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To preface, let me say that I believe it is possible to articulate rational and convincing arguments for the liberal position. I always enjoy Mr. Pattishall’s comments for that very reason. An argument must force one to think deeply about the matter and consider one’s own beliefs to be taken seriously. (At the end of the day, however, I believe conservatism wins simply because it more fully understands human nature.)
That being said, Campus Blueprint fails abysmally to make the case for liberalism, for which I am disappointed (it would be nice to have a true foil for Carolina Review). The first general critique is that the articles are intellectually vacuous, which (in fairness) may be a product of the fact that they are horrendously short. You can’t develop a thesis in a half-page article, at least to the extent that one can persuade someone of your argument. Unless the purpose of Campus Blueprint is to merely regurgitate what everyone on campus is thinking anyway…
Second, the tone of the articles is noticeably eristic and full of snide remarks that unnecessarily detract from the overall argument. References to Sarah Palin’s facebook messages on completely unrelated topics are just tasteless.
Third, each article reveals a deep misunderstanding of conservatism (most tellingly in the satirical column towards the end). But it fits in the general thrust of the argumentation by Campus Blueprint: they do not seem to be engaged in a debate of ideas, but merely of personalities. Repeating generalities or worn critiques of shallow politicians shows, to a certain extent, a lack of seriousness in approaching these weighty topics that deserve a higher level of discussion than what Campus Blueprint has been able to offer.
Perhaps it is merely a reflection of the modern-day liberal movement. Conservatism has long been the only philosophical tradition that offers any new policy ideas about the issues of the day. For all the supposed “freshness” of Obama, he is merely repeating liberal talking points since the 1960s. Where are the Heritage, Cato, or American Enterprise Institutes of the left? While neoconservatism is (rightly) much maligned, it still offered a new take on conservative principles. The left remains (ironically enough) statist in its thought, which is tragic. Hopefully we’ll see a new Campus Blueprint with the coming of the new semester.
I am shocked that my magazine would be treated in such a way by such and such persons! Schocked I say!
A fine article, Mr. Dent, as usual. As far as next semester, I hope so as well. Also, brilliant use of the word eristic haha.
Hey all,
We appreciate the feedback, and as I'm sure you all know, any publication by college students is going to leave room for improvement. We've been around less than a year, so we are still developing our mission and setting goals for the type of content we want to include and the exact audience we are trying to target. I am aware that the quality of the writing in the magazine is at times inconsistent, though it has improved with each issue. Going forward I am excited to recruit more writers and coach the ones we have to increase the quality of the magazine overall.
However, it is important to note that you misinterpret what our magazine is trying to do. Campus BluePrint is not and does not want to be a foil to the Carolina Review.
While you all seem interested in an erudite dialogue between politicos already well-versed in the issues, we are attempting to engage students who maybe haven't thought about something like immigration policy or the role of religion in voting already. Many of our writers could use quotes from ancient orators or obscure, unexplained references to Psalms, but they understand that taking a patronizing or condescending tone isn't the best way to welcome people into the Party.
Though there is a place for such writing, and I would love to see an undergraduate Harper's find its place on campus, we believe that right now it is more important to fight political apathy; we can engage in more complex conversations at our weekly meetings. Our goal is to write a magazine we can hand to politically un-engaged students in the Pit, knowing they'll be able to understand the articles and hopefully gain a sense of their saliency. We would rather be Neruda than Eliot, if you will.
We appreciate the continued evaluation of our publication, however, and look forward to continuing the dialogue.
Erin Becker
Managing Editor, Campus BluePrint
Hey,
I appreciate the insight into Blueprint's philosophy. I do agree that Blueprint and the Carolina Review are two different types of publications. Blueprint is a small arm of the Democratic Party while the Review is not affiliated with any party and therefore has no problem printing articles critical of both parties (eg the top blog post on our page represents the modern day Republican Party as Yoda smoking weed).
However I do take exception to what you seem to think is the unsophisticated nature of UNC students. I know articles in the Carolina Review can sometimes be arcane and complex, but I don't think most of the UNC students I have known are somehow incapable of understanding them. Trying to write intelligently isn't "patronizing" or "condescending", it's what good political writing should be. One of the biggest problems with the American political system is that it has been dumbed down to 15 second sound bytes and emotional appeals. It's rare to find thoughtful, detailed political analysis anywhere. I don't think people will be turned off from politics by sophisticated political writing, especially not at an elite university like UNC.
So I'd encourage your writers to turn on the mental fire hose and give us their quotes of ancient authors and obscure psalms. When I pick up Blueprint (and I do pick it up) I want to read the best, most sophisticated defense of modern liberalism that UNC's student body has to offer. I think that would add a lot of value to the intellectual dialogue on this campus.
Christopher Jones
Articles in the Carolina Review can sometimes be arcane and complex? I don't think so. Can you name one? Especially nothing you've written…
Oh snap! haha
I'm not really sure what you mean by "get over yourself." You guys are the ones who get on the blog and, in front of all your readers, slobber all over each other with compliments and inside jokes. Also, unless Christopher has a job in national security or foreign relations that I don't know about, I would hardly call him an "expert." Furthermore, on more than one occasion, Christopher has shown himself to be quite prejudiced and simpleminded.
