Posted on 05/26/2006 3:23:30 PM PDT by RWR8189
JOHN McCAIN IS, without a doubt, heroic.
Disagree with his politics, mistrust his shifting political alliances, but no one who's benefited from the tortured sacrifices he made at the Hanoi Hilton should question his integrity. How can we, whole in body and strangers to the hell he experienced, challenge this patriot? To do so indicates a fundamental inhumanity.
That aptly describes the young woman who stood up last week and ridiculed the senator from Arizona. Jean Sara Rohe, a graduating senior at the New School in New York, introduced McCain before he delivered his commencement address.
Ms. Rohe took the opportunity to attack McCain because he supports the war in Iraq, making him a proxy for the president she and her ilk so obviously detest. Her words, dripping with the elite disdain perfected by liberals, is an example of how the pampered progeny of the boomers are always demanding rights without acknowledging prior debts.
The righteous Ms. Rohe was only able to give voice to her beliefs because of McCain and others like him who sacrificed their youth (and, in some cases, their lives) to secure the freedom of strangers. You wonder what sacrifices this young woman has ever made for her country, or if she even thinks it merits the effort.
The disrespect didn't stop there. At one point, the school's president, Bob Kerrey, admonished the crowd to let McCain speak, dryly noting that it takes courage to stand at a lectern but none to scream from the crowd.
The response? Kerrey, who left part of his own leg on a battlefield in Vietnam and who received the Medal of Honor, was called a "war criminal." Given the caliber of the accuser, this is actually high praise.
To hear these things makes my blood boil. What type of people are we, so mired in our partisan anger, that we dare attack the few and singular examples of valor in our midst?
McCain, Kerrey and their comrades deserve respect and gratitude. If we disagree with their politics, the remedy is at the ballot box. But to label as "criminals" men who withstood physical assaults that make Abu Ghraib look tame? Citizenship is wasted on such as these.
Like Vietnam, Iraq is a lightning rod for controversy. Many Americans genuinely feel that we should never have invaded a country that (they say) posed no strategic threat. Many others believe that the threat existed, and provide salient arguments to counter the tired claim of "the president lied." Still others believe that even though the invasion was flawed in its execution, it was a necessary exercise of executive authority. Our country is divided, and the rhetorical battles are as fierce as the real ones.
But regardless of our personal convictions, there is no place in public discourse for the rantings of spoiled children who have never risked life or limb for the greater good. The First Amendment protects their right to protest, even though it is defiled by the content of their thoughts. Unfortunately, it doesn't endow them with courage or character.
Of course, some would disagree. Arianna Huffington has called Ms. Rohe fearless, or words to that effect. Others have praised Jodie Foster, who graced our local Penn graduates with a nice rap song and some ruminations on how we squandered the good will of the world's people.
Still others think that Mumia Abu-Jamal has something of value to impart from his seat on death row. Cop-killers, actresses and clueless little girls. Our graduates are truly blessed.
What most upsets me is that hardly anyone in the liberal community has criticized the attack on McCain. Remember the outrage at "swift-boating" and the indignant defense of Jack Murtha?
Those who were rightly upset at the mud thrown in John Kerry's direction are conveniently silent when it comes from their own side. Those who said we should listen to Murtha's call for an immediate withdrawal of troops because of his war record turn their backs on McCain and stigmatize Kerrey. Their hypocrisy is limitless.
My wish for Ms. Rohe is that, away from the admiring cameras and accompanied only by her conscience, she make as great a mark on society as John McCain and his brothers-in-arms. But I doubt it. The only Hilton she'll ever occupy belongs to Paris' daddy.
She later apologized to McCain who accepted the apology.
Leftist food fight.
Not a McCain fan at all, but these lefties are disgusting, in their manners and more ominously, in their warped view of this country and its history.
"McCain, Kerrey and their comrades"
In vino veritas?
Maybe because he's nuckin' futz?
John McCain was a war hero. These Democrats need to realize that if it were not for people like him, they couldn't stand up and make their ridiculous protests.
They left out the idolatry ladled on Max Cleland. Never mentioning the fact that his injuries, while overwhelming, were not of the "heroic" type.
Yet the fact he lost an election on the basis of his liberal voting pattern, he was a victim of "attacks"
of course, typical lib, after you throw the mud
So you're in the Rohe/Huffington camp on this one?
Pro-mccainiac piece designed to show him as a rightist patriot.
No one is fooled.
The whole thing was a disaster. McCain came to NYC to raise money. What he was doing at The New School I'll never know.
Maybe I'm the only retard in the world that does not think that getting shot down because you suck as a pilot and surviving torture ranks as heroic in the same vein as what an Audey Murphy, George Patton or George Washington did in their heroics
JOHN McCAIN IS, without a doubt, heroic.
Right over my head.
McCain is the last of the "Keating 5" senators. The only one without enough shame to have resigned for his part.
as a vet(RVN C1/7 1st Cav 1970-71) I have the greatest respect for McCain and what he went through ..........but he is still a RINO
I do not like John McCain, but I would never fail to behave with common courtesy to him. These sanctimonious youngsters with heads full of mush are disgusting.
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