The Arch Conservative - Summer 2018

Raising the Standard

Plato's Contemporary Cave

Relating Plato's Famous Allegory to College Students Today

By Ian LaCroix

SUMMER 2018

THE EDITORS

COLUMNS

FEATURES

3 The West and the Rest

8 The Crisis of Higher Learning

14 Plato's Contemporary Cave

By The Editors

By Ross Dubberly

By Ian LaCroix

CAMPUS

9 Zuckerberg's Dystopia

16 Second Amendment Hysteria

4 The Campus Informant

By The Editors

5 SGA Watch

By Kiara Thompson

By Carson Brown

By Gehrig Broxton

10 The Devil Incarnate

18 Question Everyone (and Everything)

By Christopher Lipscomb

By Nick Geeslin

11 Another Misguided March

20 Societal Purgatory

By Jeffrey Tomblin

By J. Thomas Perdue

6 The Heroes of Xiaogang

12 Russia's World Cup

By Connor Foarde

By Matt Collins

HUMOR

07 Race ≠Culture

13 FDR's Raw Deal

By Reed Ferguson

By Sarah Montgomery

COLUMNS

22 On Becoming Hip

By Nick Geeslin

23 A Guide to Finals

By Boris A. Abreu

The Arch Conservative Editorial Board and Staff: 2017-2018 Editor in Chief Ross Dubberly

Book Editor Nick Geeslin

Executive Editor Reed Ferguson

Manager Sarah Montgomery

Associate Editor J.Thomas Perdue

Business Manager Sydney Robertson

Publishing Editor Boris A. Abreu

Creative Director Mallory Traylor

Campus News Editor Connor Foarde

Contributors Carson Brown Chris Lipscomb Gehrig Broxton Jeffrey Tomblin Kiara Thompson Matt Collins

Online Editor Ian LaCroix

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THE EDITORS i

From the Editors’ Desk The West and the Rest

COVER PHOTO COURTESY OF JASTROW/ MARIE-LAN NGUYEN

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t is very fashionable today to equate all cultures; and it is taboo to assert otherwise. The notion that no one culture is superior to another—and that to say otherwise is racist, xenophobic, or bigoted—is a notion that the Left has implanted in the conscious of ordinary Americans. It is, however, one of those “planted axioms,” as longtime National Review publisher Bill Rusher called them, that the Left prefers to leave undisturbed. This is not coincidental; for by nearly any criteria one wishes to use, the call is not even close: The West has produced a culture vastly superior to any other in the entire world.

For thousands of years the West has been inhabited by the most influential people to ever live. Socrates. Shakespeare. Newton. Da Vinci. Locke. Mozart. Burke. Jefferson. Lincoln. Chesterton. Einstein.

And the list goes on seemingly ad infinitum.

Now, one of the most common criticisms leveled against such an argument (besides the slur of racism, xenophobia, or bigoted) goes something like this: “Well, that’s all well and good, but you are also forgetting that the West hasn’t always given us enlightenment. After all, the West also gave us Adolf Hitler.” We sigh and shake our head at this argument. Evil, poverty, misery, and the like are, unfortunately, normal; greatness, however, is a rarity. Therefore, the only relevant question is not Why was there evil in the West?, but Why has the West’s history been replete with goodness, wealth, and happiness?

The answer to this question is simple yet unfashionable in this age of relativism: It is the West’s values which have allowed it to reach the peak of greatness. Indeed we find much merit with Dennis Prager’s argument in his book Still the Best Hope that the American value system—and by extension, the Western value system—is enumerated on every American coin: “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” and “E. Pluribus Unum.” No nation or civilization in the history of humanity, save America, has ever combined and claimed those three ideas together as its foundational values, as Prager perceptively notes.

Liberty. America is the product of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of Western thought that said the individual had inalienable rights that were a gift from God, not government. It is a nation that declared independence from and fought a war against the thenbiggest empire the globe had ever seen mainly because of the issue of liberty. It is a nation that later implemented a Bill of Rights in its Constitution, which, essentially, was an enumeration of freedoms upon which government should not infringe.

In God We Trust. Our founders were firm believers in a Transcendent Creator who rewarded and punished people’s deeds done on

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Earth. Take the “first American,” Benjamin Franklin, for example.

“I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe . . . That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this,” Franklin once wrote in a letter to Yale College President Ezra Stiles.

More important, however, is the founders’ beliefs regarding the proper relationship between a Higher Power, the people, and the State. Here the record is crystal clear: The founders and subsequent generations understood that the belief in a God that judges was absolutely essential if America was to survive. They understood that a) human nature is not basically good; b) that human nature must be bridled; and c) that, to achieve order and abandon atavism, either a Transcendent God would bridle man’s nature or the State would.

This nation’s founders understood that only an America that said “In God We Trust” could be the proper inheritors of America’s unique privileges. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” John Adams wrote. “Before any man can be considered a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe,” Madison believed. Americans were to be subjects of the Governor of the Universe, not a large omnipresent State.

E. Pluribus Unum. This Latin phrase meaning “from many one” originally was a phrase used to describe the thirteen colonies — from many different colonies, we form one nation, America. But the phrase has come to represent something else in this age of infatuation with “multiculturalism.” As our Executive Editor Reed Ferguson writes elsewhere in these pages: “The Multicultural Left . . . equates the term ‘multicultural’ with the term ‘multiethnic.’ Effectively, [those on the Left] have trained the masses to hear racism when multiculturalism is criticized.” Indeed. But in fact, Multiculturalism is the enemy of E. Pluribus Unum. Multiculturalism is premised on the toxic notion that all cultures are equal, and that America should be a land where everyone comes and keeps the values of his or her native lands. This is begging for trouble; for multiculturalism leads to Balkanization, bitterness, resentment, and entitlement.

In a word, we must abandon the asinine idea that the civilization that gave us Aristotle is somehow equivalent to those that gave us honor killings. The West has had an exceptional past and has made mind-boggling progress in every realm of life imaginable. It’s time we acted like it. It’s time we took pride in our civilization’s rich history. b — The Editors

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CAMPUS

TPUSA Founder Charlie Kirk at UGA

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n April 3, the University of Georgia Turning Point USA chapter hosted Charlie Kirk on campus. Kirk is the founder and executive director of the right-wing campus organization, which he founded in 2012 at age 18. In his speech, entitled “Hard Truths: Exposing Leftist Lies and Progressive Propaganda,” Kirk engaged in lively debate with students, including one self-proclaimed Marxist.

He spoke of America, capitalism, and the Constitution. Wearing a t-shirt that said, “The Second Amendment protects the other 26,” he took a particular interest in the Second Amendment and the gun debate that is currently at the forefront of American politics. Turning Point at UGA weekly meetings are on Tuesdays at 7 p.m.

— Reed Ferguson

UGA Spring Game

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n April 21, UGA football will host their annual Red and Black spring game. Expect to see healthy competition from returning QB Jake Fromm as he squares off against the highly touted Justin Fields and get a first-hand glance at how Coach Smart has added so much to the program with a bevy of talented recruits. The game is open to the general public and will begin at 4 p.m. Once again, Coach Smart has asked for a packed house. Fans will also have a chance to see the impressive new videoboard, scheduled to be operational by the 21st of this month. Part of a $63 million West End Zone renovation project, the board is sure to please even the most technologically averse of the Bulldog faithful and create a new experience on gamedays.

— Boris A. Abreu

Israel Fest

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awgs for Israel hosted their annual Israel Fest event on Wednesday, April 11 at Tate Plaza. Hundreds of students and faculty showed up to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding and to learn about Israeli culture, food, and geography from members of Dawgs for Israel. Among the booths at the event were “Ask an Israeli,” “The Dead Sea,” and “Israeli Innovation.” Students were given a stamp on a punch card for every booth they visited, and those who visited six or more earned a free t-shirt. Students also had the opportunity to try various Israeli foods, such as falafel and hummus, as well as take pictures with a camel. Toward the end of the event, a handful of members of Students for Justice in Palestine showed up to protest, waving Palestinian flags and holding up a banner that read: “Israel Expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948.” SJP’s annual Israeli Apartheid Week coincides with Israel Fest. Despite the protest, however, the reactions of the hundreds of attendees were overwhelmingly positive.

— Connor Foarde

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CAMPUS

S G A WAT C H

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n light of the recent Student Government Association elections, The Red & Black, along with other on-campus new sources, showed their true colors about their feelings towards conservative students seeking student government positions. Three tickets ran for SGA executive positions this year. OneUGA, Deliver, and Believe.

Although the platforms of these three tickets were more alike than not, there was one key difference—the Deliver candidates were publicly conservative.

The backlash began the second day of campaigning (March 20). Olivia Adams, a reporter for The Red & Black, contacted the Deliver candidates for an interview. The interview started off with basic questions about Deliver’s platform but quickly turned into questions regarding the candidates’ involvement with the conservative organization Turning Point USA. While a ticket’s background is important to a campaign article, The Red & Black’s consistent focus on TPUSA indicated that it was more concerned with the candidates’ political background than with their views on campus issues.

The conversation shifted, and Adams began asking if Deliever had received any funding from the Campus Victory Project, an organization that has allegedly provided campaign funding for SGA candidates around the nation.

Deliever denied that he had received funding from CVP and explained that they were personally funding their own campaign. Adams assured the candidates that this would be the last time that the question of Deliver’s funding would be brought up by The Red & Black.

The Red & Black, however, never ceased in pushing their damaging narrative about the Deliver ticket. On the evening of March 26, a reporter from the paper texted

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Lawrence asking for copies of his bank statements. At such a late hour, it would have been impossible for Lawrence to obtain official records from a bank, and before he could contact his bank the following morning, an article about TPUSA purportedly influencing SGA elections had been published. The hit job included quotes from the interview Adams conducted with the Deliver candidates on March 20. The dubious timing of this articles publishing (during voting) brings to question The Red & Black’s political motivations in regards to this years SGA race.

Upon the announcement of the election results on March 28, one would think that public interest regarding Deliver’s campaign funding would fade, especially since the ticket provided proof of Lawrence’s personal funding.

Instead, The Red & Black decided to keep persisting with their narrative by questioning Lawrence at the Charlie Kirk event hosted by TPUSA on April 3. Another reporter for The Red & Black, inquired to why Lawrence was attending the event and even went as far to ask Charlie Kirk about his involvement with Lawrence, to which Mr. Kirk noted that there was no professional relationship established between them. The reporter then called Lawrence at 11:00 p.m. that night to further question his involvement with TPUSA. Lawrence gave the reporter the same answer that he had given to similar questions from every other The Red & Black reporter. Then on April 5, The Red & Black published an article covering the event, which included even more coverage on the Deliver candidates and their funding—over a week after the election was over.

