Terrorism is a counter-balance to political arrogance?
What if the issue were cast in personal terms...
Imagine that there is some cocktail party at a college hall. Imagine Bill Gates is there, among all the 30k/yr professors. If Bill Gates acts "arrogantly" toward the hoi polloi, would they be "warranted" to, say, brutally murder a couple dozen of Bill's family members in retaliation for his "arrogance?"
This "arrogance" argument has been around since 9/12. It's amazingly pervasive and it's amazingly bogus. How can such educated media types continue to put this crap forward? Just how irresponsible can the media be?
Mark W.
About 10 years ago there was a vicious mass murder in Ithaca of an entire family by an African American.
A few years ago, a columnist recalled that murder and postulated that the family (which was upper middle class) had more or less engaged in an arrogant display of their wealth at some point prior to that, and they were robbed and murdered as a result thereof.
Trust me, no matter how extreme and evil you can imagine a leftist to be, there's always at least one Ithacite who will live up to it.
Hence the "City of Evil" tag.
However, ISIS, the e-zine of "the fascist underground in ithaca"(as one Ithacite put it) did.
Here it is:
Trouble in Academe: A Case Study
by Brandon CrockerSince September 11th there have been numerous reports of disturbing, if not surprising, anti-American incidents at universities across the country. In January I wrote an essay regarding such campus anti-Americanism of which a condensed version was published in the community newspaper of Ithaca, New York, home to Cornell University and the lesser-known private Ithaca College. The reason for its appearance in The Ithaca Journal was that I devoted two paragraphs of the piece to an article published in the alumni magazine of Ithaca College by one professor Asma Barlas. Professor Barlas’ article along with the reaction to my criticism provides an interesting case study of a profound ailment in the American academy.
Professor Barlas, is chair of the politics department at Ithaca College as well as interim director of “the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity.” Her piece entitled “Why do They Hate Us?” starts by laying out two memos from non-policy making institutions as the smoking gun proving that U.S. foreign policy since World War II has had as its goal “control over the entire world by any means necessary.” And that now “people everywhere are sick and tired” of our “political economy based on their systematic abuse, exploitation, and degradation.” One of these damning documents is a 1941 Council on Foreign Relations memo that stated that to avoid “possible stresses” to the U.S. economy, the U.S. needed to secure sources of raw materials from around the world. The second is a CIA memo that advised president Eisenhower in 1954 that Americans needed to realize that there were “no rules” in dealing with the “implacable enemy” of Soviet communism. Does building such a premise on such “evidence” ring intellectually hollow? Well, hold on to your seat.
The question we should be asking ourselves, explains professor Barlas, is not why the terrorists hate us, but “why do WE hate and oppress THEM?” You see, in the mind of professor Barlas, the United States has not been spending the past 60 years or more merely trying to control the entire world, but we have been particularly oppressing those areas of the Islamic world - and Marin County, California - where Osama bin Laden has successfully recruited his al-Qaeda terrorist army. Osama bin Laden, the son of a fabulously wealthy Saudi construction magnet, has, undoubtedly, felt the lash of U.S. oppression more than most.
These poor souls, overwrought with concern for the oppressed, if they could form their own government somewhere, surely it would be open, democratic, and respectful of human rights. It would be a place where children of all races, creeds, and religions could grow up, free from the oppression against which they fight. Yes, we’re talking about Taliban Afghanistan.
One fact that professor Barlas seems to overlook is that we don’t need to theorize as to why “they hate us” - they’ve told us. Sure, Osama gives some lip service to solidarity with the Palestinians. And some, like professor Barlas, think that we “oppress” the Palestinians by being allied with democratic Israel and by providing Israel with economic and military aid - as we also do for Egypt as part of the Camp David Accords. But the clear focus of al-Qaeda’s hatred toward us is RELIGIOUS, and it is a hatred that comes from TEACHINGS, not EXPERIENCES. The United States is the most significant infidel power on the planet and a small contingent of infidel American troops is defiling the holy land of the Arabian peninsula, not by oppressing anyone, but by its mere presence.
What, exactly, she thinks we have done to oppress the followers and sympathizers of Osama bin Laden is not clear in professor Barlas’ piece, though she does rattle off a number of U.S. military actions over the past couple of decades, including the Gulf War, Bosnia, Grenada, and strikes against Libya. She apparently believes that U.S. military action, regardless of the mission, is damning evidence of our oppressive, controlling foreign policy. She does provide as further evidence our history of alliances with undemocratic regimes including - the Taliban. Remember that “alliance?” She is of course referring to the 43 million dollars of humanitarian aid we sent to Afghanistan a few years back in support of the stamping out of the drug trade. This inability to recognize not-so-subtle distinctions would be truly amazing in a high school student.
If you are confused why people like Osama bin Laden, who don’t support the idea of democracy, would hate us for supporting undemocratic regimes, or are wondering how professor Barlas reconciles her beliefs that we were allied with the Taliban but that the Taliban and its al-Qaeda buddies are products of U.S. oppression, then you must be more rational than is the good professor.
I searched the work of this “scholar” in vain for any explanation of how the granting of independence to the Philippines, siding with Nasser’s Egypt over our European allies during the Suez Crises, and, indeed, how our friendship with tiny, resourceless Israel have advanced our supposed goal of controlling “the entire world by any means necessary.”
