[219] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Objectivisim or Facism?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Craighead)
Fri Apr 27 03:14:11 2001
Message-ID: <3AE91D24.72EC0FAC@mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 03:17:56 -0400
From: Matt Craighead <craighea@MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
CC: Benjamin A Chambers <bac@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
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As president of the MIT Objectivist Club, I would like to reply
officially to these outrageous slanders made against our club.
I would like to point out, first of all, that although Ms. Smith does
not specifically mention this in her email, she and her friend came very
late to our lecture -- just 15 minutes or so from the end. As soon as
she arrived, she began to whisper and giggle, audible to the entire
audience. This was extremely disrespectful to all of the other people
who had come to the lecture to hear what our speaker, Mr. Salsman, had
to say.
Ms. Smith says of the speech itself that it was "lot's of 'proof by
rhetoric' in a long-winded speech". Now, I thoroughly disagree with
this statement, but I would just like to point out that Ms. Smith is not
qualified to talk about the speech itself, because she did not hear most
of it!
Since this was not clear to some people who attended, allow me to
explain what exactly a "lecture with question and answer session" is.
In such a lecture, first, the lecturer gives his speech. He has the
floor for this entire time. Then, during the question and answer
session, members of the audience _ask questions_, and the lecturer
_answers_ these questions. In the question and answer session, the
people who ask questions are usually expected to keep their questions
short and to the point, because to do otherwise wastes the time of all
the other people around. If someone wishes to engage in protracted
debate with the lecturer, he or she can always wait until _after_ the
lecture is over; this is a much more appropriate way to carry on
conversations of that nature.
Remember that in all cases, the goal of every rational participant at a
lecture is to _learn_. People come to hear what the lecturer has to
say. They then ask questions to get clarifications of topics they did
not feel were addressed well enough in the lecture, or to learn more
about what the lecturer believes. If you keep in mind that learning is
the proper goal of the attendees, it becomes clear that, for example,
you should ask questions not for political reasons, but because you
expect to learn something from the answer. Likewise, you should ask
questions that are _answerable_; an unanswerable question's answer
cannot, by definition, teach you anything.
Let's apply this simple framework to the events that transpired on the
night of Thursday, April 19.
During the lecture (i.e., before the Q&A), there was a woman in the back
of the audience who shouted out remarks several times. This was
disruptive and very rude to our speaker. I felt that Mr. Salsman
handled these remarks quite well. He replied to these remarks briefly,
and then he continued on his speech. This occurred only a few times
during the course of the speech, so we were able to continue as planned.
During the Q&A, however, things became much more problematic. As I
stated before, in a Q&A, questions should be short and to the point, and
questions are not speeches. However, a number of the people asking
questions did not understand this. Some of the "questions" droned on
for a long time before Mr. Salsman, aware that we did not have all
night, interrupted these people, asking them exactly what their question
was. Mr. Salsman was entirely justified in doing so -- after all, to
allow someone to drone on for minutes wastes the time of everyone else
in the room!
Furthermore, some of these "questions" were not just long; they were not
even questions, but disconnected ramblings. Imagine that someone asked
a question that touched on 10 different topics. If you were the
lecturer, this would be completely outrageous -- there's no way you can
be expected to reply to so many topics at the same time. So, good
questions (keeping in mind the proper goal of participants -- learning)
focus on just a few topics, and even when a question has multiple
topics, it is generally best to break it up explicitly by saying, for
example, "I have a two-part question; first, what do you think about
XYZ, second, what do you think about ABC?"
Unfortunately, many "questions" did not live up to these standards.
One question started as a long, rambling question about some study that
found that happiness did not increase significantly after people reached
a certain level of wealth. The question was taking too long, so Mr.
Salsman interrupted and wanted to get to the real question. But pretty
soon, the person asking the question broke off the question and simply
asked Mr. Salsman, "Do you like sex?" (Completely out of the blue!) He
answered "yes, next question"; but then the person persisted, continuing
on and on with more questions/speeches/etc.
One woman turned her speech into a question by beginning it as follows
(paraphrased): "What do you think about the following quote?" She then
proceeded to give some quote that blamed all sorts of random things on
evil businesses and evil chemicals. It touched on everything from
starvation to obese people, greedy companies to penis size. (The quote
itself did not make this clear; it was implied that it was human penis
size, but I learned later that the chemical mentioned had actually been
found to reduce _alligator_ penis size. So much for truth.)