At this point, The Red & Black was leading a witch hunt rather than doing their so called “due diligence” as reporters. It is a travesty the way that openly conservative students are treated by campus news sources, and such actions speak volumes about their real agendas. There is an ongoing investigation into the administrative barriers put into place by the university and the elections committee, as well as interpretive inconsistency with respect to the elections code.

— Kiara Thompson is a freshman and was the Deliever ticket's candidate for SGA Treasurer.

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COLUMNS

The Heroes of Xiaogang How Eighteen Farmers Illegally Influenced Chinese Policy In December 1978, eighteen Chinese peasant farmers signed an illicit secret agreement to divide up collective land into family plots.

Though they faced execution if their plan was discovered by authorities, their decision ended up fundamentally changing the Chinese agrarian economy for the better.

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rivate ownership of property is an undeniable cornerstone of civilized society. This tenet, along with other foundational principles, is laid out in the latter part of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, a text that fueled the ideological engine of the American Revolution. Nearly two and a half centuries later, the basic human right of property ownership is universally accessible in the United States—and indeed, across much of the globe. However, even in recent times, governments have denied their people of this right.

It was in the latter half of the 20th century, while the horrors of runaway Marxist ventures were unfolding around the globe, that a group of Chinese farmers took a stand against their government for this very reason.

During the Maoist reform period known as the “Great Leap Forward,” these men exhibited unparalleled bravery during a time of utter despair. Their story is one that embodies the miracle that is capitalism, as well as the value of private property rights.

The “Great Leap Forward” in China began with the abolition of private property rights in 1958. Agricultural collectivism became the law of the land, and any peasant who did not willfully submit to the new policies met the guns of the state. Aside from modest improvements during the first phase of collectivization, Chinese farmers saw an overall reduction in crop yields. Frantic local officials often purposely exaggerated crop yield numbers in order to satisfy the state and Connor Foarde is a junior studying journalism. He is Campus News Editor of The Arch Conservative.

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appear competitive. The decline in production was partly due to the fact that resources and labor were being directed towards steel production, often leaving land plots unattended, where crops eventually withered and went to waste. All the while, rampant famines steadily claimed the lives of countless peasant farmers and their families. The Great Leap was perhaps the deadliest campaign ever undertaken by a government in human history.

This attempt to reform China’s agrarian, arguably free-market economy into a socialist one boasts a low-end death count estimate of 18 million and a high-end estimate of nearly 60 million, far outranking any other of the authoritarian atrocities of the 20th century.

The Great Leap Forward ended in 1962, and in the years that followed, Chinese farmland continued to suffer immensely. 1978 was a particularly fruitless harvest for the residents of Fengyang County, where almost 90,000 people died of starvation between 1958-1960. The perpetual hunger, fear and general despair in the county drove a small band of peasant farmers in the village of Xiaogang to take action.

It was one December evening that 18 men crammed into a mud hut and pressed their inked thumbs onto a document that what would become known as the “Xiaogang Agreement.” The agreement divided communal land into family plots and stated that each family would fulfill their obligated quotas for the state, and keep any surplus for themselves. Such a proposition seems simple enough; however, it’s treacherous nature could not be understated. Were state authorities even to suspect the private withholding and consumption of excess crops, the suspects in question would face inevitable doom.

And indeed, almost immediately, state officials began to suspect something was amiss. The new agreement immediately incentivized the farmers to work more efficiently than they had before. Prior to the agreement, farmers would only report to the fields when the work whistle blew, but now, with the prize of a greater takeaway on their minds, they were in the fields working before sunrise. State authorities took note

of the uptick in productivity and eventually word of the villagers’ agreement got out and made its way up the chain of command. As a punitive measure, Xiaogang was initially cut off from state resources such as fertilizer and pesticides. Yet efforts to suspend the villagers’ momentum proved to be unsuccessful, as villages across the country recognized the benefits of competition and became inspired to reject collectivism by adopting Xiaogang’s production model.

After Mao’s death in 1976, new leadership looked for ways to rejuvenate China’s ravaged agrarian economy. Curiously, state officials saw Xiaogang, which was basking in a grain harvest about six times the size of the previous year’s, as a golden opportunity rather than a rogue village in need of discipline. The Xiaogang Agreement became the precursor to the household responsibility system. Under this system, farmers became responsible for their own land, only needing to meet a much lower quota than in years past.The lower quotas encouraged farmers to produce more surplus to keep and ultimately sell on a newfound unregulated crop market. As communes began to unravel and grain yields increased across the country, the household responsibility system was nationally adopted in 1981, giving China its first taste of capitalism in a very long time.

When debating a Marxist concerning the benefits of capitalism or the morality of socialism, one need only point to the actions of the farmers who signed the Xiaogang Agreement. These real men endured the very real pain and suffering that arise when the state lays claim to property that belongs to its citizens, and attempts to determine what its people need. By taking back control of their own land through a bond forged in secrecy, these 18 men set China on a course that saw 500 million people escape destitution since 1978. These men understood that their right to their own property predated Mao or any other moral being—and against all odds, they held onto it in a true display of heroism. b

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COLUMNS

Race ≠ Culture The Distortion of E. Pluribus Unum by the Multicultural Left Professors across the country have spoon-fed students the dogma of "multiculturalism" since the students' first days of Humanities 101.

But what does multiculturalism really mean?

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n order to fulfill my degree’s “Multicultural Requirement,” I am currently enrolled in Composition and Multicultural Literature. Though our first two papers were apolitical, our third paper was be focused on a societal issue, including but not limited to “issues of race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, gun control, civil/human rights, environment/climate, war/peace” (per the course syllabus).

Not wanting to expose myself as an arch conservative, I opted to take a rational approach to analyzing multiculturalism and the political divide surrounding it. I came to the conclusion that much of the divide between the Right and those who lean Left can be attributed to a lack of a consistent definition of the word.

But let’s back up. There must first exist a cohesive definition of "culture" in order to define "multiculturalism." In his 2010 book, From Melting Pot to Witch's Cauldron: How Multiculturalism Failed America, Ernesto Caravantes notes: “Even anthropologists cannot decide on a singular definition of culture.” Summing up a definition, he continues, "Simply put, culture can be the sum total of the collective social expressiveness of a group of people within a given geographic area.” Religion, art, language, fashion, and even politics are markers of culture. Some of these markers, such as religion and politics, are ideas, while others, such as music and art, are rooted in longstanding, intergenerational tradition. And then some of them—like language, for example—are a mix of both. So, to sum up: Culture = Ideas + Tradition.

But here’s where it gets complicated.

Reed Ferguson is a junior studying economics. She is Executive Editor of The Arch Conservative.

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Because these ideas and traditions could only spread so far geographically before the age of globalization, a given culture is usually connected to a specific ethnic or national group—e.g., there is American culture (national), Jewish culture (ethnic and/or religious), Mexican culture (national), and Arab culture (ethnic). Ideas and traditions that sprang from a given ethnic group—say, Arabs and Islam, or Israelites and Judaism —tend to correlate with the members of that group.

Interestingly though, the lines drawn around culture and ethnic groups are not cleanly delineated. A group can share ethnicity but be divided by national culture. A group can share ethnicity but be divided by religion. Or, a group can share a religious or national culture but be divided by ethnicity.

Culture, although tied to ethnicity, is not inseparable from it. People of all ethnicities and from all nations are capable of hearing out new ideas, practicing new traditions, and amending their own.

The Multicultural Left, however, equates the term “multicultural” with the term “multiethnic.” Effectively, they have trained the masses to hear racism when multiculturalism is criticized. But that’s a false paradigm.

Culture ≠ Ethnicity. It is possible to achieve a diverse, multiethnic society that shares a singular culture. In his essay, Between Justice and Tradition: Oliver O'Donovan's Political Theory and the Challenge of Multiculturalism, Andrew Errington writes that the heart of the backlash against multiculturalism lies here: "Because these are felt to be central to people’s capacity to identify with their society, calling them into question represents a threat to social and political unity.” The Multicultural Left induces the public to believe that criticism of certain ideas or traditions (i.e., culture) is an attack on personal identity (i.e., ethnicity).

The American Melting Pot ideal, in contrast to multiculturalism, stems from our Founding Fathers’ vision of E. pluribus unum.

American culture is the blend (or, dare I say, appropriation) of cultures from all around the world. The good aspects of all cultures are incorporated into American culture and the

bad discarded to unite an ethnically-divided people by a singular national culture. Debate on an open forum and the critique of all ideas and traditions are to form a new, cohesive whole—out of many, one.

In America, “Western values” (which essentially just means a cultural blend of a Judeo-Christian moral tradition from the Middle East and a set of political ideas from Athens and Rome) largely won the battle of ideas. Still, though, ideas from people and places the world over have captivated American society. Look no further than the food you eat, the latest fashion trends you wear, and the songs you listen to on pop radio.

Per the multicultural view, immigrants should not be forced—or even encouraged —to assimilate into the culture of the nations they enter. Refusing to acknowledge the moral inequality of cultures, the Multicultural Left exalts all cultures (i.e., all ideas and all traditions) as moral equals. All cultural values, including contradicting ones, are to be regarded as morally equivalent.

In telling me about her church, a friend once told me, “It’s a very multicultural church.” I smiled and nodded because I knew what she meant. She understood the word “multicultural” just as the Left intended her to understand it. She meant that her fellow church members were all of different races, not they all practiced different cultures. In fact, the church thrived not because of its diverse racial groups nor because different ideas and traditions existed within the church. On the contrary—the reason a multiethnic church has the capability to thrive is precisely because it has a single culture that unites people across ethnic lines.

Culture and ethnicity should not be equated. In fact, to assert that they are synonymous is an idea so ludicrous that both the Left and the Alt-Right favor it. Every individual within a group is capable of rationally examining ideas and of stepping outside the bounds of group identity when the group fails to act rationally. Ideas require reason and thought, and every individual is capable of thinking.

In fact, to argue otherwise is the highest form of racism. b

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COLUMNS

The Crisis of Higher Learning Indoctrination and Education Traditional American values sadly have no place at today’s universities.

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he purpose of education, in the words of perhaps the 20th century’s most preeminent pedagogue, Mortimer J. Adler, “is to liberate the mind.” Similarly, according to the grandfather of the modern Conservative Movement, Russell Kirk, the true purpose of any discipline in the liberal arts—and higher education more broadly —is, or rather, should be, “the acquisition of some measure of wisdom and intellectual virtue . . .” By these elevated and exacting standards, so-called “higher education” has been an abysmal failure in the U.S. for nearly a century.