But professor Barlas reaches the peak of her penetrating analysis with the following:
“Mr. Bush says, ‘Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941.’ Of all the things he has said, this should give us the most pause. What kind of hubris has induced us to believe that we have the right to do things on other people’s soil for 136 years that we won’t tolerate on our own?"
Does she really believe that for the past 136 years we have been rampaging around the world committing the equivalent of Pearl Harbor or the September 11th atrocities? This is what the professor thinks of the United States’ role in two world wars, Kuwait, and Kosovo? Does she recognize no moral difference between hijackers flying commercial jetliners into the World Trade Center and the 101st Airborne parachuting into Normandy on D-Day or B-52’s bombing al-Qaeda caves in Tora Bora?
As sidebars throughout the magazine containing this amazing article, the editors of the Ithaca College Quarterly provided brief biographies of four Ithaca graduates who died in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Perhaps they had taken courses from professor Barlas and thus knew as their terrible deaths approached that they were at least partially to blame for the September 11 attacks for “having embraced” the exploitative foreign policy of the United States. “For surely we have created the enemy we once merely defined and imagined.”
As bad as it is, the fact that universities utilize the talents of the likes of professor Barlas to “educate” people is not the ailment of which this example is a case study. The ailment is much larger. It is the fact that the guardians of the university - professors and administrators - devote themselves to defending the likes of professor Barlas with the shield of “academic freedom” while forsaking their responsibility to promote intelligence and intellectual integrity.
The president of Ithaca College, responding to alumni anger following Barlas’ piece in the Ithaca College Quarterly, extolled the virtues of “diversity” and “academic freedom.” She did not extol the virtue of an intelligent and academically disciplined faculty. IC professor of writing, Fred Wilcox, fired off a counter to my piece in The Ithaca Journal writing that my criticism of the Barlas piece was the equivalent of calling anyone who disagreed with George W. Bush’s foreign policy (or, as he put it, with America’s “license to kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason”) a “traitor.” I was a “name-calling ideologue” who did not understand or appreciate “academic freedom.” Professor Barlas, herself, complained that I never explained how her views were “anti-American” and if I used such “neo-McCarthyist” rhetoric against her, what about Bush’s antagonists in Congress?
Have university professors grown so out of touch with reality that they really think views like those expressed by professor Barlas would fit comfortably in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party? Or are these just examples of extraordinary stupidity? I have yet to hear a Democratic member of congress give voice to Barlas’ learned view that the FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton administrations forwarded a myopic, controlling, oppressive foreign policy that has been the prime progenitor of evil in the world. But if one did, I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to call him anti-American. I am old school, and believe words have meanings.
Other responses from non-professors also stressed a need to be reverent of academic freedom. To say that the likes of professor Barlas should be forced to hock their wares at some ideological think tank (if one will have them) rather than at a TEACHING institution, is dangerous, “anti-democratic,” and “intimidation.” And, surely, smart students would not be harmed by such idiotic rantings. They would just parrot the professors, get their grade and move on. Going to college is a waste of time anyway, right? And if a few of the weaker students pick up a little irrational hatred of America, that’s a small price to pay for academic freedom. After all, what’s the worst that can come of that?
Of course, the ideal of the university, cloaked in the magic armor of academic freedom, engendering a free and open search for truth is, at least outside of the sciences, a myth. Core curricula have been sacrificed on the altar of the anti-intellectual deity of political correctness, and the promise of a free and open exchange of ideas is too often a hollow one - especially if you are a political conservative. Indeed, in America, the exchange of ideas is demonstrably more free and open outside of universities than in them. Nonetheless, university professors and administrators continue to find success in peddling the charms of “academic freedom” to the American public.
Are we forever condemned to suffering a system of higher education with an increasingly left-wing, anti-American, and indeed anti-intellectual bent, perpetuated by a culture of academe where to be critical of Western values (except for some strains such as Marxism), and particularly AMERICAN values, is the key to acceptance and the key to be regarded as intelligent? If Americans continue to buy in to the sanctity of “academic freedom” and to deny themselves any role in shaping university standards and policies, the answer is “yes.” Can serious efforts by concerned citizens, alumni, and governments (in the case of state schools) curb some academic excesses - like professor Barlas? That is yet to be seen.
One thing from the Ithaca College case, however, should be clear and incontrovertible. The rallying cry of “academic freedom” should not be used to protect idiocy. The protection of intellectual standards should come before “academic freedom.” University administrators should have the courage to recognize this, and if they don’t, a little prodding by those who pay the bills is well in order.
Ithaca is the City of Evil.
I agree with you here, this "arrogance" argument is complete crapola. I like your analogy of Bill Gates, and NO they wouldn't tolerate the murder under these circumstances. But these same leftists who would decry a murder in that situation, somehow can justify acts of violence by someone or some group they see as an "oppressed minority". It's always been my experience that behind EVERY leftist is an ELETIST. Behavior they wouldn't tolerate from a group of white people , they'll justify from anyone else because in the liberal mind, "They just can't help themselves, so we can't expect them to follow the norms of civilized behavior." This is why they're liberals, they see themselves as superior, and it's their job to lift others out of the pathetic state they're in.
As an aside, IMO, this is why they have such a special hatred for someone like Clarence Thomas. He represents the minority who DOESN'T NEED liberalism to boost him up.