The only way to answer such a quote is to break it down into each
_individual_ claim and answer each one separately. However, when Mr.
Salsman tried to insist that the person asking the question do this,
i.e., make each claim one at a time and give him a chance to reply, a
number of people in the audience started bursting out in a frenzy. Mr.
Salsman was repeatedly accused of being a "fascist" by a number of
people in the audience. Many also insisted that he was infringing on
their "free speech".
Remember that free speech does _not_ mean that you can say anything you
want, any time you want, anywhere you want. Specifically, on private
property, the owner of the property can set any terms he or she wishes
as to what speech is to be allowed (or what actions are to be allowed,
or who is allowed on the property, or anything; it's their property,
after all!). The owner of the property is fully justified in kicking
out anyone who does not obey those rules. Fundamentally, you do not
have the right to expropriate someone else's private property for your
own use.
We could engage in a legal debate about what exact rights a student
group that reserves a room has over what can and cannot be permitted,
but that's not the point here. I will point out that a student group
clearly does have a significant degree of control over the room,
because, for example, if you enter a room that you have reserved and
someone else is in there, you are allowed to kick them out. It is
slightly risky to generalize this principle, but I would argue that a
student group reserving a room must certainly be allowed to (1) decide
what conduct is appropriate and inappropriate in that setting, and (2)
remove people who violate that code of conduct.
Mr. Salsman interrupting a questioner is most definitely _not_ a
violation of free speech. What free speech means is that if someone
disagrees with our club's beliefs or Mr. Salsman's beliefs, they can
peacefully disagree elsewhere. For example, someone could reserve a
different room and bring in a speaker who supports environmentalism;
_that_ is what free speech is about. Furthermore, if interrupting a
person _were_ a violation of free speech (it isn't), the agitators in
the audience would also, under the same argument, be violating Mr.
Salsman's right to free speech. The argument does not hold.
I will point out that there were some good questions during this period
as well. Some people, who may not have agreed with everything Mr.
Salsman said, asked reasonable, logical questions, and Mr. Salsman gave
good answers. This goes to show that so long as people behave
rationally, even people who disagree can get along just fine.
Now, I would have loved for the Q&A to have been peaceful, but it was
not. Once Mr. Salsman insisted that the claims be presented one at a
time, he began to respond to them one at a time. He answered a claim
about capitalism causing slavery by saying that it was the capitalist,
industrialist North that defeated the agrarian, collectivist South, and
that capitalism is in fact incompatible with slavery. He then responded
to a claim about the British Empire by claiming that the British Empire
brought civilization to India and other parts of the world (something
that is an indisputable fact).
However, at this point, Ms. Smith (who had been laughing out loud and
interfering with the lecture, as she points out in her email) crossed
the line. She shouted out, "You're being racist to my friend here!"
(apologies if this is a misquote)
Mr. Salsman asked these people to leave several times. They refused.
Mr. Salsman claimed that he had paid for the podium and that he had a
right to speak himself in the time allotted; this was actually not
correct (the room reservation is free for student groups), but the
question of whether the room was purchased or not is irrelevant. Mr.
Salsman was correct in stating that our club owned the floor, so to
speak.
Around this time I and another club member, as well as the Harvard
Objectivist Club president, all agreed that it was appropriate to call
the MIT Campus Police, because the situation was getting completely out
of hand. The Q&A was not peaceful; it was Mr. Salsman struggling to
deal with a mob, who would take every opportunity to shout "fascist!"
and more "free speech" claims at him. I did not see any actual physical
violence (I don't know if any occurred while I left to call), but to say
that the room was tense would be an understatement.
I told the police that the situation was getting out of control and that
people were causing trouble. They said they'd send someone over.
I would like to point out that I consider my decision to call the police
completely justified by the facts of the situation. I did the right
thing. I stand by my choice.
Shortly thereafter, 4 (?) police members arrived. They asked Mr.
Salsman who was causing trouble, and he pointed to the woman in the back
who had interrupted him during the lecture and had also caused trouble
during the Q&A. There can be no dispute that this woman had most
_definitely_ caused disruptions. The police officer asked the audience
whether this was true, and the whole side of the room that had been
shouting insults at Mr. Salsman burst out, shouting, "No, she didn't!"
