By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.
Really, I just wanted to discuss Aristotle; instead I
attended a protest. It certainly was not
my idea; my students requested it. Apparently,
some group had organized yet another protest against police brutality and
racism. Laudable goals, I am sure, but I think I do more for the cause by
teaching Constitutional Law than by attending protests. Yet, my students were interested because a
colleague of mine was counter protesting on behalf of the police, who she
thinks are being treated most unfairly.
I found this notion absurd, but the students wanted to go, and cajoled
quite skillfully.
“But Dr. Dunraven,” said they, “doesn’t Aristotle talk about
civic virtue and the good of the polis? Isn’t
this protest about just those topics?
And didn’t you say we are studying social justice theories next week? Wouldn’t this be a good way to see them in
action?”
“Besides,” said another, “just last week you made fun of us
for being in college but never attending a protest.”
Well there they had me.
What self-respecting college student graduates without ever protesting something? It’s like graduating without ever writing a
research paper: possible but woefully inadequate. It might even be un-American considering
Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous observation of Americans’ remarkable tendency to
organize for every conceivable purpose and cause. So, of course, I shrugged and
let my troop of hard working, free market, liberty advocates march over to
witness their first social justice protest.
They were appalled.
When I arrived at the protest, I found the students already clustered
around my colleague, an elegant, petite woman standing alone with a sign thanking
police for all they do right. Facing her
was a clearly angry crowd of a hundred or so people. The protesters were shouting epitaphs at my
colleague, calling her a, “white privileged bitch,” who had no right to be
there, or even to speak, apparently.
Whenever she would try to reply, they would shout over her, telling her
to leave. The arrival of the students
seemed to infuriate them more. The white
students were called rich, privileged, oppressors. Black and Hispanic students were called
white-washed, or sell outs, and told they were far beneath the protesters. Military veteran students were called
murderers.
The students, to their credit, remained calm and polite, but
confessed this was not the type of Aristotelian civic dialogue they had in
mind. Indeed, they said they found no
virtue in it at all, and were shocked that people claiming to advocate for
social justice, respect, and civil rights could demonstrate such disdain for
each of those concepts. In the face of
such hatred, all but one eventually returned to the classroom in disgust at the
complete lack of civilized discourse they encountered.
That left only my fellow professor and a single student,
both now resigned to polite silence, to face the verbal assaults of the
crowd. When it became clear they would
not be driven away, a couple of activists began circulating through the crowd,
and moved the entire protest to the opposite side of the field, claiming that
they did not feel safe. Over 100
shouting people moved because they did
not feel safe after trying-- and failing-- to intimidate a 5 foot woman and
a first year college student into fleeing.
The overt hypocrisy of such intolerance only grew in how the
crowd treated me. Upon my arrival, I
warmly greeted my colleague and students.
Immediately, the crowd demanded to know who I was. I politely identified myself, and explained I
was also a professor, teaching Constitutional Law. I stood near my colleague, both of us were
dressed quite formally, both appear ethnically European, and both were
professors. No one had any reason to
think my opinions differed from hers. The
only difference between us, so far as the crowd knew, was that I was a man and
she a woman. Yet, while an angry mob surrounded and shouted at her, when those
same people surrounded me, they almost deferentially asked me what I thought of
the event. They did not shout, or even make a rude remark. Again, while both my
colleague and I looked professional, and we both carried a mantle of authority
and expertise as professors, she was treated poorly while I was treated
solicitously. I found it hysterically funny that a social justice crowd
protesting what they saw as latent racism in police forces would be so blind to
their own rather overt sexism in how they tried to shout down and silence the
voice of a solitary woman in a position of honor—but not a man.
After returning to the classroom, my students expressed
their frustration with the complete lack of civility they encountered. Many students, much like myself, even
sympathized with the ostensible goals of the protesters, but were chagrined at
their complete refusal to engage in any meaningful dialogue. Most reported that, every time they tried to
engage, the protesters would simply shout them down with some repetitive phase,
be it “oppressor,” or “murderer,” at the instruction of a few lead activists. As they left, they told me one protestor
shouted some incoherent nonsense at them, whereupon an organizing activist ran
over to issue a correction. The
chastened protester then shouted, “Yeah, THAT’s what I meant!” My students said they were not sure if such a
display was horrifying or funny, and asked me if such slavish mindlessness was
what Aristotle meant when he referred to natural slaves. I suspect it is.
Aristotle defined a natural slave as someone who was
incapable of articulating or reasoning out principles for themselves, but was
capable of embracing the principled dictates of others if given sufficient
instruction, and thus is not truly free.
Today, we might call this a natural follower. However, while Aristotle thought this trait
to be permanent and inborn, I suspect it is the result of training. Many of the most viscous protesters were not
incapable of intellectualism at all.
Indeed, they turned out to be students of Sociology, and devoted to the
teaching of a few of their favored professors.
Unfortunately, modern academia too often forsakes teaching students logical
reasoning in favor of teaching them ideological dogma. Questioning that dogma is quickly derided and
punished, while fervent acceptance is held up as virtuous and the very exponent
of intelligence. While this sort of
academic training was implemented by the Progressive Movement, and is vital to sustaining
it, even many conservatives, tragically, have adopted the process, if with an
opposite ideology. Such dogmatic
thinking will always produce slaves, whose chains are reinforced with the vapid
level of intellectual discourse running through society, often consisting of no
more than a trite platitudinous tweet or a thumbs-up-like to an equally vacuous
Facebook post, both echoing dogmas learned by rote.
The protesters yesterday had real grievances and valid
frustrations with their society. They
chose to lay those grievances on the police and demand reparations. In their refusal to engage in any meaningful dialogue
with their opposition, however, they succeeded only in making enemies. Civil discourse is abandoned as both sides
simply try to gather enough numbers to bludgeon the other side into submission—and
while such a process may start with verbal bludgeoning, it usually ends in the
physical form, for force is all that is left to us when reason fails.
Aristotle posited that the highest good was intellectual reasoned
discourse in service to civic virtue.
Yet, thinking and reasoning requires training, and discourse takes a
great deal of practice. Academia is
supposed to provide both. It serves us
poorly if it instead trains us only to recite secular dogmas, and shout them
repeatedly if challenged in the hope of overwhelming any opposition with noise,
exhaustion, or outright force. It is
small wonder our society has become so intractably polarized with such
training. That can only continue to worsen
until we can learn to listen to one another, to discourse with one another, and
to together struggle to pursue truth through the challenges of reason.
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