Finally, a bit of advice. The friends you make in college will be your friends for life, and will influence what you do and how you think throughout your lifetime-so choose wisely. Some of the best friends I made as a student were Plato, Henry David Thoreau, Mao Tse-tung, Margaret Mead, and Maya Angelou. My colleagues are eager to make similar introductions for you!

Let’s just briefly recount some of the Great Mao Zedong’s accomplishments:

1. Caused approximately 40 million people to starve to death during the Great Leap Forward

2. Instigated a reign of terror and chaos in the course of the Cultural Revolution

3. Killed millions more during his purges of the 1950′s

And let’s not forget his warm and friendly relationship with that other great thinker of the twentieth century, Joesph Stalin.

So, while the dean and his colleagues may be content to make friends with such Hitlerian dictators, those of us living in what I like to call Reality take a slightly different view. We recognize people such as Mao for the monsters that they are. We recognize that such people are not worthy of emulation and certainly not worthy of friendship (intellectual or otherwise -  not that Mao is particularly worth reading). And we recognize that academics who admire people such as Mao are out of touch with reality.

Aside from all the mass killings and whatnot, if society were really to adopt (or befriend) Mao’s philosophy, people such as the Dean of CHASS would quickly become irrelevant (given Mao’s antagonism towards education). Therein lies the irony.

For those interested in the facts of the case, the final construction of the wall was completed last night around 8:00pm. The final size was about 6ft x 6ft. It was rather bulky and likely would have required at least two people to move. The wall was last seen at about 6:30am this morning by the morning shift for Rams’ Head Dining Hall. I discovered that the wall was missing at about 9:15am.

I think that this serves as a rather sad commentary on the state of political discourse at UNC. Can we not all acknowledge that the destruction of the Berlin Wall was a good thing, signaling the end of one of history’s most oppressive and totalitarian regimes? Can we not acknowledge that the world is a better place without the Soviet Union in it? Perhaps this is not even the issue. Perhaps the significance of the wall as the penultimate example of the failure of central planning, the misery that socialism inevitably entails, and the inability of centrally managed governments to provide even for the most basic needs of their citizens is the real problem here. Perhaps those who stole our wall are so blinded by ideology that they cannot even comprehend the walls that they have built within their own minds. But perhaps what is even more disturbing is that this university still cannot provide an environment where the free exchange of ideas is possible.

This week: The Finale

Many prominent figures on the Right- from Ronald Reagan to P.J. O’Rourke- were once leftists who more or less gradually converted to conservatism. They all have interesting stories. But, frankly, my personal story is far more important than all of theirs. After all, I’m the only one who’s ever been a guest on Crowder Chat.

I have often described my conversion to conservatism as a “Saul becomes Paul” moment. While this characterization does depict the dramatic nature of my shift, it makes it appear that my conversion happened as if in a flash of light. In reality, it was a slow, uncertain, and winding process involving many different catalysts, only the most significant of which I can detail here.

In March of 2004, I read Locke’s Second Treatise, because I was a nerd (I’m employing a very loose usage of the word “was” here). To a degree, Locke vindicated my communist suspicions that all governments were formed to protect (private) property. But, his argument that private property was a natural right was a bit troublesome. Looking back, I always had innate libertarian leanings. In fact, one of the main attractions of communism for me was the sustainable anarchy it promised at the end of the revolution. But Locke’s notion of private property fed my “mine” impulse, an impulse which is essentially rejected by communism. Thus, the edifice of my communist logic began to crack.

At about the same time that I started reading Locke, I also began reading Nietzsche. Nietzsche made a lot of mistakes (after all, didn’t he get syphilis from his own mother?). But, Nietzsche’s intense individualism, stemming from Nietzsche’s fierce contempt for anyone who wasn’t Nietzsche, resonated with me. Though I was never completely convinced by his entire worldview, I eventually came to see that I could never accept the uniformity of the socialist intermediary state, regardless of whether or not it would lead to a perfect communist state in the end.

For a few cognitively dissonant weeks, I was simultaneously a communist and a budding Republican. Following a bizarre line of Hegelian logic, I reasoned that the free market would inevitably lead people to communism by simply giving people the correct incentives to share and just forget about private property… yeah, I know…

I quickly realized that my theory was absolutely ridiculous. How could self-interest lead people to become completely, voluntarily selfless? I started to believe in the free market as the be-all end-all itself, the only way to protect individual rights, despite the fact that I didn’t necessarily think that it would lead to the best economic outcome.

