Stupid liberal columnist wrote: "I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's"
mike
with 957 comments as of 12/31/2010 11:32:18 AM
'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
campus.
By Colman McCarthy
Thursday, December 30, 2010;
Now that asking and telling has ceased to be problematic in military
circles, ROTC has resurfaced as a national issue: Will universities
such as Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools be opened to
Reserve Officers' Training Corps since colleges can no longer can
argue that the military is biased against gays and therefore not
welcome?
The debate reminds me of an interview I conducted over parents'
weekend at the University of Notre Dame in 1989. I sat down with
Theodore Hesburgh, the priest who had retired two years earlier after
serving 35 years as the university's president. Graciously, he invited
me to lunch at the campus inn. During our discussion, he took modest
pride at having raised more than a billion dollars for Notre Dame, and
expressed similar feelings about the university's ROTC program. More
than 700 student-cadets were in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
Few universities, public or private, had a larger percentage of
students in uniform then. The school could have been renamed Fort
Hesburgh.
When I suggested that Notre Dame's hosting of ROTC was a large
negative among the school's many positives, Hesburgh disagreed. Notre
Dame was a model of patriotism, he said, by training future officers
who were churchgoers, who had taken courses in ethics, and who loved
God and country. Notre Dame's ROTC program was a way to "Christianize
the military," he stated firmly.
I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of
slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing
cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think
that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military
would eventually embrace Christ's teaching of loving one's enemies?
The interview quickly slid downhill.
These days, the academic senates of the Ivies and other schools are no
doubt pondering the return of military recruiters to their campuses.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon, which oversees ROTC programs on more than 300
campuses, has to be asking if it wants to expand to the elite
campuses, where old antipathies are remembered on both sides.
It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral
reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of
"don't ask, don't tell." They can stand with those who for reasons of
conscience reject military solutions to conflicts.
They can stand with Martin Luther King Jr. and his view of America's
penchant for war-making: "This madness must cease," he said from a
pulpit in April 1967. Even well short of the pacifist positions, they
can argue the impracticality of maintaining a military that has helped
drive this country into record depths of debt. The defense budget has
more than doubled since 2000, to over $700 billion. They can align
themselves with colleges such as Hobart, Earlham, Goshen, Guilford,
Hampshire, George Fox and a long list of others that teach
alternatives to violence. Serve your country after college, these
schools say, but consider the Peace Corps as well as the Marine Corps.
Will the Ivies have the courage for such stands? I'm doubtful. Only
one of the eight Ivy League schools - Cornell - offers a degree in
peace studies. Their pride in running programs in women's studies,
black studies, and gay and lesbian studies is well-founded, but
schools have small claims to greatness so long as the study of peace
is not equal to the other departments when it comes to size and
funding.
At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned
that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses.
The many students I interviewed were candid about their reasons for
signing up: free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a
job in the military after college. With some exceptions, they were
mainly from families that couldn't afford ever-rising college tabs.
To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my
school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be
anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the
Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies
and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In
recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in
my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by
people of such resolve and daring.
ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school,
if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations
can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard
does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a
sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
Colman McCarthy, a former Post columnist, directs the Center for
Teaching Peace in Washington and teaches courses on nonviolence at
four area universities and two high schools.
tscottme
news:ca80f771-afc1-456e...@c2g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR2010122903033.html
>
> with 957 comments as of 12/31/2010 11:32:18 AM
>
> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
> campus.
> By Colman McCarthy
> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
<snip
Remember guys, no matter how many decades the left supports any and all
enemies of the USA and Western Civ, it's rude to call them traitors. The
left only puts cultural cyanide into society by accident, and with good
intentions. If they have to horsewhip every self-suficient taxpayer to
provide free needles for all addicts, it's because they love America. If
they have to free every convicted murderer and save a seat for terrorists on
every airliner, it's because they love America. If they have to disarm all
non-criminals and import wild animals into the suburbs, it's becasue they
love America. If America collapses just because the left have weakened
every foundation stone and imported and protected every enemy then it must
not have been much of a country any way. Slavery is freedom, diversity is
our strength, surrender is victory, retreat is progress. It's all George
Bush's fault!
