Posted on 07/07/2004 10:29:15 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
An encounter at Harvard illuminates the true ignorance of liberal scholars at universities across the country, and the danger they pose to the good fight against terrorism.
The professor narrowed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and yawned.
"You don't really believe that do you?"
I stared back perplexed.
"What?"
"That there is really some terrorist conspiracy poised against the United States."
There was a short silence. I took a deep breath, not sure if he was serious. But when I looked in his eyes, I detected no trace of humor.
"Well ... the events of 9/11 would certainly seem to point to it."
He suddenly sat forward, his face growing flushed.
"Come on, Mr. Davis," he said with an edge now in his voice. "You should know better. You're a journalist. That neo-con crap is just as easily disproved as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It's clear fabrication -- used by Bush and his cronies to justify an unjustifiable war. Better to check the terrorism coming out of Washington before looking abroad."
I had to do a double take to remember where I was sitting and to whom I was speaking. Was this Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein or some other fringe American intellectual of the far left? Was I in Northern California or Vermont where such pabulum passes as standard rhetoric? No. I was in America's intellectual heartland, Harvard University. And I was addressing one of the most noted political scientists in the country.
After a year at Harvard University I have come to understand that the professor's world view represents far more mainstream opinion in the intellectual community than I had ever imagined. For many of the professors, students and general community leaders in this high brow enclave, the events of September 11, 2001 are a distant memory -- the stuff of nightmare perhaps, but something more akin to a natural disaster than a deliberate and unprovoked attack on the United States. Gone is any outrage against the Muslim extremists who perpetrated the atrocities of that day. Absent is any sense in which America is at war with a pitiless force pledged to the elimination of democracy and its replacement with a totalitarian system based on religious law.
Instead, the wrath of the Cambridge liberal community is taken out against the American president himself. George W. Bush, whose election is universally regarded in these circles as tainted and illegitimate, has emerged as the cause of all grief suffered by Americans today. It is not unusual in such elite society to hear Bush described as Adolf Hitler reincarnate, the U.S. under the Bush Administration as an imperialist, racist, capitalist pariah or that Bush is needlessly spilling American blood for the sake of Middle East oil. In addition to his bungling of American foreign policy, he is saddled with the responsibility for the melting of the polar ice caps, for the human rights violations of prisoners of war in Cuba and Iraq, the despoliation of the world's rainforests and the exploitation of child labor in South East Asia. In short, it is George W. Bush and the policies of his imperialistic thugs who revolve the spindle on the axis of evil, not Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any of the more nefarious leaders of the Third World.
How is it possible that during a military conflict, catalyzed by the most violent attack against America since Pearl Harbor, there could be such unparalleled denigration of a sitting U.S president among academics?
Part of the answer is that for many of them, America's adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are not perceived as a response to a real military threat. In this regard, both Iraq and Afghanistan are not real wars, but punitive missions, representing failure, much like General John F. Pershing's fruitless invasion of Mexico in 1916 or America's involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s.
More than likely the academic antipathy to Bush stems from an inability to appreciate that the rules of war have changed. Invisible enemies who operate in small, isolated units; who can plot and execute a major military assault against a superpower from a cave; who rely on highly sophisticated technologies to communicate commands to underlings; who are capable of marshalling vast financial resources to procure nuclear weaponry and who are driven not as much by ideology as "martyrology", a form of military conduct still largely unrecognized by academia in this century.
Seen in this light, liberal academics mistake the events of September 11 and the dozens of other major terrorist attacks around the world since then, as anomalies. They are unable to connect the dots between these events because the pattern of attack does not conform to a standard military campaign, nor does it represent a serious injury to a seemingly impregnable political system. Liberal academics, because of their grounding in the dialectics of the Cold War are not yet capable of viewing the power of terrorist organizations in the 21st century to threaten democracy because there is no precedent for either its success in toppling elected governments or of achieving significant military objectives. But the results of the Spanish general election in April provides an important warning. It should make clear that the terrorist menace is no longer restricted to performances of mere political theater but is also now geared toward acts of direct political intervention. Under these circumstances, the threat to western civilization is as real as was Fascism's to the democracies of the 1930s.
