National Student Day of Action

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." So wrote George Orwell many years ago. Currently hitching their star to those words is a Massachusetts-based student organization called Boston Mobilization (BM), whose members purport to be truth-tellers courageous enough to speak out against the immorality of a possible US-led invasion of Iraq. In conjunction with numerous other left-wing organizations across the country, BM has designated December 10 as the National Student Day of Action, where students at some 200 college campuses will participate in anti-war demonstrations under the motto "Shut Down The War."

In the eyes of Boston Mobilization and its fellow "peace" organizations, any American military action would be immoral because the US itself is corrupt to its core. In their view, the real enemies of world peace are not to be found in the moral cesspools of militant Islam or Middle Eastern dictatorships, but rather right here in the good ol’ USA. To drive home the point, BM has mass-produced "ENEMY" t-shirts – adorned on the front with President Bush’s now-famous assertion "Either you’re with us or you’re with the enemy," and on the back with BM’s Website address and large block letters reading "ENEMY: NO WAR, NO WAY." By wearing this garment, a "peace activist" can show others that he is not aligned with the "bloodthirsty" United States.

BM’s Website calls for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from the Persian Gulf region, and exhorts students to publicly express their anti-war sentiments through such actions as: "not studying, not talking, walking out of class, coordinating a sit-in [or] ‘die-in,’ [forming a] massive human chain representing the number of innocent victims in Iraq, . . . blocking traffic in and around your campus – and even not eating that day."

Having understood that Boston Mobilization opposes any military strike against Iraq, you may be wondering what the organization proposes instead. That’s easy: the promotion of worldwide "peace and justice," of course. What reasonable person could quibble with that? And, like virtually all "peace" groups, BM sees the US as the principal enemy of those lofty ideals. Consequently, BM seeks to create "a new generation of activists" through its Youth For Peace (YFP) project, which "trains student and community activists to facilitate workshops promoting peace, anti-racism, and critical thinking." Currently sitting atop the YFP agenda is a "newly developed anti-racism curriculum" that addresses "racism in all aspects of our society" via "diversity/anti-racism workshops."

The positions of "peace activists" are generally founded upon the axiom that America is a bastion of racism and evil, and therefore has no right to make judgments about either the legitimacy or the shortcomings of regimes elsewhere in the world. Remarkably, however, these same activists direct not a word – not a syllable – against the unrivalled political intolerance that pervades Iraq. Nor, for that matter, do they condemn the religious and cultural intolerance that defines so much of the Muslim world.

Thus their "diversity/anti-racism workshops" are patterned after the diversity training seminars that have become so prevalent in corporate America – organized breast beating, mea-culpa sessions wherein members of the "group with power" (in that case, whites) gather for orgies of self-congratulatory moral preening and expiatory confession, declaring their righteous contempt for the allegedly racist, sexist, xenophobic land in which they live. In corporate America, "diversity specialists" are paid upwards of $10,000 per day to teach managers and employees that whites are inherently racist and "need to be re-educated"; that whites, whether they realize it or not, are the cause of bad race relations and should thus publicly confess their own hidden prejudices; and that white people’s racism is much like an onion, composed of many inherited layers which they must continually strive to "shed" throughout their lives.

Similarly, Boston Mobilization’s view is that Americans constitute the principal cause of bad international relations, and that self-examination and confession – only by Americans, of course – will best pave the avenue to goodwill between our nation and others.

Notably, BM’s view holds that the peace-and-justice applecart generally rolls along quite stably until it is periodically toppled by American "aggression" in various places around the world. In preference to such a scenario, BM sympathizers would rather "keep the peace" in an Iraq where terror reigns supreme; where hundreds of thousands of political prisoners and their family members have died torturous deaths in Saddam’s infamous prisons; where anyone uttering a single word critical of their dictator is subject to mutilation, incarceration, and even death; where scores of thousands of Kurds have been systematically maimed and exterminated; where Baghdad has had several years to develop and conceal, unimpeded by any nation, weapons of mass death; and where Saddam has amassed unimaginable wealth while his subjects purportedly suffer from the effects of UN sanctions. Indeed in 1999 and 2000, Boston Mobilization led the so-called Campaign for the Iraqi People, which included an international media blitz condemning UN sanctions on Iraq.

Focusing on the medical, nutritional, and economic deprivation that the sanctions were causing for the Iraqi people, the aforementioned Campaign made no effort to demand that Saddam finally abide by his post-Gulf War pledges – the breaking of which caused the sanctions to be imposed in the first place. Nor was there any suggestion that students anywhere form "a massive human chain representing the number of innocent victims" of Saddam’s brutal oppression and lust for wealth. There is nothing more lamentable than the spectacle of hordes of American college students unable to draw moral distinctions between their own nation and a land of total oppression such as Iraq – and wholly unaware of the catastrophic results that appeasement and wishful thinking have historically brought to their practitioners.

The "peace" movement is built on the notion that the axis of world evil is centered on the United States and nowhere else. It logically follows, therefore, that any easing of international tensions ought to commence with American acceptance of blame for all existing hostilities. And then, once we have dutifully acknowledged our own moral depravity to the rest of the world, we will presumably have peace – founded on the supposed goodwill, tolerance, and forgiving nature of regimes like the one in Baghdad.

In corporate America, "diversity specialists" are paid upwards of $10,000 per day to teach managers and employees that whites are inherently racist and "need to be re-educated"; that whites, whether they realize it or not, are the cause of bad race relations and should thus publicly confess their own hidden prejudices; and that white people’s racism is much like an onion, composed of many inherited layers which they must continually strive to "shed" throughout their lives.

What's always struck me is that these idiots don't seem aware of the fact that their viewpoint, is in itself, inherently racist.

If my kid were on a college campus today, and participated in this.....all funding would be cut off. (They'd know that before hand.)

"student organization called Boston Mobilization (BM)"

These "students" need a lesson in abbreviation. Their "movement" is one of the bowels.

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