--
Scott
Hey, as any idiot knows, if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly heat
it up, the frog will freeze to death before it realizes it's actually
boiling.
Classical Values on global warming
http://tinyurl.com/23mx2wq
Dennis
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR20101
> 22903033.html
>
> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
> campus.
> By Colman McCarthy
> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
>
> ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school,
> if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations
> can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard
> does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a
> sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
Yup, Coleman McCarthy is a wanker with a capital W.
Dennis
William Black
> "mike"<yard...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ca80f771-afc1-456e...@c2g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR2010122903033.html
>>
>> with 957 comments as of 12/31/2010 11:32:18 AM
>>
>> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
>> campus.
>> By Colman McCarthy
>> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
>
> <snip
>
> Remember guys, no matter how many decades the left supports any and all
> enemies of the USA and Western Civ, it's rude to call them traitors.
I don't for one moment suppose you'd like to tell us which enemies and
who supported them?
--
William Black
Free men have open minds
If you want loyalty, buy a dog...
Ed Rasimus
wrote:
I love language. "Intellectual purity of a school"!!! One should not
taint such purity with challenges to the establishment thinking. One
should not question to basis of your ideology. One should accept and
march in lock-step to the beat of the pacifist drum.
Surely if a few future warriors were to be on campus embracing their
foul ideas it would only be a matter of weeks before the whole
intellectual castle crumbled into anarchy.
I wonder if the history department offers some detailed examples of
nations that found their way to peace absent a strong defense?
Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
www.thundertales.blogspot.com
deem...@aol.com
> On 1 Jan 2011 03:32:49 GMT, Dennis <tsalagi18NOS...@hotmail.com>
Carthage?
Ed Rasimus
.....delendum est.
Arved Sandstrom
> On 1 Jan 2011 03:32:49 GMT, Dennis<tsalagi...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> mike wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR20101
>>> 22903033.html
>>>
>>> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
>>> campus.
>>> By Colman McCarthy
>>> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
>>>
>>> ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school,
>>> if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations
>>> can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard
>>> does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a
>>> sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
>>
>> Yup, Coleman McCarthy is a wanker with a capital W.
>>
>> Dennis
>
> I love language. "Intellectual purity of a school"!!! One should not
> taint such purity with challenges to the establishment thinking. One
> should not question to basis of your ideology. One should accept and
> march in lock-step to the beat of the pacifist drum.
Intellectual sterility is what I think McCarthy meant.
AHS
Jim Wilkins
> I wonder if the history department offers some detailed examples of
> nations that found their way to peace absent a strong defense?
> Ed Rasimus
There are many examples of nations that found peace by meekly obeying
their conquerors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Romana
jsw
Tankfixer
rasimus...@verizon.net says...
>
> On 1 Jan 2011 03:32:49 GMT, Dennis <tsalagi...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >mike wrote:
> >
> >> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR20101
> >> 22903033.html
> >>
> >> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
> >> campus.
> >> By Colman McCarthy
> >> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
> >>
> >> ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school,
> >> if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations
> >> can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard
> >> does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a
> >> sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
> >
> >Yup, Coleman McCarthy is a wanker with a capital W.
> >
> >Dennis
>
> I love language. "Intellectual purity of a school"!!! One should not
> taint such purity with challenges to the establishment thinking. One
> should not question to basis of your ideology. One should accept and
> march in lock-step to the beat of the pacifist drum.
I saw that line and wrote the author off as another open minded
progressive who insists you think as he does.
Paul F Austin
That's the reason I'm doing a military history degree at Norwich. It
would be pretty much impossible for someone like me to get through most
other schools without playing "dodge the land mine"
War Before History by Keeley is a good source on the payoffs on national
pacifism. Keeley says that the (few) societies that didn't make war, did
so because they were so isolated as to have no neighbors or had been
conquered and turned into clients by the victors. Most pre-state groups
engaged in more or less constant war and the body counts showed it.
Throughout human history, about 30-45% of males and about 10-15% of
females died by violence. It makes the bloody 20th century seem
positively <erm> pacific, especially when you consider that about half
the body count was the result of the Marxist-Leninist experiment.
