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We Need the Truth and a Revival of Courage

Posted on Sunday, January 29, 2023
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by David P. Deavel
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26 Comments
DeSantis

AMAC Exclusive – By David P. Deavel

Present glory and past failure are the stories of the week. The difference between them is the virtue that the philosopher Aristotle called first among the virtues. That virtue is courage. It is first because, without it, none of the other virtues can survive.

The glorious courage this week was shown by Chris Rufo and Eddie Speir, but it was actually made possible by the courage of AMAC’s 2022 Man of the Year. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been working on revamping and rebuilding education in the Sunshine State at every level. His newest moves have been working on an area that many people have considered impossible to reform: higher education. Last month he required that Florida’s state colleges and universities report all their expenditures, programs, and staff related to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

He also appointed six new members to the board of trustees of New College, a liberal arts college that has, said the memo from the Governor’s office, taken up “a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning” and accordingly “has reached a moment of critical mass, wherein low student enrollment and other financial stresses have emerged from its skewed focus and impractical course offerings.” The six members include Claremont College political scientist Charles Kesler, Hillsdale School of Government dean Matthew Spalding, New College alumna Debra Jenks, Inspiration Academy founder Eddie Speier, and the Manhattan Institute’s Rufo. As of Thursday, Ethics and Public Policy Center president Ryan Anderson was also appointed, giving conservatives on the board a solid majority. Their agenda is to turn this public school into a proper classical liberal arts school in the mold of the private Hillsdale.  

The courage from Rufo and Speir came this week when they scheduled a campus-wide town hall meeting on Wednesday to meet with faculty and students and discuss this agenda. The Sarasota Democratic Party recruited protesters for the event. And sure enough, an email threatening Speir came in the night before, giving New College provost Suzanne Sherman the excuse she needed to shut down the event. The standard move for universities looked like it would work again.

But Rufo and Speir showed up and told the provost that she was overruled. Arguing that the organizational chart showed that the board of trustees is above the provost, they announced that they were moving ahead with the event. When she said they needed to talk to New College’s president herself, who was at a meeting that day, they did. And they told the president that they were going ahead with the event in order to set a new standard of discourse at this university. Despite the fact that the provost sent an email after these exchanges trying to cancel the event, it did happen.

Rufo summarized what was important in a Twitter thread, providing a video of the exchanges with Sherman and of his speech, as well as commentary on the events: “I’m learning that much of the problem with our universities is weak leadership. Administrators do not have the courage to stand up to left-wing activists who mobilize grievance narratives and threaten violence. That stops now. We are establishing a new standard in Florida.”

Speir and Rufo did have that courage. They knew that the risks of violence at such an event were much less to be feared than the continued failure of higher education actually to do what it is meant to do. Their event went off, with even so-called mainstream news outlets like the Tampa Bay Times noting that the two answered questions clearly and dealt with hostile commentary. That paper’s account ended with an anecdote about a drama professor wearing a sombrero and a progress flag telling Speir and Rufo, “You are here, you are talking to us, and you are letting us talk, which is what I appreciate.”

Contrast this with the late Twitter Files revelations. Matt Taibbi’s latest installment of reporting on the internal workings of the social media company revealed that Twitter employees actually knew that Hamilton 68, a dashboard dedicated to monitoring Russian influence, was labeled as “Russian bots” accounts that were neither Russian nor bots. Furthermore, they knew that this list was being used to feed countless articles talking about Russian influence during the Trump years. Those fearmongering articles were used to attack Tulsi Gabbard as a foreign “asset” and smear those opposed to Joe Biden as “Russian-aligned.” Pretty much any cause that conservatives were for could be treated as a Russian cause. In a darkly humorous touch, Hamilton 68’s claims were used to assert that “fake news” was mainly spread by Trump supporters.

In reality, as Taibbi argues, this was one of the most extraordinary fake news scandals in history. “What makes this an important story is the sheer scale of the news footprint left by Hamilton 68’s digital McCarthyism. The quantity of headlines and TV segments dwarfs the impact of individual fabulists like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass.”

Even “Trust and Safety” chief Yoel Roth, who was no stranger to censorship of conservatives, was upset by this fundamentally dishonest approach and, says Taibbi, “wanted a confrontation.”

Yet Hamilton 68 was run by an influential nonprofit called the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which boasted a decisive leadership. Its advisory council included “neoconservative writer Bill Kristol, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, ex-Hillary for America chief John Podesta, and former heads or deputy heads of the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security.” And thus it was that nothing was really done.

Taibbi’s comments are darkly ironic: “‘We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly,’ said future White House and NSC spokesperson Emily Horne.” “‘I also have been very frustrated in not calling out Hamilton 68 more publicly, but understand we have to play a longer game here,’ wrote Carlos Monje, the future senior advisor to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.”

In other words, while Twitter’s employees were not blinded to either truth or the right action by their own leftist ideology in this case, they lacked the fundamental courage necessary to take on a massive scam. As Taibbi’s biographical notes on those quotations show, one significant cause of that lack of courage may well have been a simple ambition. Why take on Democratic biggies and the deep state when you don’t have to? And yet many of them simply feared lousy press. As Aristotle says, the brave person “stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right end, in the right way, at the right time. . . .” Many at Twitter might have been aware of what was wrong but did not have enough fear of letting it go on.

Having proper courage is dependent on being formed in such a way as to not only know what’s wrong but fear it. Old-fashioned liberals such as Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, or Bari Weiss may be wrong on many things, but they have been formed to fear and stand firm against many of the right things. Massive public dishonesty used to demonize fellow citizens must be resisted, whether it causes you to lose your place in the journalistic, tech, or government world—or to get bad press.

