Socialist Professor Responds

Let me please take this opportunity to thank you for your feedback and to clarify a few points that seem to be at issue. Thank you to those who have sent messages of support, and to those of you whose criticisms are based in argument and reasoning, rathern than in name calling and death threats. Thank you to those of you who noticed that I took care in my pledge not to identify with terrorists, suicide bombers, or Islamic regimes, but with the ordinary people around the world, including those here in the United States. And thank you, I guess, to those of you who are praying for my salvation. I tend to see a better world as being possible here on earth and am not waiting for the second coming so that the meek can inherit their due. But at least you aren't threatening my life, and I appreciate that.

To those of you who are sending me hate mail equating me with the enemy, however, let me attempt to make the following clarifications. It is true that the format of a pledge does not allow one to present arguments full-blown. People may have misunderstood my meaning and intent because of the brief and condensed nature of the genre.

I take my freedoms to dissent in this country very seriously. I do not want to live anywhere else in the world, your invitations to exile notwithstanding. I am a citizen with the right to protest what I see as unjust and inhumane policies, both economic and military. You are correct that I am relatively privileged; I would not have the same rights to dissent and protest in countries like Afghanistan, although if I lived there, I would be part of social movements to resist oppression whether in the form of Islamic fundamentalism or U.S. bombs. Activists in the countries I named often stress the importance of critique and dissent here in the belly of the beast. I feel a certain obligation, an obligation that comes with freedom, to speak out alongside of those with less freedom to speak. I pledged solidarity not with any nation's leaders or terrorist organizations, but with the ordinary people, who are not being liberated by U.S. sanctions and bombs or by U.S. support for the Israeli occupation. I see the people in Afghanistan who were bombed as they celebrated a wedding two weeks ago as being as human as those who died in the World Trade Center, for whom I also have tremendous compassion.

I should add that people in developing countries are not being liberated by the opportunites provided by U.S.-dominated world capitalism. I do not have space to go through all the evidence for these claims, but if you have an open mind, I suggest you read some Howard Zinn, especially People's History of the United States and his more recent Terrorism and War. Suffice it to say that if you have read any history you know that the U.S. either put in place or supported with money and guns the very dictators you decry today, including the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. The United States has taken part in the undermining of democratic (defined as supported by the majority of the people, not in terms of the free market) regimes in Latin American and the Carribean almost as a matter of course (Chile, Haiti and the Philippines for example), not to mention in Asia and Africa. The list is too long to recite here.

Those of you who are offended that you might have to fight and die for my freedoms clearly have misunderstood my anti-war stance. I do not want you to be sent to other countries to die or kill, because I think those actions are not in defense of our freedoms; more often it's about protecting oil profits (even Bush Sr. admitted as much about the Persian Gulf War, which resulted in more than a million and a half civilian deaths). I don't want you over there killing civilians in my name, when my freedoms are not what is being defended at all. Neither are yours. Even though you may hate me, I don't want to you die for someone else's profits.

I do not agree with the analysis that "our way of life" offers hope and salvation to those living in other countries under dictators and in poverty. When four percent of the world's population controls more than 60% of the world's wealth, when the nation states that harbor the strongest enterprises defend those interests with force, when U.S. foreign policy and economic policy are designed to drive countries into unsalvageable debt or rubble, it is impossible for me to remain uncritical. Too often, it is not the fault of bad leaders, bad values, wrong religion, or corrupt people in other nations that brings them ruin, but the policies of production for export over meeting human needs, the support of the U.S. for dictators like the former Suharto in Indonesia, who massacred more than 200,000 people but was, according to the state department, "our kind of guy" because he supported Nike and Freeport MacMoran's exploitation of the people there. I could go on. When Madeline Albright said that the deaths of 5,000 children a month in Iraq as a result of U.S. sanctions were a reasonable price to pay for U.S. foreign policy objectives, I reacted with the same level of disgust that you are bombarding me with now.