Today, not only is the undergraduate mind not being liberated at college, it is being fettered by, and freighted down a priori with, anti-intellectual ideology and dogma. But while the university builds bigger buildings and libraries, expands its non-teaching faculty, and further inflates its professorial cadres, ultimately it cannot hide the educational rot that is eating away at its core. Students graduate with expensive degrees that are worth essentially nothing in the labor market (e.g., women’s studies, gender studies, sociology, leisure studies, and the like); students have eleven Leftist professors for every one conservative professor; students are infantilized by their professors and administrators who provide the havens for puerility that are “safe spaces,” which are places on campus where one can go to hide and quiver in fear if one hears someone voice a non-Leftist idea; students are given “trigger warnings” during lectures; students are allowed to take over conservative lecture events because they feel “offended”; and unfortunately—it brings me no joy to report—the enumeration of campus problems above hardly does Ross Dubberly is a senior studying economics. He is Editor in Chief of The Arch Conservative.

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justice to the moral and intellectual sickness pervading college campuses.

Admittedly, students do learn something at college. It would be nearly impossible not to learn something given the vast amounts of information available to students today. We live in an age with more information than any prior age. Indeed, today there is more available “knowledge”—in the most limited sense of the word—like never before. But on the other hand, wisdom, I submit, is a scarcity today as it has not been since troglodytic times. What’s more, the university not only lacks wisdom—it wars against it.

This warring quickly reminds us, as William F. Buckley Jr. once noted, “where there is a repository of learning, there is not necessarily a repository of wisdom.”

Students unquestioningly and innocently read the books that their professors assign —Leftist, materialist, positivistic, tracts like Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, or Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. And before they know it, they have been exploited by and inculcated with the theology of Leftism. Not to mention the social poison, the corrosive acid, propagated at the university that eats away at the very fabric undergirding the civil society.

At the university, a separate dormitory and graduation ceremony for blacks may be praised for its progressivity. At the university, the culture that gave us Homer, Aristotle, and Plato may be incessantly denigrated as morally equivalent to those that gave us Sati, Dhimmi, and honor killings. At the university, the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in Zionist land annexations and not at all in religion is accepted as sophisticated thought. At the university, socialism is maintained as a viable moral and intellectual alternative to capitalism, notwithstanding more than a century of history as proof to the contrary. At the university, one may take a degree in English without having read the prose of the greatest technician of the English language ever to have lived, William Shakespeare. At the university, one risks being rhetorically stoned for supposing that men and women are inherently different.

In short, it is at the university where moral and intellectual sickness not only abounds, but is fostered.

The purpose of the university today is to indoctrinate the young with Leftist, ideological buncombe to which the students’ professors subscribe and which the typical, puerile and nescient undergraduate swallows hook, line, and sinker. As Dennis Prager has pointed out in his book, Still the Best Hope, just as there are seminaries for Christianity in America, there are also seminaries for Leftism—only we don’t call them seminaries; we call them “universities.” The stark difference however, as Prager shrewdly notes, is that the Christian seminary announces that its purpose is to produce a committed Christian; the university, however, surreptitiously does not announce that its purpose is to produce a committed Leftist.

I recognize that I am begging the question, Where are we to go from here? What is the solution to this catastrophe of higher education? That I cannot answer; and, in any event, a search for solutions to this problem is not my purpose here. Because, before we can arrive at anything like a resolution to this problem, I maintain that it must first be recognized that higher education is in fact a problem; and it remains unclear to me whether conservatives, let alone the nation at large, recognize it as such. At the very least, the magnitude of this problem is vastly underestimated, as evidenced by our toleration of the extravagant excesses enumerated in earlier paragraphs.

Therefore, my opinion—for what it is worth—is this: We must first deal with the bifurcated option that the potential undergraduate of today faces, one that was once brilliantly encapsulated by William F. Buckley Jr.’s father, William Buckley Sr. As the younger Buckley later recalled in a commencement address to St. John’s College: “[I]n a moment of exasperation with the modern curriculum [William Buckley Sr.] told his ten children that, in America, either one could go to college, or one could receive an education.”

That contrast sadly lives on—and it has never been more pronounced. b

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COLUMNS

Zuckerberg’s Dystopia How Facebook Could Destroy Democracy The Facebook data collection scandal provides a shocking example of how Silicon Valley has the potential power to significantly shape the future of democracy.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTHONY QUINTANO

acebook and its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, have come under heavy public fire recently due to the data collection of 87 million users by US-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Starting in 2014, one of the firm’s employees, Aleksandr Kogan, gained information from around 300,000 Facebook users, using an app called “This Is Your Digital Life,” according to The Washington Post. Because it was being used for “research purposes,” Facebook deemed everything Kogan initially gathered acceptable. In 2015, however, Facebook realized that the data was being used for commercial purposes—a violation of its privacy policies—and removed Kogan’s app. Facebook also told Cambridge Analytica to destroy all the data that had been gathered. But according to the original report from The New York Times, Cambridge Analytica “still possesses most or all of the trove.” If that is still the case—i.e., if Cambridge Analytica still possesses the data of 87 million Facebook users—they have the power to significantly impact public opinion, voting patterns, and consumer habits. Harnessing the data of that many users can lead to a devastating loss of privacy, transparency, and impartiality in our democracy.

The firm denies using Facebook data to influence the 2016 election; however, it did work to help then-Republican candidates Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz.

The firm was founded by known Republican donor Robert Mercer, and former White Carson Brown is a freshman studying history. He is a regular contributor to The Arch Conservative.

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House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is a former board member. But while this particular firm supports Republican candidates, there is a plethora of other firms with a variety of agendas. Perhaps there are the few that work only for the paycheck, regardless of agenda, but the data collections opens a Pandora’s Box for the ideological firms and other technological organizations to shape the public view to their own liking. This is indeed a worldwide issue that must be addressed.

Without the constant management of personal data on the internet, the biggest donors can, essentially, afford to buy votes.

The new age of lobbying could be upon us —not lobbying for legislative change, but for open democratic elections.

The question that remains in this scandal is, What happens to Facebook going forward? Stock prices immediately dropped following the news of the data breach, and many users have rallied around the movement #DeleteFacebook. On April 10, Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees about the privacy policies of the social media giant.

While the CEO answered questions, Facebook’s stock rose 4.5 percent, according to Fox Business, making it the largest gain for

the company in two years. During the hearing, Zuckerberg expressed his apologies for allowing third parties to gather data from Facebook users without its permission and for not properly responding to the security threat, as well as the Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. The company’s focus going forward will be to correct these cybersecurity mistakes and regain the public trust in the social media platform. While it is outwardly pleasant to see the apology and to hear about growing security measures, it does not necessarily translate into helpful reform. More fulfilling reform can be achieved through legal precedents to prevent future privacy violations, as well as to create a more diligent public and informed public.

The Internet Age is sharply fighting against conservative values and the people who support them. Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged this during his hearing: “I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place.” Companies like Apple, Google, Chevron, Wells Fargo, Visa, and Facebook—all of which are based in or around Silicon Valley—control an incredible amount of internet information. Not to mention other social media platforms, like Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Facebook-owned Instagram, which could all block ads or content that favor conservative points of view.

The dangers of companies attempting to sway the political opinions of its users—or allow third parties to do so—is a critical danger to democracy. All people are entitled to their own opinions, and technology companies and social media platforms should not promote one at the expense of another. The stability of this country rests on an informed and knowledgeable public, not one that is coerced into a single political viewpoint.

Privacy should be protected, and information should not be hindered or altered to favor the viewpoints of those piloting the technology. b

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COLUMNS

The Devil Incarnate John Bolton Joins the Trump Team “I've heard that you're actually the devil incarnate, and I wanted to meet you.”

— Secretary of Defense James Mattis

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he Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor worked well together. James Mattis had worked his way up through the ranks of the Marine Corps before eventually retiring as a four-star general. Eventually becoming renowned as one of the most intellectual officers in U.S. military history, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster had first made a name for himself during Desert Storm, leading the largest tank battle since World War II, before being taken under the wing of David Petraeus.

Mattis and McMaster both see the world in the stark terms that come from their military background. What’s more, both men’s worldviews are significantly colored by a profound intellectualism (Mattis once maintained a personal library of 7,000 books, and McMaster holds a doctorate in American history).

Although both men worked well together, McMaster eventually lost the support of the President, while Mattis has maintained his support. After Rex Tillerson was fired from the State Department, it became clear that Trump wanted to shake up his national security team. Shortly thereafter, it became widely speculated that McMaster would be next to go. And, as it happens, nine days after Tillerson’s firing, the White House announced his resignation on March 22. It wouldn’t be long, however, before President Trump and his national security team would be back in the news with a big announcement: John Bolton would assume the role of National Security Advisor beginning April 9.

Bolton’s appointment sets the stage for an interesting, and potentially antagonistic, relationship between the Secretary of Defense and the new National Security Advisor.

Christopher Lipscomb is a sophomore studying international affairs. He is a regular contributor to The Arch Conservative.

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Though Bolton did serve in the military briefly, his early career was mainly outside of government. But upon entering the public sector, he worked for the State Department, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Reagan and H.W. Bush Administrations.

Although Bolton is entering his new position with an already impressive record, it is remarkable that his most distinguished and important work has all come since 2000: Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Gatestone Institute, and a frequent Fox News contributor.

When President Trump tapped Bolton as McMaster’s replacement, he was most well known for his hawkish views and for his time at the U.N. Bolton’s tenure at the U.N. was relatively short (August 2005 - December 2006). During that short period of time, however, he was considered by many the most controversial man at the U.N. It was his vote against the formation of the Human Rights Council, for example, that earned him this reputation. But Bolton voted with his conscience, as he felt such a council did not go far enough. As he put it at the time: “We want a butterfly. We don’t intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success.”

Following his departure from the Bush Administration, Bolton returned to the American Enterprise Institute. It was also during this period that Bolton became a frequent contributor to Fox News, as well as the chairman of one of the best think tanks devoted to global affairs in the world. As mentioned before, Bolton was never one to sit quietly on the sideline, and never hesitated to give his thoughts on any subject relating to foreign policy. This made him one of the most formidable, outspoken critics of the Obama administration from 2008 to 2012. So disgusted, in fact, was Bolton with the direction of U.S. foreign policy during the Obama era that he even went so far as to contemplate running for the Republican nomination in 2012, and again in 2016.

Trump’s announcement on March 22, 2018, that Bolton would replace McMaster

was met by uncontrollable hysteria from the Left. Leftists effectively lost their minds over the thought of John Bolton adding to their misery at the National Security Council. Citing his open desire for regime change in Iran and North Korea, as well as his other, shall we say, less-than favorable views of the European Union and the United Nations, Leftists view Bolton as an extraordinary danger at best, and a direct cause of World War III in the near future at worst.

What the Left fails to even consider, however, is that Bolton’s hawkish views and Mattis’ battle-hardened pragmatism will likely complement each other well. Even if Mattis and Bolton clash over issues at times, the one will still serve as a counterbalance to the other; and in that respect, Bolton’s arrival has great potential to bring much-needed stability and consistency to the Trump Administration’s foreign policy.