Paul
Jack Linthicum
Argentina, and Brazil might suffice.
Dan
I wonder if anyone has told McCarthy some of Harvard's research
programs are funded by DoD.
Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
deem...@aol.com
> On 1/1/2011 10:05 AM, Ed Rasimus wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
Please. I went to Tennessee and only met one "raving liberal" in
the history dept. She taught Latin American history and was in love
with Fidel, Che, etc. She and I had some disagreements, but I got an
A. She had enough integrity to give good marks if you could back it
up. The next semester she had some kind of meltdown during a dept
meeting, stormed out and resigned. My thought was "Shit! There goes a
recommendation!"
The rest of the dept was fairly evenly split between liberals and
conservatives, but I never had one I considered unfair. The best
professor I've ever had taught African history....she's a Canadian
with a PhD from Harvard, but was extremely open-minded and fair....but
also very demanding.
>
> War Before History by Keeley is a good source on the payoffs on national
> pacifism. Keeley says that the (few) societies that didn't make war, did
> so because they were so isolated as to have no neighbors or had been
> conquered and turned into clients by the victors. Most pre-state groups
> engaged in more or less constant war and the body counts showed it.
> Throughout human history, about 30-45% of males and about 10-15% of
> females died by violence.
I call bullshit on that one. Until very recently, over 50% of
both sexes died of disease/malnutrition/childbirth/etc. The figures
being cited are estimates from burials where there is evidence of
violence on the remains. The problem is, we can't tell whether the
violence was in a war, a fight, an accident...or even post-mortem.
deem...@aol.com
"Strong defense" is relative to your neighbors. Also, the gorilla
up north with that pesky Monroe Doctrine might've had something to do
with it.....
Jack Linthicum
I answered the question. I imagine some of Rome's neighbors welcomed
the implied egis.
David E. Powell
The Colleges all want that federal money. They don't want to actually
allow ROTC or other things in return though.
David E. Powell
> On 01/01/11 02:23, tscottme wrote:
>
> >news:ca80f771-afc1-456e...@c2g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> >>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR201...
>
> >> with 957 comments as of 12/31/2010 11:32:18 AM
>
> >> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
> >> campus.
> >> By Colman McCarthy
> >> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
>
> > <snip
>
> > Remember guys, no matter how many decades the left supports any and all
> > enemies of the USA and Western Civ, it's rude to call them traitors.
>
> I don't for one moment suppose you'd like to tell us which enemies and
> who supported them?
USSR - Ted Kennedy saying he'd do all he could to sabotage Reagan in
private cables with Soviet Leadership.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/22/ted-kennedys-kgb-correspondenc
PFLP and other Mideast terrorists supported by European Leftists in
combined terror operations including the Entebbe hijacking.
Charles Manson who the Weathermen said was "alright."
The Taliban and this guy supporting them by refusing to support the US
against them, arguing that he field be ceded to them.
Hitler until a bit after the USSR was invaded as Stalin ordered fellow
travelers in the US to campaign against US aid to Britain. He did so
from the Neutrality Pact and Poland (German and Soviet joint invasion
in 1939) until slightly after the USSR was invaded in 1941.
Incidentally, there was a delay in getting the change of orders out
due to high level confusion over the invasion in the USSR, resulting
in some weeks of the Fellow Travelers still being told to oppose US
aid and involvement against Germany, eevn with German armies driving
across the USSR. No one wanted to change an order like that on their
own until Stalin gave the OK, and he was in shock for many weeks over
the invasion.
Paul J. Adam
<rasimus...@verizon.net> writes
>I love language. "Intellectual purity of a school"!!! One should not
>taint such purity with challenges to the establishment thinking. One
>should not question to basis of your ideology. One should accept and
>march in lock-step to the beat of the pacifist drum.
>
>Surely if a few future warriors were to be on campus embracing their
>foul ideas it would only be a matter of weeks before the whole
>intellectual castle crumbled into anarchy.
Ed, you might like the following story. (And it really is true, in
outline even if I exaggerate some details)
Loughborough University, circa 1988. A fine institution, not loudly
internationally famous but quietly renowned for its physical education
and its engineering.
