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All we Are Saying, etc.
National Review Online ^ | November 1 | Mark Goldblatt

Posted on 11/01/2001 5:55:33 PM PST by AndrewSshi

Walking through Union Square a week after the World Trade Center attack, I overheard a heated exchange between an elderly couple and two college kids passing out "No to Racist War" fliers. "So what would you do to the terrorists?" the husband said. "Let 'em get away with it?"

"George Bush is the biggest terrorist in the world!" shot back one of the kids.

The second kid added, "America kills more people than Osama bin Laden every day!"

The husband flushed and made a fist, but his wife grabbed his hand and led him away.

Such is the rhetoric of the antiwar movement which is now, as the civilian body count rises in Afghanistan, gathering urgency in the corridors outside college classrooms. In the coming weeks, many of us, like the elderly man, will be hard-pressed to restrain our outrage at nose-pierced dudes and tongue-studded dudettes blowing off their remedial homework assignments to march down to public parks on weekends and hold forth on the evils of global capitalism.

As we struggle to abide them, we should bear in mind that these are the very same students whose standardized reading and math scores have sunk lower than Joey Buttofuoco's brow and whose minds are, therefore, as malleable as fresh Play-Doh. Few of them, for instance, can locate Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran on a map; fewer still can define the Arabic word "Islam" or name its two holiest cities; many, in fact, would be shocked to learn that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed didn't live at the same time.

Still, the students will have their reasons to rally against war.

The boys will rally — though many of them secretly long to tool around in fighter jets, putting to use the Nintendo skills they've accumulated since potty-training — in order to show their mommies and daddies how independent they've become . . . and also because rallying is an inexpensive and intermittently effective way to score with college girls without actually paying the cover charge at a club, buying them a drink, and dosing it with Ecstacy.

The girls will rally — though many of them secretly fantasize about a war-time romance like Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor — in order to show their mommies and daddies how independent they've become . . . and also because rallying is an inexpensive and intermittently effective way to demonstrate their social commitment and unwavering idealism to professors who've been regaling them with tales from their own undergraduate protest days.

Which leads us to the professors themselves — the field generals of the antiwar movement. It's worth noting that few of them will come from math and science departments. Rather, they'll come from the social sciences and humanities — disciplines whose prominent players have spent the last quarter century disparaging the very methods of rational thought, deductive and inductive reasoning, as Eurocentric hogwash. It's no coincidence that the three most influential thinkers among social scientists and humanities professors over the last quarter century have been Les Trois Stoogés of French Philosophy, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault. What the three have in common is their insistence that language creates reality and their denial that facts exist independently of political perspectives. This is a handy epistemology if you're a superannuated Frenchman and you spent the early 1940's handing Jews over to Nazis, or, for that matter, if you're a graying academic and you spent the late 1960's cowering before snot-nosed sophomores who demanded curriculum changes at your college.

This became, in any event, the dominant epistemology of students who earned degrees in the social sciences and humanities in the wake of the 1960's — and it's they who've become the tenured radicals pulling the puppet strings of campus antiwar movements. They will, rest assured, hold many more "teach ins" — for they are by now seasoned pros at polysyllabic rabble rousing. Yet they cannot teach in any meaningful sense of the word since they cannot think. They are incapable, for example, of thinking through the basic if-then logic which binds together the denial that facts exist to the denial of the Nazi Holocaust. Or the European slave trade.

Or the World Trade Center attack.

Indeed, if there's one quality that defines the antiwar movement, from the generals down to the foot soldiers, it's thoughtlessness. Absent thought, in the literal sense, the movement is sustained by gesture. By chanting. By ranting. By guitar-strumming and candle-waving.

The only thoughtful response to such a movement is to roll your eyes and keep walking.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:
This article about hits the nail on the head. I have to go to school with bin Laden's brigade of idiots, and man, is it annoying.
1 posted on 11/01/2001 5:55:33 PM PST by AndrewSshi (ABReeves@mail.utexas.edu)
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To: AndrewSshi
I read that earlier. I felt so sorry for the old man in the story, and for older folks all over the country who have to be wondering who is the biggest enemy: those who want to destroy us from without, or those who'll aid them (however inadvertantly) from within.
2 posted on 11/01/2001 5:57:52 PM PST by Anamensis
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To: AndrewSshi
I personally like the idea stated by a fill in for Rush (His name escapes me at the moment, some columnist), Walk up to one of these peacenics and punch them square in the face. When they get up ready to fight, tell them that "violence is not the answer".
3 posted on 11/01/2001 6:00:49 PM PST by Texaggie79
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To: AndrewSshi
The only thoughtful response to such a movement is to roll your eyes and keep walking.

