It was 2004 and 19-year-old Jeff was a sophomore at Lehigh University, a private school in Bethlehem, PA. Back then I was still a loyal Republican and an active member of the College Republicans. The Lehigh College Republicans had a long running grievance with the University over the way the limited amount of funds for speakers was doled out to campus organizations. Without getting too into the weeds, the result was that the University devoted drastically more funding to speakers on the left than to speakers on the right. Of course, Lehigh is a private institution and can spend its money however it wants, but we College Republicans felt that the situation was unfair and contrary to the University’s purpose of promoting academic discourse and a free flow of ideas.
This long-simmering dispute boiled over when the University announced that it had invited Michael Moore, the director of the dubious “documentaries” Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, to speak at Lehigh four days before the 2004 Presidential election. While the University never disclosed how much they were paying Moore to speak, his standard honorarium at the time was $60,000. By contrast, the most that the University had ever agreed to pay as an honorarium for a speaker brought by the College Republicans was roughly $5,000.
We brought several objections and requests, all of which were blithely cast aside by university officials:
College Republicans: It is unfair to pay so much to bring a left-wing speaker like Moore while spending so little on right-wing speakers!
University: Nonsense! Michael Moore is not a “left-wing speaker.” He is a non-partisan documentarian.
College Republicans: His “documentaries” are propaganda. You are basically paying him to throw a political rally for John Kerry four days before the Presidential election.
University: While he intends to encourage students to vote, there is no reason to believe that he will favor Kerry over Bush.
(Several seconds of stunned silence)
College Republicans: If you are going to spend that money on a raving leftist, at least bring someone who has an ounce of intellectual credibility?
University: Intellectual credibility? Who cares! He is popular and will fill seats.
College Republicans: Will you spend an equal amount (or any amount) to bring a right-wing speaker to act as a counterbalance against Moore?
University: Are you kidding me? We just spent our entire speaker budget on Moore. There is absolutely no way that we can pay for another speaker.
College Republicans: Wait! We found a speaker who is willing to come for free. Will you require Moore to debate him as a term of the contract?
University: Again, are you kidding me? This is Michael Moore! The Oscar winner. We have absolutely no bargaining power with him. He gets what he wants, and he doesn’t want to debate.
College Republicans: Will there at least be an open Q & A time?
University: Seriously? Stop wasting our time. Moore will only accept pre-screened questions from friendly student organizations.
College Republicans: Is there anything at all that you can do to make this a more balanced event?
University: Look, if it will shut you up we will allow you to set up a booth in the lobby of the arena, that way everyone who goes to see him will have to walk by your booth.
Thus it was that on the night Michael Moore came to Lehigh I found myself manning a booth in Stabler Arena with one other College Republican. We didn’t really have any experience with protesting or activism. The best idea we could come up with was to hand out literature from the Bush/Cheney campaign and fliers listing the plethora of factual inaccuracies in Moore’s “documentaries.” Looking back on it, I have no idea what we thought we would accomplish, but we felt like we had to do something, and this was something.
As the hour approached attendees began to file into the lobby, walk past our booth, and enter the arena. We got a lot of dirty looks, plus the occasional snide remark. Some people approached the booth, perused our literature, and engaged in debate that was at least tolerably civil. A few brave souls gave us a thumbs up or word of encouragement. The vast majority of attendees, however, were content to dismiss us as misguided, yet harmless, fools and simply ignored us.
Moore’s speech turned out to be exactly what we said it would be: a Bush bashing Kerry/Edwards campaign rally that ended with Moore leading the crowd in a rousing (if unimaginative) chant of “Vote Kerry! Vote Kerry! Vote Kerry!” As the crowd surged out of the arena they were once again forced to walk by our booth: they were not happy to see us. At first they were just shouting at us in righteous anger from a short distance, but as the crowd pressed in around us they were soon screaming right into our faces. Not content with words, they loosed their fury upon our booth, scattering our literature on the floor, tearing up our signs and trying to run off with whatever they couldn’t destroy. Then the barrage of bottles flew our way. At this point the campus police moved in, formed a protective circle around us, and dispersed the crowd.
