Noted liar Mr. Liz Woodhouse Charlie Sykes is concerned about the socialists who broke up a speech by the extremist Minutemen at Columbia University. From the actions of the International Socialist Organization he extrapolates to dramatic conclusions about "the left." He's so concerned he's got two posts about it. In one he links to a column by the kaleidoscope-eyed Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan:
The Sounds of Silencing... Peggy Noonan asks, "Why do Americans on the left think only they have the right to dissent?"
Because they are so much more tolerant and compassionate than the rest of us, of course.
In another, he quote a UW grad from the 60s who deplores the behavior:
What is taking place at too many universities is the loss of free speech in favor of politically correct speech, speech that walks in lock step with the secular liberalism that is pronounced on those campuses.
I was a liberal during my university years. But that was when a liberal was a person open to new ideas and new ways of thinking. The liberals at Columbia University present a new breed of extremists, closer in attitude to communists or fascists. They need to remember that the First Amendment gives the right of free speech to all the people -- and they need universities and university presidents to remind them of that fact.
Strangely, none of these commentators talked about how New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges was booed off state off stage at Rockford College's 2003 commencement. His crime: Denouncing the US war and occupation in Iraq -- you know, something that might have a real-life impact on the people he was addressing.
The treatment he received:
Hedges began his abbreviated 18-minute speech comparing United States’ policy in Iraq to pariahs and a tyranny over the weak. His microphone was unplugged within three minutes.
Voices of protest and the sound of foghorns grew.
Some graduates and audience members turned their backs to the speaker in silent protest. Others rushed up the aisle to vocally protest the remarks, and one student tossed his cap and gown to the stage before leaving.
Man, those conservatives are uncivil!
Did the right deplore this behavior? Well, Sean Hannity said he should be fired. Instapundit spoke for many on the right when he said:
More crushing of dissent in Ashcroft's America, I suppose. Except that I imagine that Hedges was paid a lot to give that speech. He misjudged the audience dreadfully, offended them terribly, and reaped an honest audience reaction.
There are two possibilities: (1) He had no idea the audience would object, which suggests a tin ear that calls his journalistic abilities into question; or (2) he knew they'd hate the speech and didn't care, which makes him, well, a jerk....
I think the notion of a lefty speaker being booed off the stage at a college campus is messing with some people's minds. But all I can say is don't criticize what you can't understand, your sons and your daughter are beyond your command, and the times -- though, seemingly, not The Times -- they are a'changin'. Heck, they walked out on Phil Donahues's commencement speech.
No doubt feeling the heat, the NYT reprimanded Hedges and he left shortly thereafter. As for his speech, you can see the whole thing here. But the thing was he was, in the words of his fellow Timesman Judith Miller, fucking right.
You can read the whole thing here, but here are some excerpts:
The killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill—theirs and ours—be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power and security. But this will come later as our empire expands. And in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgement, and we are very isolated now. ...
Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917. It will be a cesspool for us, as well. (‘God bless America,’ a woman yells.) The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels of our occupying troops to try and teach Muslims about Jesus, the occupation of the oilfields.
(At this point, the microphone gets unplugged. When it is fixed, Rockford College President Paul C. Pribbenow addresses the audience: ‘My friends, one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its ability and its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other’s opinions. If you wish to protest the speaker’s remarks, I ask that you do it in silence, as some of you are doing in the back. That is perfectly appropriate, but he has the right to offer his opinion here, and we would like him to continue his remarks.’ People blow horns and boo and some applaud.)
The occupation of the oilfields. (More boos. A woman says, ‘We’re not going to listen. We’ve listened enough. You’ve already ruined our graduation. Don’t ruin it any more, sir.’) The notion that the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad (the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Saddam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away). The looting of Baghdad, or let me say the looting of Baghdad with the exception of the oil ministry and the interior ministry—the only two ministries we bothered protecting—is self-immolation. (More boos.)
As someone who knows Iraq, speaks Arabic, and spent seven years in the Middle East, if the Iraqis believe rightly or wrongly that we come only for oil and occupation, they will begin a long, bloody war of attrition. It is how they drove the British out. And remember that, when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, they were greeted by the dispossessed Shiites as liberators, but within a few months, when the Shiites saw that the Israelis had come not as liberators but as occupiers, they began to kill them. It was Israel who created Hezbollah, and it was Hezbollah that pushed Israel out of southern Lebanon. ...
This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war now of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation. And if you watch closely what is happening in Iraq, if you can see it through the abysmal coverage, you can see it in the lashing out of the terrorist death squads, the murder of Shiite leaders in mosques, and the assassination of our young soldiers in the streets. It is one that will soon be joined by Islamic radicals and we are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq. (‘USA, USA,’ some in the crowd chant.)
We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will, by and large, pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules, or Thucydides’ history. (Heckling.) Read how Athens’ expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home, how the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.
This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the instrument of empire is war, and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war—if we do not understand how deadly that poison is—it can kill us just as surely as the disease. (‘It’s enough, it’s enough, it’s enough,’ a woman says.)
Spoken shortly after Bush gave his "Mission accomplished" speech, these words seem positively prophetic.
Meanwhile, as far as analogies to fascists or communists go, please. You want to see modern equivalents of brownshirts, take a gander at his crowd:
These are of course the Republican staffers shouting "Shut it down" who intimidated elections workers doing the Florida recount into doing that. Using violence, or the tangible threat of violence, to achieve political ends. That's far closer to fascism or communist means than what transpired at Columbia University.
Though, of course, the Brawler agrees with Dave Diamond: The people who disrupted the Minutemen were idiots.
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