Haha I kind of agree with this (- the insults toward Chris "the man" Jones).
You guys are so BRAVE. Tracy calls Chris out for tooting his own horn and instead of addressing the points that she raises, you hide behind the "thumbs down".
While the writing that CR Daily produces is better than most of the drivel that we read on campus, to call it "arcane and complex" is arrogant even for Chris. If anything, the discussions that result from CR Daily's writing could be called complex and deep. And, as dumb as some of these twits on campus may seem to be, I cannot fathom that CR Daily has or will produce anything that a standard student could grasp.
"You guys…slobber all over each other with compliments and inside jokes." It really can't be put any better than this.
What points did she raise? All she did was point out my lack of work experience in the national security field (which is true) and say this disqualifies me on being an expert (no one has defined "expert" in this discussion so that statement is pointless). She also asked me to name an arcane and complex article in the Carolina Review, and you seem to be confusing our print edition with our online blog. A blog by its nature will have shorter and less detailed articles than the print publication.
I haven't confused the two. I have also read the print edition, and arcane and complex hardly describe CR Daily.
The term "expert" is not relative to any discussion. It was Anthony who incorrectly labeled you as an expert, in-house or not.
As far as the points she raised, do you really want me to label every claim that she makes? She denies that you are an expert, claims that CR Daily cannot provide an example of an "arcane and complex" article, calls you simpleminded and prejudiced, and calls you out as tooting your own horn, whether that was your intention or not. For one paragraph, I'd say that she made a number of points.
Yeah, it would seem a lot more patronizing or condescending to say that the average UNC student would be scared away by complex, reference-laden discussions of topical issues. I mean, in all my time at the Carolina Review., I haven't heard even the slightest whimper of protest against the CR's erudition.
Cordially? haha
Anthony,
I appreciate the compliment in the post, and am sad to say that I agree with your overall evaluation of Blueprint. I have no personal stake in that publication, since I'm not a Democrat, but I do wish to see CR engaged with at its own level. I want to see some liberal-left publication really step up to the plate, but as you say, a writer can't develop a social or political thesis in a half page article. Its two biggest problems, I think, are the brevity of its articles and the fact that it is yoked to a party. It gives the whole enterprise something of a weak, diluted cheapness, like preprocessed food.
That being said, I have to make two points. First of all, while there are certainly ad hominem attacks in Blueprint, The Carolina Review is by no means highly regarded on campus as a publication that avoids childish baiting and deliberately inflammatory rhetoric. Most people at UNC who are aware of CR or who have browsed through it find it offensive not because of its content but because of its tone. Jokes about printing CR on virgin rain forest trees make most UNC students shake their heads; they all get that it's a giggle-inducer for conservatives, but it's still tasteless and not very funny. When Marc claims, in his article on Wake County schools, that diversity policies are simply "some guilt-ridden liberal's feel-good" solution (his most comprehensive analysis of liberal intentions in his article), he is showing a very real side to CR that many students on campus find detestable. As a final example, as I've already mentioned many times, throwing the terms "fascist," "Marxist" and "totalitarian" at liberals willy-nilly is both insulting to the general UNC public (who you falsely assume will fall for it), at the same time that it undermines any and all claims to intellectual seriousness. It's a Glenn Beck tactic, and nobody takes Beck seriously as an intellectual. (It's also a rabble-rousing populist tactic that a Burkean should be very suspicious of.)
Lastly, I find the Eliot-Neruda metaphor very telling about how CR conceives of itself, and what it fails to realize about itself. Eliot was a great poet, no doubt. I love the Four Quartets myself. But Eliot was also an American who betrayed the ideals of his nation, a self-avowed Anglo-Catholic royalist who eagerly embraced traditional BRITISH conceptions of inherent hierarchy. Very attractive to a Burkean, perhaps, but very alien to Americanism. Eliot was also an obscurantist, as anyone who has read his poetry knows full well. Not only did Neruda write for the people, but he was every bit the poet that Eliot was. You can reject him for his socialism if you like, but at the same time you're proud to embrace a royalist-monarchist in Eliot.
Both CR and Blueprint have things going for them. CR has a great range of intellectual and ideological diversity on its staff, and Blueprint is classy as hell running articles by Crowder as a minority report. Both also have room for improvement. So I wish best luck in the future to both publications.
Re: "The Carolina Review is by no means highly regarded on campus as a publication that avoids childish baiting and deliberately inflammatory rhetoric."
Should we not engage in deliberately inflammatory rhetoric, if the goal is to get people to think in new ways? To create a bit of tension, as Martin Luther King Jr. said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in the minds of those we seek to influence? MLK was certainly inflammatory; he pissed off a whole bunch of white racists. Was he wrong to do so? Was nonviolent protest a form of "childish baiting?"
