Article: OUR VIEW: Protesting protocol
AT ISSUE: Intelligent discussion, debate would have greater effect than food
Ball State Daily News
David Horowitz is no stranger to flying pies.
Wednesday night, the controversial speaker was also subject to another type of pie - the delivery pizza pie variety.
Regardless of humor, the plethora of pies were not appropriate or effective methods of protesting Horowitz's presence on campus.
It's a common occurrence for people to protest against Horowitz wherever he speaks. In terms of maturity and legality, some methods are simply more appropriate than others.
A fake phone order for 15 cheese pizzas was called in to the Wheeling Avenue Pizza Hut under Horowitz's name. When the food arrived, event organizers were confronted with $230 worth of food and confused Pizza Hut employees were left without due payment.
The protestors who think Horowitz's ideals are absurd should know that acts like pie-throwing and ordering $230 of food under false pretenses are no better.
These childish acts are the equivalent of throwing spitballs at your middle school science teacher. It might seem fun, but it's far from productive.
The pizza prank also cost an unaffiliated business labor and supplies, taking focus away from legitimate business elsewhere.
This is not to say that all of Wednesday night's protestors handled things inappropriately. Other objectors took more mature and legal roads to get their point across, including handing out flyers and attending Horowitz's lecture to ask questions.
Even if Horowitz does not have the most popular opinions, legal means of expression are going to have the most effective results. Foolish games involving third parties and felony assault charges are far from effective dialogue.
Horowitz needs a rock-solid challenge, and an fluffy airborne dessert is not the solution. Opponents must enter and dominate an intelligent debate with a logical argument.Only then will Horowitz's critics savor the sweet taste of victory.
Ball State Daily News
David Horowitz is no stranger to flying pies.
Wednesday night, the controversial speaker was also subject to another type of pie - the delivery pizza pie variety.
Regardless of humor, the plethora of pies were not appropriate or effective methods of protesting Horowitz's presence on campus.
It's a common occurrence for people to protest against Horowitz wherever he speaks. In terms of maturity and legality, some methods are simply more appropriate than others.
A fake phone order for 15 cheese pizzas was called in to the Wheeling Avenue Pizza Hut under Horowitz's name. When the food arrived, event organizers were confronted with $230 worth of food and confused Pizza Hut employees were left without due payment.
The protestors who think Horowitz's ideals are absurd should know that acts like pie-throwing and ordering $230 of food under false pretenses are no better.
These childish acts are the equivalent of throwing spitballs at your middle school science teacher. It might seem fun, but it's far from productive.
The pizza prank also cost an unaffiliated business labor and supplies, taking focus away from legitimate business elsewhere.
This is not to say that all of Wednesday night's protestors handled things inappropriately. Other objectors took more mature and legal roads to get their point across, including handing out flyers and attending Horowitz's lecture to ask questions.
Even if Horowitz does not have the most popular opinions, legal means of expression are going to have the most effective results. Foolish games involving third parties and felony assault charges are far from effective dialogue.
Horowitz needs a rock-solid challenge, and an fluffy airborne dessert is not the solution. Opponents must enter and dominate an intelligent debate with a logical argument.Only then will Horowitz's critics savor the sweet taste of victory.
posted by Elizabeth at 3:39 PM
10 Comments:
Yes I agree.
Horowitz views are unpopular with many people but are not "hateful" so he has the legal right to speak without being physically harassed. Tose girls would've done better if they had searched out the best counter-Hororwitz speaker they could find.
That's just the problem; there are no logical counter-argument to Horowitz because he has the facts on his side and the Left merely wants to stifle his free speech rights because they can't face the truth.
A few pies, many more words, but no substance.
Er, Dear Elizabeth, um, on what points is David Horowitz wrong again? I seem to have missed a single point in your close to the edge of condoning but not quite. Sweet taste of what victory?
Leftist Undergraduate mass fashionable fantasies as facts?
