Spare Rib Insults Dead Servicemembers

*Addendum: The Review received a statement from Spare Rib staff that the reason for the inaccessibility of their website and articles was due to a web-host payment issue. The website and articles became inaccessible and the statement was received after the author reached out to the authors of “The Future the Right Wants” for comment.

The best reminders of why you don’t believe certain people should hold power often come from those people themselves. The staff of the Spare Rib are those people. 

In a two-part article series on the controversial October panel event sponsored by the College Republicans, authors Maanasi Shyno ’23, Ana Noriega Olazábal ’24, and Sophie Williams ’23 not only exemplify the funniest of limousine liberalism but the worst of it.

The first part, entitled “The Future the Right Wants,” offers no information about either the future or the Right’s vision for it. Instead, it rehashes the events of the night of October 24th​​—when Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), political consultant Alex Bruesewitz, and former Trump Administration official Karoline Leavitt spoke—and the controversy leading up to it.

I personally found it hilarious that the authors recounted how Dartmouth Democrat members had written chalk messages saying “freedom of speech, not freedom from responsibility” outside of Moore Hall, the event venue. They spoke of responsibility, yet did nothing to clean up the mess they made.

Another amusing moment in the article came when the authors made an aside about how conservatives were “confused” about the target of event protestors’ chant: “‘These racist cops have got to go!’”  There was no confusion as to whom the Dartmouth left was counting among “racist cops”: the lone Hanover Police officer stationed outside of the event.

Two paragraphs from the first part speak particularly to the character of those who opposed the panel. The first quotes a student who held a “‘protest’” in the middle of the event by yelling “‘it’s college policy to wear masks inside.’” The second paragraph describes how the protest ended when participants left due to “cold, weariness, and other obligations.” The Dartmouth leftist did not have arguments to refute the speakers, only College rules he wanted enforced against them, nor did he have the discipline to protest the entire event.

The second part in the series only added to the weaknesses of the first.

“Reactionaries attempt to twist the political responses of the left to fit narratives of intolerance, but the fact of the matter is we are intolerant — of prejudice and of our own discrimination. And why shouldn’t we be?” the authors declare at one point. 

Another line states that the College’s permitting of the event and others like it “makes room for harm financially, physically, and emotionally” and “enables people whose beliefs and goals are antithetical to other people’s existence to feel safe, heard, and in good company.”

It is impossible to take the second piece as seriously as its earlier counterpart. If this event really was discriminatory and harmful, to the point of being “antithetical” to some people’s existence, wouldn’t the protestors at the panel have protested harder? Did protestors really believe the event was a threat to their existence when they could not even be bothered to stay outside?

But alas, coherence between rhetoric and action is not something that we should come to expect from the left.

The worst part of both pieces came in “The Future the Right Wants” when Shyno, Noriega Olazábal, and Williams described the panel’s discussion of the twelve Marines and Navy Corpsman who fell at the hands of a suicide bomber during the disastrous evacuation of Kabul. They wrote: 

“Each speaker mentioned the 13 marines who ‘gave the ultimate sacrifice’ at least once. Focusing so strongly on the loss of thirteen lives equates the intentional occupation and suffering of an entire country with the death of 13 Americans who chose to help occupy. When Cawthorn did mention other casualties, it was in the phrase ‘thousands of ours’ dead, clearly demarcating the difference between the value of American and Afghan lives to the Republican (and, judging by their actions, Democratic) party.”

The ungrateful arrogance of the statement that our fallen servicemembers “chose to help occupy” needs no explanation. However, when I first read this paragraph, I wondered whether the authors might have misphrased their point. But when I gave all three a chance to clarify, only one responded.

Williams wrote the following:

“Thanks for reaching out. Estimated casualties in the War in Afghanistan exceed 240,000, with 2,400 casualties for the United States. Amplifying only some individual losses devalues the individual lives of the people in the invaded country.

Though personal responsibility remains, many that decide to join the US military service are impoverished or see few better options. The United States ruling class directs military action to benefit those in power, even to the detriment of those in service, and this destruction is in those powerful hands. That is what we denounce.”

While I do not deny that our invasions caused far more civilian than military deaths in Afghanistan, her statement did nothing to explain why she utilized the phrasing she did. She put on the costume of an enlightened leftist who ‘blames the politicians, not the troops’ but failed to disavow her previously expressed view that the twelve fallen Marines and a Navy Corpsman “chose to help occupy.” She and her co-authors did indeed denounce our military dead.

Their article and the publication that brought it to print deserve our condemnation.

However, it seems that the Spare Rib may not be up to the task of defending what it publishes.* Both articles, along with the entire Spare Rib website, conveniently no longer show up on Google. (Nevertheless, the Review has made HTML saves of both webpages, which can be accessed here and here.)

It remains to be seen whether this was intentional, but such behavior is consistent with the modus operandi of Dartmouth leftists.

They claim to vanguard a revolution for the benefit of some indeterminate working class, then make more work for the College employees they encounter everyday. They claim to denounce only elite warmongers, then insult twelve dead Marines and a Navy Corpsman. They claim to fight injustice, but only so long as their Canada Gooses keep them feeling toasty.

They claim to invite disagreement and debate, but only until you identify their reprehensibility.