southchild

Don’t miss two, excellent articles at the National Review Online:

Campus Rads vs. Our Vets

and

Cindy Sheehan’s Radical Strategist

The first article is about veterans (some decorated) of the War on Islamic Fascism who are returning to college campuses only to find seasoned, leftists professors trying to relive their 60’s, Vietnam-era protest days. Now as then, they are rebels without a clue. Here’s just one example:

But as liberal professors and antiwar activists continue to wage a nationwide campaign to rid university campuses of military recruiters — in some cases going so far as to throw water bottles and scream epithets at them — it is easy to see why Sergeant Martinez would remain tight-lipped about being one of the nation’s most decorated heroes.

Indeed, as one campus newspaper reported, the rift between young veteran college students and their civilian classmates has left those who have served feeling isolated from campus life, “shunned” because of their service.

Just ask Armand McCormick, 23, a student at the University of Northern Iowa.

While walking to class one day, McCormick stopped to listen to a speaker during an antiwar student rally. When he challenged the protestor’s arguments, the “peace” activist sneered, “The Iraqis don’t want us there. If you think the war is okay, then why don’t you go and serve!”

There was an obvious problem with the protestor’s retort: He had no clue who he was talking to — -Silver Star recipient Marine corporal Armand McCormick.

This is an excellent, yet depressing, commentary on the extent of anti-military conformity on college campuses. Read this and see if these academicians “support our troops.”

The second article reveals that the puppetmaster behind “Cindypalooza” is none other than professional, certified protestor Lisa Fithian. Her resume reads as follows:

To anyone familiar with the world of professional protesting — protests against globalism, capitalism, war, police tactics, and dozens of other causes — the presence of Fithian is a sign of how far Cindy Sheehan has strayed from the roots of her “one mom” crusade against George W. Bush. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is a sign that the “one mom” crusade was never just one mom. Fithian is a legendary organizer who operates in the world of anti-globalism anarchists, antiwar protesters, and union activists; an advocate of aggressive “direct action” demonstrations, she protested the first Gulf war, played an important role in the violent shutdown of Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, was a key planner in protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2000 and 2004, and organized demonstrations at trade meetings in Washington, D.C., Prague, and Genoa.

Since Fithian (I keep thinking “Filthian”) is pulling the strings at Camp Cindy, her opinions and methods can provide some insight on where this circus is heading:

And she was a tough-minded leader, not at all a peace-and-love type. Her specialty was action; she wanted to break in, cut through fences, and shut things down. “You don’t go to Fithian when you want to carry a placard,” the Times profile said. “You go to her when you want to make sure there are enough bolt cutters to go around.” Asked for a fuller explanation of her role in the protests, Fithian said, “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say I create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”

That sometimes involves breaking things. In an July 2001 interview with The International Socialist Review, Fithian — who told NRO she’s been arrested “probably at least 30 times” — spoke of moving beyond the tradition of civil disobedience as practiced by Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.; her inspiration, she explained, was not so much those leaders as the anarchist movement in Spain in the late 19th and early 20th century. And that meant different ways of doing things. “Nonviolence is a strategy. Civil disobedience is a tactic,” Fithian said. “Direct action is a strategy. Throwing rocks is a tactic.”

“I guess my biggest thing is that as people who are trying to create a new world, I do believe we have to dismantle or transform the old order to do that,” Fithian continued. “I just fundamentally don’t believe it will ever serve our interests as it’s currently constructed.”

If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2005 at 10:35 pm and is filed under General, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.