Some on the Left Now Criticize the Students They Created
By Dennis Prager
TownHall.com
In the last few weeks, there has been a spate of
columns by writers on the left condemning the
left-wing college students who riot, take over
university buildings and shout down speakers with
whom they differ.
These condemnations, coming about 50 years too late,
should not be taken seriously.
Take New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. His
latest column is filled with dismay over the way
Middlebury College students attacked Charles Murray
and a liberal woman professor who interviewed him
(she was injured by the rioters).
I have no doubt that Bruni is sincere. However,
sincerity is completely unrelated to wisdom or
insight.
Here's the problem:
It is the left that transformed universities into
the moral and intellectual wastelands most are now.
It is the left that created the moral monsters known
as left-wing students who do not believe in free
speech, let alone tolerance.
It is the left that has taught generations of young
Americans that America is essentially a despicable
society that is racist and xenophobic to its core.
It is the left that came up with the lie that the
university has been overrun by a "culture of rape."
It is the left that taught generations of Americans
that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant,
xenophobic, homophobic, racist and bigoted.
It is the left that is anti-intellectual, teaching
students to substitute feelings for reason.
It is the left that removed the portrait of
Shakespeare hanging in the English department of the
University of Pennsylvania because Shakespeare is a
white male, thereby teaching college students that
art is not measured by excellence or by the pursuit
of truth but by race, gender and class.
It is the left that has transformed the Founding
Fathers of the United States from great men who
created the freest and most affluent society in
human society into rich racist white males who
created a racist, colonialist, imperialist,
women-hating, foreigner-hating, non-white-hating
society.
Two of Bruni's fellow New York Times columnists,
Paul Krugman and Charles Blow, vie with each other
to write hate-filled hysteria regarding
conservatives, Republicans and the president. What
are students who reads Blow supposed to conclude
when Blow declares President Donald Trump "madman of
the year," "a parasite" and a "demi-fascist," and
writes that the battle against Trump is "about
democracy and fascism, war and peace, life and
death"? Can we expect them to conclude that they
should be respectful of conservatives who come to
campus?
How are students who read Krugman supposed to react
to Republicans coming to their campus? In Jan. 2011,
just one day after Jared Loughner murdered six
people and gravely wounded former Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, Krugman wrote that the
murders were a result of hate-filled rhetoric coming
from conservatives and Republicans.
He said: "When you heard the terrible news from
Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you,
at some level, expecting something like this
atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category.
... It's the saturation of our political discourse
-- and especially our airwaves -- with
eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising
tide of violence. Where's that toxic rhetoric coming
from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance:
it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."
Why would students want to allow people who
engage in "eliminationist rhetoric" to speak on
their campus?
And what about all the leftists who routinely use
the word "resistance," a word connoting a battle
against Nazi-like tyranny, instead of the usual word
"opposition" to denote political disagreement? What
should students conclude about that? Isn't rioting a
legitimate form of "resistance" when a
representative of "tyranny" comes to campus?
To cite but one more example, if students believe
the left-wing hate group the Southern Poverty Law
Center when it labels Ayaan Hirsi Ali an
"anti-Islamic extremist," is it any wonder that they
and the professors at Brandeis University would
rescind the university's invitation to this
courageous Somali-American woman, a great defender
of women in the Islamic world?
After this half-century of left-wing teaching and
hateful rhetoric, the tears of the Frank Brunis and
others on the left mean nothing. Their leftist
thinking spawned this catastrophe. Until they take
responsibility for it, they are not to be taken
seriously.