5 Bizarre Conservative Theories About the Mizzou and Yale Protests
Three days after University of Missouri President Timothy Wolfe resigned amid student protests over a racially intolerant environment at the school, tensions continue to flare: Mizzou’s black students have been the target of anonymous death threats, students are clashing with their professors as well as their fellow students, and there have been skirmishes between Mizzou protesters and reporters trying to cover the story. The situation at Mizzou comes on the heels of protests at Yale that have raised questions about free-speech rights versus the rights of students to be protected from racism.
There are clearly problems simmering on the Columbia and New Haven campuses, but what are those problems, exactly? Conservative politicians and pundits have some theories.
Chris Christie: Thanks, Obama.
When asked about protests over racism at places like Mizzou and Yale, Christie told a reporter at a campaign stop in Iowa Thursday that it’s Obama’s fault, basically. “I think part of this is a product of the president’s own unwillingness and inability to bring people together,” Christie said. “When people think justice is not applied evenly and fairly, they take matters into their own hands. The lawlessness that the president has allowed to exist in this country just absolutely strips people of hope.”
Donald Trump: If only I worked at Mizzou.
“I think the two people who resigned are weak, ineffective people,” Trump told Fox Business News Thursday, referring to Wolfe as well as the school’s chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, who was pushed out as well. “When they resigned, they set something in motion that’s going to be a disaster for the next long period of time.”
“Trump should have been the chancellor of that university,” he went on. “There would be no resignation.”
In the same interview, Trump called the protests “disgraceful” and “disgusting.”
Ben Carson: We’re all just too tolerant.
The neurosurgeon turned presidential hopeful believes tolerance is to blame for the problems simmering on college campuses this week.
“We’re being a little bit too tolerant, I guess you might say, accepting infantile behavior,” Carson told Fox’s Megyn Kelly Thursday. “I don’t care which side it comes from. To say that I have the right to violate your civil rights because you’re offending me is un-American. It is unconstitutional.”
He went on to argue that “the officials at these places must recognize that and have the moral courage to stand up to it. Because if they don’t, it will grow, it will exacerbate the situation and we will move much further toward anarchy than anybody can imagine, and much more quickly.”
Rand Paul: The problem is censorship — of racists.
“I think freedom of speech is very, very important. Does freedom of speech mean there will be boorish people who say things you don’t want to associate with? Yes,” Paul said Tuesday. “But really in a free society, there’s got to be a place for people to make their argument.”
USA Today: Raise the voting age.
“Those too fragile to handle different opinions are too fragile to participate in politics,” Instapundit‘s Glenn Reynolds wrote in USA Today this week. “So maybe we should raise the voting age to 25, an age at which, one fervently hopes, some degree of maturity will have set in. It’s bad enough to have to treat college students like children. But it’s intolerable to be governed by spoiled children.”