In typical “Mad Dog” Mattis fashion, the Secretary of Defense has attempted to put to rest once and for all any lingering concerns about his future working relationship with Bolton, stating that “Last time I checked, he’s an American and I can work with an American. Okay? I’m not the least bit concerned with that sort of thing.” Although nothing is certain, it is likely that Mattis and Bolton will enjoy a positive relationship, one that is most beneficial to the administration in which they serve. Realizing the importance and necessity of a good relationship, Mattis has wasted little time trying to sow such a camaraderie. Indeed, at Mattis’s and Bolton’s very first meeting together at the Pentagon, Mattis wasn’t at all reticent about why the meeting was taking place. He had been told that Bolton was the devil incarnate—but he wanted to meet him in person in order to determine the veracity of such claims. b

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Another Misguided March How “March for Our Lives” Missed the Mark Unfortunately, rash emotional fervor is allowed to supplant the truth for both the March for Our Lives organizers and the media.

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arches calling for increased gun control legislation were held across the nation in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month. CBS News estimated that around 200,000 people participated in the Washington D.C. March For Our Lives and around 30,000 individuals were estimated to have joined the march in Atlanta, according to the AJC News. While these are considerably large attendance estimations for the high school students who organized march, neither crowd size nor the student’s experience with immense tragedy indicate the efficacy of their political policy. Questioning the claims made by these shooting victims comes with a bevy of vicious accusations of immorality, malevolence, and deceit. Let us address some of the inaccuracies and falsehoods made during the March For Our Lives and in the media’s coverage of the marches.

We’ll begin with the claim that if one opposes the March For Our Lives, he or she is for the slaughtering of children. According the the march’s dogma, if one supports the Second Amendment and the individual’s God given right to self-preservation, they have blood on their hands. This baseless moral attack neither aids in constructing a civil discourse, nor persuades the opposition otherwise. If one wishes to show that his opposition is evil, he or she must provide concrete proof of it. As controversial as it may be to believe that people are endowed by their Creator with the right to self-defense, it still doesn’t make those who hold a progun position responsible for the heinous, murderous, acts of others. Conservatives stand with the March For Our Lives activists Jeffrey Tomblin is a junior studying entertainment and media studies. He is a firsttime contributor to The Arch Conservative.

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when they call for less gun violence. Where we disagree is the claim that gun ownership is the problem and the solution is nothing more than a slogan: “common sense gun control.”

Unsurprisingly, the National Rifle Association was one of the main targets of the March For Our Lives. Signs that condemned the NRA as a child-slaughtering organization abounded. Any politician who has ever received a penny in support from the NRA, like Marco Rubio, was slandered as the face of evil. David Hogg, one of the most vocal leftleaning Parkland students, has insisted that politicians have blood on their hands because of the shooting at his school. Amazingly, participants of the march neglected to even mention the murderer who committed the heinous crime, channeling their anger and hate, rather, toward a completely innocent organization.

The claims made about the NRA by these activists are simply not based in reality. On their website, the NRA promotes gun safety rules and offers multiple resources for individuals to find firearm safety courses. One can find a local firearm training course directly on the gun safety page of the NRA’s website. Nowhere on the NRA website can actual firearms be purchased. Perhaps most importantly, the NRA has never suggested that their members use physical violence against their political opposition nor have any of their members committed a mass murder.

The marching activists also did not acknowledge the fact that the FBI failed to follow up on multiple tips sent to them in January about the shooter; that the Broward County Sheriff ’s Office was called to the shooter’s home 45 separate times since 2008; that the school’s administration knew the shooter was a threat; that the armed campus security officer decided to stay outside rather than confront the shooter..

In an interview with Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips, march participants were asked how they defined the “assault rifles” they claimed should be illegal. Many of the participants were unsure of what an “assault rifle” even is. They often defined “assault rifles” as firearms with “military-style

features.” In reality, the term “assault rifle” is legally ambiguous. After that, they defined “military-style features” as firearms with detachable magazines (almost all firearms in the United States) and those with specific attachments like grips, scopes, stocks, or suppressors. Some even suggested that banning fully-automatic firearms and firearms with “high capacity magazines” would help end gun violence. This claim in particular falls flat on its face in reality. Fully-automatic firearms have essentially been prohibited by extensive regulation since the 1930s and “high capacity magazines” are relatively simple to machine in one’s own home using the proper tools.

This is to say that if someone really wanted to do great harm with a “high capacity magazine,” banning the sale of said magazines would not stop the criminal. Nor would a ban on specific attachments stop a malevolent individual from committing a mass shooting. Even if we did ban all rifles in the United States, statistically speaking, it would do little; for the vast majority of mass shootings are committed using handguns. In 2016, the FBI reported that handguns were used in about 65 percent of firearm related homicides while rifles were used in about three percent of firearm related homicides. If the goal were to decrease firearm-related homicides in the U.S., neglecting all other violent crime and lives saved due to firearm ownership, legislation that confiscates handguns would be a more authentic approach.

But it is not the firearm homicide rate that the March For Our Lives organizers or the media actually take into consideration.

Rash emotional fervor supplants the truth..

An emotional reaction is certainly expected of teenagers who have suffered such a traumatic incident. The media's reluctance to fact-check the claims made by these teens, however, ultimately leads to misinformation and a more divisive politics. b

The Arch Conservative / 11

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Russia’s World Cup The Burden of Home Field Advantge On top of the big money being spent in preparation for this year's World Cup, there is also intense political discord between the host country and the rest of the world. Consequently, the 2018 World Cup promises to be an interesting one.

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or many Americans, this year’s World Cup will not be at the top of their summer watch lists. After all, to the embarrassment of many, the United States Men’s National Team failed to even qualify. Thus we will sadly watch on TV the proud nations of Honduras and Panama play in spots that slipped through the Americans’ grasp.

There are many reasons that the United States failed to qualify for this tournament, but poor coaching tops the list. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into all the failings of Bruce Arenas during his tenure as manager of the national team; with that said, however, his prompt firing after the U.S. loss to Trinidad and Tobago in the final game of qualifying tells enough of the story. If there is any silver lining to be found in the United States’s failing to qualify for the upcoming World Cup, it is perhaps that this year’s tournament will take place in Russia.

Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup back in 2010 by the notorious and wildly controversial FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, who, because of corruption charges, is now serving a six-year ban from all football (soccer) activities. Russia is the third BRICS country in a row to host a World Cup. BRICS countries, the acronym for an association of five major emerging economies, include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. (South Africa and Brazil hosted the previous two, respectively.) The popularity of hosting the World Cup stems from the fact that, in order to host the tournament, the host country must either build or already have world-class stadiums Matt Collins is a junior studying economics and Spanish. He a regular contributor to The Arch Conservative.

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and other facilities capable of welcoming the world’s best players and their hordes of fans. Consequently, the enormous amounts of spending on infrastructure in the process of getting a country “World Cup ready” can be a real boon to the economy.

But the effects of such big infrastructure spending aren’t all beneficial; that is to say, such large amounts of investment can lead to overdevelopment. South Africa, for example, spent a total of $3.8 billion on five stadiums and associated infrastructure in preparation for its host year of the World Cup; now, however, the stadiums barely generate enough revenue to cover maintenance costs.

Although $3.8 billion is a lot of money, it is only a mere fraction of what Russia is purportedly spending on its preparations for the Cup. Indeed, with plans to construct seven new stadiums, refurbish five more, expand infrastructure, transportation networks, hotels and the like, it is estimated that Moscow is looking at spending a whopping $20 billion.

Not everyone is a fan of the idea. The enormous scope of Russia’s $20 billion infrastructure plan has been questioned by many. Some critics say that it seems a bit excessive to build seven new stadiums just for the World Cup—especially considering that many of these new stadiums are being built in cities that don’t even have a soccer team that plays in Russia’s top league. It makes about as much sense as building a forty-thousand seat stadium for the Gwinnett Stripers. The quality of the infrastructure has also been called into question. Comical pictures depicting precariously erected temporary bleachers of the Ekaterinburg Arena, for instance, have been floating around social media. The bleachers were added, apparently, to ensure that the stadium meets FIFA regulations’ minimum-seat requirement. But counting these scaffolds as a “part of ” the stadium seems a bit dubious, to say the least.

On top of the infrastructure drama, there is, of course, the political drama. In fact it’s hard to imagine it otherwise. It wouldn’t be a true Russian World Cup without a considerable amount of political controversy. The poisoning of former British double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, who were

poisoned with a Soviet-developed Novichok nerve agent, have worsened already strained relations between the United Kingdom and Russia. Russian hooligans have even gone so far as to direct death threats towards any English fans that make their way to Russia.

Consequently, the UK has floated around the idea of boycotting the tournament. For us soccer fans, though, let me be the first to say I hope that it will not come to that. Attempting to imagine a World Cup without the very nation that gave birth to the beautiful game is inconceivable. But English and Russian fans are no strangers to controversy, for example, fights broke out between the two groups after their European Championship game in 2016, which resulted with Russia nearly being expelled from the tournament.

Russian fans have faced similar issues during domestic soccer games. Indeed it is almost common-place for visiting players to be the victims of grossly homophobic or racial slurs anytime the player takes a corner kick or throw-in. In one instance in 2012, the Dynamo Moscow goalkeeper was struck in the back with a flare thrown by CSKA Moscow fans. And with a checkered past like this, it is needless to say the politics of this year’s tournament have created a sense of unease in what is normally a time of global celebration of football.

The sport of soccer, however, has the incredible ability to transcend politics; hopefully the 2018 World Cup will be no different. My personal tip: If you’re looking for a “Cinderella,” look no farther than Iceland, as the tiny island nation showed at Euro 2016 that they are a real threat. Perhaps, it will be Iceland, or another underdog, who emerges as the storyline of the tournament; but it is not only the underdogs who will have something to offer. In fact, nearly all participating nations will at least give us this: a reminder of soccer’s beauty; a beauty that will surely make us forget about the politics off the pitch. Something only the beautiful game of soccer can offer. b

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FDR’s Raw Deal Misconceptions of the New Deal A mere glance at the intent and effects of many New Deal programs should be enough to cast a shadow on Roosevelt's legacy. The fact that much of the New Deal is still looked upon with fondness should be deeply concerning.

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ost Americans would rank Franklin D. Roosevelt, our only fourterm President, very favorably.

Indeed, Roosevelt’s protracted presidency was not without some achievements that would rightfully earn him a high ranking.

Saving the world from Hitler is certainly nothing to thumb your nose at. In the interest of accurately representing history, however, we should be careful not to allow great accomplishments to blind us to the shortcomings of any administration—FDR’s is no exception, as his landmark New Deal was both over-praised and under-analyzed.

