University Begins Displaying American Flag in Classrooms

CNS News ^ | September 12, 2003 | ucfdeltagirl

[ucfdeltagirl]

(CNSNews.com) - The first American flag in a Florida state university classroom was unfurled at the University of Central Florida in Orlando on Friday afternoon as a result of an effort led by conservative students.

"This is a great day for UCF students," said Heather Smith, president of Rebuilding on a Conservative Kornerstone, or ROCK, a student-based group that has been working for months to have the flags placed in the school's classrooms.

Smith said it is national emblem of freedom and liberty. However, critics of the plan said the American flags would be used to show political support for President Bush and U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, issues that not all students agree on.

Several months ago, the school administration approved the group's request to hang flags in every classroom, and UCF officials even offered to provide the labor necessary to install them. However, ROCK was required to come up with the funds to buy the flags.

The organization asked the university's student government for about $3,000 to obtain 200 flags. On Aug. 28, the student leaders voted 20-13 to deny that request after some representatives said they wanted the university - not student fees - to pay for the purchase.

Debate on the issue lasted for more than two hours and was often contentious.

"I would consider this an invasion of what is supposed to be a bastion of critical thought, the university," said Robert Coffman, a junior majoring in English at the school. "What's the next proposal? Let's have President Bush's photo in every classroom?"

"The flag doesn't offend me personally," said UCF sophomore Matt De Vlieger, a native of Coral Springs, Fla. "The way it's being used does offend me."

"It's a shame that our extremist student government is so out of step with the average UCF student," said Thomas Dexter, vice president of ROCK, after the decision was made.

However, local radio talk show host Shannon Burke heard about the vote and decided to raise money for ROCK's effort during his morning program. Within an hour, Burke had gathered all the needed funds.

The biggest contribution to the project came from the state's Elks organization (the original founders of Flag Day), which donated more than $2,000. Also providing financial support were the local SunTrust Bank, people in the Orlando community and UCF alumni and students.

On Thursday, Sept. 4, the flags for every classroom were delivered to the UCF campus. "With the money that ROCK has raised privately," Smith said, "the flags will be installed this month."

Smith had worked closely with Adam Guillette, a University of Florida senior and chairman of the Freedom Foundation. Following their success at UCF, Smith and Guillette plan to help students at other colleges promote the idea on their campuses.

Still, the controversy over the project hasn't gone away. Some students gathered outside the UCF Student Union this past week to protest the effort, with some of the youths calling the American flag "fascist" and "offensive."

Nevertheless, Burke dismissed those who claim that the flags are being used in a partisan way. "The American flag transcends any political issue," he said.

See Earlier Story: Students Push for American Flags in College Classrooms (July 25, 2003)

[justshutupandtakeit]

Oh, MY GOD. You mean they aren't all cowering in the corner afraid to open their mouths because of the chilling effect of such a symbol of oppression and eeevilll? How could that be?

[bmauer]

I've enjoyed posting to this forum and I thank you for making it available to me, and for those who responded thoughtfully.

Insinuating that I'm a "deadly enemy" and that you are "smoking me out" isn't conducive to further conversation. If you look over my posts, you will find that I have been sincere and that I tried to support my arguments with reasoning and evidence as best I could given the fact that I posted dozens of messages within a few hours.

If what you want is an echo chamber, you don't need me. If what you want is a scapegoat, I'm not playing.

I sincerely wish you peace and good health.

Barry

[justshutupandtakeit]

There was no insinuation about you, if you would read my post more carefully you will note that I spoke of those who "hate America" as my enemies not those who disagree with me. I have seen nothing to indicate that you fit that description from your posts or that your views are not heartfelt.

Your description of yourself as a "surrealist" I find intriguing. Surrealism is a "form of art in which interpretation of dream phenomenon if attempted." Oxford Etymological dictionary. How is this applied to politics? I am aware that many of the Surrealists were fascist of a sort (such as the most famous, Dali) but that does not fit with your expressed beliefs.

[bmauer]

Okay, I can't pass this one up. And I appreciate your clarification and apologize if I misinterpreted it. (Still, what you wrote is harsh).

Surrealism goes far beyond art, although art was its most famous manifestation. In fact, the early surrealists had little interest in art for anything but the purposes of research into reality. They believed that metaphor, the central element of most poetry and many visual images, could reveal hidden connections between things in the world. They sought to make metaphors that would reveal these connections. The fact that much of their attempts wound up in books and museums speaks to the interest in these experiments in terms of their aesthetic value. But aesthetic value was not the Surrealists' primary motivation.

