November 7, 2005

Pining for a Revolution

Daniel Belkin has an op-ed in today's issue of The Dartmouth that trips over itself a bit, but comes out and says that casting the Trustee elections, the Homecoming debacle, etc. in terms of a tug-o-war of left and right is a little overplayed, though not entirely discountable.

I said similar things earlier this fall, but I want to extend what I had to say, which was primarily directed to a liberal audience, as this will be:

If this is an attempted coup by right wing reactionaries, it's not difficult to uncover the subterfuge--work with these "insurgents" and the constituency they represent to actually meet their needs. If they try to push us to the wall, fight like hell. Our values are well worth fighting for, but it is too early to declare them in imminent danger.

I believe that the petition trustees may have caught a bit of a 'take back the college' wave that is essentially conservative, but the platforms of the candidates have not been ideologically anathema to anything we say we stand for, with the possible exception of some background noise about identity politics. But that is a topic we should engage with "them" on--we have the moral as well as the pragmatic high ground, I believe.

We should beware the Greeks bearing gifts, but we should also pay attention to the Cassandras telling us our ways just aren't good enough.

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