What truth marched on Columbia's stage?

Oh loop, how far out of you I am! Blame upcoming midterms, research assignments, and memoranda writing for the delay.

I just browsed the Feministing blog for some inspiration. If I feel something I've written in response to their stories is worth repeating, I'll copy/paste it on over there.

From a story posted on October 5, 2006: "Students Protest Anti-Immigration Speaker"

I heard a few people in my social group discussing this Friday afternoon. Apparently at Columbia University, a group of students rushed the stage to protest speaker Jim Gilchrist, founder of a grassroots anti-immigration organization called The Minuteman Project. There's a clip running on YouTube showing what exactly happened at the incident. My conservative friends castigated the students storming the stage in protest, calling the entire proceeding "rude" and "uncivilized," and labeling the students as "liberal wackjobs."

Since I'm currently on dial-up service (and I have a few choice words for Verizon tomorrow, who charged my bank account after telling me that my service would be free until they return my DSL service), I'm still waiting to watch the YouTube clip before passing judgment. I'm currently writhing in a liberal catch-22. John Stuart Mill (yes, I'm going there) has a famous quote from On Liberty about censorship, and so does John F. Kennedy.

Mill's quote:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

JFK's quote:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Now I personally think anti-immigration policies are racist and xenophobic in nature and only promote hatemongering amongst whites against people who are not recognizable to them and do not conform to their standards. That is my view of the entire situation in an incredibly condensed nutshell. I think the national security issue is merely a convenient lacy coverlet for this rotted and charring mess of denying people citizenship they've earned while living and working here. I agree with the sentiment of the protesters that the promulgation of this program is deplorable.

However, I disagree wholeheartedly with their approach of challenging the promulgation. I nearly shuddered when I realized I agreed with my friends. Rude does not describe this behavior adequately. Advocating decorum in challenging someone's opinions is not advocating timidity in opposing the opinion. However, the temerity of these students should not be condoned; nothing constructive or informative spawned from that display.

That video illustrates a deplorable display of entitlement on the part of those students. (If a group of students with brown faces mounted the stage screaming with banners, do you think those cops would have stood idly by, watching the fray? Do you think a measly cordon would have surfaced? I would not be surprised if very minimal disciplinary actions -- if any -- were taken.) And why the hell were the people sponsoring the event allowed to abuse the protesters?

Are there no legitimate challenges to what this man would have said that the students resorted to mobbing him? Is the battle against anti-immigration speech so bleak that this was the only challenge liberal Columbia students could offer? I'm depressed that I actually agree with the asshole at the end of that video. (His jabs at the Democratic party lost me, as well as his assertion that "no conservative" would behave in that manner after witnessing how the opposition actually got into a fight with the bannerholders in front of the podium. Plus, I hate ridiculous dichotomies in general.)

I suppose a discussion of the merits of peaceful protest versus boisterous protest could arise, and whether either style of protest has any merit in a country where its citizenry barely musters the energy to vote in political elections. Another discussion could surface on whose minds these students intended to change or to influence with their madcap dash onto the stage. Were they merely intending to preach to the choir of their supporters, and if so, what would be gained by such a show?

I also wonder what Gilchrist will say at his next speaking engagement to his new audience. Will he describe how the presence of "illegal aliens" has brought out the "wackjob" tendencies in lily-white privileged America while showing this video? What challenge would these students issue then? Would they shoot the projectors and storm the halls?