By Jeff Snyder
For a few days after the terrorist attacks there was a blissful silence, a break from the incessant drivel of the anti-America crowd. It was, unfortunately, only a brief respite in their war on the rest of us. The past two weeks have brought us flag burnings, protest marches, sit-ins, and plenty of radical rhetoric. The mayor of Berkeley was involved as well as the highly overrated Susan Sontag. It should come as no surprise, however, that the majority of the protesting was done on college campuses. My column this week is for UofL students who might be getting sucked in by the so-called “peace movement”.
These wackos are no more than America-haters, though they identify themselves as socialists, anarchists, Marxists, and whatever the anti-globalization crowd is calling itself this week. They claim to be freethinkers and non-conformists. They decry the influence of Western culture and the preeminence of their own country. They openly sympathize with the terrorists. At best, these people are misguided. At worst, they are intellectually dishonest.
Why are these ideas so prevalent on college campuses and so rare elsewhere? Because these students have been insulated from the real world and indoctrinated by the aging hipsters so common in American universities. These movements might be a great way to meet members of the opposite sex but the philosophies they espouse do not persist after the students graduate and get jobs in the private sector. As for being non-conformists, is it not very odd that they dress, look, and act alike (choosing not to conform in exactly the same way)? They are hardly freethinkers, using the ideas of Herbert Marcuse to justify speech codes and censorship to ensure the primacy of their dogma.
A Cardinal editorial asks us to remember that America has “done some horrible things in our time” though the writer is careful not to cross the line by saying that we asked for it. What have we done that Bin Ladin finds so offensive? We answered the call for help by his nation, Saudi Arabia, when it was in danger of being invaded by a hostile neighbor. We are infidels in the land of the Prophet and for that he has called on his followers to specifically target American civilians. We support Israel, the only democratic country in the Middle East, but also fought to save Muslims in Kuwait, Bosnia, and Somalia. We are hated for such ideas as the emancipation of women, religious and ethnic tolerance, secular government, and free speech. American culture is feared for its corrupting influence on ‘true believers’.
This all leads us back to the America-haters and their inherent dishonesty. Their professed beliefs include gender and racial equality, freedom from religious orthodoxy, and the right to express themselves however they choose without regard for societal norms. Yet in this case, they have voiced support for totalitarian theocracies where a woman can be stoned for allowing her ankle to show and a man beheaded if his beard is too short instead of a democratic republic that is among the freest nations in the world. In short, they side with everything they claim to despise instead of the country that most gives them the right to dissent. They offer no solutions only an agenda (bashing the United States). These losers certainly have the right to protest, but the rest of us should exercise our right to ignore them.
Jeff Snyder is a senior history major and a columnist for The Louisville Cardinal
