Simply brilliant.

Brown University student Andrew Powers shares his thoughts about the hypocrisy of protesting companies while using the items they manufacture.

…I find it disheartening that, at Brown University in particular, playing the part of the obnoxious activist who racks up social justice points is so fashionable. We don’t need to find a scapegoat for all of human suffering. Sometimes external circumstances predestine adversity. It is a victimless crime to let “heartless businessmen” get rich and for us to buy cheap products while simultaneously combating poverty in the developing world.

While we might reasonably believe it to be morally superior for businesses to provide better wages and working conditions for their workers, the narrative of parasitic businessmen dragging the developing world down is disingenuous. If anything, it’s the workers who need the businesses — quite literally — to survive. Perhaps we feel that they “deserve” better, but that should not stop us from recognizing the substantial benefits their current jobs engender.

Beyond the issue itself, it is informative to examine those individuals who condemn these business practices. The vast majority of those who protest conditions in factories such as those owned by Foxconn enjoy the phones, laptops and other goods produced by such conditions with no more than a passing admonition to maintain an image of social conscientiousness. While hypocrisy is not direct evidence of invalid arguments or false conclusions, it is important to understand that genuine moral outrage is never a matter of convenience.

At Brown, these individuals and their student organizations will often affectedly call for a “critical discussion” on a complex and controversial issue without any sincere intention to consider the opposition view. They reaffirm their beliefs and perpetuate the echo chamber that makes up Brown’s homogeneous political landscape. This process is repeated ad nauseam and the conclusions to which it leads are not grounded in rational thought, but rather are accepted on the basis of the endless parroting of emotional platitudes. And many students don’t even bother with this transparent facade of self-doubt. Those involved in the Ray Kelly protests were openly uninterested in the possibility that their views were fallible.

Jon Stewart said it best: “If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.” It is not a virtue to support ‘social justice’ without thinking through the issue. This argument should demonstrate that Brown is teeming with individuals who are more interested in pushing their own rabble-rousing agendas than focusing on the pursuit of truth. This behavior is intellectually stifling and detrimental to the mission of our university.