On Wednesday, November 21, 2001, at 04:21 , sixties@lists.village.virginia.
edu wrote:
>
> "Defending Civilization:
> How Our Universities Are Failing America and
> What Can Be Done About It" [.pdf]
>
> http://www.goacta.org/Reports/defciv.pdf
Let us start with some analysis, the two Hot Governmental points are:
g1: ^In this conflict, there is no neutral ground.^
g2: "We need to know, in a war, exactly what is at stake."
The straw dogs that get dragged out in these times.
s1: The 1933 Oxford debates - which, unpleasantly they this time mentioned
that a principle part of the debate was the question of the British
Colonial
System over and against World Fascism - technically not a bright Idea, if
one were trying to use this older debate as a proof text case.
s2: Oh yes, December 7th, 1941 - how ever can we forget that american
colonial
possessions overseas outside of the 48 actual { real live, this is no shit,
they get to send two seantors each to congress } states were attacked by
another colonialist state.
s3: The Moral Relativism Thing
s4: the academic world is not falling into line, and hence is not
intimidating
students to support the party line, rather they are intimidating those who
do
not follow the party line of the various professors. { like as if that is
a
news flash - it is not always wise to point out to profs, in any field,
that
they just generically have their heads up their asses, and inappropriately
support your position based upon the actual real world cases that directly
contradict the prof's pet points... Some will take it in, some will freak,
and this covers more than just the PC stuff. }
s5: Only the academe is 'distinctly divided', as a sector of the american
society { so this is that classical logical fallacy of 'jump on the band
wagon'
or like what? }
The general Academe kvetching boils down to a few stock pieces
a1: this is a racist war
a2: support the class warfare model, even if you are all members of
the petty bourgeois, and would be rounded up if this were a real marxianist
revolution where the petty bourgeois are the class enemies of the
proletariat.
a3: At times the US government has executed on its ideals, at other times
it has not.
What I found almost too interesting were the list of things that SHOULD
have
been the hot topics of the academe...
we should be Discussing
d1. Heroism - What is Heroism?
d2. The Nature of Good and Evil - or in a there are no neutrals,
how would folks want to deal with this, well issue
d3. The Nature of Western Political Order
d4. The virtue of a free society
The big problem I have with all of this is that it's not too sure why this
organization has come with the presumption that Sound-Byte-Warfare is a
good
thing, nor where in God's Green Earth they are going.
Allow me to dispatch my concerns with the 'academic rhetoric' first, since
I do
not consider this the 'real issue' - but the usual straw dog complaint of
the
'mindless right' - who have confused 'an education' with 'learning' to
begin with.
In the main, I find the general academic rhetoric silly - and that the
classist
and racist kvetching is cute, but really impractical - and hinders getting
on
with the actual debate at hand. There are a number of the 'sloganeering'
bits
that are reasonable 'Recycle Plastic, not Violence' to be chief amongst
them. So
in the main the problem for me is that propositions a1 and a2 above are
background
noise that should simply be cut out so that we can focus on a3 - which,
gosh,
oh dear, executes on d2/d3/d4 - and in the current efforts to 'lock step'
behind the flag implements d1.
The principle problems I really have are with the two governmental
assertions
that are waved around like a flag - since there is some hope that mere
chant
the mantra from the right will suffice.
But is this really a time when there is 'no neutral ground'? Or, perchance,
has the 'government' actually executed on this assertion about knowing
what is at stake?
I have grave problems with the 'no neutral ground' - as I come from a
society
of law, in which the Judge must sit and hear the case, without passion or
prejudice, in essence being neutral. In like manner, the Jury is under the
same constriction. A proposition that holds as true for Civil Courts as
for American Military Courts. At which point we have the open conflict at
this simplistic level with this 'no neutral ground' and the notion that
any of what we are doing is an effort to uphold justice - most specifically
american justice.
The second problem I have with this 'no neutral ground' is that it would
posit that there are no third parties to this 'war' - namely 'the
noncombatants'
who are exempt from playing. So in the sound-byte-war, is the reason that
the
government has not activated the selective service system, because we are
all
now under UCMJ law as active duty members of the american armed forces?