I came to support Bush in the presidential election, though I still saw the Republican Party as the mullet of the American democracy (Not that I would have ever supported Kerry; though he was very liberal, he was no communist… that, and he was a huge dork. That guy was such a dork that he had a retainer for his retainer.). This did lead to some awkward conversations with my commie friends who, despite their secular atheism, thought that Bush was the anti-Christ. But, there was a certain romance to being a Republican. There is nothing more contrarian than joining the party roundly reviled by most of one’s friends.

Then I almost accidentally became convinced that not only was capitalism the best protection of natural rights, but that it would lead to the most prosperity. I happened to see an interesting quote from Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek on a poster one day, looked him up online, read his books, and became a full-fledged disciple of the Austrian School of Economics- all in a matter of weeks. The Austrian School’s argument that the capitalist economy is essentially sound, but that government intrusions (particularly fluctuations in the money supply) cause unnatural booms and busts was refreshing, unorthodox, and eminently convincing.

I now saw the free market as both the most robust and the most just economic arrangement, shoring up the last remaining hole in the edifice of my conservative thought. Nevertheless, I retained some leftovers from my days on the Left. I still listened to Jimi Hendrix and read Ken Kesey and Jack Kerouac extensively. I was still a pompous intellectual (I’m employing a loose usage of the word “was” here, too) hippie who wore a striped hat (Cat in the Hat style) and a flannel jacket in summer as a defiant (and uncomfortable) sartorial metaphor. I had been a devoted Luddite (it took me a good week or two to realize that I didn’t need to rewind DVDs and a few more weeks to finally realize why I didn’t need to rewind DVDs), and the effects of my slow start with learning technology have lingered so that I still have some trouble with e-mail (which is why Bryan handles all of the CR listserv stuff).

Though I am glad that I made the long journey from communism to conservatism, I am still a tad disappointed with some parts of my new position. For example, I had always assumed that Republicans had some sort of secret GOP vault filled with gold, rubies, and argyle sweaters. Well, I still haven’t received my key to the treasure chamber. I haven’t even been invited to visit yet…

This Week: From Russia, with Love

When I was thirteen, I became a communist. It’s hard to explain why. Communism is an all-encompassing worldview which determines how you interpret everything; if you don’t hold that worldview, you just can’t understand how a communist thinks. In that way, communism is a lot like conspiracy theories, akin to the theories that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government, that the Windings font is violently anti-Semitic, and that the years 614-911 A.D. never happened (all of which people believe).

To the uninitiated, these theories sound absolutely absurd. But once a person accepts such a theory, everything not only fits but further vindicates their theory. Thus, conspiracy theorists can dance around any objection. For instance, some people believe that KFC is a subsidiary of the KKK and injects its chicken with a secret ingredient that makes only black men impotent, despite the fact that KFC’s President is African-American. It’s the same with communism. Once you accept communism, everything suddendly morphs into a product of the reactionary bourgeois tyranny.

As bizarre as it might sound, the event that led me to accept communism was the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Like everyone, I was shocked and saddened by the news of the disaster. But I soon also became outraged that our government had wasted billions of dollars and tragically endangered the lives of the crew member for no apparent commensurate benefit. The crew performed a scientific mission studying different bacteria, minerals, tumors, etc., but they might as well have been studying whether ants like to eat pizza for all I cared. (Looking back, I can see that I was already being pulled by a strong libertarian instinct towards fiscal-responsibility, though at the time I had no idea how to express that impulse politically).

I felt something was thoroughly wrong with America. In my naive 8th grade worldview, capitalism represented the tired, intellectually dull, traditional system. Communism, on the other hand, was daring and radically new. After all, I was intellectual (as intellectual as someone who still had braces and a bedtime can be), so I was attracted to exotic ideas (I’m sure when you think of the word “exotic” you instantly picture Soviet Russia), and communism seemed like the default view for dissenting intellectuals. So I enthusiastically accepted communism.