The New Deal is even relevant today.

Modern Democrats, such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have made warm remarks about FDR and the effectiveness of his policies. Last year, Democratic leadership came up with the slogan A Better Deal, an obvious nod to the title of FDR’s flagship program. In high schools across America, students are taught that Roosevelt ended the Great Depression with the New Deal.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the New Deal exacerbated the Great Depression and accelerated the march of totalitarianism in America at a pace that would make Mussolini blush.

The first troubling aspect of the New Deal was the manner in which it was enacted.

Several New Deal programs were challenged in the Supreme Court and ultimately ruled unconstitutional. But Roosevelt would not stand for this check on his power, so he threatened the justices with the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. Legally, Sarah Montgomery is a senior studying marketing. She is Manager of The Arch Conservative.

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this bill would have allowed the President to appoint up to six new justices for each current justice over the age of 70 years old.

The bill was intended to threaten the power of sitting justices should they not allow the contested New Deal programs to pass. The Supreme Court blinked, and the New Deal became law.

The failures of the New Deal were the result of a flawed understanding of what caused the economic downturn in the late 20s. FDR incorrectly believed that intense competition caused the Great Depression. His theory was that some firms would lower their prices too much and that it could eventually drive them out of business. In a speech at the People's Forum in Troy, New York, in 1912, Roosevelt said “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.” His solution was to use the power of the federal government to encourage monopolies and empower labor unions.

The New Deal program that aimed to accomplish FDR’s economic goals was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which created the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The NRA used its power to establish price controls in the market and create regulations that limited factory operation hours, investment in new equipment, and overall production. The combination of economically inefficient monopolies and economically inefficient labor unions was successful in raising prices and wages. But as far as resulting in an economic boom, it was an abysmal failure, as it decreased production and increased unemployment. The government spending from the New Deal temporarily stimulated the economy, but this was offset by long run damage done to output and employment levels by NIRA programs. At the worst point of the Depression, about 15 million Americans were unemployed. This unprecedented unemployment paired with the higher prices left millions of American families to suffer from starvation, alcoholism, and homelessness. The damage done to the health of the American economy was a drop in the bucket compared to the loss of

personal freedom. American society took a frighteningly fascistic turn thanks to another aspect of the NRA: the Blue Eagle program.

The administer of the NRA, Hugh Johnson, enforced the Blue Eagle program with fervor, and everyone was expected to do their part. Johnson ensured compliance with the program through a network of informants.

This network could be anyone from a union member to a local Boy Scout. Firms that were members of the NRA proudly displayed a poster featuring an eagle clutching a gear in one talon, three lightning bolts in the other, and the slogan “We do our part” emblazoned on the bottom. If this phrase sounds similar to the unity themed propaganda of the Italian fascists, it could have been the result of FDR “keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.”

Even with domestic surveillance, the NRA struggled to shut down black markets.

Like the bloated bureaucracies of the Soviet Union, the NRA resorted to state-sanctioned violence. Enforcement police patrolled the streets looking for unpatriotic violations of NRA codes. These jackbooted forces would often enter factories and line up employees for intense interrogations about potential violations. As John T. Flynn wrote in his book The Roosevelt Myth, “Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night.” All of this was under the unblinking eyes of the Blue Eagle, which Roosevelt once compared to a bright badge a soldier would wear to identify himself on the battlefield in one of his infamous fireside chats.

The New Deal on its own, however, was an economic failure that simultaneously trampled on liberty. A mere glance at the intent and effects of many of these programs should be enough to cast a shadow on Roosevelt's legacy. The fact that much of the New Deal is still looked upon with fondness should be deeply concerning. This country cannot walk confidently into the future if we refuse to seriously scrutinize the choices of the past. b

The Arch Conservative / 13

FEATURES

Plato’s Contemporary Cave

Relating Plato’s Famous Allegory to College Students Today

By Ian LaCroix

Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave," found in Book VII of his Republic, is a classic story that proves its relevance today in the way in which people perceive information, and how they act on information that contradicts their perception of reality.

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verywhere we go and in everything we read, we are bound to find a degree of Greco-Roman influence. It protrudes from our nation's most famous buildings and slips its way into our nation's most famous and important literature. Greco-Roman art finds its way into our nation's most hallowed halls—statues and paintings depicting gods, emperors, senators, and countrymen. In fact, our very system of government was inspired by the Greco-Roman democracy and republic. The classics, antiquities of the Greco-Roman world, surround us holistically. They inspire us, and they define us. It is not unreasonable to suggest that our country would not be the unmatched superpower that is is today without the teachings of the many brilliant classical thinkers.

Among the greatest of these was Plato, an influential philosopher who wrote about justice, beauty, and the character of the just citystate and the just man in his most famous work The Republic. Plato’s Republic is written as a Socratic dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, among others. Within the dialogues, Socrates discusses the meaning of justice, compares hypothetical city-states, Ian LaCroix is Online Editor of The Arch Conservative.

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and examines different systems of governance and justice. It was common of Plato to examine these concepts figuratively, so that the concepts at hand could be better understood.

Plato discusses the concepts of knowledge, truth, and reality in Book VII of Republic, more commonly known as Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” The (simplified) story goes something like this: There are several prisoners who have been in a dark cave since birth, devoid of the light from the outside world.

These prisoners are bound by the feet, hands, and neck so that they may only gaze upon the stone wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire, the sole source of light in their world. In front of the fire is an elevated walkway where people walk, carrying objects and statues that cast shadows onto the stone wall in front of the prisoners. Having been in the cave since birth and having no knowledge of the outside world, the prisoners treat the shadows on the cave wall as their reality—as the “real world.”

Eventually, one of the prisoners is liberated from his shackles and is compelled to turn and gaze upon the fire and the objects that cast the shadows. The newly freed prisoner is disoriented by the harsh light of the fire and is reluctant to believe what he is seeing. The freed man is told that the things he sees are more “true” than the shadows on the cave.

He is then dragged from the cave into the real world and is temporarily blinded by the harsh brightness of the sun —the source of light in the world beyond the cave. Eventually, his eyes adjust, and he starts to see the reality of the world he previously doubted.

He sees “the truth of everything” —the “real”

forms of the shadows he saw in the cave and is enlightened by the truth of the world. The freed prisoner discovers beauty and meaning outside of the cave, and he feels sorry for the other prisoners who are still enslaved by the darkness of the cave.

The freed prisoner returns to the cave and explains to his former cellmates that their reality in the cave is not real, and that he has seen the light of the world and knows the truth. The prisoners treat him as insane and claim that what he is saying is nonsense. Additionally, the freed man finds himself unable to identify the shadows that he once gazed upon as a prisoner, leading the prisoners to further discredit his testimony. Trapped in the comforts of their ignorance, the prisoners vow to kill anyone who tries to free them from their reality of darkness.

The definitive meaning behind the allegory has been debated and analyzed for centuries, and there are a great number of interpretations for what exactly Plato was trying to say. For the sake of this discussion, the most popular interpretation will be assumed, i.e., that people can be trapped in the comforts of their ignorance in their version of reality. People can be angered and disoriented when knowledge or a point of view is brought to them that presents a challenge to how they perceive the world—their own version of reality.

In relaying Plato’s message to the modern world, an obvious implication is the media’s effect on citizens, specifically those hiding in the comforts of confirmation bias. The issue of citizens subscribing wholly to their confirmation bias is both a liberal and conservative

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issue, and we are all guilty of it. Someone who only watches/reads CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or any other overtly partisan news outlet risks the darkness of the cave. This is not to say that partisan outlets always contain falsehoods, just that their version of reality is a limited, biased interpretation of the world.

Cave wall shadows of biased outlets deliver a limited point of view that should not be solely relied upon to fully understand the world around us. That said, there is nothing inherently wrong with media outlets that lean in a certain ideological direction. However, it can be detrimental if a consumer of news relies on one outlet or only outlets that conform neatly to their political ideology. It is impossible to have a strong faith in your own ideology without understanding the points of view and nuances of other ideologies. To escape the cave of confirmation bias, one most embrace a diversity of thought.

For your parents or grandparents, the cave may be their commitment to solely watching or reading a partisan outlet. For the modern political savvy youth, the cave may come in the form of the sole reliance on a liberal or conservative Twitter or podcast pundit. Once again, the reliance on one person’s point of view, however credible it may be, is ultimately detrimental to fully understanding the truth and the reality of the world around us. It is not easy to escape the cave of confirmation bias; hearing exactly what you want to hear all the time certainly is comforting. I myself am guilty of turning on a Ben Shapiro podcast while walking to class and calling it a day of news consumption. It can be difficult at times, especially for a busy college student, to force oneself to go outside one's comfort zone to consume news comprehensively.

When it comes to information learned through media consumption, just like the prisoners in the cave, citizens become angry when opposing perspectives are brought to them, or if their ideas are challenged/discredited. The most recent example of this

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has been the emergence of David Hogg and other politically vocal survivors of the Parkland shooting. While Mr. Hogg certainly is entitled to his emotional perspective on the issues of gun control and Second Amendment rights, he is not awarded immunity from fact-corrections and opposing points of view because of his emotional trauma and age. Just like the prisoner’s response when the freed man shared his alternative perspective, members of the media and American public have violently indicted any attempt to challenge the rhetoric of Hogg. I offer this example simply because it is the most relevant today. (Although conservatives are certainly guilty of this as well.)

Another modern implication of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is the effect on the American higher education system. The relevance of the Cave bears out in both left- and right-leaning college students in converging and contrasting ways.

Conservative students typically have a reputation of being skeptical of the ideals and points of view of many college professors. While conservative college students get the reputation of being angered when knowledge or a point of view is brought to them that contradicts their perception of the world, they certainly are not in the metaphorical cave described by Plato. The cave suggests a lack of knowledge and exposure to alternative perspectives. The sheer ratio of left-leaning versus right-leaning professors is a good testament to the exposure that college conservatives have to Leftist perspectives.

That said, conservative’s claims of a broader liberal ploy to “take over” academia are mostly misguided. But still, liberal bias in academia is a reality and can be met with both thoughtless anger and thoughtful debate.

In the case of the more left-leaning college student, Plato’s allegory once again proves its relevance. Higher education is often described as an echo-chamber of Leftist thinking. The argument is redundantly made that

left-leaning college students are unfamiliar with conservative thought. But I do not believe this is the whole truth. Of course, in college, a student is regularly exposed to a more liberal form of thinking; but that does not mean they are devoid of all conservative thought and discourse like many would suggest. No, the whole problem is not that Leftist students are not exposed to conservative thought; it’s that they are not exposed to the best conservative thought. Unfortunately, great conservative teachers like William Buckley Jr. and Milton Friedman are being replaced by Charlie Kirk, Tomi Lahren, and the like. These pundits are a poor representation of the conservative ideology; yet at times, they can be the loudest. Unfortunately, in the case of political discourse, sometimes the loudest voices are heard at the expense of more logical, rational voices.