Dali became a fascist and was "excommunicated" from the group after expressing an erotic fetishistic fascination with Hitler. The episode was particularly embarassing for the Surrealists because they praised fetishism and absolute freedom. Dali was taking their logic to its conclusion, although one could argue that the "crime" Dali committed might have been, in another variation, a similar fascination with Stalin.

The Surrealists tried entering conventional politics in Europe at the time, mostly through Andre Breton's attempts to form a Surerealist wing of the Communist Party. He failed miserably, both because the Communists wanted nothing to do with Surrealism, and because the internal logic of Surrealism was antithetical to communism and many of the Surrealists knew it (although one of the most famous Surrealists, and one of its greatest practitioners, Louis Aragon, became an ardent communist and moved to the Soviet Union).

I am interested in Surrealism politically as an alternative to the "modern" politics that arose in the 19th and 20th century. These were: communism, fascism, bourgeois democracies, and socialism. All of these political forms are grounded on the premise of an industrial society, and they share many features (for example, all are Taylorist and Fordist). It's not that Surrealism has "policy solutions." Rather, it suggests a different way of relating to modern life that is not Taylorist and Fordist.

Many Surrealists, such as Michel Leiris and Georges Bataille, were anthropologists and suggested new forms of social organization that would develop around a renewal of the "sacred in everyday life." To some extend, this interest in the "sacred" was shared only by fascism (among all the political varieties I named above) and to a limited extent by bourgeois democracies, particularly within the entertainment industries. Leiris and Bataille argued that the fascists had developed a powerful weapon in their appropriation of the sacred and that they were directing all of the sacred energies unleashed in fascist societies towards an irrational mania around the leader, and around such terms as "blood and soil." Bataille and Leiris wanted to create a more egalitarian form of the sacred. To this end, they proposed that everyone articulate their own version of the "sacred" and use that personal sacred as a way to resist the influence of the mass state (represented by fascism).

By using Surrealist methods, people would be able to draw critical connections between things in the world and their sacred life. Everything in the world would be stamped with the imprint of the personal sacred, and thus the world would take on a new caste. For Bataille and Leiris, production and consumption would no longer be limited to exchanges of profit and loss, but would include features seen only in "primitive" societies, including sacrifice as a form of "loss without return." They proposed that the gift might replace the commercial exchange as a way to regulate economic interactions. They proposed that industrial society could be an opportunity for play and for the recreation of the self. These proposal were later enacted by people such as Andy Warhol, the Fluxus Group, the Situationists, and many others.

I hope this brief introduction gives you some idea of where I'm coming from when I say I am a Surrealist.

Barry

[TheBigB]

I myself am a dyslexic atheist. I don't believe in doG. =D

[Marysecretary]

Yeah, he kept running up a blue dress...his legacy.

[Marysecretary]

Add me to the list. I know all about leftism at universities. Mxxx

[Marysecretary]

It's a new day, Sam, and a very sad one when the flag can't be displayed publicly or in a classroom without such dissention. This generation just learned this nonsense from the preceding hippy generation, some of who are now in politics or teaching. Now THAT is scary.

[Marysecretary]

We are in a disaster because we have turned our faces from God as a nation and He is allowing us to step in our own feces. When we, as a nation, turn our faces toward God once again, He WILL bless us. It's as simple, or as difficult, as that. Repentance will bring us blessings. Nothing else will.

[commismasher]

I'm curious, what professors are a part of your Progressive Faculty at UCF?

[bmauer]

You want names? That's not my perogitive.

[Marysecretary]

I want to help send my two granddaughters to a small Christian school but I can't convince their mother they should go there. They can't sing Christmas carols in the public school, there is no talk of God except in a derogatory manner. I hate the school system anymore. It's not like it was when we were growing up and I don't like it at all.

[rintense]

You know, I can remember a time when there was an American flag in every school and classroom, along with a photo of the current President... It is disturbing to me to see so many elitists using the Constitution as an excuse for subverting patriotism and national pride.

[Marysecretary]

I remember that, too, rintense, and not one person cared that they were in their classrooms. The only place that you can do that nowadays is in a Christian school. Sad, isn't it?

[justshutupandtakeit]

My comments may be harsh but when I see my countrymen killed for no reason other than they were targeted by a brutal band of killers and see others defend the killers I am in no mood for gentleness. I am old enough to be able to perceive the attempts to change the nature of American society and to recognize how the Left has operated to do so.