I think we have to face these hard realities about "our way of life" if we are truly to understand "why they hate us" and to prevent acts of desperation and hatred targeting civilians in the future. I am not defending terrorism (which, if defined as the targeting of civilian life in retaliation for political and economic grievances, would apply to U.S. conduct in every war it has fought). But it seems reasonable to consider that "they" (Iraqis, Palestinians, Muslims in general) might hate the United States for the havoc it has wrought in the Middle East. Some examples: First supporting and arming Hussein when he was fighting our enemies and killing the Kurds, then slaughtering Iraq's civilian population and bombing the country back to the stone age. First supporting and arming Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan when they were fighting "the communist menace," then bombing their civilian population. . . You get the idea. The support for Israel and its wars and occupations against Palestinians against United Nations resolutions and international law doesn't win our government any friends, either. It is always wrong to terrorize civilians in response to such abuses. Yet the history is part of the answer to the question and a change in U.S. foreign policy must be part of the solution.

If you cherish the freedoms of the United States, it would be hypocritical of you to be intolerant of the expression of opinions that differ from yours. I am a well-educated, thoughtful human being. I am well qualified to teach at the University ("universe"-ity), which should be a place for thoughtful and respectful sharing of diverse views. My students get trained in critical thinking: the capacity to take in a number of perspectives and weigh evidence and reasoning on their own, which they would not be able to do if there were not at least a few dissenters among us here. I mean, the business school gets the big bucks and military- and corporate-funded research dominate the campus. It's a rare class where a student would find points of view that challenge the corporate and geopolitical hegemony of the United States. So I feel sorry for the students whose parents would keep them from attending my classes or the University of Texas because of what I wrote. Don't you have faith that your children can think for themselves? Don't you trust them with a range of positions and approaches to knowledge? Haven't you prepared them to defend your family's values? Any viewpoint is welcome in my classes so long as the arguer can provide evidence and reasoning in support of claims. Contrary to popular mythology, I do not routinely fail conservative students; I do welcome their voices in class so long as respect for others and standards of argumentation are sustained. Actually, the smarter conservative students tell me that they enjoy a good challenge, which they take as a sign of respect. And believe me, I am a member of a tiny political minority on campus that is nowhere near acting like the "thought police" envisioned by the hard right. The kind of fear I hear in the emails I am receiving and on the conservative listservs I have been monitoring is based on a complete overestimation of any single professor's influence.

In sum, I am not the enemy of freedom; to the contrary, I am among its staunchest supporters. I think freedoms should be expanded, not curtailed, in this time of crisis. I worry that now with the modified Patriot Act (which allows security agencies to perform warrantless searches, detentions, and wiretaps, among other things) and the new mega- security-intelligence agency consolidation, that we may not have these freedoms to dissent very much longer. I will raise questions about U.S. foreign policy and corporate globalization as long as I can. It is my prerogative, my right, and, as I see it, my responsbility.

A brief comment on patriotism, or nationalism: To me it seems untenable to say that I have more in common with George W. Bush, Martha Stewart, or Kenneth Lay than I do, say, with a teacher in Afghanistan or a student in Iraq or a UPS driver here at home. Likewise, they might share interests with me and have little in common with Saddam Hussein or Al Quaeda. As a socialist (not a Stalinist, and there is a difference), I have a positive vision of international solidarity and struggle against greed, war, exploitation, and oppression on a world scale. In my view, patriotic fervor dehumanizes people around the world so that their deaths or their hunger or their homelessness can be blamed on them and forgotten.

It's not like me to base an argument on the words of the "founding fathers" but let me remind you that it was Thomas Jefferson (leaving aside his fondness for slaves for a moment) who believed that criticism and dissent were at the core of democracy. He even thought that the citizenry should take up arms against a government when they thought it was becoming too tyrannical. It took a revolution to make the democracy you cherish, and in my view it will take another to make real democracy (political and economic) for the majority of the world's population.

Ben Franklin wrote that when a nation prioritizes security over liberty, the consequences could be dire for democracy. Contrary to my correspondents, I do not believe that order is the ground from which all liberty springs. History teaches quite another lesson--it took a civil war, for example, to end slavery. And "order" is a god term not of democratic societies but of fascism. Unfortunately, I believe that in this extremely sensitive time people are all too willing to embrace a notion of security--not only against terrorists but also against critical ideas and thoughtful dialogue--over liberty.

