Once upon a time, tolerance had meaning. It used to be that civility was a virtue, and no matter how far outside the mainstream your views were, you could be in a public place without being harangued and chased out of the building.
But tolerance isn’t cool anymore, particularly among professors on campus.
So that’s why something bad was bound to happen when Georgetown professor C. Christine Fair was at an Alexandria, Virginia, health club with Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute.
When a kooky leftist professor sees the head of a group focused on the “future of people of European descent,” it isn’t hard to guess what might happen next.
This is the same Professor Fair who had been admonished by staff at the same gym to not wear her “Fuck Trump” hat on the premises. See, public vulgarity is fashionable discourse among the anti-Trump smart set.
Fair confronted Spencer while he quietly worked out. Fair scolded that his membership at the gym was an “unfair burden upon the women and people of color — and white male allies of the same.”
After making this public scene, the gym decided to revoke membership in the club — but not for Fair. Old Town Sport and Health revoked Spencer’s membership instead. Fair kept her membership.
Fair confronts Spencer
Let’s get something straight. I’ve written on these pages for years that race should have no place in our everyday affairs. Grouping people by race is inherently degrading to individual dignity. To the extent the law must take into account race, it should be to the least degree possible.
White nationalism is as insane as black nationalism. Efforts to stoke white racial cohesion is as corrosive as the black power movement, including the Black Lives Matter movement. Individual dignity is not based on ancestry or race. It is based on the inherent reflection of the divine in everyone.
But “tolerance” is a one-way street these days, and Professor Fair is just the latest example.
Fair has become quite a cause celebre in the anti-Trump lunatic asylum that has become the Democratic Party. The central propaganda arm for the DNC — the Washington Post — even gave her rant space to justify her intolerance.
At her blog — “ShitMenSay” — the esteemed professor notes:
This is where I post snarcastic missives based upon the shit men … say to me via email, voicemail and comments “deposited” on my various social media like celestial droppings of stupidity. I believe that people who say these things should be accountable for their speech. Thus, I am exercising the same first amendment as these piggies are. The only response to nasty speech is more speech. … I tell these weasels to take their (almost always) white, male privilege and kindly deposit it in the only orifice that doesn’t embarrass them when it’s open.
Yes, the problems are “almost always” white males, aren’t they?
Ironically, Alexandria’s City Council passed a self-congratulatory tolerance resolution when Spencer arrived in town. The text of the resolution is almost laughable after Fair’s behavior.
“There is no place for intolerance in our community,” it said. The resolution denounced “hate crimes, hate speech, harassment.” All over town, Alexandria tolerance crusaders have posted yard signs virtue signaling to “Spread Kindness, Build Community.”
There has been no word from Alexandria city officials denouncing Fair’s intolerance. No rallies or teach-ins are scheduled.
Perhaps Alexandria could change the name of Ashby Street to Tolerance Avenue. The street was named after Confederate officer Turner Ashby … and is one-way.
The esteemed Georgetown professor doesn’t limit her obscene behavior to headgear and her blogs. For example, some American taxpayers might find it obscene that Fair has been on the receiving end of over $650,000 in federal grants during the Obama administration to help “understand the connection between media consumption and views towards Islamist militancy in Pakistan” and to conduct a 3,000 person survey of Pakistanis affected by a flood.
How would Fair feel if some taxpayers confronted her at her next workout, demanding their money back?
Unfortunately, Christine Fair is the sort of person who pushes us one step closer to each other’s throats.
Tolerance isn’t a treasured value by accident. Nor is tolerance the twisted version professors preach on campus. These days, your views are tolerated as long as they are the right views.
When Christine Fair was at Old Town Sport and Health, Spencer didn’t even have to open his mouth during his workout to experience the campus version of tolerance.
Words have meaning. Tolerance means not chasing down every person with whom you disagree and getting in their face. Tolerance means not waging a confrontational and uncivil crusade in public against those with disagreeable ideas.
Inside the Beltway, there are plenty of people like Fair with whom I profoundly disagree. There might even be some who I consider to be as racist or dangerous as she considers Spencer.
But that doesn’t give me the right, at least in a truly tolerant country, to confront every one of them and chase them out of public accommodations. When an intolerant and uncivil person confronts a peaceful person who holds unpopular ideas, we should rebuke the former.
Christine Fair’s version of America — where it is fine to threaten, scold, chase, and berate those with unpopular opinions — is a real and present danger to liberty.
Ask the conservative students beaten up on campus — violence Fair either doesn’t know about or will find reasons to decouple from her own saga of incivility. (If that one link isn’t enough to break out of your bubble, try this, or this, or this).
With threats, violence, and intolerance being the new norm on campus, maybe Professor Fair just doesn’t know any better.
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