The Student's Union are the usual handful of energetic neo-Trotskyites
who have banned all Nestle products from campus (selling powdered milk
to the third world for profit, how evil), forbidden Barclay's Bank from
having branches on site (they operate in apartheid-era South Africa and
have the temerity to make rooinek white Seffricans ask a black manager
for a loan! How racist!) and so on. However, their next grand gesture
(having vaguely flailed around at failing to declare the campus to be a
nuclear-free zone - how would anyone notice?) was to ban all overt
militarism.
So, no University Officer Training Corps recruitment at Freshers' Fair,
no uniform allowed to be worn on campus, and so forth. The motion was
passed with cheers and acclamation, hindered only by the detail that too
few people - the usual dozen or so soap-dodgers in a choice of Che
Guevara T-shirts and Red Brigade sweaters - were present for the vote to
be quorate. But what could go wrong? Unless it's overturned at the next
meeting, it will go ahead and the world and the campus will be saved
from those murderous baby-eating soldiers, sailors and airmen who had so
viciously been ravaging it.
But in fact, the next meeting is graced by the presence of most of the
Loughborough contingent of East Midlands University Officer Training
Corps, plus representatives of the local University Air Squadron and the
University Royal Navy Unit; who proceeded to fall into three ranks
outside the Nelson Mandela Building, before marching into the Steve Biko
Auditorium where meetings were customarily held, where they quietly and
politely waited until it was time to crush the silly notion in its crib
and deny it the second reading it needed to pass. With nearly a hundred
present in a single voting block, matters decided today are both quorate
and binding...
Then, under "Any Other Business", a vote of no confidence in the current
President was proposed, seconded, and passed by a large margin.
Then 2Lt Tobias Ellwood was proposed, seconded, and elected as the new
President of the Student's Union. Oops: a military coup d'etat taking
over student politics, using the weapons of democracy. (And yet so few
students were weekend warriors...)
Toby was an excellent President as far as most students were concerned,
keeping policy decisions to "cheap beer in the bars, good bands on
Friday nights, and no time or money wasted on pointless political crap".
He went on to a successful short-service commission in the regular Army,
then electoral success in Parliament, and has been the MP for
Bournemouth East since 2005.
http://www.tobiasellwood.com/Tobias/index.htm
Oddly enough, he only stepped down as President when he graduated:
despite howls of protests from the Trots (about the hideously
undemocratic way their pet was voted out of office by a clear quorate
majority), they were never able to muster enough people to depose him.
Maybe that's what McCarthy is afraid of?
--
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.
Paul J. Adam
Paul J. Adam
Austin <pfau...@bellsouth.net> writes
>War Before History by Keeley is a good source on the payoffs on
>national pacifism. Keeley says that the (few) societies that didn't
>make war, did so because they were so isolated as to have no neighbors
>or had been conquered and turned into clients by the victors. Most
>pre-state groups engaged in more or less constant war and the body
>counts showed it. Throughout human history, about 30-45% of males and
>about 10-15% of females died by violence.
Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs and Steel" digs into the supposed
pacifism of "innocent hunter-gatherer societies" and points to the
ferocious web of vendetta, murder and revenge that was (sometimes still
is) common therein.
For the New Guinean groups he studied, overt war was not that lethal
(tending to be about gesture and display with the two sides standing far
enough apart that thrown weapons could be dodged, yet insults could be
clearly heard and mockery properly exchanged; about as lethal as Iraqi
tribal fighting[1]) but murders over women, property, and then
escalating revenge were the main factor keeping the population in check.
(A murder every few years in a village of fifty is more than enough to
keep numbers down)
[1] Tribal fighting near Route 6 last night. Small arms, RPGs, HMGs,
mortars, DANBAT estimate 20,000 tracers seen. One casualty.
DANBAT intervened to ask that the firing swing away so Route 6 not swept
by fire.
Seriously, it was that choreographed and artificial...
Jim Wilkins
<n...@jrwlynchANDNOTTHIS.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> ...>
> Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs and Steel" digs into the supposed
> pacifism of "innocent hunter-gatherer societies" and points to the
> ferocious web of vendetta, murder and revenge that was (sometimes still
> is) common therein.