I mean, I would agree that causing trouble for its own sake is contemptible. However, when what is clearly right is so out of fashion, I would argue it is our duty to pull no punches. Isn't being intellectually challenged part of college, after all?
I'm generally inclined to agree with your point about inflammatory rhetoric getting people to think in new ways, and I'm in total concord with the idea that college is all about being challenged. (As for King's non-violent protest being a form of "childish baiting," I would obviously never say such a thing, and no one with any sense of proportion or good judgment would. It's a totally unrelated issue, and not a good way to compare like with like.)
However, the issue here is clearly not whether some well thought out rhetoric of an inflammatory nature can be good from time to time. The issue is whether or not it is appropriate for an associate editor of The Carolina Review to criticize mild ad hominem attacks in Blueprint when the Carolina Review itself is prone to childish baiting. If CR were known on campus only for using deliberately inflammatory rhetoric, I wouldn't take much issue with Anthony's criticism. It's the union of inflammatory rhetoric with childish baiting in CR that is problematic, and that makes it difficult for Anthony to fairly criticize Blueprint on that front.
What we should be looking for in the dialogue between CR and the plethora of liberal publications on campus is the most honest and fair discussion of issues we can find. Sometimes that means talking tough on issues and sometimes it means being inflammatory — about the issues. It never requires ad hominem attacks, and it never requires stupid, childish jokes.
Be honest, Jonathan. There is a difference between baiting and ad hominem attacks. I haven't read the Blueprint, so I don't know the "degree" of the ad hominem attacks, but ad hominem attacks are logical fallacies and should be criticized. As best as I can recall, CR has never engaged in an ad hominem attack on anyone.
As far as dialogue is concerned, UNC has shown just how open it is to ideas that differ from the "mainstream" liberal agenda. Sure, not everyone is like SDS but SDS only started what resulted in a broken window.
Antoine, good point, but please don't remove the "rain forest trees" reference. Besides being an enormously hilarious inside joke for all undercover conservatives on campus, it gets people's attention in a significant way. It shows that we refuse to abide by the prevailing view. It shows that we have something totally different to offer from the "plethora" (Jonathan's term) of left-leaning publications.
It is, in essence, who we are: rebels. Not against God our country but against the prevailing ecumenical niceness and guilt complex that pervades UNC and many other elite institutions.
Not that I actually want to destroy rain forest trees. I am not opposed to them, but I think a joke at their expense is not really such a terrible thing.
Further, if you can show me but one example of someone who says "I really would have read your magazine except for that mean and hurtful joke about rain forest trees," then I might agree with you. In any case, I would shake your hand for finding such a person, then give the offended party a hug because they so obviously need one.
"I think a joke at their expense is not really such a terrible thing. "
Then you disagree with Anthony that a reference at Palin or Beck's expense is such a terrible thing, right?
Those were by no means the only or worst examples of childish baiting I could find in CR. I didn't feel the need to mention Tugman's weak attempt at satire or Crowder's cartoons, mostly because those are not meant to be taken as straight-forward arguments, though they do say a lot about the tone of the magazine. I was just pulling examples off the top of my head. If I sat down with four or five back copies of CR I think that I could find other and worse examples of childish baiting. I could also probably find examples of those ad hominem attacks that NJR can't recall.
I didn't make my point about Eliot very clear, but what I was getting at wasn't that CR is a crypto-monarchist rag. It's that there are implications for the particular brand of conservatism that CR leans towards (and here I probably should have just directed the argument at you and not CR) that are particularly nefarious and indefensible. Also, there is obviously no "fact" involved in your preference for Eliot, but I have to say that it is a very bad idea to compare the quality of poets across languages. If you're going to do that, I trust you have read at least as much Neruda in Spanish as you have Eliot in English.
I don't know who you've been talking to about CR at Carolina, but in my three years I've heard it attacked as childish, cheap and mean-spirited by dozens of people.
There is no "fact" involved in your opinion about Eliot, obviously, but I'm sure you know that. And for the record, it's an opinion that I disagree with. It's also generally a bad idea to compare poets across a language divide, so I trust you've read as much Neruda in Spanish as you have Eliot in English…
In my three years at UNC, I've heard countless people, liberal, moderate and apolitical, condemn the oftentimes (though by no means universally) childish or baiting tone of CR articles and cartoons. It is really a stretch to pretend like people criticize it for deviating from some imaginary liberal standard. I generally agree that liberals on campus don't take conservative ideas as seriously as they should, but when people take the time to read CR, I find their criticisms to be as much (or more so) about tone than about content. We must be talking to different people.
Odd as it feels, I have to agree with Jonathan here. I guess I would have to ask who CR's target audience is. I finally see the point that you are trying to make, Jonathan. At least, I hope I see what you intend.
CR doesn't have a reputation of really challenging liberal ideas because that really cannot be CR's purpose. If it is, you are doing a phenomenally bad job at it. It is unfair for you guys to expect Blueprint to be some sort of foil to CR, when CR doesn't use a serious tone in the majority of articles.
"a joke at their expense is not really such a terrible thing."
Then you must not think a reference at Sarah Palin's expense is so terrible either, right?