Madison culture needs to change

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by Ben White

Monday, October 20, 2008 00:00

Our city of Madison prides itself on being a beacon of progressivism, and our university is much the same. An ideology dating back to the early 20th century days of Robert LaFollette and University of Wisconsin President Charles Van Hise, the Wisconsin Idea declared that our university should be used as a tool geared toward the social benefit of the entire state. As time has passed, however, we seem to have transformed the idealistic nature of early 20th-century Progressivism into a dogmatic, political, liberal ideology that leaves little room for defection.

State Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, summed it up nicely in an editorial in this newspaper last year: the “days of balance on campus have now been replaced by a liberal theology that has no room for independent or conservative ideas.” Nass even goes so far as to say that this “has begun to transform the educational process — particularly at UW-Madison.” While I certainly veer strongly away from the policies Nass advocates, he does make an interesting point regarding the lack of ideological diversity on campus.

For such a “liberal” place, we tend to be extremely close-minded, altogether rejecting and in some cases threatening those who offer up viewpoints different from our own. There is no locale that better demonstrates this than our community’s reaction to scholarly speakers who reflect ideas that contrast with typical Madisonian opinion. Whenever such an apparently confrontational speaker comes to town, he or she is habitually met with attacks not on their judgment but on their inherent racism, prejudice or whatever-ism is deemed appropriate. It’s an example of Madison liberals using radical us-vs.-them tactics to scare away anyone who threatens the vitality of the so-called progressivism of Madison.

The situation continually recurs. Last week, Robert Spencer came in to Madison to speak about the topic of his book, in which he questions the manner in which we view Islamic fundamentalism. His ideas were politically incorrect, but they were not ones that warranted such strong opposition. Spencer offered a logically coherent thesis and laid out the intellectual background of his research, yet no such logically coherent counter to his argument was made. He was simply cast off as a prejudiced hack representing fear-mongering and hate speech.

When we react this way to someone who simply offers a viewpoint opposed to ours, we severely hinder our chances for successful personal growth and immersion into the world outside of Madison’s borders. Yet, we do this with astonishing frequency, and it is certainly not limited to campus visitors. It should be noted that the amount of hatred that someone like Spencer or David Horowitz, for that matter, calls for is nothing compared to the utter animosity a student would face on campus for wearing a John McCain pin on their jacket. While many have lambasted Gov. Sarah Palin for her us-vs.-them mentality when she childishly said she only likes visiting the “pro-American” places of our country, we commit the same atrocity on a daily basis. We simply do not question why they hold the political stances that our opponents do; we attack them personally. We laugh at, ridicule and respond without reasoned thought toward anyone who holds contrasting viewpoints. If you find this hard to believe, simply read the hate-filled responses to the extremely limited amount of editorials advocating the McCain-Palin ticket in our student newspapers.

In 2007, conservative author Dinesh D’Souza came to campus to speak, well aware of the liberal tradition prevalent in Madison. He said then that Madison “is where my ideas are most needed, [and] what I’m going to do is challenge assumptions and force people to defend their views.” What D’Souza probably noticed, however, is that our assumptions have gotten so deep that people see no need to defend them; this is an unfortunate problem.

I am certainly proud to believe that the policy positions of the left lead to the type of society that I desire; that is why I tend to vote Democratic. The fact that others envision a different society than I do, however, does not attest to their inherent malevolence. It is not only unfair but irrational to suppose that because someone disagrees with you, they are somehow not worthy of respectful and reasoned opposition. We have a culture in Madison in which those who think differently than us are castigated as backward, stupid or ignorant, but when we immediately dismiss one’s ideas without consideration, we do nothing but demonstrate our own lack of reason and our own ignorance.