The Chronicle

Issue date: 4/23/07 Section: Columns
Last update: 4/23/07 at 7:43 AM EST

Stephen Miller

For the last two years it has been my honor to write for our campus paper. From the beginning, this column, along with my political activism, has made me a controversial figure. As a deeply committed conservative who considers it his responsibility to do battle with the left, this is not in the least surprising.

We live in an era when honesty itself has become controversial. We are told not to speak truthfully or even clearly, but instead in a fashion that is politically correct. These politically correct dictates are anathema to American values, yet many Americans have sadly surrendered to them a long time ago. The price for this surrender has been immense.

Consider the realm of issues where political correctness most strangles the debate-race.

For many at Duke, the last year offered a horrifying tutorial in the moral bankruptcy of the left's politically correct orthodoxy and the corruption of our culture at its hands.

Three of our peers faced a devastating year-long persecution because they were white and their accuser black. Imagine that Collin, Reade and David had been black students, accused of raping a white girl and that they faced a witchhunt led by a prosecutor re-elected thanks to the overwhelming support of the white community. Then imagine this witchhunt was supported by hordes of student protesters, prominent white activists and a large portion of an elite campus faculty, many of them affiliated with the European Studies Department. Imagine also that the University president suspends the almost all-black sports team of which these students are members and fires their black coach. Further imagine that the accuser in the case has continually changed her story from the first night, that there is no evidence against the players, that they've cooperated with the police and passed polygraphs and that extensive evidence exists to prove their innocence.

You think that scenario would have lasted for a year? Try a week.

To understand the lacrosse tragedy as simply the result of a rogue district attorney would be a grave revision with dangerous consequences. Ignoring the racial and political agendas that propelled the case from the beginning, and our politically correct culture that paralyzed the powers that be from stopping it, not only would invite further disaster in the future, but also would mean erasing culpability from those people and forces in our society dissolving the common bonds that hold us together.

Continued...

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