With that being said, many liberal college students are in a cave devoid of logical and rational conservative thinking, and just like the prisoners in Book VII of the Republic, they can become violent—think of the UC Berkeley riots—when a point of view is brought to them that contradicts their perception of the world.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” like so many other classic works of art and literature, has a way of remaining relevant in the contemporary world. After comparing and contrasting the relevancy of Book VII of the Republic in both liberals and conservatives, what I propose is the adoption of the Socratic method by both ideologies. Doing this, I sumbit, would yield thoughtful, cooperative argumentative dialogue between parties based on critical thinking and reasoning. In a electorate that is filled with fierce resentment and contention for the opposing ideology, perhaps the Socratic method will help foster a mutual respective for intellectual differences—even if both ideologies have no common values. b

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Second Amendment Hysteria Stepping Back to View America’s Gun Talk

"We must not let emotion consume us, so that this democracy we have forged on the basis of reason and personal freedom continues to thrive for centuries to come."

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hen the elected representatives of our society come together to pass laws and develop policy, we can only hope that they use reason in the process. Every issue that government addresses—or chooses not to address—has significant economic, political, social, and ethical ramifications. As with most choices in life, there are tradeoffs. For example, a policy that raises the minimum wage may help some individuals who earn below the federal poverty line/ this raise, however, will also lead to increased unemployment (disproportionately among the young and the poor), higher prices of goods and services, and small business closure. Representatives have the burden of weighing such tradeoffs as these and deciding on the best solution for society. Unfortunately, however, our representatives do not always attempt to solve all issues using this type of reasoning.

Unfortunately, some policymakers make decisions due to social pressure or selfish desires for themselves or their constituency.

In the case of social pressure, policymakers are encouraged by citizens to make quick, large-scale changes that will somehow “fix the economy,” or “stop all discrimination,” or “provide quality healthcare to everyone at Gehrig Broxton is a regular contributor to The Arch Conservative.

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a low cost.” Along with being misguided in their belief that government is the solution to these problems, these citizens commit the dangerous error of allowing emotions to formulate their viewpoint. At this time, the gun debate offers the best example of how rogue emotion is threatening to shape policy and, in turn, do grave damage to the foundation of American society. ​While guns have been a topic of much dispute in America for much longer than anyone published in this magazine has been alive, the hype surrounding guns has amplified after the deaths of innocent children at the hands of depraved school shooters.

Discussion of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, continues to emanate from seemingly every media outlet. But this discussion does not focus on exacting justice on the killer or reprimanding individuals in authority who neglected to intervene to prevent the tragedy. Instead, the media focuses on—and places blame upon both guns and law-abiding gun owners. Further, the media is using teenagers—survivors of the horrific shooting—to push this view. This calculated strategy draws on the emotions of the masses, sparking large movements that call for sweeping “gun reform” and gun confiscation. With the pressure on Congress to pass a gun bill at its peak, logical and reasonable discussions on gun legislation are at an all time low.

F ​ or the heralded “leaders” of the new gun reform movement “Never Again”—namely Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, and Emma Gonzalez—vapid talking points and vicious

attacks on pro-gun groups and politicians are commonplace. They drivel about how the NRA is at fault for what happened, claiming that if the NRA did not lobby policymakers in Washington, their friends would still be alive. At the CNN Town Hall meeting in Parkland, Cameron Kasky compared Senator Marco Rubio to the Parkland shooter, saying, “Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down the barrel on an AR-15 and not look at [the shooter].” In multiple interviews, Hogg and Kasky have dropped f-bombs in direct attacks on pro-gun groups and pro-gun politicians.

In an interview with Bill Maher, Kasky literally gags after he mentions Dana Loesch, a spokesperson for the NRA, and then claims that he is an “expert” on gun violence because he experienced the Parkland shooting firsthand. This statement is highly ridiculous. It would be analogous if everyone who was in a fire claimed to be a firefighter, and if everyone who beat cancer claimed to be an oncologist. Later in the same interview with Maher, Hogg brags about how he “hung up on the White House” and berates President Trump for not listening to the “screams of the children.”

Don’t get me wrong: These children have every right to speak their minds. This type of ignorant, vitriolic rhetoric, however, should not be taken seriously, and pro-gun individuals should be able to freely challenge it with their own without fearing being attacked by the Left. Now, unfortunately, this is not the case. Instead, any person who attempts to counter the claims of the “Never Again” leaders is considered “insensitive” and is charged

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PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSHLOPEZPHOTO

By Gehrig Broxton

FEATURES

with “smearing” shooting survivors who are “just kids.” The emotional atmosphere being created around the anti-gun movement only further divides us, and leaves our nation further from a common ground on gun legislation than before the Parkland shooting. ​Because many anti-gun arguments appeal mainly to emotion rather than reason and logic, these arguments tend to elicit a reaction from the public very easily. And then, very soon, much of the public begins to take these arguments and employ them at every opportunity. Anyone who follows the gun-control issue to any degree has undoubtedly heard someone who is anti-gun call for “common sense” gun control. When that someone is asked what he or she means by “common sense,” however, a coherent articulation rarely follows. Therefore, either that person has no common sense, or he is wrong in his statement on the simplicity of gun legislation.

Another common argument is that we should ban “assault rifles” like the AR-15.

First off, the “AR” in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle,” and the AR-15 is not an assault rifle because it cannot fire in fully automatic mode. It may help to know what one is trying to ban before one makes the call to ban it. Second, even if semi-automatic rifles in general were completely banned—and somehow a black-market for them magically did not develop—the US would barely see a dent in the homicide rate. According to Uniform Crime Reporting Data from the FBI, 89.6% of homicides involving a firearm, where the type of firearm was identified, were committed with handguns. Furthermore, there are over five times as many homicides attributable to a knife or some other cutting object than can be attributed to rifles. And when I say rifles, I mean all rifles, not just “assault-style” ones. These statistics are far from what one would expect after reading

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or listening to the mainstream media. And that is why the media would like to keep the facts as far away from the center of the gun debate as possible.

Just as disappointing as the media’s focus on emotion rather than facts in the gun-control debate is their complete ostracization of good, gun-owning Americans. Around forty percent of American households report owning a gun, according to multiple estimates, and an even greater percentage report having owned a gun at one point in time. With this many American households finding gun ownership necessary for whatever reason, why, then, is the narrative so skewed toward the anti-gun platform? One can infer the obvious: The news stations, anchors, journalists, and celebrities who live and work in areas that incubate Leftist thought have agendas. They are largely shut off from everyday Americans, especially the citizens of “Middle America.” If one needs proof that the preferences of these gun-owning citizens are often ignored, look no further than the last Presidential election. Nearly every news outlet predicted Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide, and anyone who suggested that Trump could win was scoffed at. Yet, because of the votes of Middle Americans who were not represented in polls throughout election season, Trump won.

Unsurprisingly, politics is not the only sector where Middle Americans are ignored.

They are overlooked in popular culture as well. Television stations such as ABC, for instance, rarely feature new shows that push a conservative view of society. However, when these networks “take a risk” and air shows like “Roseanne” or “Last Man Standing” (which is unapologetically pro-gun), the shows often have unprecedented success.

Although mainstream media outlets have a plethora of evidence that supports broadening their coverage to include the values

of everyday Americans, it is unlikely that they will heed any of it. For the time being, Americans will have to make due with largely one-sided coverage on gun control, and pro-gun Americans will have to work even harder to make their values known to policymakers in Washington. ​There are many other questions that gun control advocates must answer before any serious gun-control measure should even be considered by policymakers. Conservative estimates predict that there are at least as many guns in the United States as there are people. In light of those statistics— even if certain types of guns were banned—how would we prevent these guns from circulating throughout the black market? Would the government send in the military to confiscate these guns from law-abiding citizens? And how can we be sure that a criminal, such as a mass shooter, would comply with this law? Criminals, by definition, already ignore laws; they do so egregiously in cities such as Baltimore, where gun laws are extremely strict and the murder rate is the highest in the nation. Furthermore, the vast majority of mass shootings occur in “gun-free” zones, where there are hefty penalties for being found in possession of a firearm (or any weapon, for that matter). How can one explain away that fact?

If our nation expects these questions to be answered by teenagers with little to no knowledge of guns, we may be waiting for centuries. In the meantime, we must hope that “being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” We must not let emotion consume us, so that this democracy we have forged on the basis of reason and personal freedom continues to thrive for centuries to come.​b

The Arch Conservative / 17

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Question Everything (and Everyone) Discovery and the Liberal Education

The beauty of university, of the classical idea of the liberal education that we are supposed to receive in our four years of college, is rooted in discovery.

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choose this word—discovery—carefully, because it denotes something more than the simple absorption and memorization of facts, names, and processes. ‘Discovery’ entails a more worthwhile, applicable, and long-lasting skill set—one that enables a decently apt student to graduate with a solid worldview. Yet today, however, American universities seem to gradually be abandoning the cause of the liberal education and all of its riches.

A core tenet of the liberal education (not to be confused with a liberal arts education) is to produce “persons who are open-minded and free from provincialism, dogma, preconception, and ideology; conscious of their opinions and judgments; reflective of their actions; and aware of their place in the social and natural worlds,” according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Unfortunately, as John Henry Thompson and Davis Parker aptly noted in a previous Arch Conservative editorial, education continually morphs more into the training of a “legion of politely groomed job candidates.” You’ll notice this vis-á-vis your friends’ and fellow students’ obsession more with resumé boosting than with having a spontaneous intellectual discussion.

Nick Geeslin is Book Editor of The Arch Conservative.

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Moreover, the liberal education requires its teachers to forsake ideology in the classroom in the pursuit of truth, or at least of alternate theories and explanations. Indeed, a teacher’s object should not be to mold the minds of his or her young and fickle students, but rather solely to open them. Unfortunately, however, this objective has been all but abandoned at our universities in pursuit of a different vision which spells doom for liberal education and all of its benefits.

Some professors, journalists, and even State-devised curricula seem to believe that the systems in which they exist are more a pulpit to alter the course of culture, usually to the Left, than ones that requires integrity.

It is no secret that the fields of journalism and academia are more littered with the Left’s ideology than any other, and perhaps this is the result of a natural attraction these professions have to the Left. But I argue not with the fact that a majority of professors subscribe to a ‘liberal’ ideology, only simply with the way in which ideology is presented as the surest truth in the classroom by too many.

To take largely empty, malleable minds and mold them in a way that comports with one’s own ideology is a despicable abuse of the podium and should be regarded as such.

However, as of the present, such pontification not only fails to be condemned on today’s campuses, but even worse, it is largely applauded or perpetuated by fellow academicians, university bureaucrats, and the media.

