I recall well my first moments at the Virginia Military Institute. On a blistering August day in 1969, I matriculated as a “Rat”—a freshman in any other college—to begin four years of arduous study and military regime. Cadre Sergeants—those who instructed us on good order and discipline—were our constant “minders”. We didn’t do anything beyond their constant and demanding oversight. It was necessary. We mostly submitted and we were better for it. But that was a military environment, one like many others experience in basic training in the armed services. Military discipline is necessary to instill the instincts one needs in battle. But most of civilian life doesn’t require a Spartan existence, much less a person screaming at the top of their lungs on why “you’ll never make it, Rat!” That was one type of inspiration, but not the sort you find in a normal life lived freely.
We, however, will find “minders” in every aspect of life. I’ve had them in varying degrees from the first day I walked into my Kindergarten classroom to the calm and sedate English 101 professor who gave me a D- on the first composition I wrote. He didn’t scream insults at me, but left me shocked when he concluded that writing conference by saying “keep up the good work.” That alone left me thinking that I’d “never make it.”
Minders are not a bad thing to have, albeit in the right dosage. But in the body politic, an overdose of minders can be toxic to freedom. Today the American terrain is saturated with minders.
Nowhere is that more evident—and ominous—than on the campuses of our universities. There you find campus minders who care a lot about your speech, not to protect it, but rather to control what comes out of your mouth, where you speak it, and how. Recent efforts to abridge “offensive speech” on campuses—sparing the tender ears of some people who do not like to hear opinions they disagree with—is a case in point. Speech codes now detail not only words and ideas that a person can and cannot articulate, but to whom. These code-minders believe you have a “right” not to be offended, an idea that is specious. If such a right existed there would be no remedy—a prerequisite of all true rights—to protect it without punishing millions of people who say ignorant and offensive things every day. Indeed it’s not uncommon for students and their radical professorial minders to demand that certain intellectuals, politicians, or advocates of a particular point of view—frequently conservatives—be banned from appearing on campuses, based solely on what they will say. In some cases, universities have designated “free speech zones” to allow certain speech that may be controversial and injurious to the delicate ears of easily offended people. Nothing better than confining, for example, a controversial speaker to a campus gazebo in an obscure area where 15 people can gather.
Even the COVID-19 pandemic has managed to proliferate minders. Several states are planning to hire thousands of people to do “contact tracing” to follow us around. No harm in that, right? Besides, if minders monitoring someone’s physical locations is a good idea, why not thought ms”dsinders? In Virginia, the governor has mandated the wearing of masks inside all businesses, punishable by a year in prison. Yet he has said law enforcement won’t enforce the requirement, but implying that businesses could lose their license to operate if they don’t play policeman. Police chiefs are officially opposed to this, fearing ensuing customer confrontations that will require frequent police intervention while damaging public relations all around. But if restaurants can be mask minders, why not healthy diet minders?
In his essay “God in the Dock”, Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis warns us of this:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
The circumambient minders of our age do much within the bounds of their
own consciences to “torment us for our own good,” whether we agree or not as a matter of our own conscience. We should beware of people who would weaken our freedoms to advance their own version. Their idea of freedom suggests that they are better able to think for us, speak our words, and orchestrate our actions than we are ourselves. We do not need or want such help to remain free and answerable to our own consciences.
PS: My book Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War is doing very well. But you can help me by visiting my book pages on Amazon and Goodreads to write a personal review. Give it your best rating so other readers know you liked it! Thanks!
0 Comments