But you must admit that even Brutality has its surrealistic side. It is often used to attract the weak-minded as Hitler gleefully admitted. His followers were early on ordered to be as violent as possible in dealing with enemies. While the bourgeois reacted with horror and condemnation Hitler understood that the more violent the Nazis were the more appealing they were to the segments they wished to attract. Much of his doings were beyond the realm of rationality. How else can the decision to give trains carrying Jews to their deaths priority over trains carrying military supplies or troops to the frontlines?

Thanks for your explanation. My problem with such thinking is that it is an attempt to escape the rational. But the problems we face are only solvable through rationality. I don't really see surrealism using metaphor since metaphors are rational (I am reminded of my teen years when my friends and I would produce Surrealistic puns comprehensible only to ourselves.) It appears to me to be more the use of absurdity to provoke different ways of thinking about something but then when it is time to apply that thinking we are back in the world of rationality. Plus, it is getting close to the area of "private languages."

Even attempts to get beyond convention interpretations of reality must take a back seat to the realities of life. Hunger, love, hate can all have surrealistic aspects but one cannot be fed by surrealistic images or manifestos nor can love or hate be truly fulfilled without a real object. Other than through some sort of mental illness.

Since politics is the art of achieving and maintaining Power, I cannot see any lasting connection to surrealism outside of the use of images for political purposes.

[bmauer]

You seem to understand Surrealism fairly well. But Surrealism is not anti-rational. Rather, many of the surrealists, including Breton, Leiris and Bataille, were scientists. Their point was that Comtean Positivism (pure rationality), and its offsprings Taylorism and Fordism (pure efficiency) left a gaping hole in modern life that would be filled with irrationality one way or another. The Surrealists tried to take advantage of this opportunity by offering a way to satisfy the desire for irrationality (such as excess, sacrifice, and fetishism) and by bringing the fruits of these irrational activities back to the realm of the rational. In other words, they viewed "art" practices, such as metaphor (which produces an "excess" of meaning), as research practices.

Metaphor is rational in a sense, but it seems strange to most people. For example, many advertisements are made of metaphoric combinations. Take a hypothetical example: a car with a peacock on it. Cars and peacocks seem about as far apart as can be. Hardly any "rational" person would put them in the same category. Yet there is an almost magical transference of properties that happens, competing a circuit between the two when you put them together. Thus we would say that the car is bold, beautiful, showy, proud -- like the peacock is.

Surrealism takes advantage of surprising juxtapositions, which are in fact metaphorical, to do serious research into the properties of daily life.

Their goal was to steal from the Nazis their "ownership" of the irrational and make it available to everyone, but hopefully without the same negative outcomes. Of course, they admitted their project was a risk and that they couldn't guarantee that there would be no negative outcomes, but that it was worse than doing nothing and just letting irrationality arise on its own, an especially dangerous potential in an age of massively destructive technologies. They believed that primitive societies had shown ways in which the group could regulate the irrational through things like ritual.

Politics is about power, perhaps, but power can be defined in a huge number of ways. For example, if I have a way of changing the way I see the world, I would say that my method is powerful. In my position as a teacher, I try to teach students how to use powerful methods that they can use to convince themselves. As I pointed out earlier in the discussion, I do not "indoctrinate" but rather I teach people how to think independently.

The goal of education is independence from teachers.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I prefer "The Greeks and the Irrational" to the Surrealists and have never been much of a fan of Joyce or Beckett. While I do like a lot of Dali's paintings that is probably more because of the classical style he used to express the absurd creations he made. Likewise I love Mozart and cannot stand the con artists like John Cage.

Positivism, Taylorism and Fordism were never meant to cover all of life nor to remove all irrationality from life. Such a response is one only intellectuals would make, no one else would believe such things or that a counterbalance must be sought. Even Veblen documented the irrationality of his time with his concept of conspicuous consumption. And we have always had music to effect us in non-rational ways. Listen to Souza's marches. And games such as football and baseball. Surrealism does not approach the heart of the matter, the lack of spiritual life modern man faces. I doubt that it even considers that there is even such a thing as spirit.

Nazism did NOT arise through arbitrary irrationality. It was calculated to the nth degree. It symbols were chosen because of their emotive content and occult significance because of their power to affect the viewers. Nor did primative societies adopt their cultures to accomodate the irrational. THEY thought these were completely rational within the context of their frame of references. As "The Gods Must be Crazy" so wonderfully shows, to the primitive modern man's culture is utterly irrational.