ONE OTHER THING

YOU FORGOT THE BARF ALERT

A VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS TYPE OF ARTICLE .... especially since it was posted around dinner time

4 posted on 11/01/2001 6:01:50 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
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To: Texaggie79
For a scathing and accurate critique of Derrida's nonsense, one should pick up Catherine Pickstock's "After Writing"
5 posted on 11/01/2001 6:03:56 PM PST by watsonfellow
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Comment #6 Removed by Moderator

To: Anamensis
My one comforting thought on this matter is that bin Laden's brigade of idiots is a tiny minority (I've been paying attention, and out of the guys who are rallying, its generally the same faces, I'd say less than a hundred in a university of 50k students). Not only that, but they're not changing anyone's minds. Indeed, the only thing they're doing at this point is pissing people off. I mean, when Dan Rather bursts into tears, Tom Brokaw gets wicked pissed, and the major networks have apologized for what could be seen as a sympathetic portrayal of the Taliban, I'd say the idiots aren't winning any hearts and minds at the moment.
7 posted on 11/01/2001 6:04:37 PM PST by AndrewSshi
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To: AndrewSshi
Yeah, I have to keep telling myself "they're just a handful... they have no power... they aren't fooling anybody...." and breathe, breathe deep... I swear, though... one day I'm going to be calling around trying to come up with bail money for attacking one of these scrawny pieces of #$%^
8 posted on 11/01/2001 6:08:19 PM PST by Anamensis
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To: AndrewSshi
Hurray for New York. Blooded but unbowed. Noisy, irreverent, discordant, diverse, alive, kicking and o so American.
9 posted on 11/01/2001 6:11:30 PM PST by Gimlet
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To: watsonfellow
OWWEEEEEEEKAAAAAAAAY
10 posted on 11/01/2001 6:12:11 PM PST by Texaggie79
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To: AndrewSshi
An almost complete lack of an accurate historical basis for the leftist protests. I say almost because occasionally they do get enemies listed correctly, they're just protesting the wrong side.
11 posted on 11/01/2001 6:13:52 PM PST by hsszionist
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To: AndrewSshi
I think that I am going to the next anti-US rally with an Afghan flag to burn and an OBL pinata. Hmmm... what could I fill it with that would delight the patriotic and really piss off the mush heads?
12 posted on 11/01/2001 6:16:44 PM PST by Blood of Tyrants
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To: hsszionist
All we are say-ing....
Is give nukes a chance...
13 posted on 11/01/2001 6:22:48 PM PST by MindBender26
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To: AndrewSshi
"George Bush is the biggest terrorist in the world!" shot back one of the kids.

The second kid added, "America kills more people than Osama bin Laden every day!"

I wonder if they would change their minds if one day, as they are bent over a wooden block, they feel the prick of a scimitar on the back of their neck?

14 posted on 11/01/2001 6:23:51 PM PST by ThirdMate
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To: MindBender26
Is OBL worth a nuke or a bullet.
15 posted on 11/01/2001 6:29:57 PM PST by hsszionist
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To: AndrewSshi
I am so glad that these anti-war blame America first airheads are NOW a micro-minority in this country.
The terrorists made a huge mistake attacking New York..because they turned on of the biggest and most influencial liberal strongholds in America into genuine patriotic Bush supporting get the terrorists SOBS.... city of hawks we've ever seen.
And now it seems they're working on converting liberal California. I love it!
16 posted on 11/01/2001 6:30:02 PM PST by Jorge
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To: hsszionist
C. Either is correct.

The PRC has a rather "nice" touch they add. They bill the closest relative 14 cents for the 9mm they use to execute a prisoner.

Can't you see the bill sent to the Bin Laden family :

69th Bomb Wing

Whupass AFB

Tonapah, NV

Invoice

B-52 strike, 6327 miles at $1653.25 a mile = $10,460,112.75
Box lunch, 6 each @ 2.17 = $13.02
Indignity of beng forced to eat box lunch 6 x 20.00 = $120.
TDY pay at Diego Garcia ,6 crew, 37 days @ 67.51 = 14,987.22
BOQ at Diego Garcia, 6 crew, 37 days @ 42.20 = $9368.40
Tea for Brits at Diego Garcia, = $4.00
Hookers at Diego Garcia, 6 crew, 4 times each, at $20.00 = 480.00
Bomb, B-61, (no additional charge for thermonuclear) =$1,500,000.

Total = = = = = $12,647,000.00

We accept Visa, MastertCard, American Express. If you need further bombing, please do not hesitiate to call. Your USAF is ready to serve you 24 hours a day.


17 posted on 11/01/2001 7:01:35 PM PST by MindBender26
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To: Blood of Tyrants
Fill it with pork rinds died red white and blue.
18 posted on 11/01/2001 7:22:48 PM PST by arjay
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