John Derbyshire: Campus Craziness Will Awaken Trump’s Silent Majority Like The ’68 Riots Did Nixon’s

By John Derbyshire

03/09/2018

Earlier, from 2016: Will The Anti-Trump Riots Help Elect Trump, The Way 1968 Rioting Helped Elect Nixon? (Answer: Yes)

In open, civilized societies there is a tolerance for some level of disorder, as being the price citizens collectively pay for their liberties.

But the key words in what I just said: "some level." Today, in the year 2018, we are fifty years on from 1968, when public tolerance of disorder was tested to breaking point.

The event everyone remembers in this context: the Democratic Party convention in Chicago that August, that was marked by huge protests. (Pat Buchanan was there, and saw them!)

It had been a rough year, though, with riots all over after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April; then Robert Kennedy’s assassination in June.

And the upshot of it: the election of Richard Nixon — by what he was to call the Silent Majority. Nixon took 32 states. George Wallace, another law'n'order candidate, took five more.

Americans had had enough of disorder.

Every time the Left stages some raucous protest I find myself wondering how long normal Americans will put up with this. How long before the reaction? How long before seasoned, skillful politicians respond to widespread desire for such a reaction?

And yes, yes, I know: There was something of that desire driving the result of the 2016 election. The winner there was not a seasoned, skillful politician, though. I say no more than that.

I found myself wondering that a lot this week. In just two days, this Monday and Tuesday, there were four instances of intolerant progressive mobs attacking harmless, unarmed individuals trying to express opinions the progressives disagreed with.

I’m casting my net Anglosphere-wide here. Two of these instances were in the U.S.A.; one was in Britain, the other in Canada. The pattern was the same, though. The intolerance, the slogans, the masks were the same. (Well, the rioters wore masks in three of the events.)

• Monday March 5, at noon, Lewis and Clark Law School over in Portland, Oregon had Christina Hoff Sommers to speak to students about trigger warnings, safe spaces, and victimhood culture.

That clip is not vituperative, merely factual and logical. The lady points out, for example, that if it were really true that women only make 77 cents for every dollar men make doing the same work, entrepreneurs could arbitrage themselves a nice profit by firing their male employees and hiring women, reducing their wage bill by 23 percent.

Ms. Sommers' opinions are hardly even heterodox. For sure they are not as heterodox as mine; although, full disclosure, I once shared a platform with her at the Independent Women’s Forum in Washington, DC. I recall her as intelligent, witty, and altogether charming. Her status as a public intellectual is perfectly respectable; she is a scholar at the neoconnish, genteel-conservative American

Enterprise Institute, along with firebrands like Michael Barone, Lynn Cheney, Richard Epstein, and Ramesh Ponnuru.

It was therefore astonishing to see clips of the talk she tried to give on Monday, where a gang of students shouted her down as — can you guess? yes: a fascist.

Astonishing and of course depressing. Then doubly depressing was that the college’s Diversity Dean Janet Steverson — that’s the woman’s title, Diversity Dean — took the side of the anarchists and told Christina to shut down her talk, which of course had barely begun, to proceed straight to Q & A.

Diversity Dean at Lewis & Clark was present.She approached podium in middle of my talk & asked me to wrap up my speech & take questions. I was never able to develop my argument.Shouldn’t the dean have insisted protesters allow me to finish, rather than cut speech short? https://t.co/1d43iDeo7P

— Christina Hoff Sommers (@CHSommers) March 5, 2018

No arrests.

Punchline, in case you missed it: this was the Lewis and Clark law school.

• Monday evening Richard Spencer gave a talk at Michigan State University, which of course brought the Antifa out in full force. This was after U had been sued — successfully — on Spencer’s behalf when the college administration had tried to prevent him speaking there.

For once the authorities showed some spine against the anarchists. Police arrested 25 people, 13 of them on felony charges like assault and battery, carrying a concealed weapon, and resisting and obstructing police. As of Wednesday, 20 people were formally charged. [8 arraigned on felony charges in wake of Richard Spencer protest, By Brian McVicar, Michigan Live, March 7, 2018]

• Also on Monday, this one across the pond, the student Libertarian Society at King’s College, London hosted the British YouTube vlogger Sargon of Akkad, real name Carl Benjamin, who describes himself as a classic liberal. Masked Antifa invaded the eventand "hospitalized several university security guards, smashed the window of a grade-one listed building and threw smoke bombs.” [’several people are hurt' as violent thugs shut down a FREE SPEECH event at King’s College London setting off smoke bombs and 'punching security guards', by Rory Tingle and Miles Tingle, DailyMail, March 5, 2018]

The topic for this event? Freedom of speech.

One more.

• The following day, Tuesday March 6th, Psychology professor Jordan Peterson spoke at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. Title of his talk: "The Rising Tide of Compelled Speech in Canada."

So along came the Antifa and tried to drown out the lecture — unsuccessfully this time, although a window was broken and one protestor, not a student, was arrested and charged with mischief, assaulting police and carrying a concealed weapon. " [Protester who shattered window at Jordan Peterson lecture found to be carrying a garrotte: police, National Post, March 9, 2018 ]

That was the only arrest.

I ask again: How long will the voting public in civilized countries — Dick Nixon’s Silent Majority — how long will they put up with this level of disorder?

How long before federal authorities step up to protect the civil rights of Richard Spencer and Christina Hoff Sommers?

How much longer will thoughtful, civilized people with unpopular opinions be shouted down and physically attacked by masked anarchists, while law enforcement too often (the Michigan State campus police perhaps an honorable exception here) sit passively and watch — or, as in Charlottesville last year, actually co-operate with the people wearing masks?

How long?

Not forever.

John Derbyshire writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com:FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.