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Feb. 8, 2013
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Jewish World Review
Feb. 23, 2011/ 20 Adar I, 5771
Progressive Rot vs. the ROTC
By
Arnold Ahlert
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the midst of the chaos unfolding in the Middle East and and the American Midwest, some stories slip through the cracks. But a sordid little episode which took place at Columbia University last Saturday can't be one of them. Iraqi war veteran and Purple Heart winner Anthony Maschek, who survived two broken legs and eleven bullet wounds during a fire fight in Kirkuk, a man who spent two years recovering from his wounds at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was subjected to utter contempt by a group of students during a town hall meeting at that university.
Maschek's "crime?" Advocating for a return of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) to the Ivy League campus. Columbia, like so many other "high-minded" institutions, has made no attempt to hide its disdain for all things military. As a result, the ROTC has been banned from university grounds for 42 years. The principle fallback excuse for these bastions of progressivism has been the military's ban on gays. Now that that obstacle has been removed, it becomes necessary to find some other rationale to hide behind.
Senior sutdent Sean Udell was up to the challenge. "Transpeople are part of the Columbia community," said Udell, noting that the military still has a ban on soldiers who have changed their sexual identity. Yet therein lies the contradiction. People who support the military are also "part of the Columbia community," but Mr. Udell would deny them a place at the university table. So would Sociology Professor Emeritus Herbert Gans. "Universities should not be involved in military activities," he said. "Columbia should come out against spending $300 billion a year on unnecessary wars." What Columbia "should come out against" are ivory tower elitists who believe their political worldview should be the only one represented on an American college campus. Let's be clear here: this is not about students deciding whether or not to participate in an on-campus ROTC program, this is about denying them a choice to do so altogether.
Such is the true face of "tolerance" as it is practiced on far too many college campuses.
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As someone who well remembers returning Vietnam war veterans treated like dirt by the same kind of self-anointed, self-righteous children--and they are children in every sense that matters--who disrespected Mr. Maschek, I am reminded that a lack of respect for others is one of the defining characteristics of the terminally Angry Left. It is not enough to politely disagree with Mr. Maschek. He must be booed, belittled and besmirched. He must be subjected to shouts of "racist" by those who will never make the connection between their freedom to shout such slurs, and Mr. Maschek's vital contribution to that freedom's preservation. "Baby killer" was their favorite phrase forty years ago.
The names may change, but the attitude remains the same: a reflexive, thoughtless contempt for those who defend the right of misguided students and their faculty enablers to be thoughtless and contemptible.
Mr. Maschek tried to explain. "It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," he said. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you." He may as well have been talking to himself. The bankruptcy of progressive ideology is so all-encompassing that the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans--not "out there," but right here, less than ten miles from the Columbia campus, has all but been forgotten. No doubt, for some of these students and their equally myopic professors, the "little Eichmans," as former Colorado University professor Ward Churchill referred to the victims of 9/11, got what was coming to them. No doubt that the same university which invited Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus--and which gave him a far warmer reception than the one given to Anthony Maschek--is populated by those for whom our "imperialistic foreign policy" was responsible for the worst domestic attack in the history of the nation.
When Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia we were treated to media gushes about the "importance of free speech," and the "open exchange of ideas" on a campus that currently remains off-limits to the ROTC. Apparently, for Columbia's "enlightened" policy-makers, it is better that students listen to a totalitarian Islamic thug than a military recruiter. Heaven forbid an Ivy League student might be swayed to defend his country. Heaven forbid that one of the so-called "best and brightest" be convinced to join the same organization that one student protester's poster claimed "preys on low income communities."
That such "predators" are the only people who stand between punkish self-involved college students and those who would annihilate them? An unpleasant reality not only ignored, but dismissed with condescension.
It is said that great nations are never conquered from without. They fall due to an internal rot, one nurtured by those for whom contempt for our customs, culture and traditions comes as naturally as breathing. It comes from people who will forever wonder or attempt to rationalize "why they hate us," even as they fail to recognize such hatred is real and threatens their very existence.
The term "ivory tower academic" did not arise out of nowhere. It aptly describes tenured elitists whose world extends only as far as the boundaries of a campus, and for whom tortured, jargonistic theories of human nature never collide with the reality of it. Such theories are then passed on to students as "indisputable," even as those who would dispute them are banned from campus.
These people couldn't even shine Mr. Maschek's shoes.
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Previously:
02/21/11: Wisconsin: Progressivism in All its Ugly Glory
02/18/11: News reporters --- or Narrative Shapers?
02/16/11: The Presidents Budget Proposal: An Obamination of Progressive Profligacy
02/14/11: Only Another 9/11 Will Alter the Illegal Immigration Status Quo
02/10/11: Is O'Reilly losing his touch or is he just irresponsible?
02/07/11: Tossing Britain Under the Bus
02/03/11: Starving the World In Order to Save It
01/31/11: Walking the Middle East Tightrope
01/27/11: Small-scale Terrorist Attacks: Big Strategy?
01/24/11: Jeffery Immelt: A Crony Capitalist In Charge of Job Creation
01/20/11: An Intimate Prime-time Interview
01/17/11: Progressives: Always Angry, Newly Desperate
01/12/11: Twain vs. the Totalitarians
01/10/11: Politically Correct Passports?
01/05/11: Showdown at the Fiscal Corral
01/03/11: Reading the Constitution Aloud is a Good Start
12/30/10: Getting Our Moral Mojo Back
12/27/10: PC Airport Safety is an Oxymoron
12/23/10: Getting America Back On Track
12/20/10: A Collectivist Coalition of Convenience
12/15/10: The President Who Wasn't There
12/13/10: Tech-No!
