UMM College Republicans and victimhood

I have written in the past that UMM students should not be so zealous about politics, so confrontational. The conflict itself is not good for the image of UMM. I have written that students are here for far more important reasons than to vent political opinion from the so-called "left" or "right."
I say so-called because I wonder how many students have a really good grasp of the implications of raw political ideology. At the risk of sounding disrespectful, I think many students engage in this like it's a game that projects self-identity. You decide to join a particular camp and then you bond with other souls you find there.
I have some understanding of this because I was a student long ago. My generation attached itself to the "real" cause of getting the U.S. extricated from the Vietnam conflict. This was the conflict that President Trump avoided with bone spurs and Dick Cheney avoided with multiple deferments. I fault no one for keeping out by practically any means. It was a war that the U.S. lost at great cost.
I'm too old, perhaps, to really understand what makes college students tick today. I do not understand the fervent right wing element that has asserted itself over recent years. This is not the kind of "conservatism" that I came to learn about and respect once. I learned about temperate conservatism, patient conservatism, respectful conservatism.
As a young person I learned about the "burn baby burn" attitude from the political left. Today I sense a like attitude from the right, an in-your-face, flamethrowing type of approach. This is not the kind of conservatism I learned about when reading William F. Buckley Jr.
Is that name receding too much into the past now? Are today's college students aware of the piccolo trumpet sound in the theme music for the great conservative's TV show? I had to read Buckley's book "Up From Liberalism" post-college because I had never really learned about conservatism in college. We hear today's campus right wingers rail about "liberal bias." I can tell you that back in my college days, there was a very real liberal bias, choking off the most basic understanding of the other side, the other ideology.
Conservatives had only the most token, almost negligible, presence on campuses in the 1970s. Conservatism was treated almost as pathology. I doubt that academia engages in a whole lot of conservative-bashing today, for the simple reason that these institutions need support from both sides of the political aisle. And yet we see a conservative element of students going absolutely nuts with grievance.
This erupted in spades with the UMM campus publication "Counterweight" and then with the very notorious, very ridiculous "Northstar." "Northstar" was an embarrassment for the campus aside from any "ideological" considerations. I argued that UMM should never have been obligated to provide newsstand space for it. It was an assault on basic decorum and civility, two things that Buckley-esque conservatives value as underpinnings. Not "burn baby burn."
UMM campus conservatives are now playing the victim card again. A friend forwarded to me a link to "The College Fix." Our College Republicans are fed up with their fliers and announcements being trashed. I think you catch the gist of what's going on. So, I would like to ask these "conservatives": why do you insist on hitching your wagon to Donald Trump? Why has the Republican Party been so compliant with a man and his minions who seem despicable in so many ways? What does any of this have to do with "conservatism?" Deficit-exploding policies?
Why is abortion so important to you? I am personally disturbed by abortion, am certainly no cheerleader for it, but feel as a practical matter it can't be banned or seriously limited. It's a matter to weigh with individual personal responsibility, what conservatives have always hailed as important. Not "big government." The same big government that wants to seize on "national security" and "feed the pig" of military spending to do stuff unrelated to true national defense. Like of course "building the wall." What else might this creep into?
Our Interstate Highway System was built under the banner of national defense and surely it is a wonderful thing, which is why Dwight Eisenhower promoted it. But it was not "national defense." Might the burgeoning military be a creeping trend toward what we saw with 1930s Germany?
College Republicans would probably scream at me like they scream at so many people. Cool your jets, stop and think.
"The College Fix" reports that our UMM Campus Republicans trained a camera to investigate this pilfering of fliers. This was in the catacombs between Oyate and the science complex - the long tunnel. The article said the camera became broken, but did not make it clear there was an allegation that it was broken deliberately.
The Republicans considered this a "sting" operation although it's my understanding that only police can conduct a "sting." The Republicans did this with intent of taking their findings to police. Oh my God. What monetary value do the fliers have? Law enforcement is really only concerned with theft of items deemed to have monetary value. If no monetary value, it should just be an ethical matter.
The notorious "Northstar" dealt with this by putting a statement on the cover saying you have to pay $5 per copy beyond the one complementary copy. This was misleading IMHO because there was no intent to collect $ from "newsstand sales." The statement was simply a way to try to ensnare "thieves" and get the attention of law enforcement.
It seemed to work. Weren't there about four students who actually got in legal trouble?
I would not advocate removing any publication in a vigilante way, though I can understand the feelings of those who might. Are the campus police now aroused to do something based on the current alleged actions of removing fliers?
From my standpoint as a community member, I find the ideological sensitivity on campus making it a less welcoming place, a place I'm less likely to want to visit. I'd like to just encourage the students to prioritize what you came here for. And that's not politics. You will all find someday that real politics is more thoughtful and less emotional. You won't care if Brett Kavanaugh "likes beer."
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com