And I began acting the part of the communist, growing my hair long to subvert the bourgeois class structure and buying Phish t-shirts made of hemp. And, of course, I started reading Marx. I began with the early works, partly to build a foundation in Marxism, and partly because the later works had pictures of the elderly Marx on their covers, and the elderly Marx looked too much like Santa Claus for me. I did eventually read The Communist Manifesto and parts of Das Kapital, though it was all way over my head. But the less I understood, the more I believed.

I took some rather radical positions. I thought that, not only should Bush have been impeached for getting us into Iraq, but that Polk and McKinley should have been posthumously impeached for getting us into Mexico and Cuba. I thought that not only should illegal immigrants be allowed to stay in America, but that they should receive all of the benefits of citizenship, including the right to vote. And, I came to disagree with the American Revolution, as it begat the biggest, evilest capitalist country ever (the words “evil” and “capitalist” became fused together in my rhetoric). In short, I wasn’t the sort of progressive who paradoxically argues that “America is so great that we should change everything about it” (that’s like telling your girlfriend that she’s so perfect that she needs to lose twenty pounds). I thought America was rotten, so we needed to change everything about it.

However, I would eventually realize how ridiculous my adolescent communism was. But more on that next week.

Next week: Taking the Red Pill- converting to conservatism.

Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination… Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

When I first began writing for Carolina Review, one line of our mission statement caught my eye: “We believe any attempt to establish utopia is bound to meet with failure and, more often than not, disaster.”

The truth of this statement is borne out again and again throughout history. Mankind has tried to establish utopia over and over again, and all attempts have been doomed to failure.

Very early in the Bible, the book of Genesis reports that man attempted to build utopia in Mesopotamia, at Babel. This attempt ended in such an abject failure that “Babel” is now a term for man’s failure to create his own utopia. And modern archaeology backs up the basics of this story: When man settled down from his nomadic existence, he merely created a whole new host of problems for himself. Instead of finding food, food now had to be grown through back-breaking labor. Where he could once get a balanced diet by hunting and gathering, he now had to work to obtain proper nutrition. Instead of possessing only as much as he could carry, man accumulated possessions and all the trouble that these bring. Eventually, the early Sumerian civilizations were overrun by invaders, their cities laid waste and their people scattered and replaced by new peoples. History flowed on.

Fast forwards to the twentieth century, and many men in many countries were once again promising to lead their people to utopia. Leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong promised a land of plenty if the people would just put their faith that the ideas of Marx would see them through. Instead, after taking power from the old tyrants, the new hope only became a new form of tyranny. The ruthlessness of the Tsars was replaced by Lenin’s proclamation that protecting the revolution required “terror unrestrained by any form of law.” As Marxism begat Leninism which begat Stalinism, as the flow of refugees from South Vietnam turned into a flood of boat people fleeing the new communist rulers, as China made a great leap forwards into overpopulation and mass starvation, as the righteous cries of Viva La Revolucion turned into righteous cries of Cuba Libre, and most of all as the world’s great communist power collapsed on itself in spectacular economic and political ruin, it became apparent to the world that communism was a false hope. The hopes for classless utopia and equality in all things would not happen. In fact, they could not happen.

So man turned to other ideologies. In the 1920′s, another man had the idea that since international socialism was a false promise, a different form of socialism was needed. Rather than an international revolution, this man preached utmost loyalty to nation and a faith in its  destiny to rule the world for a thousand years. Two decades later, the arch-enemy in the east had overrun much of the German nation. Germany’s Drang nach Osten had turned into one of the greatest mass expulsions in history, as millions of Germans had been driven from their homes in the east. Even the Nazi’s most hated targets now had their own state in their ancestral homeland. Germany was in ruins, and its former demagogues met their fate either by their own hand or the hand of the hangman. Once again, man-made utopia was a false hope which only lead to greater human suffering than before.

As Dave Breese writes in his excellent book Seven Men Who Rule the World from the Grave, “Fascism, Nazism and Communism sounded in the mouths of their respective polemicists like very different things. As it turned out, they were merely different names for the same political excuse used by a dictator to grab a country, throttle it into submission, kill everybody who disagreed with him, and then smilingly inform the world that nothing had happened.”