> Paul J. Adam
This is an excellent account of perhaps the only documented case of
the rise of a powerful, sophisticated military empire out of a diffuse
and relatively peaceful agricultural society:
http://www.amazon.com/Washing-Spears-Rise-Fall-Nation/dp/0306808668
We really don't know how the ancient empires formed.
Once the free southward expansion of the Zulu was halted by contact
with the tribes push ahead by the Boers there was a sudden surplus of
young men who couldn't find new grazing land and were available to
become warriors. In this particular case their leader was a
charismatic organizational genius who may have learned Western methods
from a passing doctor. Within three years he built them into an army
and created an empire. They pushed their neighbors, displacements
stifled agriculture, and soon the previously stable southern center of
Africa was washed with waves of bandits and refugees who stripped the
land of food and then starved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mfecane
These tribes weren't primitive, they had a hierarchical political
structure and traditions not too different from medieval Europe.
Compare them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaka
jsw
Matt Wiser
<n...@jrwlynchANDNOTTHIS.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <kgguh6tj33v9g06qf8rfqpe0fnrk44o...@4ax.com>, Ed Rasimus
> <rasimusSPAML...@verizon.net> writes
Probably. Though I went to a CSU Campus which can't be described as
"liberal". They fought to keep their AF ROTC unit in the early '90s
when the AF sought to reduce the number of ROTC units (this was during
the post-CW drawdown). The AF, due to Congressional pressure, changed
its mind.
Mr. McCarthy ought to remember this quote-I don't know who made it
originally, but I've seen it repeated a number of times: "Nations do
not survive by setting examples for other nations. Nations survive by
making examples of other nations."
Matt Wiser
I'd say liberal with a capital L.
Dennis
>>Yup, Coleman McCarthy is a wanker with a capital W.
>
> I love language. "Intellectual purity of a school"!!! One should not
> taint such purity with challenges to the establishment thinking. One
> should not question to basis of your ideology. One should accept and
> march in lock-step to the beat of the pacifist drum.
>
> Surely if a few future warriors were to be on campus embracing their
> foul ideas it would only be a matter of weeks before the whole
> intellectual castle crumbled into anarchy.
>
> I wonder if the history department offers some detailed examples of
> nations that found their way to peace absent a strong defense?
Costa Rica is one of the few that comes to mind. Maybe India under Asoka.
How about Thailand? It managed to stay free even from the Japanese.
Dennis
Mike
and MIT have the Lincoln Lab and Johns Hopkins the Applied Physics
Lab. liberals believed and practiced tolerating suppression of their
unpopular views (pro-military for once)...
On Jan 1, 3:09 pm, Dan <B24...@AOL.COM> wrote:
deem...@aol.com
> Ed Rasimus wrote:
> >>Yup, Coleman McCarthy is a wanker with a capital W.
>
> > I love language. "Intellectual purity of a school"!!! One should not
> > taint such purity with challenges to the establishment thinking. One
> > should not question to basis of your ideology. One should accept and
> > march in lock-step to the beat of the pacifist drum.
>
> > Surely if a few future warriors were to be on campus embracing their
> > foul ideas it would only be a matter of weeks before the whole
> > intellectual castle crumbled into anarchy.
>
> > I wonder if the history department offers some detailed examples of
> > nations that found their way to peace absent a strong defense?
>
> Costa Rica is one of the few that comes to mind.
Once again, there's that big guy up north telling everyone else
to keep out.
Maybe India under Asoka.
> How about Thailand? It managed to stay free even from the Japanese.
Thailand became a Japanese satellite.
Paul F Austin
> In message <YY-dnVjs0fVVG4LQ...@supernews.com>, Paul F
> Austin <pfau...@bellsouth.net> writes
>> War Before History by Keeley is a good source on the payoffs on
>> national pacifism. Keeley says that the (few) societies that didn't
>> make war, did so because they were so isolated as to have no neighbors
>> or had been conquered and turned into clients by the victors. Most
>> pre-state groups engaged in more or less constant war and the body
>> counts showed it. Throughout human history, about 30-45% of males and
>> about 10-15% of females died by violence.
