Influencing Young Minds (& Islamic Terrorism)

Author: Luke Sheahan Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc. Date: February 23, 2007

Do liberal students look to their parents or professors to form their political views? FSM Contributing Editor Luke Sheahan has the answer, and more, as he examines more results from a recent FSM study of college students in America.

Last week I examined college students’ views on America and its role in the world and some of the contradictions between those views. This week, I will examine students’ views regarding terrorism and US foreign policy and reasons for some of the contradictions and discouraging results.

Students are not oblivious to the threat of Islamic terror. 67 percent said that it was a significant threat to the world and only slightly less said that “terrorism is caused by an ideology that condones violence to achieve political objectives.” 86 percent said that, if given the chance, Islamic terrorists will attack the US again. 66 percent said that the terrorists would cause as much destruction as they can, even if that means detonating a nuclear weapon. Make no mistake, college students are paying attention to the issue and understand the threat that Islamic terror poses to the world. Watching the World Trade Towers fall over breakfast did not leave them unaffected.

Despite students’ general understanding of the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, they seem confused about why the War on Terror is being fought. Two-thirds believe Islamic terrorists are driven by an ideology which seeks to use violence as a means of coercing policy changes in opposing regimes, as evidenced by the Madrid attacks. Yet, 83 percent believe that the War on Terror, at least in part, is “encouraged or caused by racism or prejudice.” Excuse me? Is it not driven by a violent ideology? Did they not attack us? Did we not already establish that?

37 percent also believe that official U.S. policy crosses humane and reasonable lines in the War on Terror. Do they not know how human rights concerns have hamstrung our military? Do they not realize that Abu Graib, etc. is not official U.S. policy and that the U.S. troops responsible were duly court marshaled? From the media rhetoric they are exposed to regarding Guantanamo Bay, we should probably just be thankful more students don’t think that way.

43 percent of students believe that the terrorist threat is growing, but they do not assign this to Islamist political ideology. Rather 46 percent believe this is due to U.S. actions in Iraq. This gets a little confusing because these students watched the World Trade Center burn and they watched the invasion of Iraq on television. They know that our action in Iraq cannot possibly be the cause of terrorism because it took place after 9/11. They also agree that terrorism is caused by a violent ideology that has been around for centuries. How can this violent ideology be caused by a policy only a few years old?

It might help if the college class room actually covered some of the current threats. However, during the Bush administration, U.S. immigration policy and global warming are all discussed more frequently than the war in Afghanistan and the spread of radical Islam and its threat to the West. It’s difficult to understand how students are supposed to make educated decisions when their professors refuse to discuss current threats. No doubt this is partially due to the fact that in many classes the topic of radical Islam is not part of the subject matter (i.e. engineering, mathematics, etc). Also, the threat of radical Islam is inconvenient to the standard leftist professor’s view that America is at fault for every wrong in the world.

Despite believing that terrorism is caused by a violent ideology and the obvious fact that a radical Islamists control Iran, 16 percent of students believe that the U.S. should not attack Iran under any circumstances and 53 percent believe that the U.S. should attack Iran only if it threatens the U.S. or its allies with a nuclear attack. If Iran is capable of attacking with a nuclear weapon, a preemptive attack becomes a dangerous undertaking. If it fails to destroy Iranian nuclear capability then Iran will surely retaliate with all its might against the U.S. and its allies. It’s better to never be in a position to have to take that risk.

Only 18 percent of students believe that Iran has the right to nuclear weapons, yet two-thirds of those who believe Iran has no right to nuclear weapons believe that no country has a right to nuclear weapons. Their opposition to Iranian nuclear armament is not because of the danger of Iran’s radical and violent ideology but because they believe no one should be armed with nuclear weapons. The lessons of the Cold War seem lost on them.

When one considers the source of college students’ political beliefs these conflicts and disturbing trends begin to make a little more sense. Only 11 percent said that they trusted the media but 71 percent named it one of the three most important influences on their political beliefs. 68 percent named their friends and 67 percent named their parents as major influences on their political views.

Students who identified themselves as conservative were much more likely to identify their parents as a major influence -- 80 percent of conservative students verses 59 percent of Liberals said Mom and Dad influenced their political views. Liberal students are much more likely than conservative students to name their professors as major influences on their political views, 51 percent to 35 percent. I don’t think that surprises anyone.

We all know that the media hasn’t been exactly fair in its reporting on the war, so it’s disturbing that it is the biggest influence on college students’ views. Even more troubling is that college students know it’s unreliable and still allow it to influence them. The dialectical training I harped on in previous columns would do a lot of good here. Some, including this humble writer, will find it comforting that professors have less influence on students’ views than family and friends. It’s good that students are more willing to trust their parents, who likely have a real job, over the tenured boneheads who populate college faculties and probably couldn’t do a full honest day’s work if their lives depended on it.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Luke Sheahan is a writer living in Philadelphia, PA.

ARTICLE SNIPPET:

"Despite students’ general understanding of the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, they seem confused about why the War on Terror is being fought."

Liberal students trust what their professors spew, lap up what the media feeds them, are generally in the rebellious mode anyway. They feed on each other. No big surprise. Go to just about any university newspaper website, especially the editorial section. The editorials and responses are usually laughable and predictably pathetic.

Amazing how far liberals will go in it's political "anti-war" war, abolish the 'war on terrr' reality as a myth, on the expense of EVERYBODY's - sane people or liberals - security.

[Liberal students trust what their professors spew]

And it begins in high school. My daughter, her friend, and I were in the car and a political matter came up. The friend expressed a very liberal point of view on the subject, which I promptly rebutted. She retorted, and I quote, "Well, my science teacher says it's true, and he's really smart, so I believe everything he says."

Honestly, I entered college pretty naive. I had long regarded college as a place to expand my horizons, to be engaged by bright minds, and as a place to be molded into a thinking adult.

It took me about two years to figure out that I had every reason to disagree with a lot of what I was being taught. It took me a little longer to wise up to the ideologies being drifted through the classroom. At that point, I knew the game, had to jump through the hoops, but learned ways to push the line.

Maybe today's high schoolers are more aware. I grew up in a small town that is assuredly NOT liberal. I waas also attending a school in a city with millions of people. So I expected things to be a little different. It was a heck of a learning curve, though.

Teach your kiddos early and prepare them for it as best you can is all I can say.

The following little passage is not my own original but is a perfect summary of the state of US and Western academia in general:

Their racist multi-culturalism, their anti-Americanism, and hate of anyone that disagrees with them. They are all for "free speech" as long as it's "political correctness."... Western campuses have become a mecca of anti-Western hate feeding into Islamic hate.

God help us:

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