Colleges, Congress and a chamber of commerce combat hate in Charlottesville

This column about Charlottesville, Virginia, has been the hardest one for me to write in my life.

The overwhelming majority of most readers probably feel this way too. What’s happening to our country? We saw torch-wielding Nazis with swastika flags, chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, hitting students and an administrator around a statue of Robert E. Lee, a man who would never have approved of the marchers’ message or what the messengers were doing.

The next day, we watched with horror as a terrorist used cruel ISIS tactics, turning his car into lethal weapon. The only thing more shocking was that more counter-protesters weren’t killed.

Across the Internet, pundits speculate that a second Civil War is brewing in this country, one that could be worse than the first. Could anything prevent such widespread bloodshed?

When my students and I study a country where democracy failed, we find a common thread: institutional collapse. More accurately, those individuals in charge of the institutions either fail to act out of fear or indecision, or decide to bandwagon with the rising threat, adapting to the new order. It’s happened in Russia, Turkey, Asia, and Latin America. Could it happen here?

Democrats were quick to condemn the white supremacists, but they’re very much a party in the minority. It’s going to take a lot more to stand up to this threat.

That’s why I was proud of our administration, faculty and staff. President Dan McAlexander and Dean of Students Marc Shook clearly expressed our college’s position on the Charlottesville events, rejecting hate. They relayed the stand of the United Methodist Church that we are affiliated with, which prays for peace, and rejects the belief that you can be a bigot and a Christian. They added the SPLC guidelines for resisting hate without violence.

Whether it was the Chinese Cultural Revolution cadres, Nazis thugs, Russian ruffians, or Islamic terror groups, history has shown us that schools are early and easy targets for totalitarians to attack. Remember that this weekend’s march came against the University of Virginia. Colleges need to find their voice, and not shrink back in fear. There are no sidelines in this kind of sport.

Nor does this mean that the college will lump conservatives with these hate groups in deciding who will speak to the students. Since I have been at LaGrange College, I have brought in so many more conservatives than liberals to speak to my classes, and have never had to go to the administration building to be called out for it. But our college won’t invite attackers.

There’s also another institution that I would like to commend for standing up to the hate. A few days after the attack, I was invited by the Chamber of Commerce to attend the Georgia congressional meeting, to see guest speaker Dr. Larry Sabato, a well-known political science professor. He got into how he messed up his election forecasts, but gave us a sobering account of what it was like to be a University of Virginia professor when your campus is under assault.

Yet the best moment of the event in Macon came from Congresswoman Karen Handel, who gave a full-throated condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism, with no equivocation, along with sincere sympathies to Heather Heyer’s family, the troopers who died in the helicopter crash, and others who were injured. She received thunderous applause from the audience and praise for her speech by Senator Johnny Isakson. They joined many Republicans nationwide who have also specifically condemned these white supremacists. It gave me confidence that we can truly survive this horror as a country.

This story was originally published August 18, 2017 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Colleges, Congress and a chamber of commerce combat hate in Charlottesville."