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 Coping
with the 9.11.01 Aftermath
Elitist Contempt for American Values
By Anonymous Author
College campuses are home to elitists who are out of touch with and have
contempt for American values. Let's look at some of their statements after the
recent terrorist attacks. A list of those statements have been compiled by Young
America's Foundation (www.yaf.org),
Virginia Institute (www.virginiainstitute.org)
and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org).
Hours after the terrorist attacks, University of New Mexico History Professor
Richard Berthold told his students in his Western Civilization and Greek history
classes, "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote." A University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill, teach-in featured William Blum, author of "Rogue
State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower." Blum equated the United States
with the terrorists, saying, "There are few if any nations in the world that
have harbored more terrorists than the United States."
Nick Woomer, a student columnist at the University of
Michigan, thinking that the United States deserved to be attacked said that "the
action taken by the terrorists on Tuesday are not completely unwarranted. We try
to forget about the way this country behaves internationally -- that we too
often behave as terrorists."
California is home to most of America's leftists and the
blame-America-first crowd, and they made their thoughts clear. Sixty-six
Berkeley professors were joined by 100 other academics in placing a New York
Times ad calling the U.S. war on terrorism "unacceptable." A Sacramento
elementary school teacher burned an American flag in front of his sixth-grade
class. A California Chico State College professor said that President Bush wants
to "kill innocent people," "colonize" the Arab world and capture "oil for the
Bush family."
University of Texas professor Robert Jensen said that the
terrorist attack "was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism ...
that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime." Adam Goldstein,
University of Wisconsin-Madison's former campus relations committee chairman,
said in a letter to the editor of the Badger Herald that "before you preach at
us about the evil terrorists, why don't you try getting your facts straight and
face up to the reality that our leaders are war criminals just as much as people
like Hitler, Stalin and other monsters of the 20th century."
What were some campus responses to staff or student
pro-American sentiment? At Florida Gulf Coast University, Library Services Dean
Kathleen Hoeth ordered employees to remove stickers saying, "Proud to be an
American," from their workplaces. At the University of Massachusetts, students
against the military response to terrorism were granted rally permits. Students
in support of our military response had their rally permit revoked. At Lehigh
University, Vice Provost John Smeaton ordered removal of the American flag from
the campus bus. After adverse publicity, the flag was replaced and Smeaton
apologized.
These actions and remarks shouldn't surprise us, for they
represent the prevailing attitude on far too many, perhaps most, American
campuses. These professors and administrators, formerly the hippies and flower
children of the 1960s and '70s, are people to whom we entrust our impressionable
17- and 18-year-olds. As parents, we cough up to $30,000 and sometimes more in
tuition money to have our youngsters taught that America is not only a racist,
sexist and homophobic nation, but a terrorist nation as well, and an
international monster creating world poverty and destroying the planet. Among
their preachments is that Western civilization is no better than other
civilizations. I'd like one of these professors to stand up and make the case
for the moral equivalency between the Taliban and American treatment of women.
Americans as donors and taxpayers have been far too generous
with the higher education establishment. It's about time we stop paying for
campus anti-Americanism and academic dishonesty. Nothing opens the closed minds
of college administrators more than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut.
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