Dan Fishback: In our own backyard

I'm kind of glad Stephanie Winters is around. I'm kind of glad she's here, and she's nuts. Brother Stephen too -- here and nuts. I like it.

I don't like the fact these kinds of people exist. I don't like the fact that they're swarming all over the world. But if they're going to be at all, then I'm glad a few of them are going to be right here. Where we can watch them. Where we can keep track of them. Where we can integrate their existence into our world views.

Stephanie Winters seems rather convinced that Palestinians are genetically inferior and should die. She put it right out there for everyone to see. And we were all shocked. Not many people ever expected to encounter real, honest-to-goodness, Hitler-style language when they came to college.

We never really thought a graduate student -- a teaching assistant, no less -- would actually publicly unveil herself as some kind of bizarre psuedo-Nazi. We didn't really think that many bizarre psuedo-Nazis existed at all!

The same goes for shrill, bigoted, evangelical street preachers. Before I came to college, I pretty much assumed that they were all concentrated in Alabama somewhere. It wasn't until I first passed Brother Stephen that I realized they're everywhere. It was unsettling at first, but then oddly comforting.

Brother Stephen doesn't just bring hate and madness to campus -- he also presents a very uncomplicated enemy: something to push against. He cannot preach for long without people shouting back at him, without people noticing that insane evil exists, without people realizing that they can resist him. He reminds us that we must be vigilant, lest his rantings go unprotested. Enough unprotested rantings from enough army preachers, and you set back civil rights around 15 years.

Of course, most of the world is not as simple as all this. Most destructive individuals are a mix of various intentions and questionable philosophies. And it's this relentless ambiguity that makes us sick and tired of politics. Even the politicians we believe are sheer evil are draped in a sort of sick respectability. We don't have that many unquestionably horrifying domestic villains. We think the bad guys are all overseas where there's nothing we can do about them. We don't really think they exist right here, right in our neighborhood.

But they do. And now, thanks to the crazies, we know they do. And now we see that they could pop up anywhere. And this is important information. This affects the way we see our world, our community. It affects the way we understand words like "hate," "racism," and "genocide." It makes these ideas more tangible. It brings the reality of human lunacy to our doorsteps. As future Ivy League degree-holders, many of us in powerful positions, this information might be rather useful.

So thank you, Stephanie Winters. If you are going to be nuts (and I don't know if I could talk you out of it), I'm glad you decided to let us know. Not only did you remind us that the world is full of crazy people like you, but you ended up sparking a rather interesting debate about free speech as well! Didn't expect to be productive, eh?

The question "What should a university do when it discovers one of its employees is a lunatic" is frankly much more interesting than "What should a university do when someone says 'water buffalo.'" It engages us all in dilemmas of freedom and safety, eternal problems of liberty and authority. It makes people active, it makes people think and it accomplishes all this without doing much damage to anyone except perhaps the lunatic herself.

And thank you, Brother Stephen. If you are going to be nuts (and I don't know if anyone could talk you out of it), I'm glad you've decided to turn your madness into performance art. I'm glad you bring it here for all to see. I'm glad you remind us how easily a human being can latch on to absurdity. Mostly, I'm glad you make us wonder, "How does it happen? How did he get that way? What's going to happen to his kids? What can I do to stop him? What can I do to stop them all? What can I do?"

As long as bigots and genocidal maniacs keep their ideologies on a linguistic level, as long as they don't turn it into violent action, I'd much rather them on College Green, at the center of an angry crowd than, well, just about anywhere else. Turn them into a sideshow, I say. Keep a picture of Brother Stephen on your wall as a mnemonic device: They're here. They're nuts. What are you going to do about it?

Dan Fishback is a junior American Identities major from Olney, Md.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.