The result has been catastrophic—a prevailing bias not only on campus but in society at large that jeopardizes our citizens’ ability to self-govern in as pure a manner as they once

did. The consequences for the abandonment of liberal education are indeed fatal for a free society. After all, only when “the people are informed can they be trusted with their own government,” as Thomas Jefferson notes.

But, rather than frivoling about in a past full of idealistic systems of education and society, I advise the following: question everything (and everyone).

An inquisitive mind is the only way to ensure that you, a student not only of the University of Georgia but also of the world, can possibly emerge from university with more than a mere degree. A genuine understanding and appreciation of your roles, duties, and obligations as a citizen are just as crucial, and perhaps more so, than your diploma. Therefore, never listen, read, or watch anything—especially in relation to your formal academic work—without a skeptical eye.

When a teacher discusses the issue of climate change as a phenomenon that transcends debate or perhaps even mindlessly categorizes skeptics of the State’s preeminent role in solving climate change as “climatedeniers,” challenge this notion. Go home and dig; research on your own and you will find that the prestige of individuals in the all-too haphazardly created “climate denier” camp cannot simply be dismissed as antiscience. You may find alternative solutions to climate change, such as convincing free market solutions.

Likewise, take the skeptic’s route when your teacher praises Franklin Delano Roosevelt for his Keynesian approach to ‘saving’ America from the Great Depression by

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PHOTO COURTESY OF DXR

By Nick Geeslin

FEATURES

vastly expanding government and creating invasive and long-lasting bureaucracy. It is likely that none of the following facts will be mentioned: that he threatened to pack the Supreme Court with justices who would flout the Constitution and uphold his New Deal policies (but ended up merely threatening the justices to vote in his favor); that one of Roosevelt’s appointments, Hugo Black, was a former member of the KKK and that another had but one year of law school experience; that he vastly expanded the power of the presidency to the point that it would be an unrecognizable office to the Constitution’s framers; that he ran the country into a massive debt that is still unpaid (think Medicare and Social Security); and that his New Deal programs, far from ending the Great Depression, as many would have you believe, only prolonged it. Therefore, sadly, it is up to you, the student, to educate yourself on these matters.

Moreover, when you read a Washington Post article on white privilege or hear a teacher speak on the issue and find it condemning, illogical, or a tad silly, check out opposing opinions on YouTube. You will at least appreciate the broadening of your knowledge on the subject if not change your entire perception outright. Objective facts, experiences, and statistics—as opposed to nebulous, unfalsifiable, indefinable, and often anecdotal catch-all phrases used in reference to politics like ‘white privilege,’ ‘institutional racism,’ or ‘social injustice’—are far more reasonable and accurate. But, unfortunately, it will largely be up to you to discover these less well-known and less popular viewpoints and facts of life.

The Left has made it taboo to approach nearly any such issue with incredulity, healthy skepticism, or an open mind. Although the moral relativism of the 1960s and 1970s is mostly out of vogue, save for a few specific issues, its replacement has not been any less damaging. On the contrary, now the university suffers often from a certainty that its positions are correct, leaving no room for a liberation of the mind that a liberal education seeks to achieve.

Take, for example, an article from the Daily Kos. Apparently, Ayn Rand was a “clever racist” who “cloak[s] [her] white supremacy in an economic philosophy.”

However, it only takes an inquisitive mind and a Google search to uncover the reality.

The Left is perfectly willing to sacrifice the integrity of logic and research in the name of creating a State powerful enough to resolve

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every flaw of humanity.

Only at the modern university could one-sided beliefs—such as the morality of socialism, the “gender wage gap,” the inherent racism of capitalism, that men and women are essentially the same, that gender is fluid and countless other ideas to which variance is equated to bigotry—not only be taught as viable positions but as truths. And for those who deny—or merely question—the veracity of such ideas? Too often are they shut down intellectually and, most alarmingly, morally.

The Left are entitled to these opinions, of course, and they should be tolerated. What is intolerable, however, is the use of an authoritative position like a professorship or journalistic post to promote ideology as truth to young minds that are immature, naive, and extremely gullible. Herein lies the problem.

People, but especially young people, tend to place too much trust in authority, whether it be the authority of the State (i.e., our elected officials), the authority of the Fourth Estate, or the authority of those who teach, profess, or otherwise instruct. This brings us back to my initial point: The beauty of university, of the classical idea of the liberal education that we are supposed to receive in our four years of college, is rooted in discovery. But how, with the corruption of liberal education at the university, can one experience the liberation of the mind through discovery?

My own story may be of some interest to any despondent students.

Discovery came to me through a rather impulsive decision to follow a friend, a certain Editor Emeritus of The Arch Conservative in Connor Kitchings, who encouraged me to join the magazine as a freshman. I began by writing totally unbiased pieces and used the opportunity to take some time and figure out my political beliefs sans my parents, friends, and teachers. It was not until a year, perhaps even two years later, however, that I realized my embracement of conservatism. This decision, wholly my own, was unsurprisingly not influenced by any of my professors. No, it was in my free time that I discovered the wonders, the facts, and the logical consistency of conservatism.

By the same token, I also came to understand the Left and liberalism to a greater extent. Of course, this makes sense. Naturally, to be sure of your opinion one must be able to imagine the argument of the other side. As John Stuart Mill professed in his essay On Liberty, “He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that.” This effort presented challenges to everything I

believed and thought to be true. It also was time-consuming. But so are all good things in life; also, the payoff—which was and is confidence in my own positions, principles, and worldview—is priceless.

Knowledge is indeed power. And to acquire knowledge, one must acquire the will to use free time to learn. Some free time must be devoted to discovery or else a liberated mind will be forever elusive.

Free time is too often overlooked in today’s college experience. I see too many people, myself for a time included, use their free time only to get away from their school and their studies: drinking too much, binging Netflix, or otherwise lazing too many precious hours away. It makes sense, of course— school is tough. But with a university system that is, for whatever reason, experiencing a decline in the critical thinking that a liberal education by its very definition intends to imbue, it is increasingly important to move to alternate media to complement education.

Here is a piece of useful advice: Read without professors. Not only will this significantly boost your experience at university, it will also prove far more enriching and useful than anything you may learn in class.

Who knows, you may even discover your most sincere of interests and bring it along with you into an interview. A weeklong YouTube or Wikipedia binge on any given topic is easily worth an entire semester of class. In my own case, it was watching Milton Friedman videos for a week that convinced me of my ideology. I can assure you I learned more about my opinion on the role of the State in the economy than I ever would have by memorizing facts in a classroom setting.

In short, the message is to branch out, to question the norms of collegiate thought, find alternatives, and never be afraid of discovery or where it may lead. In this, you will find or become stronger in your beliefs; and, rather than mindlessly absorbing the indoctrination of the classroom, you too may discover the beauties of a liberal education—professor, or no professor, degree or no degree. b This article is adapted from a March 28th, 2017, piece from The Arch Conservative's website.

The Arch Conservative / 19

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Societal Purgatory The Catastrophe of Men and Boys

By J.Thomas Perdue

We have neglectfully abandoned our fathers and sons to a cruel paradox that orders them to be relentless earners, while simultaneously shaming them for their accomplishments, if not diminishing them completely on account of privilege.

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utlets of mainstream social thought tell us that the white patriarchy dominates Western society. Politicians, news outlets, and academia preach identity politics and vouch for the seemingly never-ending struggle against white-male oppression and domination. This years-old phenomenon has formed the concept of “white male privilege”—the idea that white men are afforded exclusive societal advantages in everyday life.

Privilege has evolved into a conversational tactic, used to diminish the experiences and therefore the value of individuals. Those who can see through this tactic, or those with particularly thick skin, might not let it bother them. However, young men are surely malleable. Being constantly told that their experience counts for less because of how they were born, coupled with the societal standards that tell men they must achieve, has led many young men to redirect their natural ambitions toward resentful and destructive paths. This is both understandable and unacceptable.

Understanding the societal purgatory in which men and boys now find themselves J.Thomas Perdue is Associate Editor of The Arch Conservative.

20 / The Arch Conservative

permits one the understanding of their denigration. Women and girls, unlike males, are afforded appropriate support systems. In her March article, “The Growing Attack on Boys,” National Review columnist Heather Wilhelm notes that “In America, cheers for women abound. Girls are often praised, in fact, just for being girls. They’ve long been oppressed, we’re told; we need to eternally shore them up.” An International Women’s Day exists and is gaining popularity in the West. The effort to celebrate women is not an inherently bad or destructive idea; to say that males are celebrated for their masculinity equally today is willfully ignorant.

Problems that are exclusive to men, or that disproportionately affect men, are often ignored, laughed off, or dismissed as chauvinism. Simply Google the term “men’s rights activists,” and you’ll be met with overwhelming negativity. Media have been quick to denounce MRAs as a fringe movement, with the intent to demonize women. Blaming society for one’s problems is a precarious path, one almost never recommended by this writer. When men bring real issues to the forefront of conversation, however, such as judicial bias against fathers in divorce court cases, astronomically disproportional suicide rates, men’s lives being ruined after being falsely accused of rape, shorter life expectancy, and a higher chance to die at their occupation, the response is dismissive.

Perhaps these issues are not as pertinent as those faced by women. Perhaps even a large contingent of MRAs are spurred on by a hatred for feminism. But perhaps not.

Regardless of intent, the issues at hand should

not be ignored. The better option for all parties involved would be for individuals to take control of their own lives. Men and women alike should eschew identity politics entirely, take steps to better themselves, and triumph over what ails them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. The nurturing of identity politics has created an unconscious generation that cannot see a world where they might be responsible for the causes— or worse yet, the solutions—to any of their problems. It’s all because white men ruined society. Or, maybe, it was radical feminists.

Or minorities.

Since the Left is more than willing to play identity politics in support of groups they deem marginalized, some of the people they left out decided to react by forming the Alt-Right. If the game we must play is identity politics, divide and conquer, as it were, why would a disenfranchised white male not want to win that game? Since we must pick sides, why wouldn’t anyone pick his or her side—even if it is the side of the perceived oppressor? As it turns out, the AltRight did not come from Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, or even Richard Spencer. It is a misguided reaction to the perceived actions taken against white men as a result of identity politics. Even further, it is the offspring of a pure, unabashed resentment of God and the society in which He dropped the misfit toys.

This is the same resentment that drives the especially odious chapters of the far-Left, and it is the same resentment that the Nazis generated against ethnic minorities that led to the death of six million.

Men who cannot acclimate to their social

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expectations are not told that they can be anything they dream as girls typically are.

They are told to toughen up. And as demonstrated by the hostile reception of MRAs, a man is discouraged from asking for help; so if he does not toughen up, he is cast out.

