Pseudo-Intellectuals Take on America

Starting out loudly, America’s far-left has grown somewhat more quiet over first month since the terrorist attacks of September 11 as it learned that there is not much of an audience these days for its ugly blame-America-first diatribes. Following are a few of the most egregious examples of their silliness.

PECULIAR SENTIMENTS FROM AMERICA’S INTELLIGENSIA

Katha Pollitt, in The Nation, Oct. 8: “My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. It seems impossible to explain to a 13-year-old, for whom the war in Vietnam might as well be the War of Jenkins’ Ear, the connection between waving the flag and bombing ordinary people half a world away back to the proverbial Stone Age. I tell her she can buy a flag with her own money and fly it out her bedroom window, because that’s hers, but the living room is off-limits.”

Professor Robert Jensen of the University of Texas School of Journalism: “[T]his act was no more despicable as the massive acts of terrorism–the deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes–that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime. For more than five decades throughout the Third World, the United States has deliberately targeted civilians or engaged in violence so indiscriminate that there is no other way to understand it except as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of terrorism by client states….

“So, my anger is on this day is directed no only at individuals who engineered the Sept. 11 tragedy but at those who have held power in the United States and have engineered attacks on civilians every bit as tragic. The anger is compounded by hypocritical U.S. officials’ talk of their commitment to higher ideals, as President Bush proclaimed “our resolve for justice and peace. To the President, I can only say: ‘The stilled voices of the millions killed in Southeast Asia, in Central America, in the Middle East as a direct result of U.S. policy are the evidence of our resolve for justice and peace.'”

“America, America. What did you do–either intentionally or unintentionally–in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting? America, what did you do in the global warming conference when you did not embrace the smaller nations? America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the world conference on racism, when you wouldn’t show up? Oh, America, what did you do?”–Former San Francisco Supervisor Amos Brown, speaking at a memorial service for the victims on September 17.

From Rachel Neumann’s collection of the reactions of novelists and essayists in The Village Voice (10/3/01):

Alice Walker: “In a war on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden will either be left alive, while thousands of impoverished, frightened people are bombed into oblivion around him, or he will be killed in a bombing attack for which he seems quite prepared. But what would happen to his cool armor if he could be reminded of all the good, nonviolent things he has done? Further, what would happen to him if he could be brought to understand the preciousness of the lives he has destroyed? I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love.”

Barbara Ehrenreich: “What is so heartbreaking to me as a feminist is that the strongest response to corporate globalization and U.S. military domination is based on such a violent and misogynist ideology.”

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo: “The left needs to reject, once and for all, the label ‘anti-globalization.’ As Bush forces the world to join America’s war, sidelining the United Nations and the international courts, we need to become passionate defenders of true multilateralism. What we are seeing is not a global response to terrorism but the internationalization of one country’s foreign policy objectives. This is the trademark of U.S. international relations, from the WTO negotiating table to Kyoto. We can make these connections not as ‘anti-Americans’ but as true internationalists.”

Vivian Gornick, author of The Situation and the Story: “They have struck us, and in their strike announced: We’d rather die—and take you with us—than go on living in the world you have forced us to occupy. Force will get us nowhere. It is reparations that are owing, not retribution.”

Political cartoonist Ted Rall: “Now we know why 7,000 people sacrificed their lives — so that we’d all forget how Bush stole a presidential election. . . . Bush has capitalized on a nation’s grief, confusion and anger to extort a political blank check payable in young American blood.”

TEACH-INS AND OTHER EXERCISES IN INDOCTRINATION:

UNC Chapel Hill: The UNC Progressive Faculty Network presented a forum entitled, “Understanding the Attack on America: an Alternative View.” Here are some quotes:

William Blum, author of Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower: “If I were the President…I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and the impoverished, and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then . . . I would announce that America’s global interventions had come to an end,” preached. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90 percent and I would use the savings to pay the reparations to our victims and to increase social services. . .”

“If one [of the perpetrators] is Osama bin Laden, send the international police for him and pick up Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet on the way home,” declared Catherine Lutz, professor of Anthropology.

“The de facto executive branch and the compliant press are putting the historical spotlight right now on December 7, 1941, and Pearl Harbor. I think we need to aim that spotlight at February 27 in 1933 and the Reichstag fire.” Stan Goff, a disgruntled former U.S. Army Ranger and author of Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti.

Oberlin’s discussion series was entitled, “Islam and Politics of the Middle East, U.S. Policy and Terrorism, and Backlash and Hate Crimes.” Among the speakers was the Dean of Arts and Sciences Clayton Koppes, who said, “The US needs to take its rightful place as a citizen of the world.” “By this,” The Oberlin Review explained, “he meant that America should respond to terrorism with ‘strength, not swagger,’ maintaining its power while at the same time taking a more respectful stance toward other countries and international agreements, such as the Kyoto treaty and treaties against biological warfare.”

