The proper and strongest argument against the College Republicans' decision to host Vernon Robinson isn't that he was offensive or failed to properly "celebrate" Black History Month. It is that he offered absolutely nothing constructive. In welcoming Vernon Robinson to Bowdoin, the College Republicans performed a disservice to the campus as a whole, and to student conservatives in particular.
Students who consider themselves conservative, and I am one, often complain about the atmosphere of college campuses, claiming it is inhospitable to people who claim either a conservative political view or a conservative personal disposition, or both. Many of the specific complaints, however, are silly. They're founded on a sort of near-indoctrination that convinces some on the Right that the modern college is out to get them and everything they stand for. As they continue to ratchet up the rhetoric against affirmative action and "diversity" training, some campus conservatives cross a line and become almost self-parodies.
Vernon Robinson crossed that line soon after opening his mouth Tuesday night. Instead of offering substantive, intellectually-grounded arguments for conservative policies (which do, by the way, exist), he repeated platitude after platitude. Rightly pressed by students who clearly disagreed with him, he fell back on an argument that amounted to "just because." In particular, he repeated a claim that the mythological "Left" was simply unwilling to defend America. This is language of which true conservatives ought to be ashamed.
From evidence gathered Tuesday night, Vernon Robinson is a caricature of a conservative thinker, not an actual one. And in hosting him the College Republicans managed to reinforce unfortunate stereotypes of conservatives as bigots, reactionaries, and hurlers of incendiary slogans. Thoughtful conservatives should consider this sort of solicited representation negligent on the part of our ostensible on-campus leadership.
One could make the argument?indeed, it was rather strongly made in this case?that the "fireworks" of having a controversial guest like Mr. Robinson is somehow productive. Indeed, speakers who are not afraid to buck the trends of oversensitivity and political correctness are certainly welcome and can enliven campus discussion.
But does anyone really think that, aside from the references to North Carolina politics, Mr. Robinson offered anything that any College Republican leader could not offer himself after a trip to National Review Online and a check of statistics on Google?
And so the cost of Vernon's visit goes well beyond his honorarium. It is the opportunity lost to invite someone who has real intellectual heft?someone who has the power and purpose to change minds. All Vernon Robinson did was harden what was already in people's minds.
The opportunity lost is all the more tragic at a time when the most sincere and substantive debates around public policy, foreign and domestic, are within the larger conservative movement. Neoconservatives and traditional conservatives are engaged in a contentious discussion about America's role in the world, especially after the decidedly mixed results of the Iraq war. There's a case to be made that the most interesting arguments over what to do with Social Security and illegal immigration are within the Republican party, not between it and the Democrats.
Campus conservatives ought to be exploiting this opportunity to inject and extra dose of serious conservative thought into academia?not passing it up for some hothead.