Kathy Sheridan: Killian Foley-Walsh should shut up and listen

The problem with grown-ups debating the righteous social media musings of any student is that it is a terrible waste of time. One of society’s greatest gifts to the young are those precious college years in which they are awarded the time, space and freedom to shoot their mouths off, try out new ideas and ideologies, make a show of themselves, debate in oddly orotund, pompous accents a long way from Ballymahon, experiment with a variety of personas and be madly inconsistent. That’s their job.

Some confuse this licence with the “right” to wound and offend. They should learn fairly smartly that it’s possible to make clever, witty, outrageous points without being a careless, smug, contemptible prat.

In his number-one piece of advice to graduates, one of my favourite writers, Simon Kuper, says: just shut up and listen. Whenever you think “I know about that”, you don’t. When someone worthwhile tells you something about North Korea, don’t sit there waiting till you can interrupt with your one factoid about North Korea. Pre-rehearsed anecdotes will keep you dumb. If you have a theory that explains everything, bin it. When you discover you were wrong about something, treasure the moment: you’ve learned something. And even if you become an expert, you’ll still be pretty ignorant. True experts and sound people believe in life-long learning and humility.

We are free to make whatever choice we want but we are not free from the consequence of that choice

How much of this applies to Killian Foley-Walsh hardly matters. The president of Young Fine Gael who lit a small party fire by attending a conservative student conference addressed by Mike Pence is still only 24 and may have picked up a few life lessons already. A savage tweet he posted about abortion in 2015 was, in hindsight, “atrocious”, he told the Journal.ie last year. Indeed he felt he “would have matured since it was sent and that evolution has come from the experience of life”. The backlash from another casually offensive tweet he sent to a homeless man in 2017 was “a lesson, certainly . . . But I’ve been through the national spotlight and it makes you grow.”

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Studenty indulgences

Nowadays his role model appears to be more Jacob Rees-Mogg than Donald Trump, if his Twitter bio is any guide. The “esq” added to his Twitter name and the bit of basic Latin are straight from the JRM stylebook. The famously unflappable Rees-Mogg courtesy may be in train.

The problem is that Foley-Walsh’s studenty indulgences have become conflated with very grown-up themes such as the right to free speech and free association. We are free to make whatever choice we want but we are not free from the consequence of that choice.

And we also know that there are many strands within American Republicanism. Yes, we do know that.

But this is the line reiterated by many commentators now. David Quinn writes that Young America’s Foundation (YAF), sponsor of the young conservative students’ conference and founded in 1960 by influential conservative journalist, William F Buckley jnr, “could not be more mainstream Republican . . . Think Ronald Reagan, and you have Buckley’s politics.”

It’s a reassuring throwback to the pre-Tea Party, pre-Trump GOP, with its centre-right, broad church, family values, God-fearing brand of conservatism and emphasis on indivisible liberty and economic freedom.

The problem is not their religious conservatism. The question is why such business titans would bother to fund dweeby student conferences

Writing in the Burkean, a conservative student journal, Ciaran Brennan also shrugs off the fuss, calling the YAF conference “perhaps the dweebiest of centre-right events to possibly attend . . . quite literally the safest and most genuinely boring right-wing conference going”.

Conservative firebrands

So what is YAF selling? Why does it bother to dispatch dozens of highly paid conservative firebrands around US college campuses week after week ? Check out Ann Coulter (sample tweet: “Trump shouldn’t call them ‘shithole countries’. A little respect is in order. They are shithole nations”), Ted Nugent (he called Obama a “sub-human mongrel”) , Matt Walsh (self-styled “theocratic fascist”) for a start.

Who gains ?

Conspicuous among YAF donors are the Koch, Mercer and DeVos family foundations. The problem is not their religious conservatism. The question is why such business titans would bother to fund dweeby student conferences.

In a rare public statement, contained in an essay published in 1978, Charles Koch – one of the world’s richest men – explained his objective: “Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.” In her book Dark Money, Jane Mayer writes that the Kochs’ ideology – lower taxes and looser regulations – and their business interests “dovetailed so seamlessly it was difficult to distinguish one from the other”.

Over the years, she notes, “the company developed a stunning record of corporate malfeasance”. Researchers at Harvard and Columbia concluded that a Koch brothers organisation, Americans for Prosperity – which rivals the Republican party in size and organisation – has pulled “the Republican party to the far right on economic, tax and regulatory issues”. And if the Mercer name rings a bell, it’s because Robert Mercer played a key role in the Brexit campaign by donating data analytics services to Nigel Farage.

Is this the GOP that Ronald Reagan would recognise, the dweeby mainstream?

Follow the money, then decide if this is where you want to deposit your dreams.