Exclusion and social rejection all too often breed that same poisonous resentment of God and man alike. Take for example the most infamous mass shooting of our time —the Columbine Massacre. This particular tragedy offers a glimpse at ultimate resentment and a desire for revenge.

In their writings discovered after the shooting, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold promised revenge not only against the bullies that deemed them social outcasts but against all of mankind. Harris wrote in his journal— dated around the summer of 1998— that “the human race isn’t worth fighting for, only worth killing. Give the Earth back to the animals, they deserve it infinitely more than we do.” On the next page, he wrote, “If you recall your history, the Nazis came up with a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish problem: kill them all. Well, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I say: kill mankind.”

And, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the type of disenfranchisement-turned atrocity exhibited by Klebold and Harris is woven from the same thread as several of history’s darkest characters and ideologies. But what makes these monstrous manifestations of resentment—the school shooting phenomenon, for instance—a problem exclusive to boys, and specifically white boys? In his 2015 TEDx lecture, “The Boy Crisis,” Dr. Warren Farrell, an educator and activist on men’s and women’s issues, outlines causes and solutions to men’s issues to answer that question and others like it. One of the answers, according to Dr. Farrell, is dad-deprived boys. He says, “When you have less father-involvement, the

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boy ends up having less likelihood of being empathetic [and] assertive. He’s more likely to do poorly in school, more likely to be suicidal, homicidal, to shoot up schools and to be in prison. Prisons are basically centers for dad-deprived boys. Boys who hurt, hurt us.”

Farrell goes on to point out that school shootings are mostly white boys’ method of acting out their hopelessness. Suicide rates are another, far more prevalent method.

Before age nine, suicide rates for girls and boys are roughly equal. The rates for girls remain essentially the same throughout their lives—but the same cannot be said for boys.

By the 20-24 age range, boys are six times more likely to commit suicide. 63 percent of youth suicides come from fatherless homes.

Also, 90 percent of homeless children, 85 percent of children with behavioral disorders, 80 percent of rapists with anger problems and 71 percent of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.

As previously mentioned, societal support for women is ubiquitous. Feminism’s rise in the 20th century “expanded girls’ sense of purpose,” as Dr. Farrell puts it. Girls no longer have to put their dreams aside to raise a family if they don’t want to. They can focus on their careers, their families, or do a combination of both. The extent of a boy’s sense of purpose was—and still is­— to “earn money, earn money, earn money, or be a loser.” This leaves much less room for men and boys to be empathetic. Fathers are disappearing because they are not shown that there is room for them to pause and care.

Sarah Hampson, of Canada’s The Globe and Mail, delves into this idea in the context of divorce in her article, “The Ghost Dad Phenomenon.” She writes: “In the world of masculinity, you’re either a winner or a loser. It’s black and white. Divorce is seen as failure, ergo you’re a loser. Who wants to be

reminded of that?” Disappearing fathers and the sons they abandon receive the same message from their situations: “You are alone.”

Nobody will listen to the father who can only see his children on visitation weekends as he plummets into alcoholism and self-loathing.

He is privileged after all. He should toughen up. Nobody listens to the teenage boy on the nights that he sits in his room, contemplating the worthlessness of life and humanity. He is a leper among his peers, and he has no one at home to show him how to be a man. He has no one to teach him how to love with strength. It is a good thing indeed that his male privilege will kick in at any moment to dissolve the gun he holds to his head, or to those of his classmates. And if it doesn’t, we can just blame it on his sense of entitlement.

Identity politics has robbed of us of the reality that men can have tough lives too. And surely they will. We will all suffer in our time.

Tragedy will strike us. We will bury our parents. Our loved ones will get sick. There will be times when we feel utterly and completely alone. It is only when strife blinds us to the good and hopeful things in this world that we succumb to resentment and, inevitably, tragedy. We have abandoned our fathers and sons to a cruel paradox that orders them to be relentless earners, while simultaneously shaming them for their accomplishments, if not diminishing them completely on account of privilege. What could we possibly expect from those we consciously shun, save for misery and catastrophe? Men should be tough. They should be leaders of strength; they should remain present and nurturing in their families, as well as become receptive to the love and attention that so many would hope to deny them. b

The Arch Conservative / 21

HUMOR

On Becoming Hip Advice to Aspiring Freshmen

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here is a dangerous world of mainstream out there. In Athens, however, you will find your haven. Though we townies have attempted to use our methods to block any radio frequency that does not correspond either to WUOG or NPR (we’ve tried our passionate hearts out, but, alas, there are only liberal arts majors among us), Athens is still no less than Georgia’s cultural capital of hipness.

his god-like image on your lawn or in your dorm window.

10. Do not associate with anyone interested in joining Greek life; they will poison your soul with their affinity for non-local food chains, their tendency to major in business, and, worst of all, their relentless effort to wear unsustainably sourced comfort color tees.

Here are some tips on how to get involved in that bit of Athens that your soul so direly desires: 1. Attend zero University of Georgia football games.

2. Familiarize yourself with Tim Denson.

3. Hemp jewelry only. No metal allowed save for a maximum of 20 charms.

4. Smoke a cigarette in front of Nowhere Bar at least three times a month.

5. Refer to Tim Denson as comrade.

6. If you do not have a Bernie sticker on your vehicle, you must have a Coexist sticker lest the drivers behind you believe you to be a racist bigot.

7. If you have neither a Bernie sticker nor a Coexist sticker, you had better think of something hip to put on the back of your car, because otherwise you are not getting let into Tim Denson’s “Politics & Hip Hop” events.

8. Color your hair differently than at least 70 percent of the room at all times.

9. Place a sign adorned with Comrade Denson’s name, including a stylized rendition of Nick Geeslin is a senior studying international affairs.

He is Book Editor of The Arch Conservative.

22 / The Arch Conservative

11. Is someone telling you about an issue that exists in Athens? No need to organically reach your own viable conclusion—just profess that your prefferred Leftist candidate will fix it all!

12. Scoff at everyone in red on gameday Saturdays.

13. Stand outside Church Bar and scoff at a total of 35 people per month who seem like they are on a Greek event.

14. Grandstand about how else the school should be using money directed toward the athletics department.

15. Is someone telling you about an issue that exists in America? No need to donate

money to a cause, respectfully argue with the opposition, or even consider a solution—just slap a Bernie sticker on your Subaru!

16. Complain about every construction project on campus.

17. Brag about how you know a WUOG DJ. 18. Wear New Balance shoes.

19. Tell everyone about the next concert you are going to.

20. Do not mention that Comrade Denson looks like Tobias Fünke.

21. Remain Facebook and Snapchat friends with high school acquaintances in order that you may expose their unhip activities with cynicism and scorn.

22. RSVP to every event with the term “local” in the title on Facebook.

23. Acquaint yourself with at least one local artist. Do not stop talking about them.

24. Be seen at Flicker Bar twice a week.

25. Steal The Arch Conservative’s magazines and dump them. They are the seed of white supremacy on campus, and they must be destroyed.

Do not think yourself a member of the group merely by appreciating music or art based its merit, by having a distinct style of dress, or by attending cool events around town. No, to be a part of the hip sect of Athens, you must participate in this defined set of prescribed acts. Once admitted, you will enjoy a most-satisfying sense of superiority over those bumper stickerless, generically outfitted, Clarke Standard-going normies in their Katy Perry sororities and their Luke Bryan fraternities. That hole within you will be filled, once and for all, with the substance of true culture. b PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSH HALLETT

Waste no time in integrating into the vibrant culture of the Athens liberal elite by following these easy steps!

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COLUMNS HUMOR

A Guide to Finals Boris's Declassified Finals Survival Guide Surviving finals is tough—or at least used to be tough. With these fifteen fail-safe, foolproof tips, you can breeze through finals exams and get on with sweet summertime.

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s finals season creeps up on even the most prepared of UGA students, allow this carefully calculated guide to surviving finals to aid you in your many travails yet to come. If you follow these tenets of college life to the letter, you may be able to crawl away from this semester with your scholarships intact. This fail-safe, fail-proof, authoritative guide will keep you ready to ride for those 7 p.m. finals on the last day of the semester.

1. Procure Red Bull (The bigger the case, the better).

2. Bring a coffee maker. (The best Folgers has to offer mixed with Red Bull will have you seeing noise and laser-focused, all of the time.)

3. Procure a prodigious supply of the finest ramen noodles Kroger has to offer (nutritious brain food that will fill you up and keep you going).

4. Keep a tight sleep schedule— at least 2 hours a night and you are totally fine.

5. Stake your claim in the MLC. (Wooden posts and fences are encouraged—don’t want any pesky raiders to take your spot!

We engage in fisticuffs for study rooms.)

6. Never shower or shave. (Who has time to shower or care for themselves when there are papers to write and exams to cram for?)

Boris A. Abreu is a junior studying political science and international affairs.

He is Publishing Editor of The Arch Conservative.

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7. Always cram. (Meticulously outlined study plans are a concoction of liberal elites. Don’t bother with trying to learn a whole semester’s worth of material in weeks. Do it in a day.)

8. Bring a pillow everywhere. (In the heat of the moment, you never know when you’ll need Ole’ Faithful to ease you into your threehour slumber. And those library tables do murder on your neck.)

9. Also bring a blanket, especially so you can stay warm when you’re out burning the midnight oil. Alternatively, bring the blanket for survival once you’ve resorted to burning your papers for additional warmth. Many a soul has gone missing on the seventh floor of the library.

10. Definitely bring your phone. (This will allow you to call your mom and declare that you are dropping out and pursuing your dream of becoming the world’s greatest basket weaver. Or you can browse Twitter.)

11. Sharpen up your begging skills. (When you email your professor begging for extra credit or a curve, be sure to throw in some emotional rhetoric and some anecdotes.

Leave out your name in case he checks the attendance sheet to find that you haven’t been to class all semester.)

12. Go downtown. (Eventually, you may just give up and go to enjoy the raucous nightlife of Athens. Lack of sleep and poor financial decisionmaking combines really well the day of an exam.)

13. Bring some cash. (You’ll become such a regular at Jittery Joe’s that all you’ll need to do is throw money at them and wait for your quadruple espresso shot to kick you awake.)

14. Tissues. (You’ll need them when you’re crying tears of joy at how good your rage-fueled, totally-not-written-at-3 a.m. final paper turns out.)

15. A picture of whatever higher power you believe in.

(If you can’t save your grades, maybe they can.)

These expert guidelines have been proven effective from years of experience by yours truly. If you follow them, you are sure to ace those finals and finish the semester strong.

My handy guide will hopefully keep you fully sane and sharp in these next few frantic weeks, preventing burnout at the most crucial time in the semester. The thrill of summer is only weeks away, and we are all in this together. Best of luck, and happy studying! b

The Arch Conservative / 23

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