>
> Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs and Steel" digs into the supposed
> pacifism of "innocent hunter-gatherer societies" and points to the
> ferocious web of vendetta, murder and revenge that was (sometimes still
> is) common therein.
>
> For the New Guinean groups he studied, overt war was not that lethal
> (tending to be about gesture and display with the two sides standing far
> enough apart that thrown weapons could be dodged, yet insults could be
> clearly heard and mockery properly exchanged; about as lethal as Iraqi
> tribal fighting[1]) but murders over women, property, and then
> escalating revenge were the main factor keeping the population in check.
> (A murder every few years in a village of fifty is more than enough to
> keep numbers down)
Yes, Diamond supports the notion that primitive war is fundamentally
unserious. Keeley points out that while the body counts for those
skirmishes were low, they occurred frequently and the cumulative death
rate was quite high.
According to Keeley, the Dugum Dani in 1961 had a warfare death rate of
0.48%, the Manga from 1949 to 1956, 0.46% (both groups in New Guinea).
That compares with Germany during the first half of the twentieth
century of about 0.3%
Many pre-state societies examined by anthropologists fit this pattern,
relatively low body count per engagement but very high frequency of
engagement and high cumulative death rate from warfare.
The numbers get more and more uncertain, the farther back in time you
look but the overall pattern seems to show that deaths in warfare were
common as far back as you can look.
Some of the efforts to deny this are risible. Steven Leblanc mentions
archeologists who mis-identified clay sling stones found in large
numbers at an Anatolian site as essentially, coffee warming stones <see,
you warm the clay spheroids in the fire then drop them into the drink
that you want to warm up>
Paul
Paul
Dan
"Free" is relative. Thailand did a deal with Japan which allowed
military transit. There wasn't anything the Thais could have done to
prevent it anyway. They were transited during the Malay and Burma invasions.
William Black
> On Jan 1, 7:58 am, William Black<blackuse...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 01/01/11 02:23, tscottme wrote:
>>
>>> "mike"<yard22...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>> news:ca80f771-afc1-456e...@c2g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
>>>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR201...
>>
>>>> with 957 comments as of 12/31/2010 11:32:18 AM
>>
>>>> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
>>>> campus.
>>>> By Colman McCarthy
>>>> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
>>
>>> <snip
>>
>>> Remember guys, no matter how many decades the left supports any and all
>>> enemies of the USA and Western Civ, it's rude to call them traitors.
>>
>> I don't for one moment suppose you'd like to tell us which enemies and
>> who supported them?
>
> USSR - Ted Kennedy saying he'd do all he could to sabotage Reagan in
> private cables with Soviet Leadership.
>
> http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/22/ted-kennedys-kgb-correspondenc
Your reference is best described as a biased load of old rubbish using
sources best described as 'tainted'.
> PFLP and other Mideast terrorists supported by European Leftists in
> combined terror operations including the Entebbe hijacking.
>
Ah, you mean terrorists.
I'm afraid I don't really consider them 'leftists'.
> Charles Manson who the Weathermen said was "alright."
Manson wasn't really a political figure unless you have some very odd
ideas indeed about what 'political' means.
> The Taliban and this guy supporting them by refusing to support the US
> against them, arguing that he field be ceded to them.
The Taliban certainly aren't 'leftists'.
> Hitler until a bit after the USSR was invaded as Stalin ordered fellow
> travelers in the US to campaign against US aid to Britain. He did so
> from the Neutrality Pact and Poland (German and Soviet joint invasion
> in 1939) until slightly after the USSR was invaded in 1941.
What's a 'fellow traveller'?
Jim Wilkins
> > David E. Powell wrote:
> ...>
> > Hitler until a bit after the USSR was invaded as Stalin ordered fellow
> What's a 'fellow traveller'?
What's a "useful idiot"?
Lenin used the Greek "idiot" which is a political misfit or anarchist,
rather than the Russian "durak", the village idiot.