We can now ruefully reflect on the tragic ill preparedness of the free world to Hitler's designs at that time. Academics and intellectuals in Europe and elsewhere, largely stood on the sidelines as the Nazi threat swelled. No one should pretend that the terrorist menace, if excused and ignored by this country's intellectuals, could not have the same devastating consequences for the United States and its allies in the future. Portraying the American president or any other American leader as a terrorist may provide cartoonists and columnists with noxious verbiage to hurl at conservatives. But in the end it only serves to deflect attention from the real battle and lends support to a source of evil that threatens us all.
Avi Davis is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a senior editorial columnist for Jewsweek.com.
ping
"Liberal academics, because of their grounding in the dialectics of the Cold War..."
They are Vietnam war protest reenactors.
When it comes to politics, I wouldn't really put Harvard in the category of "intellectual".
The talking point from the rats the last couple of days has been that Liberal is a worn-out over-used term and that painting F'n Kerry and the Breck Girl as liberals (Steve Doocy referred to the "Breck Girl" this morning) is not going to work to defeat them this fall. I would reply, if I could, by asking if they would like to be called what they really are? Which is Socialists.
Methinks the author is a bit naive. Most of the schools in the athletic conference known as the Ivy League are in the crapper these days.
The intellectual community: folks who couldn't make it the real world.
If President Bush were as Hitlerian a character as these "intellectuals" imagine, they'd have been shipped off to the camps three years ago!
I believe McCarthy was right. There is a Communist conspiracy to destroy the USA.
All liberals should be required to wear headphones plugged directly into the reverberations of history.
This is of course wrong; the correct reason is that the Earth's axis is tilted, making northern hemisphere days shorter in the winter and longer in the summer; the difference in heat input as a result explains why winter is colder. (Also, the Earth's orbit is actually close to perfectly circular, and the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere.)
So it doesn't surprise me that a Harvard professor could be this wrong and be this arrogant about it.
Liberals never let the truth stand in their way! Why acknowledge the reality of the situation when you can spin it to suit your twisted purpose?
"Liberal academics, because of their grounding in the dialectics of the Cold War are not yet capable of viewing the power of terrorist organizations in the 21st century to threaten democracy because there is no precedent for either its success in toppling elected governments or of achieving significant military objectives."
It has to do with the Cold War, but differently. As advocates of communism or fellow travelers many embraced a "dialectic" if you may that America was not only the force against Soviet victory, but a harmful project in itself. The "lefty", as part of his ideology, even identity, cannot imagine an explanation of the world where what is bad is not caused by America or merely responsive to an American evil.
They cannot understand that Saudi, France, Iran, whomever act in their own interests and what these countires may criticize in America is self-serving and untrue because the lefty mind is hardwired to privilege anti-Americanism and ignore any other fact.
In this regard 9/11 was a whack in the head for them. It didn't fit into the Marxist-guided anti-american historical narratives they were weaving in place of "history". Their worldview shattered, they first tried to explain it in the "root cause" discourse - meaning confirmation of what they obseesed about - "imperialism" and Israel. Osama's speeches about global caliphates and such threw them for a loop and they self-censored themselves in fear of ridicule.
The way to counter them, even educate the ones who want their bonds broken, is to ask them if they read Osama's own speeches. I've seen this - it stuns them.
But they're gaining, in a way, at an agitprop level. If Michael Moore can say with a stratight face that the Iraq war was supported by Saudi Arabia, and the chattering classes viewing the movie don't laugh out loud in response, this shows how ill-informed the lefty sheeple have kept themselves in happy ignorance.
In short, the author of this piece failed when he himself could not respond "But Osama, etc. said..." Nothing like words from the horse's mouth to embarass the ignorant.
Ronald Reagan said something like "Liberals are very knowledgeable. Its just that what they know just ain't so."
(Lack of) Education Ping!
Quite.
Regards, Ivan
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Rom 1:22
It's been too long since I left SEC Enforcement. I used to know some guys who offered me money for introductions to potential marks.
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