The truth is, all ideas that promotes a man-made utopia on this earth are doomed to failure. The technological revolution replaced physical problems with new moral and spiritual problems. The American Dream became an ideology of hedonism and materialism, and the same is true of the ideology that free market capitalism will save the world. Its counter-weight in the eastern world, militant Islam, has begotten pervasive cruelty in an attempt to force human society to become virtuous. The creation of colonial empires in the name of the “civilizing mission” led instead to the enslavement of many peoples. Later, the leaders in these colonies who promised their people happiness through independence instead became a whole zoo of psychopathic dictators. The fall of communism failed to deliver any new utopias: Eastern Europe became host to problems of organized crime, corruption and violence, while most of central Asia is still under the control of men who believe themselves to be demi-gods in suits and ties. Attempts to spread democracy around the world have met with varying levels of success, but democracy is no closer to Francis Fukuyama’s  “end of history” than it was in ancient Athens.

As Breese writes, “The mind of man has been so created by God that it cannot function as an autonomous entity. It must have an ultimate truth, a final authority, a god it sees as a fountainhead of all values and from which all final truth is derived.”

And yet, all man-made ideologies are doomed to failure because all man-made ideologies are created by imperfect, self-centered human beings. When man puts his faith in his ideology, what he is doing is setting up an idol. Man-made ideologies have all been “gods that failed.” Any attempt to use man-made ideas to create utopia is doomed to failure. Any future ideology which promises to bring heaven to earth should be warned against, and treated with the utmost suspicion.

Poster in the Campus Y building

Failure to notice the world in which we live, getting by without discernment of even a commonsensical strain, is failure to be adequate stewards of our responsibilities.  I wager that of the thousands of students who have passed by the imposing campus Y building few have stopped to imagine what the thing is.  The other night I took the opportunity to imagine and, after hours of research, I have no idea.

The Campus Y is simultaneously a department of the university (under the Division of Student Affairs) as well as a student organization.  Or, rather, it is a collection of various and sundry student organizations.  It had its beginnings as a YMCA and YWCA in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but in the 60s and 70s it dropped the Christian part and now “seeks social justice through the cultivation of plurality.”  What does that mean exactly?  Nothing coherent I can tell you.

My first direct encounter with the campus Y came last semester when I had some business in the newly renovated building.  As I stood waiting, I admired the posters hung along the wall, strewn over everywhere.  My favorite was the one that displayed the communist flag.  “Is the Campus Y secretly a communist front group?”  I thought.  If so someone needs to work on the secret part.  The Campus Y is involved with the U.S. Social Forum, a blatantly anti-American organization, it is involved with an event entitled the Social and Economic Justice Fair, it actively fights for “worker’s rights,” it campaigns on behalf of unions, and it believes in instituting a “livable wage” (as opposed to the minimum wage) for workers.

The Y is involved in the “progressive” movement in other ways as well.  It was among the first to fight for an LGBTQ resource center back in 2002, starting a special committee, SPECTRUM, to focus on “education and outreach” for the LGBTQ community; it also came out against AIO Fraternity’s bout with the university over the right to deny people into their Christian Frat who were not Christian; it advocates for “equal access to college education” for illegal immigrants; it stands “in solidarity for the Palestinian people;” it holds a Race Relations Week in which there are such productive events as the “Mix it up Dinner” in which people of different races sit together (and feel good I suppose); also, it is decidedly anti-Iraq War.

My favorite Campus Y activities involve homelessness.  Street soccer games are put on for the homeless; members of the Campus Y “sleep in” periodically for homelessness; and the Y has begun a magazine in which the homeless can write articles about, well, homelessness (the magazine is free btw).

Perhaps most bizarre is the Campus Y’s weirdness regarding the topic of Sex.  The Y held an event entitled Carolina United on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 in which the “phrase of the night was ‘snap judgments’ as students discussed how quickly people judge others and how to avoid ignorant assumptions.”  Aside from the Barney-like parallels that make me laugh, I fear I must inform the Y that I assume any organization that offers the service of condomgrams, “condoms attached to a personalized Valentines Day message,” is not worth the spittle used to seal the perverted telegrams it sends.  The Campus Y’s official stance on fornication?  “Sex is Cool.”  (You can’t make this stuff up).

What is the Campus Y you ask?  Who the heck knows, but it sure aint the YMCA.  Rather, perhaps the Y should consider renaming itself the YPAA; the Young Peoples Atheist Association.