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February 17 -- Some people ask, “Why bother with a debate? Why spend your savings and time to encourage free speech in Massachusetts with an extensive debate on many subjects?” I reply, “A prominent Boston liberal says our universities are now ‘the enemy of a free society.’” He’s a well known lawyer with impeccable liberal credentials and a proud
leader of the ACLU. According to him:
What’s his advice to our universities? “Let them say to the public what they say to themselves: ‘This University believes that your sons and daughters are the racist, sexist, homophobic progeny — or the innocent victims — of a racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive America.’” The lawyer is Harvey Silverglate. His book is, The Shadow University. I have never met Attorney Silverglate, but what he says applies to our entire society, not just universities. I am sure that he and I would differ on many issues, but we would also respect each other and the debate. Before the ‘60's, passionate discussions were welcomed because we realized that everyone gained when we learned the opinions of another. One of the most important student teams at each school was the debating team. Debate was an integral part of our society, and the freedom of expression it engendered was a root of the pride that Americans felt for our country. Now, any disagreement is immediately labeled, “hate speech.” Most of us still do not understand what happened to us during the Vietnam
era. It was liberals in the Johnson administration (many of them
with strong ties to Massachusetts, such as Robert McNamara and McGeorge
Bundy) who sent our teenage boys to die in Vietnam in a war where we had
no business being directly involved. (It was not Presidents Eisenhower,
Reagan or even Nixon who did it.) But those liberals deserted our
boys when the war became unpopular. They even condemned them for being
there. We also deserted the many natives in the area who had tried
to help us, with over a million dying after we left. We were on the
good side (Jane Fonda notwithstanding) but we had no right to tear our
young men from their homes by drafting them and sending them to die and
then mocking those who survived.
Debate became impossible because the conservatives, who did not want the war in the first place, were loathe to desert the blue collar boys who had been sent there by the liberals; and they were equally loathe to desert the many good people in Vietnam who had helped us and would surely die if we left. But the liberals and their minions in the press saw to it that no meaningful debate of these issues was ever held because it would be too embarrassing. Therefore, many of the youth of the ‘60's thought they were the first in history to “discover” the world and all of the “truths” therein. And many still believe that. It will come as a shock to learn that this war was no different than the Korean War. I was drafted for Korea and was on a troop ship in the Pacific as a private, a rifleman in the infantry, when Eisenhower succeeded Truman and quickly ended that war. (I had also been in the U.S. Navy for a short period at the end of World War II.) You could avoid the Korean war if you were rich enough to stay in college or get married. No one wanted to go to that war either. Harry Truman bungled us into it and we were not prepared to fight. While at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, I was a guard at the prison stockade for a short period. The prisoners were mostly poor, white teenagers from the hills of Kentucky or young black men, all of whom had gone AWOL and only wanted to go back home. They couldn’t quite understand why they had been snatched from their families. But they were powerless. This was the forgotten war where our young men were sent into the midst of bitter winters in Korea with summer uniforms because the liberals did not like the armed forces (even then) and therefore did not adequately equip the young men. Even as late as 1952 we would camp out for days at a time in a foot of Pennsylvania snow with summer uniforms. Meanwhile, life on the civilian front of America went on as usual with not much notice of what was happening to our lower-class young men in Korea. The army had recently become integrated and had not yet become heavily black. Therefore, what happened to poor white boys was not noticed. We were very thankful on our troop ship in the Pacific to hear that President Eisenhower had ended the war within a few months after his inauguration. Although no one knows exactly what he did, most people believe he warned the Chinese that if it didn’t end, he would bomb the bridges which they used to pour into Korea over the Yalu River or he might even use an atomic weapon. While I was in Korea, the French lost the deciding battle to the Communists in Vietnam, and the rumor was we would be sent there to help. I will always be grateful that Eisenhower was too smart to do that. But the war didn’t end soon enough for my roommate at Williams College, Jim Dorland, one of the finest persons I have ever known. He enlisted in the Army as an officer and then volunteered as an observer in Korea on an L-19, a small, propellor-driven, unarmed plane which flew just above the trees over the enemy lines in Korea to direct the fire of our artillery. He never came back from one flight. We now must wonder if he was one of those hundreds of prisoners who were taken to China and Russia and used for experiments that were much worse than what was done to the victims of the holocaust. Perhaps he is still alive. What kind of a society is it that abandons its young men like Jim? It is the memory of what this country was before the liberals seriously damaged it in the ‘60's that makes me want to begin a more open debate on many subjects. Women Have Weakened the Debate Despite what we learned from Archie Bunker back in the ‘70's, men and women are not the same. (We’ve paid millions of dollars to scientists to “discover” that fact, which everyone in the world used to know immediately after infancy. For example, a psychology professor has just released a study which shows that “gender stereotypes” are accurate and are rooted in the techniques we use to attract mates or to compete with those of the same sex. He notes that his findings may “offend” some people. [1]) All we hear from Washington nowadays is “bipartisanship” and “getting along.” The most important value in the world is “tolerance.” This is because of the influence that women are having on our society. There is no question that Bill Clinton is in office only because of the women. The majority of men voted against him in 1996. The women are being fooled. While Bill Clinton and Richard Gephart plead for ‘bipartisanship” and “a coming together” and a “reconciliation of this great country,” they are the very ones who are dividing our land. This is evidenced by a terribly divisive advertisement which ran just last November in the black area of Gephart’s district in St. Louis: “When you don’t vote, you let another church explode. When you don’t vote, you let another cross to [sic] burn. When you don’t vote, you let another assault wound a brother or sister. When you don’t vote, you let the Republicans continue to cut school lunches and Head Start.” Has anyone in Massachusetts heard about that hate? I have tried in vain to find it in the archives of the Boston Globe. For better or for worse, the success of Bill Clinton can be attributed to the women of America. A large number of them appear to want a warm, loving, socialist government which will satisfy all of their needs. Apparently liberty and freedom seem hardly worth noting. It is true that every Democrat president in this century has involved us in a major war except for Kennedy and Carter, who were in office for only one term or less. [2] My greatest fear is that Bill Clinton will continue the Democrat record in an effort to go down in history as an important “leader,” and we will see more American boys going into combat in a war where we do not belong. I pray I am wrong. As women continue to be an important part of the leadership of our country, we are going to suffer if they fail to understand that a vigorous, ongoing debate is necessary in any democratic society. We must have more debate and less “tolerance” and “getting along” if we are to survive as the greatest experiment in freedom the world has ever known. Of course, women are not a monolith, but it is a disturbing sign to see the polls showing that a sizable number of women are agreeing with the big government agenda. Am I Angry? Many people will respond that I am an angry man. But that is not true. I never expected that this world would be “fair,” for it never will be as long as it is run by human beings. I have lived gratefully and happily in the best country the world has ever seen. But I am concerned. I am concerned that our country peaked in the 1950's and that our spiritual and moral foundations are being eroded at a rapid pace. I will keep debating the issues as long as that is true. Yes, I do think of my college roommate, Jim Dorland, and I believe that we owe this much to him for the sacrifice he and many others made for us. Endnotes 1. A review of 1200 studies by Professor
David Geary, University of Missouri-Columbia. His findings are published
in a book that is published by the American Psychological Association,
Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences.
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