12/08/10: A Lethal Military, Inclusive or Not
12/06/10: The Unexpected Consequences of Progressivism
12/01/10: Leakers and Losers
11/29/10: We Won, Part One
11/22/10: Keep Your Hands Off My Constitution
11/17/10: Grope and Change
11/14/10: Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time
11/11/10: Checks (and Balances), Please
11/08/10: Curtain Up, Progressives Down
11/04/10: Last Chance, Republicans
11/01/10: By Their Own Words Shall Ye Know Them
10/28/10: Progressive Determination to Undermine American Elections
10/25/10: Shock, but more importantly, action: De-Unionize Public Schools now
10/20/10: Multiculturalism? Check, Please
10/18/10: Healthcare: Alice in Wonderland vs. The Constitution
10/11/10: Vote for Restoring the Rule of Law in November
10/11/10: Dems: Running From Clarity
10/07/10: Hypersensitive Hogwash
10/04/10: Comprehensive Con Artists
09/29/10: Why Dems Are Going Down in November
09/27/10: The Unholiest of Unholy Alliances
09/22/10: Two Words for Republicans to Remember: I Won
09/20/10: Purging Me First Politicians
09/17/10: No More Lesser of Two Evils
09/15/10: Recovery Arms Race
09/13/10: Bigots in the Majority --- Again?
09/09/10: Giving Voters Something to Vote For
09/07/10: Irresponsible Dems, Incomprehensible Bills
09/02/10: War Weary Americans vs. Implacable Islamists
08/31/10: A Dream Debased
08/25/10: American Bigots Versus Media Propagandists
08/23/10: Recovery Bummer
08/19/10: An Unholy Alliance of Radicals
08/16/10: You've Lost America, Mr. President
08/13/10: The Twin Towers of Progressive Disconnect
08/11/10: A Far Better National Discussion
08/09/10: It's Only One Dead Nun
08/06/10: Incremental Tyranny
08/04/10: Ground Zero Mosque: Context Counts
08/02/10: The Arizona Ruling: a Gift for November
07/29/10: The United Cities of America
07/26/10: JournoList: Coordinated Ideological Bankruptcy
07/20/10: Go For Broke Or Get Out of the Way
07/14/10: You're a Liberal/Progressive if You Believe…
07/12/10: $33-an-hour--For Sleeping On the Job
07/08/10: Extortionist Government
07/06/10: Commerce Clause Totalitarians
07/01/10: Another Public School Travesty in MA
06/30/10: Calling YOUR Bluff, Mr. President
06/28/10: A Trifecta of Progressive Corruption
06/23/10: Plug the Darn Hole --- In Our Border
06/21/10: Our Empty-Suit-in-Chief
06/16/10: Betraying Our Children
06/14/10: Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt?
06/07/10: Politically Correct Warfare
06/01/10: Bill Maher's Black President
05/25/10: A Mosque At Ground Zero
05/23/10: Libs Stand Tall --- For Mexico
05/19/10: The 'Unintended Consequences' of Liberalism
05/17/10: 'Los' Suns: Stuck on Stupido
05/12/10: Union Audacity: Yes We Will!
05/10/10: Greeks, Leaks and and Double-Speak
05/05/10: Twelve Million Illegals --- or Thirty?
05/02/10: Republicans: Playing Not to Lose Doesn't Cut It
04/28/10: Arizona: Progressivism's Waterloo?
04/26/10: Son of Amnesty
04/22/10: Mortgages and Moral Meltdowns
04/20/10: Bashing Christians Or Gays?
04/15/10: Personal Integri-tea
04/12/10: Fools, Tools and Ghouls
04/08/10: (Tea) Party On
04/05/10: The Triumph of Mediocrity
04/02/10: Two For the Road
03/29/10: The Innate Immorality of Liberalism
03/24/10: The Art of War
03/22/10: I Want My Country Back
03/18/10: A Perpetual Process
03/17/10: American Exhibitionists
03/15/10: A Light Bulb Moment of Clarity
03/10/10: Little Things Mean A Lot
02/03/10: Budgetary Fork in the Road
02/01/10: Liberal Economic Illiteracy
01/27/10: Roe-ing and Wade-ing Back to Reason
01/25/10: Arrogance When Up, Denial When Down
01/20/10: Connecting the Educational Dots
01/19/10: The Next Tea Party?
01/15/10: The Myth That Keeps on Giving
01/13/10: Airport Security Begins Away From the Airport
01/11/10: Secrets and Lies
01/08/10: Embracing Bigotry or Rejecting Bullying?
01/06/10: Hanging by an Ideological Thread
01/04/10: Our Wonderama Bureaucracy
12/30/09: A Day Off
12/28/09: Dangerous Myths
12/25/09: I, Me, Mine
12/23/09: A Very Harry Christmas
12/21/09: My Opinon
12/18/09: The Party of Repeal
12/15/09: Privileged Exemption
11/30/09: Settled Science and Unsettled Children
11/30/09: American Sharia Law
11/23/09:The Trial (Travesty) of the Century
11/04/09: American Vampires and Their Political Enablers
11/01/09: Opting Out of Insanity?
10/28/09: Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer. Brain Required
10/26/09: Communism: Nazism With Better PR
10/21/09: Just Asking
10/16/09: Cost Projections vs. Actual Costs, or Hope and Change vs. Reality
10/14/09: News you can use …
10/07/09: Incremental Insidiousness
10/05/09: MIA: Common Sense and Common Decency
09/30/09: Iran: Bad Options and Unpreparedness
09/21/09: Crying Racism: the Last Refuge of Scoundrels
09/11/09: 9/11 Cannot Be Sanitized
09/08/09: Truthers and Consequences
09/01/09: A Paper Trail Challenge for the Mainstream Media
08/31/09: Drowning in Amorality
08/26/09: The Republican Recovery Program
© 2010, Arnold Ahlert
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