Our response to Publius.
Buckley Beacon Staff
The Buckley Beacon
Publius, the now-defunct Yale Daily News editorial board, took Yale by surprise with their Election Day special, “We’re Jealous of Our Conservative Peers.” To their credit, they managed to do something quite impressive: Frame liberal hostility to conservative opinions as a perk, not drawback, of conservatives’ experience at Yale.
Constant criticism and social ostracization, Publius argues, affords conservatives a unique chance to cultivate their beliefs, and refine their presentation to an audience eager to cancel them. We admit, this is a compelling spin on what might otherwise be considered an odious excuse for censorship, intolerance, and exclusion. Conservatives at Yale, unlike liberals, have the privilege of being bullied into greater precision, intellectual caution, and eloquence. For that reason, Publius settles on a lucid thought: Conservatives, we envy you.
We are flattered, truly. And seeing that we are in a new year, we figured we’d provide a response, having let the emotional shrapnel from the November election hit the ground, simmer, and cool for a couple of months.
For a few on the political left, Donald Trump’s election victory was a wake-up call. For too many others, it was a provocation. No conservative expects the left to abandon their unholy trinity of socialism, class grievance, and identity politics overnight. But for many leftists, soon-to-be President Trump’s victory has led them to double down on many of their most radical and backwards ideas.
Take December’s campus-wide referendum, for instance, which expressed overwhelming support for arms divestment from Israel. Sure, anti-Israel politics at Yale had already become stable prior to November 5th. But Trump’s landslide seems to have only reinforced the moral confusion already chronic among staunch progressives, leading to increasingly absurd displays of activism.
So, we here at The Buckley Beacon figured we’d let campus cool down a bit before directly answering Publius’s message.
We’re not jealous that we can’t spout liberal mumbo jumbo that moves its target whenever it’s fairly attacked. We’re not jealous that we can’t strawman opposing arguments or resort to ad hominem attacks in lieu of critical engagement. We’re not jealous that we can’t concoct neologisms like ‘internalized misogyny’, ‘microaggression’, or ‘cultural appropriation’ and toss them around in applied conversation. We’re not jealous we can’t shriek left-wing newspeak into a bullhorn and use it for the enrichment of our own social currency. Really, we’re not.
Conservatives are, by no means, immune from our own mumbo jumbo, echo chambers, or dogma. Conservatives, too, remain sequestered in our own safe spaces, with our own talking points. A serious dialogue demands serious interlocutors — and if the idea of critical engagement disheartens you, whether you’re conservative or liberal, you are part of the problem.
That being said, Publius is right: There is a disproportionate opportunity cost to being a leftist at Yale. Without the constant scrutiny of one’s beliefs, left-wing students miss out on the chance to reckon with the best forms of opposing arguments. Reducing conservative thought to far-right identitarianism, racial supremacy, or transphobia is a lot easier than vigorously debating the philosophical merit of religion, principle, and tradition. Yet, such a caricature of conservatism is an all too common feature of Yale’s political mainstream.
Conversely, the real victims of left-wing intolerance are not conservatives, but its perpetrators. For too long, the left has been captured by an ideology that equates speech with violence. It pushes tolerance and solidarity above a depth of understanding for differing perspectives. To them, engagement is synonymous with endorsement, which is to say even acknowledging a competing perspective is to legitimize it.
To that pitch, we here at The Beacon respond with the following: Nonsense. Exposure to competing opinions is nothing short of a privilege, and a uniquely American one at that. Best case scenario, such exposure forces us to better articulate beliefs we already hold — worst case, we are forced to admit we are wrong and learn from our mistakes. A win-win bargain, if you ask us.
With that in mind, we would like to issue a formal welcome to all campus leftists into our spaces. Join us at the Buckley Institute’s firing line debates, chats, Chick-fil-A meals, annual conferences, and trips to Washington, D.C.
In true New Year spirit, let us here at Yale commit to doing better, conservatives and leftists alike. We can make the next four years miserable, or we can all commit to a shared pursuit of truth through qualified criticism and debate.
Liberal friends, the call is yours.
A little more self-awareness would go a long way. At least you acknowledge the right has its own echo chambers and reluctance to engage in good faith; I assure you that spending much time in the comments section of your average political YouTube video will reveal that gleeful assertion long ago trumped tightly wound logical constructions as the rank and file right winger’s preferred mode of engagement. As for the notion that criticism of a state currently murdering children with impunity is somehow extreme, let alone conformist (as the most powerful forces in society eagerly punish anyone who criticizes said state, sepaking of free speech)? This indulges the longstanding conservative desire for martyr status rather too generously.
Most of all, I’d note a disparity alongside a conflation. First, the former. Your editorial, soaked as it is in campus culture (which thankfully I’ve had little contact with for the past two decades – nor have most Americans if ever) confuses political tendencies which don’t have much in common aside from being hostile to your own ideology for varying reasons, to varying degrees, and in varying ways. You lump a genuine left-wing ideology – probably stronger within the college student body but even there weak enough to be booted for seriously challenging the status quo – with the mechinations of a Democratic Party which quite openly despises that left and runs away from it every chance it gets. Indeed, to the extent there was a marriage of convenience between these hostile forces, this year was the finalization of their divorce.
Three million more voters voted for Trump this time, but six million fewer voted for the Democratic candidate. This election was, in a quiet way, at least as much if not more about voters rejecting Democrats AND Republicans (including even some who voted for Trump while holding their noses or deciding to take a leap of faith or just liking the vibe; it’s always been a hodgepodge coalition on its decisive margins). Meanwhile, on the right you tend to march lockstep in the same political project, despite occasional grimaces at right identitarians and your offer of the old Firing Line ethos as an olive branch (right-wing billionaires tend to have a different idea of firing when it comes to the left while the helicopter meme-wielding online warriors have a more ominous idea still).
For a long time, there was a tradition on the right of deep curiosity and engagement with the inner workings of the left – often misguided and sometimes in bad faith, but at least fascinated with the intricacies of an opposing ideology. From 2016 on, I don’t really see that. There is little to no appreciation of how deeply those lazily lumped in with Democrats hate them, of tensions between a populist vision and a more discreetly identity-rooted framework, of the alienation from academic and white collar workplace culture at least as profound and significantly less immersed in those waters than conservatives (whose only concept of opposition/rejection of their own politics seems to come from their own social circles). The idea that someone rejecting overly precious social justice language also shares your blase attitude toward “class resentments” sounds very blinkers. The savvier conservatives know this, and at least attempt to wrap the right’s definitional elitism in a “slobs vs snobs” deflection.
If you want to prune all affect away and leave only the policy positions (in which case you’d lose most of your voters), you’d find that there is little crossover between what defines Democrats negatively in the public imagination and what said public wants or doesn’t want their supposed representatives to achieve. The snobbery, elitism, and professional-managerial condescension of Democrats, with which Republicans make so much hay, is also resented by people who will never vote Republican – or who do (because some manage to express that resentment) but could just as easily find themselves voting for Bernie or someone like him.