Good luck as Left shibboleths are not self supporting when faced with decency, logical fallacies and harsh reality.
That's why they need such angry forever juvenile earnestness and endless PC enforcement.
The Left can be stirred but not shaken. They have an inbuilt topsy turvy mechanism so it seems. It was ever thus. colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com
First off I don't know that I fit in the "left" or the "right"
Politically I have leanings in both directions and don't see that either of the brand name parties are any different than Coke or Pepsi.
Second I do agree with "Horowitz needs a rock-solid challenge, and an fluffy airborne dessert is not the solution. Opponents must enter and dominate an intelligent debate with a logical argument.Only then will Horowitz's critics savor the sweet taste of victory."
I'm not a Horowitz fan, but neither am I a fan of 3 stooges at lectures. I would love to hear Horowitz speak, even though I won't necessarily agree with him, I always like to hear other ideas, and sometimes find that I have more common ground than I thought going in.
The left has always been afraid of serious debate. When confronted with debate, they have to try to "sound" intelligent through the use of big words (that appear even more foolish in writing when the can't spell them.) By the end of the dialogue, though, the overload of ranting exposes most of them to be fools...
They have to rely on spell checker, which, even in this comment field, labels dialogue as incorrect even though it is the preferred spelling...
I started Brooklyn College in 1973,just at the time the Viet Nam war ended. My memory of professors lecturing personal political views vis-a-vis their subject matter as a 'right way of thinking' vs. a 'wrong way of thinking' didn't exist for me. We debated politics, sometimes with great enthusiasm, but there was never a push on students like there is today from both the left and more so the right wing ideologues.
Graduate level courses were similarly devoid of political persuasion about 'correct' party politics.
I was fairly ambivalent about government at the time making decisions about my life, and an American legal system rife with inequities towards people who were not WASP and 'ESTABLISHMENT WASP'. I was a young gay man who very much wanted to adopt children with a married partner and I was affected personally by the inadequacies of America's constitutional protections not being made available to "all men, (et al women)". (I managed to adopt children outside the system at great expense with a loving partner- we had a domestic partnership in NYC before he was killed in a car accident)and our kids are grown up now, with their own children. (Life goes by quickly!).
The reason for my comment here is to express my confidence in the generation of students being educated in our Universities and Colleges today to make their own determinations despite the protestations of people like Mr. Horowitz and those who would protest against his attempt to undermine pedagogy with his right to 'free speech'. We can listen without being swayed to his position. We can continue as every generation has done to make America a better place for all.
Charlie, New York
Why aren't these students protesting this:
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2008/1/ec3b38a0-00af-4743-9943-5d00e920249f.html
I believe in social programmes, but the level of grotesquely intolerant, pro-Islamofascist, anti-Semitic sentiment on the left has brought me very close to deciding to vote Republican.
Right, left or in the middle. Every free American has the right to speak in public. This is a great gift granted to us over 200 years ago and kept alive in us by the blood of brave Americans.
To silence what you do not like to hear or disagree with is a big slap in the face to those who died for that right.
Any person who is not disgusted by those individuals throwing pies should take a second look at why they are not insulted by it.
I have and would put my life on the line so all Americans can continue to live in a society that allows the rights to free speech to continue.
Let us not forget what kind of society we would have if those rights were stripped away.
As a "child of the sixties" (i.e a student :), it's deeply depressing to see how today's youth, thinking they have the freedom to stifle speech, have got it so profoundly wrong. The academics who teach them this have to take the blame.
Back in the sixties, we didn't always understand or get some things right, but by god we talked about it, argued, demonstrated, even went to jail for the right to speak and act freely - and as a result, we LEARNED a thing or two.
Today's lot, by comparison, a a bunch of scaredy-cats playing right into the hands of leftist manipulative academics, and worse, terrorists. This lot are afraid to even LISTEN - god knows what will happen when they realise the jig is up and and that they'll have to actually fight for their lives.
Post a Comment
<< Home