Lessons Learned

The article below smacks more of Hitler Youth than anything else.

When these sorts of divisive and far right machinations enter the classroom one has to wonder if there is any middle ground at all for moderates to inhabit. This “ratting” on “radical” professors is as much a right wing scheme to further the current agenda to take from the poor in order to increase the rich as any other scheme perpetrated by the Bush administration.

A framework for influencing the future of not just American politics, but the very fabric of American education bent to the will of the Bush agenda, when compared to the fait accompli machinations of Nazi-era Germany would appear to be ill-conceived and not very threatening to life as we know it. It is tempting to discount these activities as unlikely to succeed.

However, when one considers that any control of any educational system is accomplished through this sort of sneak attack seeping up through the ranks until the concept becomes an unshakeable ideal, then one must question how to best defend against these attacks on freedom of expression on both sides of the political spectrum.

We cannot continue to create anarchy by forcing further disadvantages on the poor, and we cannot continue to place the welfare of corporations above the will of the people.

One only has to look at the “sociological triangle” which assigns economic status from the base of the triangle to the apex to understand that to further weaken each layer of the socio-economic triangle results in a collapse of the entire structure—sooner or later.

Common sense dictates that as each layer collapses, the next higher layer takes its place on the bottom, and thus our American society is destroyed layer by layer, at the same time creating such desperate conditions that anarchy is the only option to survival for the unfortunate lowest members of our society.

Only by shoring up the currently collapsing bottom layer—such as the poor of New Orleans, the single mothers struggling to survive and raise children, the infirm, the elderly, and all others in dire need of assistance, can we prevent the destruction of America.

Those who would succor the rich at the expense of the poor are just as much traitors to this country as any citizen of America who aids a terrorist jihadist in destroying some part of America.

Those who would allow the Republican Party to engage in a “McCarthyist” campaign on any college campus in order to lend legitimacy to the criminal activities and socio-economically destructive agenda of the current Bush administration are also traitors to the spirit of American democracy.

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RAT OUT A RAD PROF FOR $100

A UCLA alumni group led by a former student Republican leader wants students to sell out their "most radical professors" for $100.

The Bruin Alumni Association is offering cash to students who supply tapes and their notes of professors "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom."

The group says it's aiming to "depoliticize the classroom" by exposing politically charged professors, although its list of "Dirty 30" instructors targets those who've stated positions against President Bush and the military.

"We're just trying to get people back on a professional level," said the group's president and founder, Andrew Jones, a 2003 UCLA graduate..

Some of the professors targeted likened the project to a McCarthyist crusade, and at least one of the group's 20 board members quit over the offer.

Sondra Hale, a professor of anthropology and women's studies cited by the group, told The Post, "The tactic is a low tactic." David Andreatta

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