More from The Oberlin Review: “Anti-US feelings ran high throughout the discussions, particularly the question-and-answer session ending Tuesday’s discussion. People questioned the use of the American flag as a symbol, wondering where to draw the lines between support for one’s country and jingoism and, indeed, whether or not to support the United States at all. ‘This country is b******t! Just because you can vote doesn’t mean you’re free!’ a student shouted, after equating the American flag with the Ku Klux Klan. Emotions, in this session, occasionally overflowed into personal attacks, as when a student who supported the use of the American flag as a symbol of America’s perceived status as a ‘beacon of light’ was angrily confronted and called ‘ignorant’ by another student, who subsequently left the discussion area. However, such expressions of anger were generally treated as running counter to the discussion’s overall purpose. Another general area of questioning that frequently occurred dealt with US-Middle East relations and how to diffuse anti-American sentiment.”

The forum at the City College of New York on Oct. 2, “Threats of War, Challenges to Peace,” drew about 200 people.

The attack was called “the incident”; the terrorists were “freedom fighters”.

Anthropology professor M.A. Samad-Matias: “countries sitting on mineral-rich deposits with fast-growing birth rates—to some people that’s a threat.” “Despite all the colonialization [sic], Muslims are able to resist the Western mindset, the Madison Avenue clothing designs…to maintain a separate economy.”

Professor Walter Daum: “The ultimate responsibility [for the attacks] lies with the rulers of this country, the capitalist ruling class of this country.”

Said one unidentified dissenter in the room, however: “There is hardly any evidence that these thugs were responding to the evils of capitalism. It’s more likely they were reacting to this country that allows women to wear bikinis.” He was booed, of course.

On Sept. 25, the teach-in at the University of Michigan was entitled “The U.S., the Middle East and Islam: Reflections on the Current Crisis.”

Mark Tessler, professor of political science, addressed perceptions and attitudes in the Arab world, especially the question: “How much anti-Americanism is actually out there?” Tessler asserted that there “certainly is some [anti-Americanism] but our conception is vastly exaggerated.” He noted that this sentiment, where present in the Arab world, is usually based on America’s foreign policy toward Israel, toward Iraq and “above all, perpetuation of the status quo.”

Anton Shammas, professor of Middle East literature, asserted, “Even now it is safe to assume that we are all still groping in the dark in one way or another. Discourse [in the media] doesn’t seem to have risen beyond the original logic of rage which has been with us since the Stone Age and can be encapsulated by the imperative ‘rubble for rubble’ as the right American political answer.”

A few selections from the American Youth Foundation’s top-10 “Blame America First” quotes:

Kathryn Duke, a student columnist for the Chronicle at Duke University writes, “The words ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ are great words. But when they are used by the media to summon a nationalism so potentially destructive as that being bred now–the sight of the flag burning would be preferable to me to its display across America, across the hearts of Americans.

“During an anti-war protest at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, protestor Verdell DeYarman equated flag waving to murder, stating, “It disturbs me to see all the flags out supporting the slaughter.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison‘s former Campus Relations Committee Chairman, Adam Goldstein, likened leaders of the U.S. to some of the notorious murderers of the 20th century. His letter to the editor of the Badger Herald states, “…before you preach at us about the evil terrorists, why don’t you try getting your facts straight and face up to the reality that our leaders are war criminals just as much as people like Hitler, Stalin and other monsters of the 20th century.”

A Penn State University group called “The Village” went ahead with a planned protest complaining about prejudice in America just four days following the attacks. Speaker Jennifer Storm, a member of the Lambda Student Alliance, compared the fear that many Americans are feeling after Tuesday’s attack to the emotions felt by minorities daily. “I mean no disrespect,” she said, “But welcome to the reality of so many people every day.”

READ MORE NONSENSE AND THE CONSERVATIVE RESPONSES

“Fault lines”. Peter Beinart, The New Republic. If Fisk and The Nation really want to argue that America brought the World Trade Center attack on itself, they shouldn’t delude themselves. They are not defending the Palestinians’ right to a state or the Iraqis’ right to medicine. They are defending a Muslim’s right not to live with a non-Muslim. And in so doing they are renouncing this country’s most sacred principles–principles that saved countless Muslim lives in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.

“America hated dies hard”. Mona Charen, The Washington Times. They cannot altogether contain themselves. The America-haters know that at a time like this, the vitriol they usually aim at the United States will not suit the national mood. And yet, it must truly gall them to remain quiet in the face of the most full-throated, unambivalent patriotism in 60 years.

Look who’s waving the flag now
. Noemie Emery, The Weekly Standard. As Democrats rediscover patriotism, the anti-American Left sulks.

Sontagged. J. Bottum, The Weekly Standard. The first Susan Sontag Awards are given out. Picture the Oscars, but with dumber winners.

The New Republic’s “Idiocy Watch”