A bunch of other people replied that yes, she did.
Unfortunately, one of the police officers decided to do one of the worst
possible things in such a situation. He said, (paraphrased) "this is a
democratic society; let's take a vote."
I'd like to pause for a moment to reflect on the inanity of this
statement. Imagine that you are a police officer and show up at a crime
scene; a man has been shot. There's a big puddle of blood on the
sidewalk, and there's a guy you see nearby who is holding a gun. There
are also several other people standing there. Do you (1) arrest the guy
with the gun and ask questions later, or (2) ask the people who might
have witnessed the crime, "this is a democratic society; let's take a
vote"? It should be completely obvious that in a free society, the
police are _not_ a democratic organization. The purpose of the police
is to preserve order and to apprehend and detain persons suspected of
crimes; it is the purpose of the court system to sort out matters of
guilt later. It is ridiculously inappropriate for a police officer, in
_any_ situation, to take a vote.
The police decided to take no action whatsoever. Go figure. (I am
planning on filing an official complaint against the MIT Campus Police
for this.)
Fortunately, most of the people who had caused trouble decided to leave
at this point. I take exception to Ms. Smith's claim that "all the
reasonable people left after the cop incident exposed what a wacko the
speaker was"; in fact, I met a number of the people who stayed around
afterwards, and all of them were actually quite nice individuals.
After the people causing trouble left, in fact, the remainder of the Q&A
was much better. The woman in the back who had interrupted Mr. Salsman
many times earlier stayed around, but Mr. Salsman adopted a simple
solution to her constant interruptions (and yes, they were indeed
constant): he simply talked over her. All of us were quite grateful
that he did so. If this woman had cared to engage in a rational
discourse with Mr. Salsman, she could have stayed around afterwards to
talk to him, but she did not do so; she simply left without saying a
word to him.
A few other small notes on some of the content in Ms. Smith's email...
The "white skinhead looking guy", who happens to be our club's
ex-treasurer (he recently dropped out of this position due to
classwork), was entirely justified in what he said. Although he did
speak somewhat aggressively to some of the people disrupting the
lecture, the actions these people had already taken entirely merited his
response. I'm not convinced what he did was the _best_ response, but,
really, this was well past the point where it mattered; the Q&A had
already degenerated. (And no, although he does shave his head, that
does not make him a "skinhead" or any of the other epithets associated
with that term. You know the epithets I'm talking about.)
As for the claim that Mr. Salsman said that private property would
eliminate pollution, anyone who actually attended the _whole_ lecture
(not just the end and the Q&A) would know that Mr. Salsman explicitly
stated that this was _not_ true! In fact, he made a point during his
lecture of saying that pollution isn't really a bad thing -- so long as
we don't have to live in it (for the same reasons that we have sewage
systems). He made it quite clear (as if anyone didn't already know)
that pollution is a necessary byproduct of any natural process (animals,
humans, factories, anything), and that our goal should not be the
elimination of pollution per se, but instead finding ways to deal with
pollution. Ms. Smith is clearly misrepresenting Mr. Salsman's views.
As for the environmentalists being fascists, I fully agree with Mr.
Salsman's claim that environmental regulations are destroying our
freedom. If you want, go ahead and disagree, but this doesn't have any
real relevance to this discussion.
Finally, as for Ms. Smith's final paragraph, where she attacks Mr.
Salsman's views on a variety of subjects, once again, she clearly did
not understand his points in the lecture. Mr. Salsman's fundamental
claim was that there are two beliefs that environmentalists hold that
are destructive, especially when put together. First, the claim that
"nature has intrinsic value." Second, the claim that "man is not part
of nature." Putting together these two claims, the logical conclusion
would be that "man is evil." Anyone who upholds these two claims
_consistently_ (let's be clear on this; there are many people who hold
inconsistent beliefs) must believe that man is evil. Any such person
must fundamentally believe in the destruction of mankind. Any such
person is, in the end, evil. Now, many environmentalists escape this by
holding inconsistent beliefs -- but inconsistent beliefs can also only
lead to destruction.