So perchance the more appropriate position would be to take sound-bytes for
what they are - the barking of the shills on the carnival centerfare,
trying
to grab our attention that things are much more intersting inside.
If anything, this clearly is good time to wonder about the real issues at
hand:
What are the Laws of Warfare? How do we keep in touch with what is lawful?
What is the real notion of a 'sovereign state' - and to what levels are
which forms of intervention allowable, acceptable, and impermissible?
What are the real notions of International Law, both as they are now and
as we would prefer them to be in the future.
The sixties were a time when we went after some of this, and would learn
along
the way that some of the blithe naivete of the Peace Corp did as much
damange
as Good. We never did really work out who were all of the legitimate
military
types and when is what form of warfare not only acceptable but mandatory.
The Groteque Irony that the Reagan Administration found itself obliged of
law to
support the Pol Pot Regime as the 'legitimate' government of Kampuchea
was, well, 'the moral relativism' of Politics of the 'liberals'? Or merely
the fact that the precedence remained that Law is Law, and that we do not
have to like the government seated at the UN to simply follow the law?
That this had lead some to the conclusion that the Khmer Rouge were the
puppet toadies of the Sino-American Hegomony over and against the
Soviet-Hegomonist
is merely the sort of Stalinist Rhetoric we have come to accept from
reactionary ideological deviationalist - or, well, the impolite obligation
they suffer under trying to at least retain some 'mere consistency'.
Given that one of the propositions put forward in the document was about
the state of Hawai'i - and I would not be at all surprised which U of H
prof led the charge on that point - since, gosh, well, everyone is so
excited about, you it's 1941 again - and some Foreign Colonial Power has
attacked most of our Pacific Colonies. Granted, in america, we did not
call them colonies, but territories - since, well, do we really need to
go over the transition of america from the days when Mahon wrote 'Sea
Power'
to help motivate congress to the fact that we had no Steel Ships, and could
be invaded by Brazil, who did, thru the wonders of backing the coup against
the Feudalist Oppression of the Hawai'ian Kingdom, to our unilateral
protectorate
of the islands.... { I always wait for the moment when the struggle between
the marxists on being 'anti-feudalist' and 'anti-imperialist' runs into the
problem that we ripped off Hawai'i by freeing it from the very evil
kingdom.
But that way of course messes up the simplistic purity of the debate. }
That the idiots who put their document together were foolish enough to note
that a core part of the debate at oxford was about the differenciability of
the British Colonial system and the Fascist World - was not a wise tactic,
since, gosh, in america, aren't we SUPPOSE to remember our 'glorious fallen
dead' who Opposed the British Colonial System with force of Arms? That we
were also in the process of leveraging the British and French on the matter
of their Empires - even if we did step in to try to save the remnant of
'free indochina' from the Red Hordes....
So how DO we go about the process of resolving when, where and how, which
'soverign state' bounderies should be reschuffled by what means? Clearly
for all the Heat and Noise about Hawai'i we have yet seen them successfully
escalate to the opening phases of the Great Maoist Revolutionary Struggle
against the Imperialists!
In like manner, the academe, for all of its thrashing about, has likewise
been unable to resolve, at least for me, how they deal with their
culpability
as members of the Evil American Society - especially given the rhetoric of
'blowing up the pentagon is a good idea' - what is wrong with being
responsible
for actualizing your own rhetoric???? To be honest folks, I do this rant
with
the same folks who after the inauguration of George W. Bush were still
driving
around with their 'Charleston Heston is my Commander in Chief' bumper
stickers
- hello stoners, if you want to stop the EvilTheyThem - what is your
battle plan,
besides bitching as a bar stool hero.
We have a new century still unfolding. As the 'liberal media' is begining
to
notice, for some strange reason, things in Afghanistan are not quite like
the
liberation of France. Could it be that leaning on the Romanticism of WWII
was
not a cool kick off to the football game?
Maybe we should have started with understanding who the players were?
Maybe there were a lot more 'segments of american society' who were not
rushing
out to be easily swayed or easily panicked one way or the other?
What if the process is just going to have to take more than just more
sound-byte to sound-byte warfare?
ciao
drieux
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