Jun 22, 2017
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No magical elves are going to build your community for you. If people are afraid, don’t tell them that they’re cowards. Teach them how to stand up.
The ongoing argument of how and whether conservatives should stand up for their beliefs in a hostile environment includes some recent interesting flareups, including here in The Federalist. The most interesting, to me, is the exchange between National Review’s David French and the Paradox Project’s pseudonymous Matt Shapiro (full disclosure: he’s written for The Federalist).
French worked as an attorney doing important civil rights work with the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Shapiro was in graduate school at a university that was one party in a case where French served as lead counsel. They experienced different parts of the same elephant.
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The strongest point in Shapiro’s essay comes when he notes that he has, in fact, made a commitment that there is a line violating his religious beliefs, a line he will not cross: “But you’re ridiculous if you think I’m telling you what that line is. The moment an activist discovers my line, they will use that information to go to my employer and demand that they find a way to force me to cross that line. And I won’t cross it. And I’ll lose my job.”
And courage can’t prevent that. French certainly can’t prevent that: after all, he went to bat for Kevin Williamson’s job at the Atlantic. How’d courage work out for Williamson?
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French described Shapiro’s statement as “a response worth reading,” but didn’t agree with the conclusion, maintaining, “It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. And the battle won’t be won without both/and. Two decades of litigation have blazed a trail, but sometimes folks have to just walk down that trail. If you don’t want to, I understand. It’s hard. But it’s still a failure if you don’t.”
In other words, “There may be a hockey-masked slasher down that trail, but you need to go down it by yourself anyway.” But as anybody who has ever seen a horror movie knows, fewer camp counselors would meet grisly deaths if they just figured out how to walk down trails together.
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Crichton observed that journalists were absolutely terrible at covering his profession, yet when he turned the page in the newspaper he still assumed for some reason they would be competent at covering foreign affairs. Similarly, French knows perfectly well that organizing is hard, that putting people together is a skill, and that not everybody has the skills they need in a given situation. When the matter at hand isn’t a civil rights lawsuit, he forgets how hard organizing is.
But nothing happens invisibly or without cost. And telling people they’re cowards isn’t the way to get them to pay that cost. In his excellent book “Hegemony How-To,” the lefty organizer Jonathan Smucker points out that people who are reluctant to do something don’t just need to be told it’s morally important. They need to be convinced the thing you’re asking them to do will work. That it will matter. If they don’t buy that, they won’t do it.
The reason conservatives in hostile settings are reluctant to stand up is that they don’t know how to do it in a way that will produce effect. What’s noteworthy is that French doesn’t even consider that maybe people need some help figuring out how to effectively stand up. Giving them the idea that they should do so, he thinks, should be sufficient.
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Lefties who wanted unions didn’t just secure the legal right to form a union, and then stop. They taught people who want unions how to make unions. Conservatives don’t do that for our own people, to our shame. We tend to think if people don’t do something for themselves, they must be either cowards or lazy.
Well, sometimes people are cowards, and sometimes people are lazy, but sometimes it’s just that they don’t know what to do. Lefties are better at providing onramps to this stuff. Conservatives blithely say things like French’s line that “there are platoons of lawyers willing and eager to take a swing at your antagonists,” and assume you know who they are, how to reach them, and under what circumstances you can call on them. Lefties planning a protest give you a workshop on your rights, provide free legal observers from a multitude of organizations, then read off a legal defense phone number and tell you to write on your arm.
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Conservatives don’t do mobilizing, and we certainly don’t do organizing. We basically have three modes: evangelism (telling people what they should believe), electioneering (convincing them to pull the lever), and advocacy. None of these really empower people to fight for themselves. Advocates can swoop in heroically, like knights in armor, but they can’t do everything, they can’t be everywhere at once, and when they depart the field they still leave behind their protectees as an untrained rabble.
