The news earlier this week that William F. Buckley, Jr. was transferring his ownership of National Review magazine to a board of trustees made me think of the day fifteen years ago that he was the commencement speaker at my college graduation.
No, I did not attend Yale...or Harvard, or Princeton or any of them other fancy book learnin' places. I chose to spend my pursuit of a B.S. at the bucolic campus of St. John's University in Collegeville, MN.
SJU is a small all-male Catholic school smack dab in the middle of Minnesota, so I'll give you one guess as to the political leaning of the majority of their teaching staff, not to mention the students.
When not otherwise occupied drinking ungodly amounts of alcohol at the Midway Bar in nearby St. Joseph (the location of SJU's sister school, The College of St. Benedict...and its all-female enrollment) I spent most of my time in math and physics classes. As a result, I was relatively immune from the onslaught of left leaning nonsense spewed daily to captive, albeit largely hungover, audiences of eager young minds. It's hard to rip Ronald Reagan when your lecture concerns the numerical methods for first order differential equations. I'm sure they've done it at Carleton, but the mathematics staff at SJU just aren't that clever.
Nevertheless, you can imagine the wailing and the gnashing of teeth that resulted from the announcement that William F. Buckley, Jr., the torchbearer of modern conservatism, would be visiting our idyllic little campus to send a fresh new class of college seniors out into the big, bad world.
As my memory of "The College Years- Act I" has been somewhat clouded by...something...I am unable to recall many concrete details. I do know, however, that for a period of time our class faced the real possibility that the gracious invitation given to Mr. Buckley would actually be rescinded.
There were angry letters to the editor of the college newspaper. There were threats of protests during the commencement ceremony. There was the usual hue and cry from those on the opposite side of the fence who alternately claim to value diversity above all else. It seemed then, as it still seems today, that diversity of thought just never occurs to them.
Ultimately, the threats were never acted upon. Sure, a few of the intolerants stood up and turned their backs during the entirety of Buckley's address, but the paucity of their numbers just made them look foolish. And they were. Just as those who insist on protesting the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 look foolish.
Let's face it...the movie is out there and a whole lot of people will be seeing it. Having a couple of obnoxious chuckleheads confront the throngs as they leave the theater is just as ridiculous as a few 20 year old college seniors turning their backs on an eminently respected and accomplished speaker.
The difference is that William F. Buckley's message has survived for 50 plus years and will continue to survive for countless more while Michael Moore's incredible distortions will eventually join several other "popular ideas" that currently reside on the ash heap of human history.
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