A Few Good Men

Greeks Defending the West

Last weekend, I moved my freshman daughter out of her dorm. It’s quite an endeavor—and a mother lode of landfill waste— but this being my third freshman move-out, I knew how to salvage and recycle the disheveled remains of unwanted supplies and decor. I also knew to soak in the moment on her behalf, because she’ll eventually miss the rubbery stairwell scent, the click-slam of the residence hall’s entry door, and her own window overlooking the freshman quad. In two decades, she’ll treasure the dorm room placard with her name on it; but for now, it will join childhood art work and “I love you Mommy” cards in our downstairs closet.

This time around, though, I didn’t take anything for granted—including life beyond the sentimental dormitory scene. While we were hauling her bulky belongings out to my SUV, seniors were a five-minute walk away, seated inside the coliseum, celebrating graduation with their families and classmates. What joy! While life had devolved into third-world clownery elsewhere, here it continued peacefully in the dreamy warmth of Southern spring.

Driving around town that day, I’d encountered no protest signs, encampments or obnoxious drumming—although the campus has seen a few activists try to peddle their unpopular and doomed ideologies. Since this SEC school hasn’t yet pursued the diversity mission to its suicidal end, students here spent their spring traversing campus without the interruption of noodle-armed malcontents, finishing the semester with an orderly, in-person graduation ceremony.

Not all college kids were so blessed—revolting displays and chaotic interruptions have dotted America’s college landscape. It was therefore deeply gratifying to see University of North Carolina fraternity “bros” resist the ideological disease that proliferates in the sickly administrative offices of Ivy League schools. Down with the Palestinian flag, up with Old Glory—simple enough for young men who aren’t too cool or cowardly to do the right thing.

Courage is contagious, and it has been endemic to southern schools that are often snubbed by the elites. Carolina’s left-leaning campus, an outlier in this respect, seemed an unlikely place for this outbreak of manhood. Fraternities make a good breeding ground for it, though, because their culture generally offends the pale males, angry women, and anti-Western agitators who are the antithesis of good looks and fun. Collegiate Greeks are interested in parties and football games, anyways, not far-left social causes and ramshackle commie camps. In short, they’re enjoying their lives—which annoys the greasy college progressives and visa holders who seethe in anti-Western rage.

A few simple moments of preppy courage was a breath of fresh air in an education world smothered in the stench of leftism. Our dimmest lights now serve as college administrators, professors and lecturers—many who’ve wormed into “conservative” campuses, too. Now their post-graduate smog pollutes our K-12 schools, which are often staffed by fully-indoctrinated education majors. How long before the fifth-graders burn a flag at school?

The progressive class project is almost complete now, having convinced students that America is evil, and that discipline is mean. Protestors who destroy property and interrupt work now demand amnesty or request vegan snacks—the proud and picky products of progressive thought. As an aside, my own children had never even heard of getting “swats” until recently, when I explained how schools once managed 3000 teenagers effectively. In ninth grade, I received three stinging replies for stealing freshly-baked lemon squares from the home economics classroom, and so did my co-conspirators.

As for our UNC campus lesson, I suspect that many people hurried past the Palestinian flag with annoyance—and for Jewish students, perhaps with trepidation. Some found comfort in pretending that Hamas rage is yet another campus fad, just youthful activism—didn’t students protest in the 1960’s, too? Perhaps so, but in a population less infiltrated by those who hate Western values and white skin, and under leaders less inclined to surrender our soil to enemies. Violent anti-American protests aren’t new, but they’re now officially sanctioned, making the fraternity boy flag mission that much more courageous.

It’s time for more collegians on the Right to follow the frat-bro example. The Left has anointed its “youth” as leaders of its inglorious crusades, and I see no reason why the Right cannot encourage its own young men and women to respond appropriately—and honorably. You want to bang drums, scream, and celebrate intifada? We will blast the National Anthem at your dreary encampment. You want to elevate Marxists and America-haters? We will promote principled freedom-lovers from every demographic. You want to destroy gender, have green hair and behave like you’re mentally ill? We will be ladies and gentlemen in every way—in dress, behavior, and speech—and refuse to accommodate nihilistic ideas that threaten our very foundations.

Sadly, far too few know anything of those foundations. A smartphone generation has been raised in peacetime—if it can be called that—yet subjected to continual assaults on Western values. As victims of our throw-away culture, they don’t know about sturdy things, much less of sturdy ideas. They learn about green-haired pansexuals, climate hysteria, and recycled Marxism. They now know little of the ideas that drove immigrants to our country, and even less of the courage that has defended it.

Back at the dormitory, my heart was full of these notions as I watched beautiful but now-abandoned things thrown into a huge campus dumpster. Nobody wanted yesterday’s baskets or plastic drawers. Too much trouble, no real use—stuff others bought is easily thrown away. They’d be wise to take a different approach, though, toward the freedoms that others hard-earned; maybe those college boys will stand and lead the way.