What still shocks me to this day was the speed at which the situation deteriorated. I guess that 30 seconds, a minute tops, passed between when the crowd began exiting the arena and when the police surrounded us. Based on the rate that things were going, I have no doubt that if the police hadn’t intervened an all-out melee would have erupted within moments. Ok, fine! Not an all-out melee, but a totally one-sided beat-down of myself and my compatriot. I can’t say I was scared, I was in too much of a state of shock and disbelief for fear to register.
For you see, I believed in free speech. I did not just support free speech as a matter of policy or Constitutional law, I believed in it. I believed that free speech was natural, that it was universally understood and accepted, and that every American embraced the tenants of free speech as their birthright. While I knew that there were debates about the outer limits of free speech – Nazis marching in Jewish neighborhoods, nude Shakespeare in the park, etc. – we weren’t doing anything controversial like that. What could be less revolutionary than advocating the reelection of the sitting president? I literally could not fathom a scenario where my fellow Americans would use violence to silence my political speech. Even with a line of cops surrounding me I could scarcely believe it.
I must confess that my story is pretty tame when compared to the accounts you hear today about violence on campus. Some torn up signs, a few thrown bottles, two students narrowly avoiding an ass kicking – most universities today would count that as a success. Surely there is no sophomore in the nation today who is sophomoric enough to believe that their speech could never be met with violence. Tame though this experience may be, it was one of the most formative political events in my life.
Prior to this I had taken for granted not just that individual rights ought to be respect, I took for granted that individual rights were respected. That night I learned that individual rights are never to be taken for granted. For the first time I began to understand the saying that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
Unfortunately, for quite some time I applied this lesson in a purely partisan manner. We virtuous Republicans had to vigilantly guard our rights from the predation of those dastardly Democrats. Those Democrats, who, despite all their bluster about civil liberties, will gladly censor the speech of Republicans when given a chance. Those Democrats, with their desire to take away our gun rights. Those Democrats, who want to micromanage every aspect of our lives with an all-encompassing, all-powerful nanny state.
Over time, however, I became increasingly disenchanted with the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I began to see the extent to which my former allies were a threat to individual rights. Republicans scoffed at concerns about excessive government surveillance in the War on Terror. Republicans derided “activist” judges who took the rights of criminal defendants seriously (unless that judge happened to be named Scalia). Christian Republicans constantly hacked away at the First Amendment, hoping to manipulate the levers of government power to bring about their vision of Christ’s Kingdom.
Eventually, I did the hardest thing of all. I looked in the mirror and saw the ways that I was a threat to individual rights. I saw that I wasn’t quite so innocent in the whole Michael Moore brouhaha. Perhaps I wasn’t just upset about a funding disparity for campus speakers. A part of me just didn’t think Moore should be allowed to speak. I may have been acting out of a fear that he might actually convince others to think and vote in a manner that displeased me. Maybe I had been far too quick to dismiss complaints from minorities about racial profiling and biased police tactics. Perhaps I had supported the indefinite detention and “enhanced interrogation” of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay because a part of me simply hated Islamic terrorists and wanted to see them suffer.
The reality, I came to see, is that respect for individual rights is not natural. It is natural to only care about yourself, your friends, and your allies. It is easy to use and abuse others for your own benefit. It is normal to want to make others believe what you believe and act as you act. It is human nature to hate and oppress your enemies. None of us are disposed to respect the rights of those who displease us. We are all inclined to believe that rights are only worth respecting when they lead to a result that we like.
Liberty requires eternal vigilance. But not just vigilance against our enemies. Not just vigilance on behalf of those individuals and those rights that we like. Liberty requires vigilance against our own worst tendencies and against the oppressive nature of our friends and allies.