I Wish They'd Save Me a Slice

Voltaire famously prayed to God to make his enemies ridiculous. God, according to Voltaire, granted the wish. Voltaire’s adversaries probably would not have agreed that God had made them ridiculous, or that they were ridiculous at all, but it’s a rare man who loses an argument in his own head. We’re all sure, like Voltaire, that our best argument will win the day. And we’re right…in our own minds. Clarence Darrows unto ourselves, every one of us.

But the universal desire behind Voltaire’s hopeful prayer is undeniable; there is something wonderful about a self-important and self-righteous person with whom we disagree being exposed as silly. However, it is important to remember that Voltaire prayed to God to make his enemies ridiculous because his own ridicule alone was not enough to prove that his enemies were silly fools. And it is important to remember that throwing a pie at your adversary is not the same thing as God making your enemy ridiculous. Throwing that pie is you attempting to make your enemy ridiculous through your own actions. There is a big difference.

Throwing pies at visiting conservative speakers has become something of a fad on college campuses. William Kristol and David Horowitz have been hit in recent weeks at Indiana colleges; Ann Coulter herself was able to avoid being pied in Kansas only through agility and luck. As far as juvenile campus behavior goes, it’s not so bad. It’s uncomfortable and humiliating to get a pie in the face, and I suppose someone’s nose could get broken, but we’re not talking Weathermen-type behavior here. On a superficial level, it can often be sort of amusing. Politically, it makes those egregiously liberal college students look spoiled, mean, and out of control. Rhetorically, the action fails on its face.

Why? The reason the young pier of William Kristol gave for his actions was that he wished to mock what he considered a superficial dialogue about American foreign policy. In other words, he wanted to expose the ridiculousness of Kristol’s points. Fair enough. I don’t read William Kristol’s magazine or watch him on TV, so I don’t know what he has to say about American foreign policy, but since he apparently believes that preemptive war is a good way to bring about political change, I’d say that exposing his arguments as ridiculous is probably worth some effort.

Unfortunately, God has not made William Kristol ridiculous. Lots of people still agree with him. For whatever reason, the man has ideological weight with a large section of society. Some people just think that wars in general and Iraq wars in particular are good ways to deal with nasty political realities. Here at the Blasphemy Blog, we tend to think that wars are engines of destruction and death that cannot be controlled and always have horrid, untold consequences for the future, usually having to do with the unquenchable human desire for vengeance when we are wronged. But that’s just the Blasphemy Blog and a couple of our friends. Most other people feel different. And those other people are wrong, but they are not ridiculous. Too many people agree with them for them to be so.

What I think has happened on college campuses is that students are getting tired of waiting for God to make William Kristol ridiculous. So they reach for the meringue.

But they’ve got to stop with that. Why? Voltaire was wrong. Even a schizophrenic is not ridiculous in his own head. William Kristol is a man who has thought a lot about what he believes. He’s got a lot invested in those beliefs, personally and professionally. Throw a pie at him, and what does he do? He steels himself, as a righteous man will do when faced with persecution. Most of us are arrogant enough that we feel persecuted even when people aren’t throwing anything at us. Most of us feel that we are misunderstood geniuses. The desire not to be misunderstood any more drives us. Throwing a pie at William Kristol just gave his drive some extra drive. Meanwhile, his financial backers are busy updating their fundraising material. They’ve got drive, too. And, if we don’t choose carefully they way we respond to them, they’re going to run us all over.