William Black
> On Jan 2, 6:28 am, William Black<blackuse...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> David E. Powell wrote:
>> ...>
>>> Hitler until a bit after the USSR was invaded as Stalin ordered fellow
>>> travelers in the US to campaign against US aid to Britain. ...>
>> What's a 'fellow traveller'?
>> William Black
>
> What's a "useful idiot"?
Oh I certainly know what one of those is.
Lenin defines them quite adequately.
So what's a 'fellow traveller'?
Paul F Austin
> On 02/01/11 13:47, Jim Wilkins wrote:
>> On Jan 2, 6:28 am, William Black<blackuse...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> David E. Powell wrote:
>>> ...>
>>>> Hitler until a bit after the USSR was invaded as Stalin ordered fellow
>>>> travelers in the US to campaign against US aid to Britain. ...>
>>> What's a 'fellow traveller'?
>>> William Black
>>
>> What's a "useful idiot"?
>
> Oh I certainly know what one of those is.
>
> Lenin defines them quite adequately.
>
> So what's a 'fellow traveller'?
>
>
>
could not order the "fellow travelers" but could only do so for people
under Party discipline.
Fellow travelers were non-party member leftists who for various reasons,
allied themselves with the Communist Party in United Fronts or like
organizations, many of whom were in heroic denial of the nature of the
Soviet project. The Secret Speech peeled many of them off when the
nature of the Stalinist regime became unignoreable.
Paul
Jim Wilkins
IOW, active or potential Useful Idiots.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1433323/How-Shaw-defended-Stalins-mass-killings.html
William Black
In other words they weren't Communists and any allegiance they ever had
to any political party is hearsay.
Jim Wilkins
> ...>
> In other words they weren't Communists and any allegiance they ever had
> to any political party is hearsay.
Absolutely innocent, unless proven otherwise at their trials. At least
in Western courts.
There aren't any real Communists anyway, just a few old Sovoks.
Paul F Austin
above. Communists had allies on the left which is grimly funny,
considering that Marxist-Leninists considered other left wing parties
more important enemies than were capitalists. The first to be shot
during the Russian Civil War were Right-SR's more or less anarchist-free
soilers. In Spain, the Cheka pursued Anarchists and the POUM
(Trotskyist) with great vigor.
It's not just a river...
Paul
Paul
William Black
I know all that.
What you've just pointed out is that non Communist left wing political
parties were actively hunted by Communists.
Some left wing parties made common cause with the Communist parties but
the 'Fellow Travellers' seem to be a fantasy designed to make people
mistrust anyone to the left of, say Obama or Clinton, who are both
pretty centre-ist in European terms..
Jim Wilkins
> ...>
> Some left wing parties made common cause with the Communist parties but
> the 'Fellow Travellers' seem to be a fantasy designed to make people
> mistrust anyone to the left of, say Obama or Clinton, who are both
> pretty centre-ist in European terms..
>
> --
> William Black
Notable examples of traitorous unpersons whose existence you must
strive mightily to deny:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Koestler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Spender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dos_Passos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Fast
William Black
Well Koestler, Stephen Spender, and Howard Fast were all Communist Party
members at some stage.
So was John Dos Passos, and he broke with the Communists as early as 1935
Anyone who thinks George Orwell was a Communist 'fellow traveller' needs
professional help.
In what way were any of then traitors?
And do please try and remember that not all of them were US Citizens.
I know the current excesses of Mr Assange and his friends seem to have
incited the US government into more or less saying that everyone on the
planet owes loyalty to the US of A, but I'm afraid that just isn't the
case.
frank
Locally, ROTC runs over to Notre Dame for training, kind of pisses
them off, but not enough units to go around, there are about 4000
colleges in the US. Don't know how many units. No doubt lots want them
that can't get them, but not a lot of people go to the military option
these days. Though here, being a private college would greatly help
with the tuition (which gets subsidized anyway).
frank
> yep fromwww.usaspending.gov
U Texas had a huge military research center off campus.
frank
Pretty much weren't Republican and were found under the beds of
countless Americans after they went to bed at night. Scary times the
50s...
treadhead
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR201...
>
> with 957 comments as of 12/31/2010 11:32:18 AM
>
> campus.
