Let the Man Speak

Colorado Representative and lunatic Tom Tancredo attracted a crowd when he spoke Thursday on the Michigan State University campus. The speech, sponsored by the College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom, drew dozens of protestors angry at Tancredo for his reactionary stance on illegal immigration – and almost every other issue.

The protestors heckled him and flew banners, and apparently pulled a fire alarm that caused the MSU building to be vacated. The battle resumed outside.

The brouhaha was documented in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. It quoted Tancredo this way: "It was pretty much what I recalled when I was in college myself during the old anti-war protests. Lots of kids, lots of screaming, lots of banners."

And something else. Tancredo deserves the right to speak. By abridging his freedoms, the protestors make a victim of Tancredo, and he ends up looking like(sort of) a good guy. By not letting him talk about building Berlin Wall-like fences on the borders and reasons that Miami is a Third World country, they allowed him to say something smart: "It was, on the one hand, an excellent expression of free speech on the part of demonstrators and the school allowing them to do that. On the other hand, it was a demonstration on the part of the demonstrators not to extend that to me."

That’s what I hated about campus battles of the sixties and seventies. I always said: “Let the man (or woman) speak.” On the University of South Carolina campus in the post-Kent State protests of 1970, a speech by Jane Fonda was interrupted when someone tossed a tear gas canister on stage. At the University of Florida in 1975, former South Vietnam strongman Nguyen Cao Ky was forced to escape via helicopter when protestors shouted him down. The irony of Ky’s escape by Huey was not lost on us.

My advice: “Let the man speak!”

The News reports that Tancredo has followers in Michigan, where he recently won one county's straw poll for would-be Republican presidential contenders. Kyle Bristow, chairman of the YAF at MSU, said this: “I hope so badly that he runs for president. So many people are willing to move to whatever state he goes to to help him campaign."

Meanwhile, Tancredo continued jousting with Jeb Bush and other Floridians after he commented that Miami resembles a "Third World country." Bush and Tancredo traded pointed letters, and Bush has dismissed Tancredo as a "nut."

Here’s the wrap-up from the RMN: Joe Garcia, executive vice president of the New Democrat Network and director of its Hispanic Strategy Center, used the Miami controversy to give Tancredo backhanded praise. "I'm a big fan of Tom Tancredo. I want to be the first guy to give him a check when he runs for president," Garcia said. "Morons like him gave us (Democrats) the House and Senate, and it's going to give us the White House, too." Tancredo laughed when he heard the comment Friday.

Read the entire story at the News’ web site.

One thing about this incident that surprised me: I didn’t know that YAF still existed on college campuses. I believe YAF was founded by William F. Buckley. It was strong at colleges in the 1960s, but I thought it had gone the way of the dinosaurs, much like Buckley conservatives. YAF and the SDS used to mix it up often during Vietnam protests. We called them yaffers and rednecks; the called us hippies and yippies and some four-letter terms. Are we experiencing a YAF revival? It might be a good thing, something to stem the neocon tide.