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It’s important to have conservative organizations that fight for people’s legal rights. But that’s not enough. When the legal fight is won, you have to make sure the public knows what the rights they’ve secured are, and what to do if they’re infringed upon. The ACLU, for example, provides illegal immigrants information in multiple languages about what their rights are, how to interact with law enforcement, and where to turn for help. The same Web page provides a 108-page PDF toolkit for responding to ICE workplace raids.
The Alliance for Defending Freedom provides information on your rights, too. But they don’t just give it to you. They make you fill out a form first. (You can freely download their PDF brochure.) The barrier to entry is small, but means many people can’t find their advice.
And while my lefty friends are constantly recommending ACLU guides to people worried about their rights, I’ve never seen a single conservative — even David French! — say “Okay, first thing is you need to get the guidelines of the Alliance for Defending Freedom.” Or of any other conservative advocacy group, for that matter.
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Their strength is in informing people what their rights are; their weakness is in providing guidance for when those rights are violated. In comparison to the ACLU’s 108-page toolkit, they’re lacking: they don’t tell people how to stand up effectively with anything other than ineffective griping or suing with ADF’s help. The real heart of the publications is guiding you to lay groundwork that will make it easier for the ADF to defend your faith-based organization when they represent you in a lawsuit. Which, again, doesn’t help people stand up for themselves.
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Write the administration. Submit an op-ed. Hold an event. Because conservatives on campus have had so much luck with those.
This is our real problem. Normal people building normal groups to support the normal desires of normal people is essential to community, let alone political organizing, and righties kind of suck at it because we assume it’ll naturally emerge. Well, no. The kind of communities that naturally emerge are usually pretty crappy communities.
No magical elves are going to build your community for you. If people are afraid, don’t tell them that they’re cowards. Teach them how to stand up.
What does helping people stand up for themselves look like? I keep telling people: you have to read the lefties. Conservatives like French tell people they’re cowards if they don’t stand up for their unpopular beliefs as isolated individuals in a hostile environment, but radical leftists like McAlevey teach people how to make friends. Guess who wins?
http://cyclopsfixed.com/2016/08/matt-shapiro-mash-10-year-film-edits/
Matt Shapiro | MASH 10 Year Film Edits
If you haven’t had a chance to see the full MASH 10th anniversary film, head over to their VIMEO page. They have been releasing riders cuts, from the film almost monthly. This was one of my favorite parts of the film, featuring Matt Shapiro, pulling miles (not really) of balloons behind him as he slayed on a track bike.
Preview of some new stuff
Matt 'Cone Destroyer' Shapiro
Matt Shapiro rendetlenkedik egy kicsit Mash módra, az útépítő munkások legnagyobb örömére gondolom. Lazázás, naplemente, kúlságfaktor az egekben, mi más kellhet ebben a rekkenő hőségben?
jade getting a positive pregnancy test after a night with robbie but robbie doesnt believe her
Robbie stopped drinking from his straw and stared at her aghast. “What?”
Jade had her arms crossed and she was looking around to see if anyone had heard her. Robbie stuttered and tried again. “W-w-wait, no way. You didn’t even let-I mean how-I used protection! That doesn’t make any sense! How can that-“
Jade grumbled in her throat and rolled her eyes. She grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him near so he could hear her clear as day. “You were my ONLY partner; don’t give me any of that crap! I said it’s you and that’s that! Now take responsibility!”
“I – I- I can’t be a dad! I’m- I’m only 17! Wait, there must be a mistake!”
“Don’t you dare say what I think you’re gonna say Shapiro!” she hissed menacingly. But he did. “You sure it’s not Becks?” he asked desperately. This garnered him a hearty slap to the face that made him stumble back, clapping a hand to the injured cheek in shock. Jade slowly walked up to him in slow steps.
“Stop being a coward, trying to blame someone else for your actions is the lowest. Man up Shapiro. You think I told you cause you have a choice? Doesn’t work that way. Don’t leave town, I’ll find you!” she said in a growl and stalked off, leaving him confused with worry. She would kill him, he knew that much.
2012: The Cinescape by Matt Shapiro. A perfect ode to modern cinema. Brilliantly edited and realised. Love this to bits.