Now, I'm not writing this email to argue in favor of Mr. Salsman's
arguments. I agree completely with his arguments, and I think his
speech was excellent. I think the event was good but disappointing in a
few aspects (specifically, the first part of the Q&A); if only it had
not been hijacked in the way it was, it could have been excellent.
Instead, I am writing to urge you to listen to the facts of what
_really_ happened on the evening of Thursday, April 19, and to urge you
to not listen to distortions of these facts.
I would like to close by asking you to think about the motivations of
the people who attacked our lecture in the way they did. Many of these
people arrived late. One interrupted during the lecture. One whispered
and giggled, angering others and disrupting the event. Many accused our
speaker of being a "fascist." Many asked "questions" that were
rambling, disconnected, extended beyond any reasonable length. I said
earlier that a rational participant in a lecture comes to the lecture to
_learn_. When you look at the actions of these people, what do you
see? Do you see rational people? Do you see people who came to our
lecture to learn more about "Capitalism and the Environment"? Or do you
see the actions of irresponsible people who came to our lecture to
_destroy_ -- to *prevent* others from learning?
I can assure you, as the president of our club, that when I think back
over what happened that evening, that the actions of these people were
_not_ motivated by the desire to learn. They were indeed motivated by
the desire to destroy.
Given this, their disruptive and destructive actions during the lecture
are not surprising at all.
I have no interest in debating this topic further. I have said
everything that needs to be said here already. These are the facts of
the case, and that's all there is to it. If you have any specific
problems, I would suggest that you reply to me _in person_, but I can
already assure you that I absolutely stand by everything that I did and
everything that Mr. Salsman did, and nothing that anyone else says or
does will change that.
--
Matt Craighead, MIT Class of 2002
President, MIT Objectivist Club
http://web.mit.edu/objectivism/www/
Aimee L Smith wrote:
>
> My friend and I stopped by the objectivist lecture this evening.
>
> The usual, lot's of "proof by rhetoric" in a long-winded speech.
>
> The interesting part is that during the Q&A, the speaker got very defensive,
> would cut off the questioners who disagreed, got upset when people
> in the audience had to laugh (like myself-- some points were beyond
> belief, s.a if we privatize all air, then pollution will end... has
> this guy ever heard of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? The shit is going to
> mix...) Nevertheless, things really got interesting when the organizers
> called in the police. 3 mit police came, one in a helmet. The speaker
> than seemed relieved and informed the officers that someone in the
> audience was being disruptive. The officer in helmet asked which and the
> speaker pointed to the woman whose question he kept interupting. And yet,
> he claims the environmentalists, (That's right, that unified highly
> organized body that includes occaisional recyclers and earth-firsters alike)
> are the fascists. Several people in the audience defended the woman and the
> officer then said, "How about we take a vote then?" Now, we all thought
> we were in a university, but then the speaker informed us that he had
> paid for the podium. What I don't get is why they didn't inform us
> that is was an infomercial from the get-go. I mean, being a university
> and all, we assumed it was an open exchange of ideas. Anyhow, after that the
> officers left and the speaker was aghast that the police did not play the
> role he expected-- defenders of the interests of the ruling class elites...
> (I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised myself...)
>
> I have to admit, I stopped trying to be respectful to the speaker after
> he claimed that capitalism is what ended slavery and that English colonization
> was a liberation for the Indian people... I guess I feel that the delicate
> balance between free-speech and the espousing of racial hatred against which
> could serve as an unfar barrier to inclusion to certain of the audience was
> pushed a bit too far (I know Prez would disagree... but then, I only
> quickly laughed and then voiced disgust at his racism... I didn't tell him
> to shut up or leave.)
>
> All the reasonable people left after the cop incident exposed what a wacko
> the speaker was.
>
> And the only person who actually yelled at anyone in a threatening manner
> was this white skinhead looking guy... but naturally, he wasn't the
> disruptive one as he supported the speakers views...
>
> I am pretty disappointed. I can understand people having differing views,
> but why is this guy so scared to yield the floor for a few minutes after he
> had already used his "purchased" podium for well over an hour? Why did he
> group all sorts of disparit things together to make his point, yet when others
> did the same to make theirs, he called them irrational? Why did he say all
> environmentalists think aids is a good thing? This one sure doesn't and
> there is a whole section of Boston Global Action Network that works on this
> particular issue... in fact, I never met such an environmentalist yet,
> although anything is possible...
