Liberal students need to buck up and deal with other points of view, says . . . Barack Obama?

One of those rare moments when we have to give Obama credit for getting it right, and there's really no caveat to attach to the credit? Er, mostly. Apparently the context is that he's just finished slamming people who criticize colleges for being too liberal, so take that into consideration. Even so, how can you quarrel with what he says here? What he says is correct, of course, so he deserves credit for it and we herewith extend it. Nice job, Mr. President.

Having said that: When he says that instead of silencing conservative critics, you should "have an argument with them," I would hope the students on hand don't have that argument in the same way he does, which is to: 1. Constantly present the opponent's point of view vis-a-vis your own as false dichotomy of oversimplified options (it's either this deal or war). 2. Create false associations to make your opponent look like something he is not (they're in league with the Iranian hard-liners!). 3. Take it personally every time someone criticizes you or your point of view. 4. Refuse to debate on the grounds that you're above it all ("I won!"). 5. Deny the obvious in an attempt to avoid unpleasant topics ("not even a smidgen of corruption"). 6. Tell flat-out falsehoods (a spontaneous uprising caused by a YouTube video) and then later claim it's not important that you did that. 7. Cite support for your position that really only comes from sychophants ("every expert who's looked at it agrees"). I could go on, but you get the idea. If all you do is listen to what Obama says here, you'd get the impression that he's extremely high-minded and respects other people's points of view - that he listens with an intent to understand, and that he learns when he gets exposed to ideas that are in opposition to his own. In actual practice, Obama does none of this. He had his mind made up about absolutely everything before he ever ran for president, and all he's done since becoming president is look for every opening to cram his view of the world down everyone else's throats whether we liked it or not. So I do hope these students take the advice Obama offered here. It's surprisingly good advice. But I hope they don't follow his example. Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, so it's better to advocate the right things but fail to do them then to advocate the wrong things and practice what you preach. But it's better still to say and do the right things. Maybe our next president will.

Dan Calabrese——Bio and Archives

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