The College Fix

OPINION: Appalling, jaw-dropping vulgarity is unique to the Left

Yaron Brook is one of my favorite intellectual figures and public speakers. He is president of the Ayn Rand Institute and often speaks at various venues across the nation, including colleges.

What follows are details from a talk he gave in 2006 at Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University on Middle East conflicts and other military and terrorism topics, at which he graciously held a lengthy question and answer session for students and older folks who attended. A video of the talk was recently posted online.

From listening to questions students asked, it appears as though advertisements for the event were circulated solely at the Howard Zinn and Derrick Bell School for the Brainwashing of Young Malleable Minds, and wasn’t so much marketed to students who might be more sympathetic to a Thomas Sowell or a Milton Friedman.

Case in point: In this first example, one young, intrepid Leftist ends his elaborate, contrived hypothetical soliloquy with a question for Dr. Brook: If you and George Schultz were the last two people on Earth, would he use lubricant while he sodomizes you?

“Because I doubt it,” the young man continued as murmurs echoed through the hall, “because he likes it somewhat rough.”

“I’m sorry, you’ve passed the bounds of good taste,” the moderator says, but the young man doesn’t budge.

“What do you think?” he asks, shrugging his shoulders. He doesn’t leave the microphone until an administrator pulls him away.

Shortly after this insult, a young female student walked up to the microphone and begins her question by exclaiming to Brook how thrilling it is to meet a “real, live, fascist NAZI.”

Toward the end of the video, a female student is escorted from the building as you hear her, off-camera, scream that Dr. Brook, who is Jewish and emigrated from Israel to the U.S., is a NAZI.

Dr. Brook, being the class-act that he is, shrugged off the repugnant first statement without any apparent effect on his ability to carry on the session, and he even respectfully answered the young lady’s question regarding an organization called Campus Watch after she was done calling him a fascist.

I urge you to watch the entire video, posted below.

Dr. Brook demonstrates how to properly debate leftists who, by and large, employ emotion, belittlement, and ad hominem as their primary debate tactics. He brushes off their vapid, insignificant attacks and simply proceeds to lay waste to the entire room with impeccable logic.

I have a theory that one of the factors that drives people to Leftism is a lack of intellectual confidence and self-esteem. This is why it is predominantly Leftists who end up using appeal to emotion in order to skirt around having to employ logic and reason. As a consequence of this, it is on the Left where one finds the most vulgar ad hominem attacks in the political sphere.

Of course, this is a generalization, there are some “on the Right” who appeal to emotion as well. George W. Bush is a prominent figure that comes to mind (think “Compassionate Conservative,” which is a redundant term, by the way).

Undoubtedly, someone will dig up a clip of some “Rightist” in the KKK, or some loony Obama “birther” conspiracy theorist, or an overt racist like the eminent Donald Sterling (who is purportedly a registered Republican) as a counterexample, and thus evidence disproving my theory that the left has a monopoly on emotion-driven vulgarity.

However, I would point out that such types of figures are not unique to the Right.

Robert Byrd, the late Democratic senator from West Virginia, was a member of the KKK, and many on the Left have harped on about Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth and how that would potentially present problems for a presidential run. And there is no shortage of overt racists on the Left, such as Melissa Harris-Perry, who made fun of the white Romney family’s adopting a black child.

My point is, where on the Right can you find very public figures who say things like Martin Bashir does, who suggested someone sh*t in Sarah Palin’s mouth?

Appalling, jaw-dropping vulgarity is unique to the Left.

Now, maybe I’m wrong and I have to revise my theory, I’m always open to examining compelling evidence that counters my thesis, and therefore I issue this challenge: Can you provide an example of a conservative student, pundit, media figure, or whomever saying something that rivals the vulgarity of the suggestion by a young Leftist that Dr. Brook would enjoy sodomy?

College Fix contributor Josh Hedtke is a student at UCLA.

Editor’s note: This column has been amended to indicate the talk took place in 2006.

Watch the video:

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