:

 

If a substantial number of people feel inclined to make allegedly tasteless comments, then maybe that should be out in the open. We might learn something from it. Kirk was all about stirring up opinions. Well then let's have at it. 

 

Why are we so scared of people's opinions? Taking the assassination lightly doesn't necessarily mean we are dancing on someone's grave. It might mean we have a fear of entrenched political views. Mr. Kirk was totally "out there" making a living and gaining celebrity by dispensing political views that he knew were going to bring resistance. 

William F. Buckley put out a book of some of his collected columns with the title "A Hymnal: the Controversial Arts." Well, a little hubris there, eh? And he knew he was dealing in controversy. Ah, in this age when people cannot tamp down their feelings and emotions with the sedative of cigarettes, maybe we get too excited. Maybe? 

But of course we also must remember when we entered public places like restaurants and bars where we encountered cigarette smoking. Can't we assume that a whole lot of people found that objectionable? But society put its imprimatur on the ubiquitous cigarettes. "Is there any place you don't smoke?" Robert Redford as Bob Woodward said to Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in "All the President's Men."

 

Kirk, Shapiro et al. 

Charlie Kirk was hardly unique. Ben Shapiro does the same thing. These people continue the tradition established by William F. Buckley. I could still enjoy reading a book by Buckley even though I'd reject his desired political candidates. 

Our understanding of "liberalism" and "conservatism" changes over time. Richard Nixon the conservative? He certainly presented himself as such, guided by a young Roger Ailes. But Nixon established the EPA. Could you imagine today's Republicans having anything to do with that? And Nixon kept the U.S. military involvement in Indochina going for far too long. Today's Republicans reject military adventurism, I guess. But their president approves of gunning down boats from Venezuela and killing people. You know, activities like that could start getting us into trouble. 

I'll confess that I have a place in my heart for William F. Buckley. After completing college without ever having gained a grasp of the conservative ideology, a paperback book by Buckley got me introduced properly. And then I read a second. And for a long time I bought into a lot of that. Then I realized there was more to life than ideological principle. 

The principles are to be respected - make no mistake - but we all toil in the real world. I'm fond of pointing out that "half of the population is below average." We're not all capable of living according to the highest ideals, much as we would wish it was so. The government needs to hold our hand sometimes. 

Sometimes the farmers have to be "paid off" - wink. Well it's true. Republicans used to complain a lot about the Farm Bill. They employed their principles in doing so. But then they noticed they were losing elections. So they decided to "just go along with it." 

 

Colleges on notice 

Charlie Kirk actually continued a pretty long tradition. Colleges are under pressure to book guys like him. There's an element of aggrieved "conservative" students at most college campuses. I'm sure some private colleges are "ruled" by conservatives. 

In Morris we had the "Northstar" publication coming out of UMN-Morris. Astonished as I was by that - its obvious outrageousness - we must learn from such things. What is the wellspring of such things? 

Let people say what they want about the Kirk assassination. What do you have to fear?

 

Below is the editorial cartoon in Newsday that, well, raised eyebrows. Any true journalist would look at the drawing and feel privately impressed. But the newspaper issued an apology. My what a tempest of reaction and counter-reaction. But isn't that what Charlie Kirk was programmed to create? The cartoon  by Chip Bok was in Newsday. He is a Pulitzer finalist illustrator.

Addendum: I always think of the piccolo trumpet when remembering Bill Buckley's TV show. The piccolo trumpet rendered the theme for "Firing Line." 

  

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com