> By Colman McCarthy
> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
>
> circles, ROTC has resurfaced as a national issue: Will universities
> such as Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools be opened to
> Reserve Officers' Training Corps since colleges can no longer can
> argue that the military is biased against gays and therefore not
> welcome?
>
> The debate reminds me of an interview I conducted over parents'
> weekend at the University of Notre Dame in 1989. I sat down with
> Theodore Hesburgh, the priest who had retired two years earlier after
> serving 35 years as the university's president. Graciously, he invited
> me to lunch at the campus inn. During our discussion, he took modest
> pride at having raised more than a billion dollars for Notre Dame, and
> expressed similar feelings about the university's ROTC program. More
> than 700 student-cadets were in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
> Few universities, public or private, had a larger percentage of
> students in uniform then. The school could have been renamed Fort
> Hesburgh.
>
> When I suggested that Notre Dame's hosting of ROTC was a large
> negative among the school's many positives, Hesburgh disagreed. Notre
> Dame was a model of patriotism, he said, by training future officers
> who were churchgoers, who had taken courses in ethics, and who loved
> God and country. Notre Dame's ROTC program was a way to "Christianize
> the military," he stated firmly.
>
> I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of
> slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing
> cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think
> that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military
> would eventually embrace Christ's teaching of loving one's enemies?
>
> The interview quickly slid downhill.
>
> These days, the academic senates of the Ivies and other schools are no
> doubt pondering the return of military recruiters to their campuses.
> Meanwhile, the Pentagon, which oversees ROTC programs on more than 300
> campuses, has to be asking if it wants to expand to the elite
> campuses, where old antipathies are remembered on both sides.
>
> It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral
> reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of
> "don't ask, don't tell." They can stand with those who for reasons of
> conscience reject military solutions to conflicts.
>
> They can stand with Martin Luther King Jr. and his view of America's
> penchant for war-making: "This madness must cease," he said from a
> pulpit in April 1967. Even well short of the pacifist positions, they
> can argue the impracticality of maintaining a military that has helped
> drive this country into record depths of debt. The defense budget has
> more than doubled since 2000, to over $700 billion. They can align
> themselves with colleges such as Hobart, Earlham, Goshen, Guilford,
> Hampshire, George Fox and a long list of others that teach
> alternatives to violence. Serve your country after college, these
> schools say, but consider the Peace Corps as well as the Marine Corps.
>
> Will the Ivies have the courage for such stands? I'm doubtful. Only
> one of the eight Ivy League schools - Cornell - offers a degree in
> peace studies. Their pride in running programs in women's studies,
> black studies, and gay and lesbian studies is well-founded, but
> schools have small claims to greatness so long as the study of peace
> is not equal to the other departments when it comes to size and
> funding.
>
> At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned
> that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses.
> The many students I interviewed were candid about their reasons for
> signing up: free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a
> job in the military after college. With some exceptions, they were
> mainly from families that couldn't afford ever-rising college tabs.
>
> To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my
> school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be
> anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the
> Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies
> and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In
> recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in
> my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by
> people of such resolve and daring.
>
> ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school,
> if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations
> can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard
> does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a
> sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
>
> Teaching Peace in Washington and teaches courses on nonviolence at
> four area universities and two high schools.
"Stupid liberal columnist" is a redundant term!!!!
Schiffner
You have to understand...some of them are redundantly stupid. You
know, like a brand new (still has the varnish on the bars) 2lt.
<shudder> I hated raising those pups.
Dennis
> On Dec 31 2010, 11:51 am, mike <yard22...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR201...
>>
>> 'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on
>> campus.
>> By Colman McCarthy
>> Thursday, December 30, 2010;
> "Stupid liberal columnist" is a redundant term!!!!
Not necessarily. There are some who give thoughtful arguments with
supporting evidence. Molly Ivins wasn't too bad here.
Coleman McCarthy isn't one of them. I remember when, a long time ago, he
wrote a guest column on what it took to be a 'healthy, sane liberal'. It
was the utmost infantile crap.
A reader wrote in, 'That column is the best argument for conservatism I've
seen in a long time!'
Dennis