I hope that this set of expanded arguments makes for more thinking and fewer personal attacks. Of course, I hoped to provoke a response and I welcome deba†e and dialogue. I do not feel like a victim and I am not complaining about being criticized. However, I hoped to get a *real* response, not just hate and intimidation in the name of freedom.

I encourage activists with views similar to mine to come out into the light of day. The urgency of speaking now far outweighs the flak we will get for standing up.

Twice this century, in 1914-23 and 1939-47, capitalism has been thrown into such acute worldwide convulsions that it stared death in the face. Twice, its own rivalries and contradictions have raised up the spectre of its global defeat at the hands of the proletariat. On countless other occasions the proletariat of individual countries has sought to settle accounts decisively with its exploiters.

But, as yet, it has not found, or been able to preserve, a leadership capable of completing the task of the world revolution. Before 1914 the Socialist International did assemble a mass-based world movement of the working class, but this suffered degeneration and betrayal before it could create the centralised leadership necessary for victory in the approaching revolutionary crises.

Very interesting. It is with your claim of being a Trotskyite, and this little snippet where you cast your lot with Hitler. It is refreshing to see a socialist actually claim their heritage rather than trying to make the people believe that it is the heritage of the right. Herein lies a distinction that the light of truth shines for those who bother to educate themselves. Nazis are socialists, socialists are Nazis. Communists are only slightly more bloodthirsty socialists. Again I ask, how can you be what you claim to be? Are you so self-congratulatory and delusional that you actually think that yourself and those who can believe like you do can take pure evil and make it into pure good? Or are you merely pure evil and wish to make others believe otherwise so that you may seize power?

And please dont assume that I am simple minded or stupid because I believe in the principles of right and wrong. I hold these beliefs not because I am a fundamental Christian (tho I am a non-practicing Christian), but due to more secular influences in our culture, influences that could never exist in your utopia...JFK

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Is the freest country on earth moving toward totalitarian dictatorship? What were the factors that enabled the Nazis to seize power in pre-war Germany? Do those same conditions exist in America today?

These are the questions raised — and answered, with frightening clarity — by Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's heir, in his powerful book The Ominous Parallels.

"We are drifting to the future, not moving purposefully," Peikoff warns. "But we are drifting as Germany moved, in the same direction, for the same kind of reason."

Some of the "ominous parallels" between pre-Hitler Germany and the United States that Peikoff identifies are: Liberals who demand public control over the use and disposal of private property — social security, more taxes, more government control over the energy industry, medicine, broadcasting, etc.

Conservatives who demand government control over our intellectual and moral life — prayer in the schools, literary censorship, government intervention in the teaching of biology, the anti-abortion movement, etc. Political parties devoid of principles or direction and moved at random by pressure groups, each demanding still more controls.

A "progressive," anti-intellectual educational system that, from kindergarten to graduate school, creates students who can't read or write — students brainwashed into the feeling that their minds are helpless and they must adapt to "society," that there is no absolute truth and that morality is whatever society says it is. A student radical movement (from the 1960's through the violent anti-nukers and ecology fanatics of today) who are, Peikoff maintains, the "pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected." The radicals are nature worshippers who attack the middle class, science, technology, and business. The rise of defiant old-world racial hatreds disguised as "ethnic-identity" movements and "affirmative action." A pervasive atmosphere of decadence, moral bankruptcy, and nihilist art accompanied by the rise of escapist mystic cults of every kind — astrology, "alternative medicine," Orientalists, extrasensory perception, etc. In an introduction to Peikoff's book, Ayn Rand describes The Ominous Parallels as, "the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than myself" and goes on to say that, "If you do not wish to be a victim of today's philosophical bankruptcy, I recommend The Ominous Parallels as protection and ammunition. It will protect you from supporting, unwittingly, the ideas that are destroying you and the world."

In brilliantly reasoned prose, Peikoff argues that the deepest roots of German Nazism lie not in existential crises, but in ideas — not in Germany's military defeat in World War I or the economic disasters of the Weimar Republic that followed, but in the philosophy that dominated pre-Nazi Germany. Although it was mediated by crises, Peikoff demonstrates that German Nazism was the inevitable climax of a centuries-long philosophic development, preaching three fundamental ideas: the worship of unreason, the demand for self-sacrifice and the elevation of society or the state above the individual.

