I am a moderate Liberal, and a member of the Amherst Democrats, but I admit that I was not at the debate due to intellectual curiosity as to what Coulter might have to say. Bored over the summer, I already had the dubious pleasure of reading her latest book. Instead, I went to witness a spectacle, to be entertained by a woman who earns a living by shocking people like me, people who should know better.
As a moderate who respects the traditional Republican point of view (even if I don't always agree with it), I think that conservatives were represented astoundingly poorly in the Oct. 17 debate. Beinart, while certainly not stellar, was everything Coulter was not: clear and cogent, well-informed, polite when possible and only mildly insulting when not, and, despite a lack of objectivity, unmistakably intelligent. Coulter, however, had a hard time formulating well-structured responses, relied on glib evasions and even resorted to insulting catchphrases when faced with questions she could not field. I do not mean to imply that there are no good conservative arguments; only that she didn't make them. Had the debate simply been the "battleground of ideas" it was advertised to be, Beinart would have unquestionably come out on top.
But what happened on Oct. 17 was much more than an exercise in public discourse, or, I suppose I should say, much less. It was a wimpy young man intelligently arguing against someone with whom intelligent argument is impossible. It was an infantile clown-show masquerading as high debate, performed in front of 700 ogling bipeds who reacted in a predictable succession of moans and claps, hisses and hoorahs.
As I sat there, avidly taking part in this monstrosity, I couldn't help but be reminded of an unnecessarily violent scene in a thriller movie. It was hard to watch, but impossible to turn away.
It was puerile entertainment, and it was puerile entertainment of the very worst kind; the kind that disguises itself as important and educational. When I explained my outrage to friends after the show, many of them argued that, while Coulter was insulting, at least she taught us something about how the "other side" thinks. First of all, to say that Ann Coulter represents conservative thought in this country would be an insult to most conservatives. But disregarding even this, how could we be expected to learn anything from a woman who has heard all the questions before and has a snide response for each of them, who spends her time traveling between liberal campuses where she knows students will be so shocked by her rhetoric that they might even buy her books?
Had the liberals in the audience truly been interested in learning about conservative thought, we could have done any number of things that did not involve buying tickets to the show. The wealth of information available to those who are actually interested in political thought in this country is astounding. We went to be entertained, and tried to convince ourselves that we were being educated.
Last year, Justice Antonin Scalia gave a speech at Amherst, and a group of professors decided to boycott the event. Scalia's beliefs, they said, did not fall into the parameters set by the Amherst College Statement on Respect for Persons. Thus, he should not have been welcomed by the school.
While I am dubious as to whether Coulter's claim that Christianity is "better" than Islam is one that should be accepted by the College, I do not think that the Oct. 17 event should have been boycotted by professors or students, and I certainly do not believe that people like Ann Coulter should be barred from speaking at Amherst.
I believe that we simply shouldn't have shown up. Not as a political statement, but because no one gained a thing from the debate; in fact, we only lost. Beinart said at one point during the debate that the best thing we could do to make sure Coulter's ideas failed was to not buy her books. Looking back on it, I disagree. I think we could have not gone to the event in the first place. I think Program Board could have not spent thousands of dollars of our money to bring such a hollow event to campus. I think Professor of Philosophy Alexander George, the moderator, could have decided he did not want to condone such a useless exercise. I think that Beinart could have not agreed to debate Coulter in the first place.
Last summer, I worked for a moderate Republican congressman who believed that the greatest crisis facing this country is not education, welfare or gay marriage, but simply that conservatives and liberals refuse to understand one another. In fact, he said, they try actively to misrepresent one another in order to make their side of the aisle seem superior. It is why moderates in our country are being pushed to the extremes; it is why we are more divided than we have ever been; and it is why conservatives and liberals have such opposing visions of the future of our country.
The Oct. 17 debate was a perfect example of this division. Liberals in the crowd did not leave Johnson Chapel understanding conservatism any better than we did upon entering. In fact, the debate made it easier for us to demonize those who think differently than us, because Ann Coulter reinforced our every negative prejudice. When both Republicans and Democrats agree that our country is facing a crisis potentially as divisive as any in recent memory, we should work together to find its resolution. Instead, we demonize each other, eschewing any chance at consensus and understanding.
At the earliest of ages, we are taught to do our best to understand why people who think differently than us believe what they believe. Politicians in America could learn from this lesson. On Oct. 17, we could have too.