The Reckoning of Rauner Library

On March 2nd, Rauner Fel­low MazKenzie Wilson gave a presentation titled “Greed is Good: The Development of a Reagan-era Youth Conserva­tive Movement as Led by The Dartmouth Review.” Naturally, this caught the attention of The Review staff, as the pa­per is not unfamiliar with re­peated attempts by what can charitably be referred to as scholars and their attempts to characterize the history of The Review. Sadly for Dart­mouth, it appears as if this presentation suffers from the many mischaracterizations and outright fabrications that plague many of the so-called historical accounts of The Re­view.

For starters, the presenta­tion omits or misrepresents several important events in the paper’s history. Just to name a few, Wilson erroneous­ly recounts The Review’s early incidents with William Cole’s Music 2 class by Laura Ingra­ham, conveniently leaving out the fact that Cole confronted Ingraham, a young college student, at her dorm room, alarming her roommates, and acting deranged. Wilson, fur­thermore, argued that Dart­mouth indicated a willingness to “allow” The Review to con­tinue using Dartmouth in its name, leaving out the fact that Dartmouth had exhausted all legal options in its frivolous lawsuit against The Review’s name, in which it was pointed out that numerous businesses in the Hanover area were us­ing the College’s name them­selves. Moreover, Wilson took several minutes to describe the inserting of lines from Mein Kampf in an issue in an early ’90s issue of The Review, neglecting to mention, until questioned by a Review staff­er, the fact that The Review claimed sabotage of the paper, and attempted to work close­ly with the Adminsitration to locate the sabateur, an en­treaty which was rejected by then-President Friedman.

That larger problem of mis­directed interpretation was reflected elsewhere in the pre­sentation, which also strug­gled with historical accuracy in its treatment of The Dart­mouth Review, especially re­garding the highly publicized clash between Laura Ingra­ham and Professor Bill Cole. The fellow presented a heavi­ly skewed narrative, claiming that The Review had secret­ly recorded Cole without his consent. But as Ingraham her­self made clear during her re­cent visit to Dartmouth, a visit the fellow admitted she missed because she was “out of town,” the recording took place at a fully public event. The presen­tation likewise attributed The Review’s successful $300,000 legal defense fundraising campaign solely to wealthy “conservative alumni,” while conveniently omitting the ac­tual catalyst for that support: Cole’s own conduct. Accord­ing to Ingraham’s recollection, Cole appeared at her dorm room on a Saturday morning, demanding an apology, then spent his next class calling her every swear word in the book.

Mackenzie Wilson con­cluded her presentation with a slide condemning the “pes­simistic” tone of conserva­tism espoused by The Dart­mouth Review. During the Q&A, a staffer asked whether she meant to contrast a pes­simistic conservatism with an optimistic conservatism, or whether she viewed con­servatism itself as inherently pessimistic. Her response was measured, if brief. She said that she regarded Reagan’s movement as optimistic, and that the conservative move­ment after his presidency had soured into pessimism.

There is some truth in that intuition, but it misidentifies the real object of conservative pessimism. Consider Reagan’s 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech endorsing Barry Gold­water. On its face, the speech is pessimistic, but its pes­simism is directed squarely at the excesses of the federal government. After criticizing high taxes and even higher spending, Reagan addressed this very charge: “Yet any­time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we’re always ‘against’ things — we’re nev­er ‘for’ anything.” The liberal policies Reagan criticized of­ten sound noble in principle, which makes them difficult to attack rhetorically. But their contribution to fraud, waste, abuse, scarcity, poverty, and decline is difficult not to view pessimistically. That is why conservatism is so often called pessimistic: it is critical of an oversized federal bureaucracy precisely because it believes that bureaucracy stands in the way of a better, more hopeful future for Americans.

After all, it is conservatives who continue to affirm Amer­ican exceptionalism and the rule of law, rather than see­ing racism and discrimina­tion around every corner and seeking to dismantle nearly every institution imaginable. When Rand Paul visited cam­pus at the end of last term, he polled the audience and found that an overwhelming major­ity believed America’s best days were still ahead. That is the future of the conservative movement we recognize: one that is hopeful about what lies ahead, but realistic about the difficulties of getting there. The only way out is through, and, as Reagan concluded, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.”

By leaving out these cru­cial details, the presentation raised serious questions about the credibility and thorough­ness of the fellow’s research. If Rauner Library intends this fellowship to produce seri­ous historical work, it should strongly consider extending it to two terms rather than one. With adequate time for more rigorous review, audiences might be spared a presenta­tion that managed to pack nearly a dozen glaring mis­representations into less than an hour.