I agree with your statement about the role of teachers but find it totally depressing that their own thinking is so predictably Leftist. It is as though they have a great fear of appearing to think like ordinary people and share the common feelings of Love of Country, Belief in the Divine, and Respect for Tradition. Far too often they appear to seek confrontation even if that means adopting positions so absurd that they would have been ridiculed even 50 yrs. ago.
Can you imagine trying to explain the concept of Same Sex Marriage to a person in 1950. Even homosexuals would have thought you had lost your mind and they would be correct.

And I am not anti-intellectual but would be considered highly educated having attended one of the best universities in the World.

[bmauer]

Joyce and Beckett were not Surrealists, nor even irrationalists really. They were modernists. Dali was not particularly Surrealistic in his art (painting was not as interesting as photography was to the Surrealists) because painting required talent and the Surrealists believed that talent was often an impediment to learning. If you could learn without talent, they thought, that was better; for one thing, it would be open to more people, most of whom didn't have talent. Still Dali was an important Surrealist for the non-artistic things he did, like his strange performance and his "theories" such as the "paranoid-critical" theory he invented.

I love Mozart and John Cage. I don't listen to much Cage, but I'm glad he set the examples he did, because he makes me hear things differently in the world. He pointed out that anything could be music if you heard it the right way. Thus the sound an elevator makes, along with the sound of a child coughing plus the sound of coffee brewing could be considered a kind of "symphony." That's a very surrealistic approach, since it is a transformation of everyday life from the mundane to the sacred. I also appreciate Cage for his writing and performance, which is for me more interesting than his music.

Fordism was intended as a "totalizing" approach to modern life. Ford set up workers' cities, so that their "free" time could be regulated like their work time was. This idea caught on in much of Europe and Asia, but had somewhat limited success in the U.S. and Canada. Here, the leisure and entertainment industry had grown up around Ford very rapidly and had undercut him somewhat. Entertainment in particular offered a form of less regulated free time that left people with a wide range of choices to reflect various styles, tastes, lifestyles, etc. This was in contrast to Ford's famous motto about the Model T, which was that you could get it in any color you liked as long as it was black.

Entertainment is something of a paradox within a generally Taylorist society. It is produced by Taylorist methods, and is extremely rationalized at the point of production -- MGM's studio was run by managers who had studied Ford Factories closely. But the consumption side of the equation was a bit stranger. Here rational decisions --such as interest in a good story --could only account for a part of the cinema's appeal. The other part of its appeal was clearly irrational, though the irrationality was identified as mainly having to do with people's interest in "stars." Hollywood's offer of stars to people in America could be seen as calculated, and it certainly was. It was calculated to stimulate consumption (stars sold other products) and it was calculated to supply access to the sacred that had become increasingly scarce in modern society.

Veblem notes the paradox about this issue by describing entertainment and leisure as both irrational and rationalized.

Now the Nazis of course calculated much more than Hollywood did, but they had Hollywood as an example to follow. An excellent documentary about Hitler, called The Architecture of Doom, demonstrates Hitler's interests in creating a "mass sacred" through his design of insignia, uniforms, and all manner of arts and aspects of daily life. The attempt on Hitler's part was to fuse the sacred and the everyday, but in a uniquely modern way, using mass media (radio, film, the press, mass rallies, etc.) to construct a modern primitive state.

Now primitive cultures don't think of themselves as rational, or if they do they are not using the same concept of rational that we use. Books by Eric Havelock, Jack Goody, and Walter Ong chronicle the rise of literacy in ancient Greece. They argue that literacy was more than just the development of writing. It was, in fact, an entirely new way of seeing the world. For example, Plato invented the concept -- things like "truth" and "justice" that were defined abstractly for the first time. Before Plato, there was no abstract for justice, merely examples of justice (Odysseus slaying the suitors). The contradiction followed upon the invention of the concept. Prior to the invention or discovery (depending on your point of view) of the contradiction, it didn't really exist. Thus if primitive (meaning pre-literate) societies express two beliefs in contradiction (or at least apearing to be in contradiction according to we moderns) they would not see themselves as having a flaw in their thinking the way we would. Primitive societites invented myth as a way to deal with so called "contradiction." Myths hold two contradictory things in balance . . . thus a character who is both alive and dead is common in myth.

One note on the remainder of your comments . . . everybody believes in tradition. It's just a question of which one. Maybe my idea of American tradition I want to follow is that of Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley. It's tradition, right?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

We expect that all members of the community respect the rights of others and obey the laws of our state and nation and the rules and regulations of the University.

You must obey!...

That could get us into serious trouble under an authoritarian/totalitarian regime...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

How long before they are burnt and defaced?

How often do professors play with matches in class?