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November 25, 2005
It's not just the University of Colorado at Boulder that harbors wacko, America-hating lefties. Behold, the sequel: "Son of Churchill." At Warren County Community College in rural New Jersey, John Peter Daly, an adjunct English professor, went off the deep end last week in an outrageous e-mail to a student.
The student was Rebecca Beach, a freshman and member of a the local chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a respectable, mainstream national conservative student organization created in 1960 with assistance from William F. Buckley Jr. and other leaders of the intellectual conservative movement. (Disclosure: I've been a guest speaker in years past at YAF's annual student seminar at American University in Washington, D.C.)
Rebecca's crime was to invite Lt. Col. Scott Rudder, a decorated Iraq war hero, to appear on campus on Nov. 17 to discuss with students America's accomplishments in Iraq. She compounded this felony by advertising the event via e-mail and by posting fliers around campus contrasting the number of people killed under communist regimes to those freed from communism by Ronald Reagan and worldwide freedom movements.
So you know where Daly sits before you hear where he stands, you should be aware that he's a member of the Marxist Worker's World Party; a regular correspondent to their newspaper, Workers World; a gay activist; and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in California of the Peace and Freedom Party (self-described as a "socialist and feminist political party" calling for "collective ownership" of industry and "an unconditional end to U.S. military intervention in the affairs of other nations"). None of this is illegal, of course, but it gives you a picture of an angry, self-disenfranchised outcast from mainstream society. That mentality comes through in these highlights from his e-mail to Beach:
"I am asking my students to boycott your event. I am also going to ask others to boycott it. Your literature and signs in the entrance lobby look like fascist propaganda and is \[sic] extremely offensive. \[Daly is a professor of English!] Your main poster "Communism killed 100,000,000 is not only untrue, but ignores the fact that capitalism has killed many more and the evidence for that can be seen in the daily newspapers . . . thanks to the students of WCCC and other poor and working class people who are recruited to fight and die for Exxon and other corporations who are earning megaprofits from their imperialist plunders . . . I will continue to expose your right-wing anti-people politics until groups like yours won't dare show their face on a college campus. Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors and fight for just causes and for people's needs."
1. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn has eloquently testified, with first-hand knowledge, to 100 million murdered under communism.
2. What standing does Daly have to inflict his obtuse politics on his students and urge them to boycott Rudder's talk? He's not even teaching political science; it's a freakin' English class!
3. Typical of radical leftist brownshirts, his notion of diversity of ideas in higher education is to drive conservative groups off campus. And he has the gall to direct the term "fascist" at others! What would he say if a conservative professor wanted to drive leftist groups off campus?
4. Daly isn't merely disagreeing with our foreign policy in Iraq; he's advocating that American soldiers murder their sergeants and officers!
Typical of pusillanimous administrators, the college has posted a statement on its Web site diplomatically divorcing itself from Daly's comments, but invoking its support of the First Amendment, adding that it's reviewing this as a personnel issue. The First Amendment protects Daly's speech, repugnant as it is, from prosecution at the hands of government. As an employee, he's not immune from disciplinary action for his abusive behavior toward a student. Ironically, it's the free speech of conservative students at the college that's under assault here.
Beach says Daly has created a hostile learning environment and has called for Warren President William Austin to require intolerant leftists, like Daly, to attend mandatory seminars on free speech, sensitivity and respect for differing opinions.
I'd say Beach is being far too lenient. Daly has exposed himself as a bigot and a hysterical seditionist. His intolerance is an affront to the basic tenet of collegiality to which institutions of higher learning claim to adhere. He has disqualified himself as a responsible steward of impressionable young minds. His words are to intellectual discourse as a cesspool is to the Seven Seas. And he doesn't even have tenure. If the Warren County Community College administration has any decency, self-respect and backbone, they'll throw the bum out.
Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA.