---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 13:55:20 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: The Symbionese Terror and the Academic Left
The Symbionese Terror and the Academic Left
By Bruce S. Thornton
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 21, 2002
TWENTY-SIX YEARS after a bank robbery that left a mother of four dead from
a shotgun blast, five former members of the terrorist Symbionese Liberation
Army of the '70s are finally going to court for their implication in the
crime. As the victim's son said, it's about time.
In fact, this should be just the beginning of the accounting owed by all
the ex-"radicals" and "activists" and fellow-traveling apologists for
murder and terror. For years now people who rationalized and championed
everything from torture to genocide, as long as these crimes were perfumed
with leftist idealism, have enjoyed the good life created by the culture
they once wanted to destroy. Indeed, in the university some have been
rewarded for those activities and beliefs, which to this day still have
adherents in the looking-glass world of the academy.
Examples abound. Ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers-to the shame of the state of
Illinois--is on the faculty of the state university, and has written a book
crowing about his youthful exploits and the fact that he got away with
them. A one-time advocate of murder of the innocent, in other words, at the
cost of a few crocodile tears, is given a free pass, presumably because of
his youthful "idealism" or "good intentions" on behalf of the oppressed and
downtrodden.
Well, the Nazis were idealists too. So was Jim Jones. So were
segregationists in the old South. So are the Al Qaeda terrorists. But in
the American university, the political flavor of one's idealism, not one's
actions, is what counts. Any belief or even rhetoric allegedly
"progressive" functions like a plenary indulgence. Just say that you are
full of righteous indignation over the suffering of the oppressed, and you
will be forgiven a multitude of sins, including attempted murder-especially
if your victims are the culprits (the police or other "bourgeois" enemies
of the people) dehumanized by the left. Then even cold-blooded murderers
like Mumia Abu-Jamal can be canonized by the international left, the same
people who once groveled before mass-murderers like Chairman Mao.
Ex-terrorists like Ayers, however, who at least acted on his corrupt
ideals, are rare. More numerous in academe and the media are those
fellow-travelers who, at no cost to themselves or their comfortable
lifestyles, consistently have rationalized and excused the evil of leftist
thugs and killers. As every year passes, their lies and ignorance are
exposed, their ideological spin shredded by facts, their double-standard
laid bare. Rather than the cutting edge of historical inevitability, their
great Marxist god "history" has in fact shown them to be at best Lenin's
"useful idiots," nave idealists whose politics was their cargo-cult, at
worst collaborators with the most murderous dictatorships in the history of
the planet.
Yet how many have acknowledged their errors, recanted their lies, and owned
up to their complicity in terror? Why should they? They pay no price for
failing to take responsibility for their stupidity and moral idiocy.
Indeed, they are rewarded and considered morally superior to so-called
"conservatives" and "reactionaries." Chairman Mao has more fans in the
university today than does Ronald Reagan. The mystery is why the rest of
the nation lets them get away with it.
Perhaps most Americans ignore these apologists for tyranny because they
romp in the playhouse of the university, which is sort of like the medieval
church, the repository of the ruling class's disgruntled second string. But
September 11 should have shown us that ideas have consequences. The
cultural relativism, moral nihilism, and knee-jerk anti-Americanism, which
still dominate the university and much of the media, helped pave the way
for that disaster, and it remains to be seen if we have experienced the
last effects of those pernicious ideas.
So let the accounting begin. Let's make those who rationalize murder and
terror acknowledge the consequences and costs of their idealism. And let's
make clear one fundamental truth: that murder of the innocent, no matter
what the ideal motivating it, is an inexcusable evil.
---------------------------------------
Bruce Thornton is a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno and author of
Bonfire of the Humanities (ISI Books) and Greek Ways (Encounter). Recently
he wrote "A Leftist Bestiary" and "Politically Correct Imports," and "The
ACLU's Civil Liberties Fundamentalism" for FrontPageMagazine.com.
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