Coming in at $15,000 to $30,000 per speaking gig, the wisdom of Angela Davis doesn’t come cheap.
But just like us, communists like Davis must pay the bills.
Still, I’m not terribly sure what colleges, conferences, and whoever else is paying Davis actually get for their money. After all, aside from her eloquent if somber tone, Davis’ ideas are rather insipid.
Consider some excerpts from a speech Davis gave in St. Louis, Mo., last week.
Davis claimed that she supports a society built on “indigenous temporalities” rather than capitalist innovations. The former approach, Davis says, is better because it doesn’t regard “the importance of human beings as residing within the borders of a single lifetime. But rather, embrace generations: many generations. When we try to imagine a better world, our vision is focused not on today, not on tomorrow, but generations and generations into the future.”
That will be $2,000, please.
Don’t get me wrong, if Davis’ point is that we must live sustainably to preserve the Earth and its environment in a good condition, she should have said so. But her actual words purport to be a counterpoint to capitalism, yet offer nothing substantive and no detail. When you are seeking an intellectual revolution to overturn capitalism – which has done far more than any ideology to provide better, longer lives – you need to offer more than a few poetic pretenses.
Next up, Davis spoke of education’s importance in improving lives. For a second here, I was optimistic that she might have something valuable to say: that she might offer a narrative of personal responsibility matched to improved delivery of education. Alas, no, to expect anything more from someone who praises the Cuban prison system is to embrace delusion.
Instead, Davis called for a total “reimagining” of the education system under the template used in the Palestinian territories – and yes, I am not making that up. She also decried the education system’s “emphasis on discipline.” This is an outright betrayal of students and their parents – minority students and parents in particular. The rising generation doesn’t need a John Lennon-esque “reimagining.” They need accountability, an educational culture of high expectations, academic support, and, failing that, school choice to get them out of a system that can’t provide those things.
Of course, you have to give Davis credit on one point: even as she rails against the evils of capitalism, she is able to charge tens of thousands of dollars for a single speech. In that sense, the market she so detests is actually her greatest ally! There is a market for washed-up socialist claptrap. Perhaps we’ve all underestimated her.
