Ahmadinejad At Columbia: Merely A Symptom
By Christopher Adamo (09/27/07)
The only real surprise from the disgraceful speaking appearance by Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University is that anybody was
surprised at all. University President Lee Bollinger was so taken aback by
the ferocity of public anger that after first stridently defending his
decision to bring the crazed Iranian ruler on campus, he felt compelled to
excoriate Ahmadinejad once they were both on stage.
University leaders felt a necessity to justify themselves, resorting to most
of the worn out clichés by which they have repeatedly justified their
abysmal behavior in recent years. Among other excuses, Columbia’s defenders
claim a “First Amendment issue,” along with their predictable mantra that
“universities exist for the purpose of freely and openly exchanging all
ideas, no matter how outrageous they may be.”
To begin with, the First Amendment was not the product of a committee of
bloodthirsty mullahs intending to confer it upon all humanity. Rather, it
resulted from the measured thought and reason of a handful of God-fearing
men who, as a result of their Christian perspective on the inalienable
rights of man, sought to establish a nation in which such rights would be
protected among its citizens.
In their most twisted dreams, the founders never believed that the First
Amendment guaranteed the “rights” of foreign dictators to defile American
soil and American institutions in their effort to propagandize the populace
and thus annihilate it.
Furthermore, it is a relatively recent liberal myth that universities exist
for the “unfettered exchange of ideas.” Plenty of that can occur, and with
equally worthy results, down at the local bar. Yet this notion has been
repeated so often and so emphatically that eventually, even traditional
America has largely bought into it.
But America’s universities were not instituted at great expense and
sacrifice so the thinking within their halls could be devoid of any
connection to reality or consequence.
Nor were they conceived as places where every youthful absurdity would be
granted equal credence with the tested and proven truths of human
experience. And they were certainly never intended as cesspools of treason,
relentlessly devoted to the destruction of the nation whose citizens are
nonetheless forced to lavishly fund them.
Rather, they were designed to ensure that learning and thought would be
constrained to the foundations of amassed knowledge and wisdom, upon which
newer and greater wisdom and knowledge might build in a rational and
beneficial manner. From this basis, it was assumed and hoped, pupils would
go on to construct and digest ideas founded on a background of proven and
time-honored knowledge.
Neither did the leftists ever believe in their vaunted profession of “free
thinking.” From the beginning, their quest was never about openness of
thought, but only about establishing a beachhead for their radical thought.
In fact, it has been through the methodical efforts of the left that the
traditional approach to the advancement of ensuing generations through the
accrual of real knowledge has been degraded to its current state.
Close upon the heels of this philosophical surrender, the countercultural
forces that had invalidated the previous conventions proceeded to substitute
their own ideologies as an unquestioned orthodoxy, always under the phony
auspices of “free thinking.”
Modern “free thinkers” are the first to brand as “heresy” any reminders of
the self-evident truths and intransigent concepts of good and evil, right
and wrong, or any mention of the Author and Finisher of such things. Thus
they display their blind devotion to a secularist order, yet remain
oblivious to all of its disastrous consequences throughout the world during
the past century.
Yet the real danger facing the country at the hands of its “higher learning
institutions” is evidenced by the notion that the incident at Columbia is
somehow exceptional.
Far from being a shocking aberration, it represents a fully predictable
continuation of the abominations being rampantly perpetrated throughout
American academia during the past four and a half decades. The only
differentiating circumstance highlighting Columbia is that Ahmadinejad chose
to appear there.
From the most prestigious Ivy League schools to the innumerable junior
colleges that dot the American landscape, a perversely liberal and
anti-American mindset predominates. Ahmadinejad and his poisoned thinking
would have been no less welcome at any of those places, had the logistics of
his stay in this country made a visit to any of them possible.
Worse yet, real America, though outraged by Columbia’s actions, continues to
blindly fund and morally support the extension of its outrages throughout
the land, conferring an almost universal inculcation on the next generation.
Consider, the abominable thinking and words of former “professor” Ward
Churchill of the University of Colorado, as well as the tepid grounds on
which the University’s board of regents finally, reluctantly dismissed him.
Churchill, it should be remembered, referred to the victims at the World
Trade Center as “little Eichmans” who, he asserted, deserved their tragic
fate.
Hardly an outstanding icon of subversive American universities, the
University of Colorado represents nothing far out of the “mainstream” of
American campuses. Yet among the thoroughly indoctrinated student body,
Churchill’s supporters were no less enthusiastic than those at Columbia who
applauded and cheered Ahmadinejad.
Furthermore, this pattern is in complete harmony with the rest of the nation
’s schools, where history revisionism, leftist cultural indoctrination, and
their secularist orthodoxy of “political correctness” ensure that every
liberal ideology is given the utmost deference while traditional moral,
religious, and patriotic principles are completely scorned and targeted for
eradication.
Ultimately, the events at Columbia did little more than to briefly “tip the
hand” of those entrenched in “higher learning,” who have been spewing
outrages against real America nonstop ever since the 1960s. While some are
suggesting reprisals against Columbia, nothing will be fixed until Americans
of traditional values and beliefs begin to hold every such school
accountable, cutting funds and removing any members of the teaching staff
who transgress.
Yet any individual who would even hint at such a course would undoubtedly be
categorized as a “real” danger, and is far more likely than a genocidal
despot to be universally barred from appearing on American college campuses.
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