Rainfall increased steadily from about 1 p.m. onward last Saturday, the day of the Crazy Legs 5-miler, Mifflin Street Block Party and Green Bay's drafting of former Buckeye A. J. Hawk. At the end of the Crazy Legs race, late in the morning, long after Tim Keller took home the title, participants who had walked or shuffled most of the way (seemingly a large percentage of the field) ran into the stadium toward the finish while the Badger varsity cheerleaders flung up you're No. 1\ hand signals.
At soaking Mifflin, on the other hand, each participant sprinted the whole day (even if some did not finish well) and each was simultaneously a cheerleader. Drinking, unlike sports, is democratic.
Watching people like A. J. Hawk play sports can be democratic too, in that fans cluster in living rooms to socialize around the TV. As commentators such as David Brooks have pointed out, such social activities are good for the citizenry, helping us to form bonds that may counteract excess individualism. Yet there's more to citizenship: resigned, complacent or fearful citizens can also bond around the TV. On the other hand, truly active citizenship requires courage, corny as that may sound.
There were protesters out on April 29, marching up Park Street for increased and equal funding of schools. The column was nearly all black kids, but with a few scraggly-looking white kids (why is it that white liberals dress so poorly?). Obviously, you do not need to read Tom Wolfe's ""Radical Chic and Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers"" to know that protesters are easy to ridicule.
Yet the thing we need to remember is that protesters have throughout history seemed laughable. Until, that is, they change things. Lacking historical vision, many of us do not exercise our freedom to protest simply because we feel safely unembarrassed when keeping quiet.
In this vein, Alexis de Tocqueville, the great 19th Century French analyst of American life, wrote that Americans are ""prey to two conflicting passions ... the need of guidance, and [the need] to stay free."" In Tocqueville's view, our need for guidance turned us into children and our government into a schoolmaster.
We reconcile guidance with freedom by imagining that a ""unitary, protective and all-powerful"" government is not tyrannical so long as it is ""elected by the people."" In other words, so long as the majority elects the taskmaster, everything is OK.
Tocqueville thought such a notion was ridiculous. ""Each individual lets [the schoolmasters] put the collar on for he sees that it is... society itself which holds the end of the chain.""
Since affordable education is salient for us students, maybe we should have all been marching with those other kids April 29. True, many of us bonded by drinking out at Mifflin or staying home to watch the NFL draft with friends.
However, such low-grade democratic bonding, in Tocqueville's eyes, is not enough for good, active citizenship. In fact, the only way to loosen the collar and chain of government guidance is to exercise our freedoms of speech, petition and assembly. But it takes courage to forgo a schoolmaster's guidance (by this measure, the May Day immigrant demonstrators are model citizens). Being brave is never as easy as being complacent, afraid or resigned.
Today, and depending on who you talk to, Americans have many reasons to be complacent, afraid or resigned. One can get the impression that most people feel resigned. When you feel resigned, courage seems pointless. And maybe that ugly formulation is too often the point of our educational system. That is, the goal is to control rather than inspire.
An anecdote about a stupid fight (is there any other sort?) that occurred last Saturday perhaps illuminates this point. Across the street from Riley's Liquor, a young, sober Asian man in leather boots and a white Polo shirt dropped a drunk, six-foot-three corn-fed white boy with an actual roundhouse kick to the temple. As Chuck Norris shambled off in defeat, an onlooker gave Bruce Lee a can of Pabst that was symbolic of a limited bonding. In the face of misfortune, resigned citizens share a beer.
Teddy O'Reilly is a senior majoring in international studies. His column runs every Wednesday in The Daily Cardinal. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
\