"These ideas," Peikoff says, "are the essence of Nazism and they are exactly what our leading universities are now spreading throughout this country. This is the basic cause of all the other parallels."

"If you cherish the freedoms of the United States, it would be hypocritical of you to be intolerant of the expression of opinions that differ from yours."

It was the founding fathers "intolerance" towards Britain's government that gave us our Democratic republic in the first place.

It is intolerance to murdering babies that will save their lives.

It is intolerance to radical regimes that will give their citizens freedom.

It is intolerance to this socialbabble that will keep us free and sovereign.

It is intolerance to professors such as this who are on the dole of the taxpayers who use their time against the taxpayers.

It is intolerance toward radical islam that will win the war on terror.

It is blind tolerance that allowed us to get into the situation that we are in. Tolerance of radical homosexual agendas, radical enviro policies, abortion, moral relativity and tolerence of leftists as they try to silence us through intimidation and demand that we are tolerant.

The only tolerance that we should show, is when other views do not try to take from us the freedoms that we are assured through the constitution. When others as part of their agenda demand us to accept immorality, illegality, and irresponsibility then we must stand up and become intolerant.

There is enough food produced every year to feed everyone 54 times over--most of it is dumped in the ocean because it wouldn't get a profit on the market.

Well, I doubt that "54 times" statistic, but I'll give it a pass for now... and I'll assume that you do not think that massive quantities of food are literally dumped off of a boat into the ocean (Greenpeace would have a conniption fit, LOL). I want to address the last line of the post.

That's our system's sick set of priorities.

Our systems single most important, significant, and historic priority is to give the individual the Freedom to produce as he sees fit. This was never tried in 6000 years of recorded history. The results are blazingly obvious. Those Western nations who have followed our example are miraculously short of famines, plagues, rampant inefficiency, etc. Those who have not are still floundering, and are somehow unable to feed themselves and unable to survive financially without Western aid, grants, and relief. Do you see this as a coinsidence?

Allow me to give you the clearest example of the inherent impossibility of success in the Socialist model. Oklahoma State University was working closely with Ethiopia in the 1950's, and the nations quickly became a net food exporter, overcoming famine, creating wealth, and even helping other African nations to feed their people. In the 1960's the Socialists took power, and the people of the region have never recovered. Millions are dead of starvation, billions of dollars of assets and wealth are consumed and never replaced, and they have never once produced the same tonnages that they did 50 years ago. This happens EVERY time Socialists enforce the "compassion" on populations. The ONLY reason some Socialism-leaning Western nations (like France) do not collapse is that they have enough of our "sick" priorities and allow the more motivated parts of the population to evade or circumvent national planning schemes and actually be productive... in SPITE of Socialism, and NEVER because of it.

It is sad that a college professor would so willfully ignore History and the plain lessons that it imparts.

With this in mind, which set of priorities is "sick"? The society that enforces a system that keeps people from producing enough to feed its people, or the system that is SO good at letting its people produce a surplus that they can voluntarily (aka, "freely") choose to waste food as they see fit?

In response to your question. This professor seems to be relatively mild. What we used to call in my former Stalinist circles as a useful fool. There are others who are much more radical and unpretentious about things like the necessary mass murder that will have to take place once the socialist takeover takes place. Dana would find himself among the first to be shot (provided a more efficient method of extermination is not found). What Stalinists cannot stand besides Troskyist revisionists is mushy left wing liberals who harp about compassion. As Lenin aptly stated you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs. Or as Stalin so aptly noted "one death is a tragedy, 50,000 is a statistic".

Pure socialists are not interested in the individual but in reaching the ideal, even if this means the eventual liquidation of upwards of 90% of the population to remove them from the gene pool. After all, that is what being a member of the elite revolutionary vanguard means. Dana is obviously conversant in cliches and slogans. In the end they are good for propaganda for the masses. Unfortunately Dana actually believes his line of BS. I assume he has never met commited Stalinist leftists more conversant in the theoretical aspects of the class struggle and how to go about achieviong absolute power.

We can all take comfort in the knowledge that when my former Stalinist colleagues take over, it will be people like Dana who will be shot first. The Mensheviks have obviously never learned anything from history. All they do is pave the way and like all good cannon fodder lose out in the end.

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