Head to Head Conservatives deserve better than Candace Owens Candace Owens: demonstrating respect for opposing views

For Your Consideration

BENJAMIN

HAINES @bphaines

Last Tuesday night, LSU’s Student Union Theater felt much like Tiger Stadium. There were standing ovations, t-shirt throws, screaming, manic fans, semi-obscene chants and people wearing their team’s colors. But instead of “Let’s Geaux Tigers!” people shouted “U-S-A!” In lieu of “Neck,” screamed “Let’s go Brandon!” and rather than wear purple and gold, donned InfoWars shirts and Tucker Carlson hats.

The excitement was all for Candace Owens, a controversial right-wing political commentator and the headline event for Turning Point USA’s current speaking circuit, the Live Free Tour.

Owens spoke with the passion of a charismatic preacher, delivering a sermon of good and evil, left versus right. She spread the Republican gospel of small government and hard work: “Society will reward you if you are willing to work hard.” She decried the dangers of feminism: “I blame feminists for almost every ill that we have now.”

After seemingly every right-wing zinger Owens threw at libs, she received some sort of response from the crowd. When she declared that “representation is pandering,” for instance, “Yeses!” rained down from the crowd like amens in a revival service.

It’s a lucrative message, clearly. But lucrative is not synonymous with correct or good. On several instances, Owens’ talk devolved into a salad of words and ideas, devoid of much intellectual value, as vapid as logic she claimed to represent.

Once in the talk, Owens casually mentioned the dangers of “isms,” presumably referencing socialism, transgenderism, or some other typically left-wing cause. Later, however, in the question-and-answer portion of the event, Owens was stumped by a self-avowed feminist and LSU student who asked her a very fair question: “Isn’t conservatism another ism?”

Instead of engaging with a reasonable question or telling the student what conservatism properly understood is – a philosophy, not an ideology – Owens simply deflected and changed the subject. By the time one realized what rhetorical move Owens made, it was already too late, the point was already gone.

Some of what Owens said leaned toward the conspiratorial, too. Drawing a rhetorical picture of the grand schemes of leftism, she claimed that “what we are heading towards is a socialist society.”

All liberal policies were aimed at destroying tradition in order to make people more dependent on the government, everything from

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the family to climate change to welfare; the latter of which, she said, was apparently more harmful to Black Americans than Jim Crow ever was.

Owens cited no evidence for these claims other than brief, occasionally relevant anecdotes and the random statistic.

We should see Owens’ on-stage behavior for what it truly is: performance art.

Owens moves the crowd with a passion for her cause that is no doubt genuine, but nonetheless misguided – perhaps not wrong in its conservatism, but fundamentally erroneous in its argumentation, presentation and logic.

Conservatism deserves better. It deserves better than stooping to the level of ad hominem attacks, cheap laughs, rhetorical frills or cherry-picking data. Conservatism is a long historical tradition with philosophical roots dating back to the ancient Greeks. That’s largely the point of being a conservative: citing and knowing the past in order to better know the present and anticipate the future.

Owens’ visit to LSU was anything but that. It didn’t rely on reasonable, clear argumentation. It didn’t cite the past as the basis or evidence of its claims. It didn’t deal honestly with opposing claims. It caricatured them.

This isn’t to say that Owens’ views, at least in their conclusions, are damaging.

Critical Race Theory does, for instance, exist in K-12 education in places across the country. There has been a marked increase in the size of parts of the American government in the last 50 years. There are good reasons to think that welfare doesn’t do much to help people or instill personal responsibility throughout society. And there are problems with feminism, especially in its more recent iterations.

If Owens thinks she will convince anyone to join her political side, other than her fans, she has another thing coming.

Benjamin Haines is a 24-year-old graduate student from Shreveport.

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Over the past few years, the mainstream media has over-polarized our perception of liberals and conservatives, discouraging dialogue and making it seem impossible to understand each other.

But Candace Owens’ talk in the Union Theater on Tuesday, a stop on Turning Point USA’s Live Free Tour, demonstrated that engaging in respectful conversation with those of opposing views is possible and even advantageous.

Hearing those with different beliefs can enable us to become more open-minded and understand others’ perspectives. By engaging in sincere and tolerant conversation, we gain a deeper understanding of our beliefs and how they compare to others.

After the talk, audience members had the opportunity to ask Owens questions. Attendees lined up to ask about topics such as critical race theory, feminism, the education system, and vaccines.

She related all these topics to her chief talking point: traditional family values were under threat in the United States.

Starting with critical race theory, Owens said, “It is an entire theory based upon the idea that the color of your skin determines your outcome, and it is causing friction in our society.”

Owens, who is a Black woman, was outspoken in saying many of the contemporary problems Black Americans face stem from the absence of fathers in Black families, not necessarily racism.

Even in the Jim Crow era, she said, there were fewer absent fathers than now.

“If you come from a strong family, you are way better positioned to become more successful,” Owens said.

Throughout her talk, Owens spoke about the irrelevance of feminism today. Asking Owens about this, an attendee argued that feminism is fighting for equality, not necessarily legally, but socially and culturally.

“What is it socially that we don’t have and men do?” Owens replied. “What are the real-world implications that somehow suggest to you that you are unequal to men?”

The attendee brought up sexual assault as something feminists fight against, and Owens and, “You don’t have to be a feminist to fight to end sexual assault.”

Owens, who used to consider herself an adamant liberal, related modern feminism as a threat to traditional masculinity, again a problem challenging traditional familial values.

Another attendee asked about Owen’s opinion on the federal government’s role in the education system. She replied, saying she lacked faith in the system and encouraged people to homeschool their children.

She also said she believes in school choice, which would allow parents to choose which school their kids get to attend and not be restricted to a particular school based on their tax bracket or the area they live in.

Owens shared personal experiences to connect with her audience and convey her message by pointing out statistics and facts.

It is not statistics, citations or numbers that genuinely influence our beliefs, but rather the experiences we live through and their impact on us.

Does this mean our worldview is limited to our experiences and conditions in our own life? On the contrary, our outlook on life can be broadened by exposure to others’ experiences and beliefs.

Hearing people share their opinions can resonate more than hearing a list of statistics and facts. It can enable us to understand where they come from and why they hold particular views while, at the same time, leading us to reflect on our own opinions and analyze how we came to those stances.

“When you really spend time with yourself, and you realize who you are, then the next step is to take a chance on yourself,” Owens stressed.

In America, she said, anyone has the ability to succeed, no matter the circumstances.

“You have to disbelieve the system that tells you, ‘you can’t unless you do it this way.’ You have to take a chance; that’s what America is about.”, Owens said, “Getting it wrong is okay; failure is okay. It’s about getting back up and trying again, so believe in yourself.”

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