The campus turmoil is way, way out of hand. The University of Southern California (USC) has cancelled commencement altogether lest they suffer protests. (About the only thing the host and I agree on regarding sports is that USC should be beaten in all sport at all times in any circumstance.) Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday that what is happening on campuses is a leadership crisis. That’s putting it mildly. Glenn Reynolds has responded by inviting Jewish students to southern universities, because we don’t tolerate this stuff. Reynolds acts as if we in the South just like everybody – and we do. But it is deeper than that.

What is ingrained in the south is respect for the law and decency, in large part because the law there has not been trivialized by trying to dictate every tiny aspect of life. I live out in the country and there are some homes in the area that are “ill kept,” to be polite. I was riding with a tow truck driver a few days ago and he commented on it. I told him that after years in California with very strict municipal standards and a community associations to boot, that such homes were, to me, freedom. Yeah, they are eye sores, but in California they would be another tent on the sidewalk, if not jailed for creating a public nuisance.

It is illegal to build “villages” on university commons. Vandalism is illegal. Harassment is illegal. Assault is illegal. We have even gone so far as to make “hate” criminal in some circumstances. I don’t care what these people think or believe, who they support or who they despise, they are engaged in illegal activity and as such they are subject to law enforcement. But we have so trivialized law in this age of gross over regulation that no one really cares any more.

Regardless of the response to these protests, the massive spread of them indicates organization. The utter ignorance of some participating in the protests indicates they are being manipulated. That manipulation is enabled to some extent by a romantic nostalgia for the protest movements of the late 60’s and early 70’s – which is sad since those of us old enough to have lived through it know there was nothing romantic about it.

But the biggest enabler of this manipulation to illegality is the pandemic immediately past. I, and many others, wrote time and again about how the government, regulators and administrators were sacrificing credibility in their overreaction to the disease and their overregulation in response to it.

Geraghty and many, many others in the past twenty-four hours have jumped on the bandwagon noting that university administrators no longer actually lead their institutions. That ship actually left the dock a few years ago when they locked down campuses and declared a virtual education just as good as a genuine tutorial.

During the pandemic lunacy, D.E.I. went from an academic concept to policy fact and we saw person after person gain positions of great authority based solely, or nearly solely, on meritless characteristics – further eroding that authority.

We are now reaping what we have sown. Authority and respect must be earned and cultivated. In recent years we have done neither.

The straightforward assertion of authority after having urinated it down the drain will backfire. It will just look weak and pathetic. Yet it remains true that these protests are a purely illegal activity. There is only one option – a whole lot of resignations and the assertion of authority by replacements that have not yet wasted it. And if those resignations are not forthcoming, well someone of greater authority will just have to force them.

We need to get control of immediate circumstances so we can begin to get into the bigger picture. Who is organizing all of this? Who is manipulating these poor ignorant students? Why are they doing so? We are currently missing the forest for the trees, and maybe even the trees for the leaves. This is coming from somewhere, and someone is playing on our weakness.

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