In the case of both New College and Twitter, the case is the same. The challenge was to understand the threat to America from a failure to seek, acknowledge, and tell the truth—and fear it much more than having one’s career stall or having journalists attack you with words. Rufo and Speir acted so that an institution that feared free and open discourse aimed at the truth might begin to seek it. Roth and the Twitter gang failed to act to stop a media movement based on lies from defaming individuals and increasing division. Thankfully, Elon Musk and his band of Twitter Files investigators are atoning for that wrong through their own actions.

Truth is paramount for any society, but especially in this age of information. We need it more than ever. And we need those courageous enough to seek it out, whatever the cost.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative.  

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Roy Anthony
Roy Anthony
1 year ago

I know this is coming out of nowhere, but I am furious in our system of seeking Donations to “support” various candidates, ideas, etc. Many are done though a “clearing house” type of entity which has no physical or PO Box address. I have recently heard that dollars donated are not concomitant with what the candidate actually receives for their use. When money is donated through a clearing house, who knows where the rest of the donation $$ go, e.g. admin costs, advertising, etc. I want to know how my donation $$ are being spent and how much my candidate actually gets put into their campaign. I’m donating only to those few candidates who have the business knowledge to know that more people will donate if they can see some address. I feel comfortable stating that there are many others in the donating market who don’t donate for the same reason stated herein. I know there are personnel safety reasons involved, but this has to be resolved in some fashion ASAP.

johnh
johnh
1 year ago

It seems like every state has a Secretary of Education & who is elected by voters. The Governor of all states should take a strong interest in how well the schools & colleges are providing education. Any Gov. that is not interacting with his staff & being briefed on Education is not performing their job.

Joearcher
Joearcher
1 year ago

It has become apparent that AMAC has been infiltrated by Leftists who want to antagonize us by posting hate messages and calling us nazis, etcetera. AMAC needs a moderator for comments. They know who posts these hate messages because they have their email addresses. They need to be rooted out. I am not against differences in opinions, but when someone calls everyone who posts a pro-Trump comment a nazi, that person has to go. Also, it would be helpful to have a “block” button like Facebook has, so we, individually, can block seeing these insulting comments.

Deb Rockwell
Deb Rockwell
1 year ago

Love my Top Gov. He rocks! If only we could duplicate him many times over.

GLDove
GLDove
1 year ago

To RDPence, There is an excess of evidence to convince any honest jury that the election was stolen. You are the one believing the big lie and big fraud.

RDPence
RDPence
1 year ago

Three cheers for The Truth. We do need more of it, which is why I wish more conservative would denounce the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and it was stolen from him. Nobody believes that anymore, not even Trump himself~ only the naive folks in MAGAworld, led down the garden path by the Liar In Chief. Time to Stand For Truth and demand it of others!

koenigsking
koenigsking
1 year ago

You can only tell the truth if there are people aware enough to recognize it as such. And the ignorance we’ve fallen prey to has been why the lies have taken hold. So the schools are the obvious place to start

Jones
Jones
1 year ago

Wokeism can’t exist in a world with free speech. It must shout down and punish any criticism less its sheeple start thinking about none of it makes sense.

Matt
Matt
1 year ago

You are vile.

Michael J
Michael J
1 year ago

When Newsom hates a governor like Ron DeSantis, you know he’s the real deal.

Something, Something
Something, Something
1 year ago

It doesn’t start and end with them either. We all need to stand up for our beliefs or there will be no one left to defend us.

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 year ago

Excellent article.
“TRUTH WILL ULTIMATELY PREVAIL WHERE PAINS IS [sic] TAKEN TO BRING IT TO LIGHT.”
– GEORGE WASHINGTON

Larkenson
Larkenson
1 year ago

Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, but White countries for EVERYBODY? That’s Genocide! Anti-racist is a code word for Anti-White.

K. Wolter
K. Wolter
1 year ago

Great article.

Now do George Santos.

All of them
All of them
1 year ago

And rufos just mad even his own students hate his guts lol

All of them did
All of them did
1 year ago

“The Sarasota Democratic Party recruited protesters for the event”

look First of all you can easily find the people shown there and two your Nazi governor recruited rufo becuase his fee fees were hurting so even if that was true it was putting everyone on equal ground

and they hated him lol

Lindsay A. D. Worrell
Lindsay A. D. Worrell
1 year ago

Truth and Justice are of God Almighty! I and many in your readership appreciate your articles promoting those who espouse virtue and stand up with courage for Right and against the Wrong in an age when the meanings of Right and Wrong have been perverted. Thanks to AMAC for exposing the Lies and purveyors of the same and removing the scales from our eyes! As it says in Revelation “him who has an ear let them hear”. Kudos to AMAC for such reporting! We need more Hillsdale-like educational institutions, leaders with balls, like Gov. Desantis, independent thinkers, like Elon Musk-Christian or otherwise to achieve God’s plans and purposes.

Tara
Tara
1 year ago

This is so encouraging. Raves for Rufo and Speir. May God bless us with more courageous people to rebuild and repair our educational institutions throughout our country.

John Diaz
John Diaz
1 year ago

This is an excellent piece by David P. Deavel. I truly appreciate and hope that Governor DeSantis keeps moving ahead and that other states will have governors who are looking to better the education of the universities and high schools within their states. Many students will be looking for the benefits of an education not inocrination.

Don
Don
1 year ago

Very informative article. Thanks.

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