Posted on 01/27/2002 10:49:32 AM PST by NYCVirago
I'm old enough to know that the Greatest Generation didn't fight World War II for our right to burn books. Yet the recent news photos of Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, N.M., burning copies of "Harry Potter" and Shakespeare immediately recall the Nazis.
Book-burning is only part of the outbreak of right-wing thought control brought on by the 9/11 attack. Groups large and small are affected.
A friend reports a recent restaurant outing where one table of diners tapped a glass to demand that everybody stand up and sing "God Bless America." That most of the diners remained seated was more about distaste for Horst Wessel-type coercion than disrespect for their country — or songwriter Irving Berlin.
Left-wing political correctness may be silly — and, as manifested by the Berkeley, Calif., City Council, deeply irritating — but right-wing PC is scary.
The conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni, co-founded by Second Lady Lynne Cheney to stamp out liberal opinion on campuses, practices another form of thought control. It posts names on the Web of professors and others whom its accuses of post-9/11 "unpatriotic behavior."
A New York University professor made the list for telling a journalist that there was campus "skepticism" about going to war. A Stanford University professor was listed for saying that Osama Bin Laden should be tried before an "international tribunal." Since Osama is another Hitler, I happen to agree. Will my opinion find its way to an equivalent of the Media Research Center, which keeps its conservative eye on network news?
Why are so many Americans willing to see freedom of thought and expression compromised? Maybe they truly want to help President Bush. With his teddy-bear compassion, hugs for children of all creeds and colors and startled-deer expression, Bush invites sympathy. He is the smiley face of conservatism.
Attorney General John Ashcroft — who trampled on the free expression of Oregon and California voters by arbitrarily striking down their assisted suicide and medical marijuana laws — is the frowny (or true) conservative face. What other state laws are in danger of being undone for ideological reasons by erstwhile believers in states' rights? Not the Mississippi flag law, you can bet, but there's always New York's gun laws.
The Constitution belongs to all the people, not just those who are politically correct according to the party in power. Everybody — right, left and center — wants to live in safety. I support the war on terrorism, but I know that our country is safest and best when our right to be free-thinking Americans is unchallenged.
Buckley is author of "American Patriots — The Story of Black in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm."
That's funny stuff. A historian under the impression that Hitler was tried under an international tribunal.
Did Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, N.M. sieze anyone else's books and burn them? Did it take the books from the public library and burn them? If the church only burned copied which it owned, how is that worse than burning a flag?
If the church made no effort to destroy all or even a significant number of copies of the books(bet your last dollar on that), expressing fear of a mere media event is over-the-top political correctness.
If the church made no effort to destroy all or even a significant number of copies of the books(bet your last dollar on that), expressing fear of a mere media event is over-the-top political correctness.
Great points! We're supposed to be all up in arms because a few yahoos burned their own copies of books? Oooh, scary.
Bravo, such fools, history is replete with the numerous social benefits derived from book burning!
That is prima facie absurd. Those folks in that church presumably bought those books or they were donated by people who bought them. They can be used in any manner .
Burning those books was no different from throwing old comic books in the trash. They are the property of those that bought them to do with as they like.
It is something else when books are confiscated to be destroyed by the government or by one's neighbor, in which other it is Robbery and Arson and Malicious destruction of property, v.v.
There are some concepts that are politically correct: patriotism, participatory government, personal freedoms, free enterprise.
I would have to assume that this is in reference to their recent report Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It . Since I read the report and noticed how conspicuous it was that the names of the professors were excluded, I checked. Sure enough, no listing of professor’s names (or “others”) listed on the website that I could find ACTA Site.
The author is so intellectually lazy that she has to invoke Nazi comparisons in the very first paragraph.
Lazy and stupid. The Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. Despite the questionable benefit brought to a German Worker, I can’t imagine any Conservative favoring that much government involvement. What a lazy way to conduct a straw man argument.
That's funny stuff. A historian under the impression that Hitler was tried under an international tribunal.
Yeah, wasn’t he sent to Devil’s Island where he was assassinated by Sirhan-Sirhan?
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
Now THAT goes beyond the pale (g)
A minor quibble--the free expression of Oregon and California
voters was recognized when they voted. What was damaged,
once again and on a continuing basis, was the right of states
to regulate items not specifically delegated to the Congress
by the US Constitution. This is the frowny (true) face of
drugwarrior/lifestyle-police conservatism, as it speaks out
for state's rights but on a highly selective basis.
As much as I hate to admit it the author is correct here.
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